Original subtitles

Ruthless raiders plundering throughout Europe.

Bold navigators braving treacherous high seas.

And mighty heroes, who wielded

unbreakable swords.

During the Middle Ages, the Vikings were infamous

for being a bloodthirsty band of seafaring warriors

who would appear out of the mists of the Atlantic Ocean

and attack without warning.

But while we’re all aware

of the Vikings’ notorious reputation,

is it possible that they were

not merely the savage brutes we think of today

but rather a highly advanced civilization?

Well, that is what we’ll try and find out.

It’s a land of wild beauty,

filled with towering fjords

and dense forests.

This region in northern Europe

that includes Norway, Sweden and Denmark,

is a place of spectacular vistas,

where vast sheets of ice lie beneath night skies

that are illuminated by the northern lights.

And over a thousand years ago,

this untamed region gave birth

to a legendary and mysterious people

who fascinate us to this day.

We call them... Vikings.

The Vikings are embedded in our consciousness.

When we think of the archetypal warrior,

we think of the Viking.

The Vikings are the quintessential

fighting race.

We love the idea of the Vikings being these superheroes,

and we’ve embellished them a little bit.

We’ve made them blood-curdling savages.

It’s just because these characters really appeal to us.

What we term a Viking today is a Scandinavian person

who lived between 793 and 1066.

And that is a period when

Scandinavians were raiding and pillaging,

and they were known throughout Europe

for specifically brutal Viking culture.

This is a maritime culture, it’s focused around boats,

and all based on the waterways.

The Vikings poured in with sort of brute strength, with fury.

They ransacked sacred monasteries

and completely upset the balance of power throughout Europe.

The Viking Age goes through phases.

At the start, the raids are just raiding.

And then armies land,

and they’re there to take land and conquer.

And then Viking kingdoms come together.

At one point, the Vikings had conquered all of England.

And so the impact of the Viking Age is, um, extraordinary.

What is interesting is they seem to have achieved

so much while being functionally illiterate.

Some historians have tended to assume that because

the Vikings were illiterate,

their technology must have been primitive.

But in fact, their achievements in technology are considerable.

They were great shipbuilders, they were great sword makers

and great metalsmiths.

It was simply that they weren’t at a stage

where they could write down what they were doing.

Trade routes established by the Vikings

would change the course of world history.

And their impact on medieval Europe can still be seen today.

Yet the lack of written records about these fierce conquerors

has left the details of their life and times

shrouded in mystery.

We have a lot of archaeological excavations which tell us about

where the Vikings settled and where they went.

But what we lack is long, epic descriptions of

the lives of the Vikings, that is, long stories

in the words of the Vikings themselves.

What I find baffling about the Viking Age

is how little we know.

You can come across wonderful material finds, buildings,

forts and whatnot, but you don’t know anything

about, really, the story of the people themselves.

While there are no definitive historical accounts

written by the Vikings themselves,

there is a curious collection

of fictional poems and stories

written about the Vikings

that might potentially offer a glimpse into their civilization.

These epic tales are known

as the Icelandic Sagas.

The Icelandic Sagas, most of the ones that are preserved,

come from the 13th,

14th, even 15th century.

So they are talking about events that happened

centuries before when they were written down.

They reproduce stories

that has been told and retold over the centuries.

The storytellers who are behind the sagas

take motifs and ideas from other stories that they have heard,

or from the history that they think that they know.

And that’s why some of the stories are so good.

What we should remember about the sagas

is that they were meant to entertain.

Because of this, historical accuracy was not really

the top priority for the person who was...

Who was telling the saga.

For centuries, historians have dismissed the Icelandic Sagas

as nothing more than the fictional creations

of anonymous storytellers and poets

who had no direct knowledge of the Vikings.

But is it possible that these fantastic stories contain

shreds of truth that could shed light on the Viking Age?

Perhaps the answer can be found by examining the Sagas’ account

of a legendary, larger-than-life Viking warrior named...

Ragnar Lodbrok.

The story of Ragnar Lodbrok is really

one of the most exciting Viking Age stories.

It starts by Ragnar defeating a dragon

in order to be able to marry a very beautiful woman.

Later on, Ragnar is out sailing

on adventures in various places in Europe.

In the end, Ragnar is defeated in battle,

and the death of Ragnar

is famous in the Sagas.

He’s captured by his opponent,

and thrown into a pit of snakes,

where he dies after being bitten by many.

It’s a kind of torture death, of course.

This is, of course, a literary motif

that has been told about many people before Ragnar.

I mean, this is... this is great storytelling.

It’s not historical fact.

While many parts of the Ragnar Lothbrok story,

such as his death by snakebites,

are most likely fictional embellishments...

some experts claim that the events in the Sagas

which took place after Ragnar’s death,

may actually have a basis in fact.

In the saga, very soon after Ragnar apparently died,

a lot of Vikings got together

to form what is called the Great Army.

This Great Army starts to

more or less systematically conquer England.

In the Sagas, the Viking Great Army headed for

one of the key sites in England, which was Repton.

And Repton was the site of a very wealthy monastery.

Now, archaeological excavating actually found evidence of this.

We know that it was attacked by, presumably, the Vikings,

because a lot of it was ruined.

And there were a lot of Scandinavian graves.

So, this is a really quite unique example where

we have archaeological evidence backing up

something that comes up in the Saga literature.

The Sagas are written by people

who wanted to preserve

a great deal of information about the past.

So they’re not making up this stuff out of whole cloth.

Are they changing the story slightly in their rendition?

Yes. But they’re relating a story

that was very, very influential to them,

and had been for hundreds of years.

Do the Icelandic Sagas contain important information

about the Vikings that has been overlooked for centuries?

Perhaps the answer can be found by examining

a number of mysterious Viking swords

that were so exceptionally strong

we still don’t know how they were made.

Throughout Europe

there are numerous museums

that house a countless number

of ancient Viking artifacts,

some of which are more than 1,000 years old.

Perhaps the most fascinating objects

left behind by the Vikings are their swords.

These extraordinary blades

are an iconic symbol of the Viking Age.

And not only were they formidable in battle,

but they also feature detailed

and exquisite craftsmanship.

The thing about the Viking swords in particular

is you’ll see, on a lot of these hilts of the Viking era,

repeating geometric symbols.

Oftentimes, these hilts were further decorated

largely with silver, or perhaps copper

or gold inlaid into the hilt.

And some were incredibly advanced in their techniques.

Quite beautiful,

and hard to produce even today in a modern shop.

The sophistication of Viking swords

shows how important these blades were

to their warrior culture.

And, in fact, powerful weapons featured prominently

in Viking mythology.

The Icelandic Sagas are filled with epic tales

about supernatural swords and spears

that were wielded by the gods.

The god Odin is the supreme being of the Norse system.

He had an unusual spear, the Gungnir.

Now, this is an incredible spear. It can travel.

It’s well-balanced, so it can go far with great accuracy.

Odin has this spear that almost seems to be laser-guided.

It finds its target regardless of how it’s thrown.

And then Thor, of course, as we all know,

has his hammer called Mjölnir.

It creates thunder, but it also can,

create massive devastation.

Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir, it’s associated with

the skill of the blacksmith.

Blacksmiths were often considered,

just by nature, somewhat magic.

Right? To be able to take this raw material

and produce an incredible steel sword.

While the Sagas speak of magical armaments,

in reality, 170 special Viking swords have been recovered

which are so unparalleled in strength and craftmanship

that they are the real-life embodiment

of mythical weapons celebrated in the Sagas.

To this day, no one knows how they were made.

And curiously, many of them bear

the mysterious inscription "Ulfberht."

The Ulfberht swords were made between about

800 and 1000 AD.

So, right solid in the high Viking period,

when they were trading and raiding.

Some of the Viking swords seem to be much better than others.

And these were the so-called Ulfberht swords.

It was assumed, without any evidence,

that it was a swordsmith’s name.

But why the name Ulfberht was used is still a mystery.

What does Ulfberht mean?

It’s probably not a person.

It was probably a word of power.

Typically, ulf means "wolf."

And berht is an adjective meaning "bright."

So it might be "bright wolf."

Even more mysterious than their enigmatic inscription

is the seemingly impossible strength of Ulfberht swords.

I’ve analyzed 40 or 50 Ulfberht swords.

It’s certainly interesting to find that many of them

still have a sharp edge, which is certainly unexpected.

These swords were made of a very high carbon steel.

The chemistry’s completely different to any other weapons

found in medieval Europe.

It would be vastly superior to any other weapon in combat.

To forge these extraordinary swords,

the Vikings would have had to generate extreme temperatures,

exceeding 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

But incredibly, the technology to accomplish such a feat

is not known to have existed until the Industrial Revolution,

nearly 800 years after the end of the Viking Age.

So how did Viking blacksmiths forge

these marvels of medieval warfare?

The search answers leads far from Scandinavia...

to Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.

Here in his workshop,

blacksmith Ric Furrer is committed to forging swords

that closely resemble an authentic Ulfberht.

How I reproduce an Ulfberht blade

is prepare the raw materials.

It would start with rock, with iron ore;

something that mirrors the chemistry

of some of the blades that have been found.

So, you’d crush that,

put it into a ceramic cup, a crucible,

fill it completely to the top,

and then join it together

with other materials.

So we need a little bit of glass.

The glass acts as a flux and a protective coating.

And then, right after that, all of that material

gets brought up to about 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

So, very hot.

Hotter than a typical blacksmith fire

would be allowed to get.

A little more.

In the Sagas,

heat control in the fire was very important.

It was even mentioned as being important when

when, the two dwarf brothers made Thor’s hammer.

And we’ve got a nice temperature here.

After heating the metal with temperatures that,

as far as we know, were supposedly impossible

to achieve during the Viking Age,

the raw material becomes molten liquid.

And when the liquid cools down,

it hardens into a purified chunk of metal

called an ingot.

And you would take this steel ingot,

and then start forging it.

So, you’d change its shape,

making it progressively more bar-like as you go.

Ready, ready? Three hits.

One hit. Hit. Hit.

And that’s it. That looks really good.

So, if you look here, we have the finished blade.

How did Viking blacksmiths,

working with comparatively primitive tools,

complete this process with such precision and expertise?

It’s a fascinating question that,

despite his extensive understanding of metallurgy

and years of intense study, even Ric cannot answer.

I don’t think anyone has produced an Ulfberht

using completely traditional methods.

Because we don’t know what those methods were.

The Vikings had these mythological stories

that involve weapons in the hands of a god.

And it isn’t a far stretch to say that some of the swords

that they actually had could also do miraculous things.

There’s still a huge mystery in steel.

Were the Ulfberht swords

really infused with mystical powers?

It may sound incredible,

but then again, we still don’t know

how the Vikings were able to forge

such exceptionally strong blades.

And there’s another artifact

that is just as astonishing.

It’s a small, seemingly ordinary piece of crystal

that Viking sailors used to navigate

beyond the edge of the known world.

For centuries, the Vikings were

masters of the high seas.

Employing the era’s most sophisticated techniques,

Viking shipbuilders created iconic vessels

that are referred to as longships.

Incredibly, numerous longships from the Viking Age

have actually survived the ravages of time,

and can be seen today in museums.

When you think about our image of the Viking,

of course we all know the iconic ship and how

that’s part of the mythos of Vikings today.

However, people don’t realize

that the Viking ships were fairly large,

sometimes 100 feet long.

Boats were arguably

the most important component of Viking life,

and they were very good at building them.

Their technology was so much more advanced

in shipbuilding than anyone else’s.

These boats were made to flex with the waves.

That’s why often referred them as a sea snake.

Because they could sort of snake through the waves.

So, a lot of it was the prowess of their boat-building skill

that really defined the achievements

of the Vikings, and enabled them to do so much.

Without the Viking longship,

there wouldn’t have been a Viking Age.

The longship, of course, was the tool

that you could use to project power.

You could transport soldiers, warriors,

over long distances, quickly.

And you could ride far up rivers,

and you could get across oceans,

making these long expeditions

that takes you all the way to faraway lands.

While the incredible shipbuilding prowess

of the Vikings is well-known,

another very important key to their success on the high seas

remains shrouded in mystery.

When talking about the Vikings,

you’re faced with a mystery:

how did the Vikings navigate?

They were able to navigate with tremendous accuracy.

Yet, for all we know, they had no compass.

The compass was a Chinese invention,

and without a compass, how could they navigate?

Well, "the stars," you say,

but actually, if you’ve ever been there,

to the Northern Atlantic,

you realize how cloudy it is.

On a cloudy day, you cannot see the Sun,

you cannot see the stars.

And yet here they were,

navigating throughout Northern Europe.

And the question is, how did they do it?

Some researchers believe the mystery of Viking navigation

may be solved by examining the Icelandic Sagas,

which include tales of a legendary tool

used by Viking sailors.

In the Norse Sagas, we get an account

of what could be described as Viking technology,

and it involves a mysterious crystal

called the sunstone,

or the sólarsteinn, as they term it.

And this is a kind of translucent stone

that had special, magical powers.

The Viking sagas tell us about how this great sunstone

was held by the captain of a Viking warship

up to a cloudy sky

in order to be able to make out

where the Sun was located

in order to be able to navigate.

It’s been long rumored from little glimpses in the Sagas

that the sunstone may have been a major part

of the navigational abilities of the Vikings,

giving them an edge that other people at the time did not have.

But knowing exactly what it is

is tantalizingly in the realm of legend.

Was the magical sunstone just a fictional creation,

or could it have actually been a real-life tool

that allowed the Vikings

to become extraordinary navigators?

While investigating a 16th-century

sunken English warship,

underwater archaeologists uncover an unusual crystal.

Although the shipwreck is English, some believe

this crystal may be connected to the mythical Viking sunstone.

There was a find from an Elizabethan shipwreck

from the Channel Islands, where they actually have

picked up a piece of calcite

quite close to some navigational equipment

on a shipwreck site.

It’s a mineral, calcite,

and it has a particular quality

that it lets polarized light pass through it.

And polarized light comes from the Sun,

even if it’s covered by clouds.

Does the discovery of a calcite crystal

inside an English warship suggest that this same material

was the real-life sunstone used by the Vikings

to navigate the high seas centuries earlier?

According to tests conducted in 2011

by physicists from the University of Rennes in France,

the answer is yes.

It turns out that if you look at a calcite crystal,

you see not one image, but two images,

each one polarized slightly differently.

And as you scan the sky,

the intensity of these two changes,

depending upon where the Sun is located.

But when you lock on to the Sun,

the two images are equally bright.

Bingo, that’s where the Sun is located.

And that’s how the Vikings could do it without a compass,

without superior navigational equipment,

without elaborate maps.

No, they simply matched the two images,

and bingo, that was it.

To think that a crystal was the tool the Vikings used

to precisely navigate the high seas

centuries before the invention of the compass...

It’s intriguing.

And it begs the question, how far did they sail?

Believe it or not, there’s evidence to suggest

that the Vikings traveled all the way

to the heart of North America.

One of the most intriguing tales

from the Icelandic Sagas

involves a group of Vikings

who embarked on a daring voyage across the Atlantic Ocean...

on a quest to reach a faraway realm

known as Vinland.

According to the Sagas, Vinland was a bountiful paradise,

and for centuries, historians thought it was

merely the stuff of myth and legend.

But then, in 1960, Norwegian husband-and-wife team

Helge and Anne Ingstad set out to prove

not only that Vinland was a real place

but also that it was located in North America.

Helge and Anne Stine Ingstad combed the entire coast

of Canada to try and find this site.

And they were very confident that the Sagas

had an element of fact about it.

And they were right, they did.

The Norwegian couple uncovered

the remains of a Viking settlement

on the northern tip of Newfoundland

that dated to the 11th century AD.

This profound discovery,

which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site

called L’Anse aux Meadows,

is indisputable proof

that the Sagas may hold more truth about the Vikings

than we ever thought possible.

L’Anse aux Meadows is actually the physical evidence

of Scandinavian habitation

on the North American continent.

The Vikings did discover North America

500 years before Christopher Columbus.

We know that there were Viking settlements in the New World.

When I was a young boy, that was considered a legend.

Now it is historical fact.

And they may have actually been more extensive

than we see in the Sagas themselves.

L’Anse aux Meadows is in Newfoundland.

And we know that they were there,

but then, of course, it begs the question,

how far in did they get?

Is it possible the Vikings

traveled deep into North America?

Well, there are those who believe the answer is yes.

And they claim that the proof can be found

more than 2,000 miles away from Newfoundland...

in Alexandria, Minnesota.

This small city, about 130 miles northeast of Minneapolis,

is home to the Runestone Museum.

Inside is an artifact

that many point to as evidence

that the Vikings traveled

well beyond the northeastern tip of Canada

and into the heartland of America.

Because on display is the remarkable,

yet controversial, Kensington Runestone.

The Kensington Runestone

is about the size of a gravestone.

And it was discovered in 1898 in Kensington,

in Douglas County in Minnesota

by a Swedish immigrant, Olof Ohman.

And it is covered in runes.

And what intrigues people is that it seems to be

incontrovertible proof that the Vikings were there.

Runes are Viking works of art.

And runestones are located

pretty much throughout the Viking realm.

Runes were kind of cumbersome to write with,

and so things tended to be short.

So what you end up with is very often cryptic poetry

with a tremendous amount of meaning

packed into very obscure passages.

So, even to be able to understand these runes

was sort of a master craft.

For over a century, people have speculated about the meaning

of the cryptic markings on the Kensington Runestone.

By comparing it with other known runestones,

historians have theorized that the stone tells the tale

of a Viking expedition.

Allegedly, the Kensington Runestone has

an intriguing story

written in runic script,

about a group of about 30 Vikings,

who journey from Vinland

all the way down into what is now Minnesota.

Now, ten of them are massacred

en route by the local people.

But the suggestion is that these Vikings made it

to the interior of North America.

Based on this translation,

many believe that the Kensington Runestone

is a memorial to Vikings who died

on their quest to explore North America.

But skeptics have questioned

the stone’s authenticity.

This could either be a genuine account

of an incredible journey

by intrepid warriors deep into America.

Or the other theory is that this was Swedish immigrants

trying to prove to their neighbors

that they had a much longer presence

and an entitlement to be there

because their ancestors had been there.

But the idea that these warriors ventured

deep into North America,

into places that we know well today, Minnesota...

That really captures the imagination.

The truth about the Kensington Runestone

is a fascinating enigma that continues to be explored.

But there’s another Viking mystery

that has drawn even more attention.

It involves the fate of a settlement

that was home to more than 2,000 people who vanished.

A fleet of Viking longships

sets off from the shores of Iceland

on a 900-nautical-mile journey

to settle a new colony in Greenland.

The expedition is led by famed explorer

and notorious outlaw Erik the Red.

Erik the Red is kind of a character.

Because he’s in Norway, kills a man, gets outlawed,

leaves Norway, gets to Iceland,

kills a man, gets outlawed.

So, he’s constantly, like,

one of these guys that is

trying to evade the law.

So he thinks, "All right, off to Greenland I go."

When the Vikings travel to Greenland,

they’re bringing the whole households over.

So, these would have been a major, major movement in

these boats going across open oceans,

with cows and pigs and ducks and dogs and things.

And these were rough seas,

these north seas can be very rough and very wavy,

and could potentially be dangerous.

A large number of people go there.

They set out with 24 ships,

and then there was a terrible, almost a tsunami,

and only 14 ships made it to Greenland.

And they settled there.

Historians estimate that approximately 500

Viking settlers landed and established

the colony in Greenland.

And remarkably, several ruins of this settlement

have endured for nearly a thousand years.

You can do tourism in Greenland today,

and you can see the remains.

There’s a lot of archaeology going on.

They dug up a lot of farmsteads,

but the buildings are mostly just, you know, foundations.

Which is interesting, since they were made out of stone.

The place is a wild place where the wind blows.

It’s a harsh, barren, treeless landscape.

And yet, they survived with this thriving colony.

Over time, Viking colonists in Greenland

became successful merchants,

and established lucrative trade routes all throughout Europe.

In the Middle Ages, there was a craze for ivory.

Rich people, churches couldn’t get enough ivory,

and a lot of that ivory came from

walrus tusks in Greenland.

So the Vikings who were living in Greenland were making

lots of money selling ivory to the rest of Europe.

Over the course of nearly 500 years,

the prosperous Viking colony grew

to a population of more than 2,000 people.

And their descendants lived in Greenland until the 1400s,

centuries beyond what is commonly thought to be

the end of the Viking Age.

And then...

the colonists mysteriously...

disappeared from history.

We know that they were there in 1408,

because there was a wedding,

and that record made it into records in Iceland.

So, in 1408, there was a big ceremony,

big enough to say that this was still a thriving community,

and that is the last written record

of the Vikings in Greenland.

Numerous theories have been proposed to explain

the mysterious disappearance of the Greenland colony.

Some say that the colonists fell victim

to mankind’s greatest adversary,

Mother Nature.

During this period, known as the Little Ice Age,

Greenland was blanketed

in a punishing and interminable frost.

In the north, it made summer so cold,

it maybe seemed like winter.

And it happened for several years in a row.

It might have also promoted people to just leave the area.

It’s possible that Mother Nature’s wrath

obliterated the Vikings’ booming economy.

In 2018, groundbreaking new research

from scientists at the University of Oslo revealed

that an unexpected set of circumstances may have triggered

the Viking equivalent to the Great Depression.

Something like 80% of the ivory that turns up

in Europe came from Greenland.

We know from scientific evidence now that that walrus declined.

So, all of a sudden, that whole economic

basis seems to disappear.

While there are many theories

for the cause of the Greenland colony’s

mysterious disappearance

an even more confounding question is...

where did the people go?

If 2,000 people from Greenland moved back to Iceland

or to Norway, there would be some sort of record.

There’s not.

But if they all packed onto ships, you know,

the seas were very dangerous.

And so, yeah, it’s possible that the entire population

of Greenland was killed in a storm, maybe.

That’s at the bottom of the ocean

where we can find it, or maybe it’s lost forever.

The disappearance of the Greenland colony

was the fascinating final chapter in Viking history.

And although the truth about their fate remains elusive,

archaeologist are making new discoveries

that could reveal secrets about the Vikings

that have been lost for centuries.

Just outside the small village of Gjellestad,

a group of archaeologists from the Norwegian Institute

of Cultural Heritage Research

is investigating an ancient Viking burial mound

when they make a remarkable discovery.

The team unearthed a 65-foot-long Viking ship

that is the largest ship recovered

in more than 100 years.

This huge vessel was buried

at the beginning of the Viking Age,

around 800 AD, and is referred to...

as the Gjellestad ship.

There’s a good reason for being very curious about

the Gjellestad ship, and that is that it might actually

be one of the very oldest sailing ships in Scandinavia.

So, you could say that the Gjellestad is

a new piece to the puzzle about the Viking Age.

And I think it’s a very important one.

For over a thousand years,

this hallowed ground

concealed 5 longhouses

and 13 burial sites.

Curiously, experts believe

that an ancient Viking king was

ritually buried inside the Gjellestad ship.

The Gjellestad site provided the first opportunity

for 100 years to excavate a ship grave.

And, and this was a fantastic opportunity,

because 100 years ago,

archaeological excavation methods were

much, much different from what they are today.

With our modern technology, there was much bigger chance of

really harvesting a lot of knowledge from the excavation

of this mound.

The excavation of the Gjellestad ship

will reveal details of Viking culture

that have yet to be discovered,

and could prove the Icelandic Sagas

are based more on fact than fiction.

It’s exciting to think that each new artifact found

brings us closer to understanding

the real life of this fascinating

and exceptional Norse civilization.

The Vikings represent these

people who are adventurous...

who did things that,

as we think about it, were amazing.

How do you go thousands of miles on a boat,

from this place to this place,

at a time when no one else is doing that?

I think those kinds of components

are part of the reason why we’re so fascinated with the Vikings.

It’s really great that there’s so much interest in the Vikings.

Because it creates a space for scientists

and the researchers to really back it up.

We’ve got new sites coming to light, and we’ve got

new scientific methods that are telling us more and more

about these real people behind those legends.

And that combination of the real evidence and

the fictional side is really something quite special.

It’s surprising how little we actually know

about the Vikings.

Were they merely ruthless and barbaric invaders,

or does their notorious reputation overshadow the fact

that they were a highly sophisticated culture?

The mystery of who the Vikings really were

is perhaps what makes them so fascinating.

But for now, their true history remains...

unexplained.

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