All language subtitles for BBC - Pagans - 4 - Sacred Landscape

I'm Richard Rudgley.

I've made it my business to delve into
our past to try to find out what makes

who we are today.

And I've explored the Dark Ages and
found that our barbarian ancestors were

mindless savages.

Now I want to fill in one more critical
piece of the puzzle.

We think that our lives are shaped by 2
,000 years of Roman and Christian

tradition.

But I've never really bought into this.

For generations before the Romans came
along, we all lived in a very different

world. And I believe this world still
plays a major part in who we are today.

This is the world of the pagan.

Here, in the middle of Piccadilly
Circus, there isn't a blade of grass to

seen, let alone a tree.

Apart from the sky above, everything in
sight is man -made, cutting us off from

the natural world.

No wonder, then, that we dream of
abandoning our urban rat race and

to nature.

I think that the countryside and the
natural world is deeply embedded in all

us. But it's not just the promise of
fresh air and pretty views that draws us

the countryside.

It's something much more fundamental.

It's our pagan past.

And in a journey across the pagan
heartlands of northern Europe, I'll show

why.

For thousands of years, our pagan
ancestors lived and thrived among the

marshes and forests of northern Europe,
forging an intense spiritual

relationship with nature, a relationship
that enabled them to settle in the far

reaches of the known world.

Iceland, the last time a new European
pagan society was created from scratch.

When the Vikings approached the coast of
the new land, their leader, Ingolfur

Arnason, holding firmly on to his pagan
beliefs, threw two logs into the sea and

declared that he would settle wherever
the logs came to shore.

But where these logs landed must have
taken Arneson completely by surprise.

For here was a land like no other, a
land of fire and ice.

A land of frequent earthquakes, volcanic
eruptions, vast glaciers and boiling

water erupting from the earth.

Yet Arnason did settle in the place
where the logs washed up, and the Viking

colonization of Iceland was phenomenally
successful.

Why were they successful?

Because they had something we're in
danger of losing, a different way of

with the natural world.

Today we tend to explain nature rather
than experience it. The more facts we

know about a mountain, somehow the less
magical it seems to be.

We understand mountains in a very
particular kind of way.

We understand them to be the results of
certain geological processes.

But there are other ways of seeing them.

Such as? As you're climbing a mountain,
you could see that as being...

A journey through time.

Because if you leave the valley and it's
summertime, and you walk up onto the

high mountains, and it's freezing cold
and there's patches of snow, it suddenly

becomes wintertime.

And how can you explain that if you
don't understand atmospherics and

temperatures and meteorology in the way
that we do?

Perhaps the landscape was a place...

not just made of rocks, not just natural
in the way that we understand it, but

maybe a place that was more alive,
living, perhaps even inhabited

by ancestors or spirits.

So what's the key to us being able to
understand a bit more about the way they

saw things?

I think, quite simply, we need to use
our imaginations.

Whilst we have been taught to understand
the world around us scientifically,

early man allowed himself to be
overwhelmed by his surroundings and to

by them.

For our ancestors, every rock, stream
and plant was a living thing with its

power and spirit.

But at a time when northern Europe was
still covered by vast forests, the most

important element of this sacred
landscape was the tree.

You've got this idea of life after
death. The tree apparently dies in the

winter, comes to life in the spring,
brings forth new growth.

And, of course, it's a very powerful
visual statement. Well, it's there in

landscape, it's been there for
centuries, and it's part of your

So was the symbol of the tree always
important in pagan times or just in a

specific period?

It seems to be embedded in people's
consciousness from very early times. If

go back to when the Romans were first
talking about France and Gaul and so on,

they noted that certain tribes were
actually named after trees.

So you had the Lemaviques, who were the
people of the elm. You had the Iberones,

who were the people of the yew. So
clearly, right back into the pagan past,

you've got the idea of whole communities
or even tribes identifying themselves

with particular trees that must have
been their totemic tree, their

protective tree.

It's difficult for us today to imagine
having a meaningful relationship with a

tree.

Maybe this is part of our pagan past we
have left behind.

To find out, I checked into an Iron Age
village in Denmark.

Visitors are asked to leave their 21st
century minds behind.

along with their clothes, in order to
get closer to the pagan world.

No water.

It's in the middle of the summer, so
it's dried out.

I think you should get some from the
deeper water. This is really dirty now.

Excellent.

Now we can make some tea.

Thank you.

Even in the space of 24 hours, it feels
easier to look at the world in a

different way, more at ease with natural
time.

And yet the main lesson I will take away
from here has been completely

unexpected.

It shouldn't come as a surprise, but it
is shocking to realise that everything

in the pagan world depended on
exploiting their most sacred, but also

plentiful natural resource, wood.

Whilst the tree was the symbol that
shaped their spiritual life, necessity

required that they build their world of
timber.

They had to exploit the forest.

But nature did not give so freely. There
was a price to pay, and a heavy price

at that.

Our pagan ancestors would sometimes pay
with their lives.

290 BC, Denmark.

A pagan man is beaten.

Stripped naked.

his throat split

and

his body thrown into a watery pit to rot
except he didn't rot

he became a bog body his flesh and hair
even his fingerprints preserved in the

unique environment of a danish bog

Is this incriminating evidence of a
vicious and brutal society?

The dark side of our pagan ancestry.

Analysis of his fingerprints has shown
that Graubler Man has a direct genetic

link with 80 % of modern Danes.

So we can't just dismiss him as
belonging to another world, another

having nothing to do with us.

On the contrary... I believe
Graubullerman offers us a vital clue

to understand our ancestors'
relationship with nature and our own.

Yeah, I think it's fantastic that he's
so well preserved and he belongs to a

very... Pauline Assing led the team that
investigated this pagan murder mystery.

So, Pauline, in Denmark you're known,
jokingly, as Graubullerman's wife

you know so much about him. So could you
tell me a bit about him?

Now we know more about what happened the
time when he died because his left leg

was broken.

The X -ray and the CT scan now can tell
it happened when the time when he died.

So maybe they hit his bones so he
shouldn't run away.

They put him down on his knees and
turned his head back.

They cut his throat from ear to ear.

Very deep.

So far, so damning.

By examining the victim's teeth,
Pauline's team discovered that he

malnutrition as a child, but at death he
was perfectly healthy.

Through the latest technology, counting
the lines in the formation of the bone,

Rather like counting the rings in a tree
trunk, the team has calculated that

Graubler Man was 34 when he died.

We are left with the undeniable fact
that a healthy man in the prime of his

was murdered.

Why?

To solve this pagan murder mystery, I
need to look at other evidence, starting

with the time of death.

In pagan times, marshland covered large
swathes of northern Europe, from Ireland

to Scandinavia.

During the Iron Age, our pagan ancestors
exploited this part of the landscape,

just as they had exploited the forests.

The Iron Age was the equivalent of a
pagan industrial revolution.

Man started to extract iron ore from the
boglands to make weapons and tools.

was also extracted from the bogs as fuel
to smelt this new resource.

Everyone used the bog, benefited from
it, lived almost on top of it.

But the marshlands were also treacherous
places, where carts and horses and

human beings were swallowed whole by the
hungry earth.

So how did our ancestors get around the
obvious problem of living and working in

the most dangerous place in the
landscape.

If we stop to think about it, many of us
might be tempted to trace the origins

of our modern motorways back to the
Romans.

And as the history books tell us, the
Romans were supposed to be the first to

build straight roads in Britain.

But in fact, from the Stone Age onwards,
hundreds of wooden trackways and roads

were built, often over miles, across the
treacherous bogs and marshlands of

Northern Europe.

The steward went into the bog.

It seemed to him as though all the men
in the world from sunrise to sunset had

come to the bog.

Into the bottom of the causeway they
kept putting a forest with its trunks

its roots.

So now, Richard, here we see

18 metres of the Iron Age 148 BC
trackway.

Now, the trackway ran for a kilometre in
length. It ran in a north -west, south

-east direction for a kilometre.

The work that was involved had to be a
great communal effort.

Noel Carberry is a guide at the Corlay
Museum, which houses the longest and

-preserved wooden trackway in Europe.
They're basically of oak.

That's amazing, isn't it?

We'll just have a look up at the centre
here.

There's a bit of a bump in the road
there. Yeah, and in this area,

this part of Ireland, we carry on this
ancient Celtic tradition of having holes

in our roads. This is the original one
here.

I mean, just looking at this, it really
makes you wonder exactly how much timber

was used to make the whole track.

Well, they have estimated that it would
have taken up to 300 large mature oak

trees.

Now, that's just for the...

the timbers on the top part of the track
itself.

Then you have to think of the runners,
the supporting timbers, maybe twice as

much there.

Also the pegs that were driven through
to stabilise the timbers of the track.

They've estimated they would have used
up to 5 ,000.

So is it possible to see any cart ruts
or anything like that on the surface to

show what it was used for?

That's the strange thing about it.
There's no signs of any marks, any wheel

on the...

on the timbers themselves.

They're not sure if it was maybe just
used for one ceremonial occasion or if

was another theory that it was maybe a
symbol of a road to the afterlife.

Why would our pagan ancestors have
invested such a huge amount of time,

and natural resources to make a wooden
road to nowhere and then apparently not

use it?

The answer to this and to our pagan
murder mystery lies at the scene of the

crime.

The bog itself.

The bog was a dangerous place, but it
was also a place of mystery.

It was a place that was neither earth
nor water, but both.

The mists and gases, as well as adding
to its danger, gave it a mystical aura.

Like everywhere else in the landscape,
the bog had its spirits, but these were

capricious spirits that needed
appeasing.

In the Danish wetlands, archaeologists
found the remains of an ornate wagon.

Torben Egberg thinks that this was put
there deliberately to appease these

spirits because this was no ordinary
wagon.

Thanks. that makes it different from
other wagons is the bronze mountings.

They have an iron band on the wheels.

At that time, you didn't have wagons of
that kind for agricultural purpose.

And here you can see how they made
ornaments. They had used bronze and

So it must have been very expensive.

You can call it a Rolls Royce.

And then they just put it in the bog.
Yeah.

But why build the Rolls -Royce of wagons
and then destroy it?

A clue comes from an unlikely source,
the Roman historian Tacitus, who

the story of a fertility goddess being
drawn on an ornate wagon.

They believe that she takes a part in
human affairs, riding in a chariot among

her people.

On an island of the sea stands an
inviolate grove.

in which, veiled with a cloth, is a
chariot which none but the priest may

Here was Tacitus describing a special
wagon, ornately decorated for a goddess.

And this matches the evidence found in
the bog.

It seems the wagon was put into the bog
as a sacrifice to the goddess.

The wooden trackway at Corley was
probably a sacrifice too.

And this is the clue that solves our
murder mystery.

This was a sacrificial society.

Our pagan ancestors had a deal with
nature.

You don't get something for nothing was
the way they looked at it. They knew

that by exploiting the bogs and the
forests, there was a price to pay.

If they took from nature, they had to
give something back.

And the more they took, the greater the
sacrifice had to be.

So sacrifices didn't stop at wagons and
roads.

The ultimate sacrifice with a human
being.

The death of Graubullerman reminds us of
our place on this earth.

Our modern sense of guilt over the abuse
of the planet's natural resources is an

echo of this pagan deal with nature.

But is this deal with nature not just
murder by another name?

I asked Miranda Green how she thought
the victims were chosen.

These people were sometimes volunteers,
and interestingly, sometimes they were

people of low status.

who were chosen a year before they were
going to be sacrificed, and they were

then looked after, cosseted, given
everything they wanted, all the women

wanted, wonderful clothes, fantastic
food, for a year, in order, in a sense,

symbolically to raise their status.

If you've raised your status in this
world, even if it means being

then your status in the next world is
assured.

Instead of dying heroically in battle,
you...

dying heroically, in a sense, through
sacrifice.

That's right, and maybe by sacrificing
yourself, you were ridding your village

or community of disease or pestilence or
crop failure or whatever.

So you actually thought you were helping
the whole community sometimes by dying.

That's right.

You're helping the community, and by
being placed in a mosque near the

community, you're actually staying with
that community and even remaining as a

force for good after your death.

Graubuller Mann would then have gone
willingly to his death, secure in the

knowledge that he would be taking his
place in the history of the community as

part of the pagan society's deal with
nature.

But there is another reason why he'd
have been happy to volunteer to die.

Because our pagan ancestors did not fear
death. On the contrary, it was

something to look forward to.

Death was not the end, because as the
body was dragged down by the power of

bog, it was taken from one world into
another, into the dark and shadowy world

of the ancestors.

In pagan times, the dead did not leave.

Narvan Fort, Northern Ireland.

Built around 90 BC, this huge mound is a
bit of a conundrum.

For a start, despite its name, it isn't
actually a fort.

In fact, it's a fake.

It's a fake of monumental size and
influence.

So how can we make sense of it?

Unraveling the story of why our pagan
ancestors took the time and trouble to

construct this can help us to understand
their relationship with nature and our

own.

One of the reasons that our pagan
forebears had such a deep spiritual

to the landscape is because it was alive
with the spirit of the ancestors.

They weren't just dead and buried. They
lived on in the thoughts and actions of

the living, just like today.

These memorial benches overlooking
Derwent Water in the Lake District are

example of how we today keep the memory
of our loved ones alive.

But this wouldn't have been enough for
our ancestors.

They wanted their dead near them,
always.

Pagans saw their ancestors as a valuable
source of knowledge, so they buried

their loved ones near to them in order
that this wisdom would seep into the

around them.

They built burial mounds to house their
dead so that they could visit the bones

and draw inspiration from them.

This is something that was really
important to them, that they shouldn't

alone, that their ancestors should be
with them in some sense and should be

to continue to help them. It may
actually have been a reflection of the

precariousness of life.

So they seem to have had a different
sense of community.

You were still part of the community
even if you were dead. The Anfestas seem

have been very much part of society.

Yes. And the reason they wanted to keep
the ancestors with them is because the

ancestors were dead.

They lived in this world of the spirits.
They lived in the other world. And, of

course, the world of the dead, like the
inside of the tombs, is very dark, it's

very mysterious, and there's knowledge
there. And that's really what they

wanted. And in some ways, once they're
there, the ancestors kind of permeate

whole of your existence.

The Boyne Valley has the greatest
concentration of prehistoric tombs in

People began to live in this area around
5 ,500 years ago, but there is

virtually no trace of their villages or
houses.

If we contrast this lack of evidence
with the numerous monuments that they

here for their dead, we get a sense of
where their priorities lay.

firmly with their ancestors.

This huge monument is made up of some
200 tonnes of materials dragged here

a wide area.

It's surrounded by a number of small
burial mounds.

They appear as lesser chapels around the
central cathedral.

But Geraldine Stout explained that the
smaller mounds were actually built

Would you like to come down and have a
look at some of the tombs? Sure.

OK, we'll go down.

What you're looking at here is really
the culmination of culture.

You've got smaller tombs and large
tombs.

We have a small tomb here, and what has
actually happened here is that the large

mound has actually sucked itself in.

Actually swooped around.

the small mound to respect the earlier
monument.

That tells us that this was built first.

There's another burial mound over to our
right.

And again, they actually had to alter
the entrance into the burial mound

obviously it was very important that you
could still get into the smaller tombs

when the larger mound was in use.

So the small mounds were still
important?

Still very important.

So there obviously was some kind of a
memory within the community of who was

actually buried in these smaller mounds.
Maybe they were the burial mounds of

the first communities who actually came
to the valley and started building the

mounds. So they would have been... Yeah,
they would have been... Maybe we should

go into one of the... Sounds like a good
idea.

So we're going in.

We're going to go over the entrance
stone here.

which will lead into a small burial
chamber.

Now, it's quite dark in here, Richard,
so I left a torch there for you.

Okay.

Yep, got it. Thanks.

Now, so we're coming down into a
passage. The passage just swells out to

a wedge shape, and the end of the
passage is marked off by this stone. We

this a septal stone.

And so you just have really a long
passage. But because this stone is

along it, it would create separate
space.

And I think what they were trying to do
in previous times was to say, this is

the chamber, this is where the burials
are taking place. You can come down

but you're not to go in here.

I see.

So was it just one burial in this one,
or would there have been... There would

have been a couple of individuals in
here, a couple of individuals.

But you can see that when we went over
the entrance stone, there was no actual

closing stone.

So that suggests to me that they could
still actually come in to the chamber

over a long period of time.

So, mind your head!

3 ,000 years after the first ancestors
were buried here, men and women

to make pilgrimages back to this sacred
site.

to draw on the wisdom and knowledge they
believed was buried here.

These cobbles were brought in here
during the later Stone Age.

You're saying that they were brought in
long after the grave was actually first

built. So is this people bringing things
from where they were back to their

ancestral roots? Maybe they came, in a
sense, home to die.

I don't know whether they came home to
die, but they certainly came here to

worship the same way as people would go
to the centers of their religion.

Like people go to Mecca, I suppose,
today.

They trace back to the roots of their
religion. The center of their community,

the Rome, the Vatican of their community
was the Boyne Valley.

We know that for our pagan ancestors,
the whole landscape was sacred.

But with the creation of these vast
burial mounds, some parts of the

became more sacred than others.

The Boyne Valley may have become the
religious centre of the region for the

Irish tribes, but gradually over time,
and right across Europe, burial mounds

came to be used for another purpose too.

They became a way of marking out tribal
territory.

Remember, this was still a rural
society.

There were no real boundaries, no city
walls.

A mound meant that a community could
claim the land around it, because this

the land of their ancestors.

Moreover, leaders and chieftains gained
power by claiming they were descended

from the ancestors, buried in the tribal
mounds.

The importance of burial mounds in pagan
society became such that if you didn't

have one, you had to create one, which
brings us back to Navan Fort.

Richard, we've just crossed the main
ditch into the interior of the monument

we're rising up into a very large
enclosed area, about

12 or 14 acres, and the whole site's
dominated by this big...

grassy mound on the very top, the main
earthwork.

There's a huge investment of work...
Narvan Fort is one of the last great

monuments of Western Europe, and if we
can unravel the meaning of this place, I

think we will better understand our
pagan ancestors, what they were thinking

what they believed.

So we've essentially got the large
circular enclosure, the hill that it

encircles, and then the mound on the
very top.

The site looks just like the burial
mounds in the Boyne Valley. The mound is

huge and imposing.

The earth and stones it's made of were
brought from afar.

But there's one major difference.

This mound is not a burial mound.

Excavation revealed no burial chamber
and no bodies.

Instead, the burnt remains of a vast
wooden temple with a 13 -metre -high

central post.

So what was going on here?

Well, that's a great archaeological
conundrum because there's nothing

really like this to compare it with.

And, I mean, we know it dates from the
Iron Age, from about 90 BC.

It required a tremendous effort to have
it made.

There were something like 280 oak posts
in the circular structure.

And then this massive tree trunk at the
very centre.

And the mystery deepened when the
excavations revealed that the whole

edifice was never used.

All the evidence pointed to the fact
that it had been burned almost as soon

it had been built.

The postholes of the wooden wall and the
charred remains of the central post

were all that remained of the building.

The post has been carbon dated to 90 BC.

But it is through fiction that we can
begin to solve the riddle of Narvan

This was an heroic society of kings and
palaces, palaces which the myths

describe as being large wooden circular
structures where the warriors went to

train for the next battle.

At the centre of this society stood a
sacred tree, a protective tree, a tree

which the kings of Ulster were crowned.

These warriors were born from this
sacred tree and took their name from it,

Red Branch.

It is quite remarkable that when we
excavate these sites that we find that

heyday of use and construction was at
the very date that the tales say all

other things had been happening in them.

Archaeology and myth come together to
illuminate our pagan past.

Navan Fort was the centre of a thriving
and powerful dynasty of kings.

The wooden edifice built here echoes
descriptions of the palaces of those

But the stories do not explain why this
particular palace was built and then

immediately burnt.

For this, we need to return to what we
know of this sacrificial society.

So how do you explain the burning
element?

Well, the burning may have been a way
indeed of sanctifying the structure to

burn it and thereby in some way or other
to transmit it to another realm.

The builders of Navanport had created
their own sacred mound, an ancestral

for the kings of Ulster, their very own
Westminster Abbey.

somewhere that drew on their past and
gave gravitas and legitimacy to their

future leaders.

So what's all this got to do with us?

Well, in some ways, Narvan marks the
beginning of the end of the old pagan

As this last pagan monument took shape
in the landscape, Julius Caesar had

already been born.

The classical world was already
beginning to shape our culture and turn

a rural into an urban society.

The deal with nature had always meant
that the people we're part of belonged

the land.

From now on, the land belonged to the
people.

Paganism was coming to an end, but not
before it had bequeathed us a final,

lasting legacy.

Not only did our pagan ancestors
transform the old ancestral landscape,

also transplanted their roots to new
lands, as many of us have done today.

And nowhere is this clearer than with
the north settlement of the virgin land

Iceland, paganism's final frontier.

This is Ingle 4 Arneson.

the Viking leader who threw two logs
into the sea when he approached the

of the new land, and declared that he
would settle wherever the logs came

ashore.

We now know that there was nothing
arbitrary about such a declaration.

This was the culmination of thousands of
years of pagan culture, a culture that

had sought not to control nature, but to
coexist with it.

And this settlement of the virgin land
began by putting itself at the mercy of

the forces of nature.

The remains of this first settlement
have recently been unearthed and,

or not, generations of Icelanders have
continued to settle in the same place.

For Arnason's settlement is in the
centre of modern Reykjavik, Iceland's

capital city.

But this was only the beginning of
Arnason's success story.

For within a generation, his followers
had not only populated the island, they

had also established the world's first
parliament.

Tingvellir, where the continental plates
of Europe and America are tearing

apart.

Here, the first chieftains of Iceland
gathered every summer to debate and

proclaim the laws of the new land.

In Iceland, the land was divided into
four quarters, four regional assemblies,

and then the chieftains agreed upon
creating a general assembly as well.

Over there, there was the law rock.

This is the meeting point of the
assembly.

Over here where the flag is? Yeah,
that's right.

They established this general assembly,
wanting to have one law for the whole

country. They had no central power,
there was no royalty to do it for them.

So every summer for a couple of weeks or
so, people came here, the chieftains,

with their followers.

So really this General Assembly was like
a pagan parliament?

It was democratic in a way that the
chieftains who were running the show,

had to depend upon popularity.

Curvation over here.

Yes. Adolf Friedrichsen has recently
begun an archaeological dig at the site

the old parliament.

His excavations have uncovered a vast
complex of buildings dating back to the

earliest meetings of this Parliament.

This one is over 30 metres in length and
has thick, solid walls.

To build such a grand structure for use
only two weeks a year is evidence that

the first delegates took this proto
-democracy very seriously from the

beginning. How big do you think the
whole complex of buildings was?

Well, um...

When people walk around here today, they
see mainly remains on this side of the

river where we are standing.

But my feeling is that there is a lot
more on the other side of the river as

well.

Democracy, we are told, began with the
Greeks.

But here was a society without kings and
without slaves.

True parliamentary democracy began here
in Iceland.

But the settlement of Iceland tells us
something else about our pagan heritage.

We have an instinctive relationship with
nature, in common with our pagan

ancestors. But we also share their need
to put down roots, to belong.

Here was a virgin land, a land with no
ancestral spirits to protect and guide

the Viking settlers.

There were no burial mounds here marking
out their territory, linking them to

the spirit world of the ancestors.

And they didn't have the manpower to
build fakes like Navan bought.

So how did the first settlers go about
making this place their home?

The answer can be found in a unique
collection of books.

The Icelandic Saga The books provide a
remarkable

documentary record of Arnathan's
expedition.

They contain the names of every settler,
every village, every valley.

who settled where, the names of their
descendants, and stories of the major

events of the time.

Not only are they describing living
historic characters, but also at times

spiritual world that is surrounding
them.

The settlers will die into the land,
into the mountains, and become guardian

spirits of the area.

In particular, we have a mountain in the
west.

A place called Holy Mountain, where the
texts tell us that it was so holy that

you couldn't even look at it without
washing your hands first.

It's into this mountain that the first
settlers in the area dies, joining then

the local spirits.

The first settlers fuse with the natural
landscape in the saga.

Yes, that's what they do. They are
bringing with them.

the culture of their homeland, but they
are blending it in an entirely new

fashion in this new land, creating not
only a new settlement, but a new

a new spiritual world.

And in a way, a new past.

A new past. The past is constantly being
created by the present.

So what's the importance of the
manuscripts to modern Icelanders, apart

fact that they're national treasures, of
course?

The texts that they contain, they are
still being read and enjoyed and used

the building of national identity and
building a sense of roots.

In the landscape, every region, every
area has a saga attached to it.

So nature is not only experienced
through the aesthetic beauty which it

present you with, but with the spiritual
world that...

Only comes alive when you know the
stories that are attached to it.

So to really know the land, you've got
to know the stories as well.

Yes, so otherwise you're always looking
at it as a foreigner. You don't have

access to the culture.

You're reading the landscape in an
entirely different way.

This is the difference between being in
a culture and being an outsider.

It's difficult for us today to talk of
recreating a past or to see how stories

can influence the way we feel.

But we know what it feels like to
belong.

And we know what it feels like to be an
outsider.

The pagan settlement of Iceland still
resonates with us today because here is

nature at its most capricious, reminding
us that we should not always seek to

control the natural world.

And here is the real cradle of
democracy, reminding us of the

society and our place within it.

But whilst this last pagan settlement
was giving birth to our modern

parliamentary society,

most of the rest of Europe had fallen to
the twin forces of Rome and the

Christian Church.

770 AD. The Christian King
Charlemagne... wants to crush the pagan

hordes once and for all.

And he knows exactly how to do it.

He cuts down their sacred tree.

For tens of thousands of years, our
pagan ancestors had an intense spiritual

relationship with nature, and the tree
came to symbolize that relationship.

This symbolic act signaled the end of
the rural deal with nature and the

beginning of the urban vision of the
world.

Soon people across the whole of Europe
began to leave the countryside behind

drift into the cities.

And here...

most of us remain.

Charlemagne's action was intended to cut
us off from our pagan roots and break

the link with our past.

Much of our dissatisfaction with our
21st century urban lot is a feeling that

we're losing connection, not only with
our roots in nature, but also with our

cultural roots.

So, when we begin to feel the pull of
the countryside, remember, that's our

pagan heritage calling us.

When we feel ourselves cut adrift in our
urban wilderness, that's the pagan in

us reminding us to reawaken that
reciprocal relationship with the natural

with our local community, and with
ourselves.