All language subtitles for BBC.The.Dark.Ages.An.Age.Of.Light.4of4.The.Men.of.the.North.PDTV.XviD.AC3.MVGroup.org.eng

So far, on this artistic journey
through the Dark Ages

we have been hugging the
Mediterranean and following the sun.

But the Dark Ages wouldn't be
as significant as they were

in the story of art
if they had stayed in the south.

To be properly influential,
they needed also to venture north.

This is Lindisfarne, high up
on the north coast of Britain.

Holy Island they call it.

And this monastery you see there
was founded

early in the seventh century by
an Irish monk called Aidan.

What a place to
build a monastery, eh?

Cut off from the mainland,
beaten up by the sea.

It's so out of the way
and impractical

and that's precisely
why it was chosen.

The Irish monks who founded
Lindisfarne weren't

looking for an easy life, they were
looking for difficulties to conquer.

These were hard-core northern
Christians who had isolated

themselves up here on purpose,
who worked their fingers to

the bone and created something
out of nothing.

As they saw it, Jesus had
sacrificed his life for them

so the least they could do was
sacrifice their comfort.

The hard-core determination
of the Lindisfarne monks shows not

only in the miraculous
building of their great monastery

but also in the stunning book art
they made up here.

So intricate, so detailed,
so difficult.

And that's the thing
about the north's contribution to

the art of the Dark Ages.

What it achieved,
it achieved by going the extra mile,

working the extra hour,
adding the extra detail.

Nothing was given to it on a plate.

In this film, we are going to be
looking at the Carolingians,

Dark Age expansionists from France,
whose huge empire gobbled up most

of modern Europe but who made art
of exquisite finesse and richness.

Also the Vikings, who, despite
their terrible reputation for raping

and pillaging, were actually
exceptionally inventive craftsman.

The extreme delicacy of
Dark Age Viking art

is an unexpected pleasure.

Then up here in
the north of England,

we'll be celebrating
the Dark Age nation

whose artistic handiwork was
admired across the whole of Europe.

I'm thinking, of course,
of the Anglo-Saxons -

so skilled, so hard-working,
so ingenious.

Speaking of hard work,

one of the things we are going to be
doing in this film is following

the creation of an Anglo-Saxon
jewel from start to finish.

Later on, I'll introduce you
properly to Shaun Greenhalgh here.

For now, all that really matters is
that he's going to be making

something exquisite - a silver disc
brooch in the Anglo-Saxon manner.

Shaun Greenhalgh's
Anglo-Saxon brooch

is a pleasure we
are saving for later.

First, we need to confront the
north's most notorious barbarians.

We've tackled some terrifying
warrior nations in this series -

the Huns, the Vandals, the Goths -
but when it comes to

bellicosity, no-one has quite as
fearsome reputation as the Vikings.

You know, people get
so much wrong about the Vikings.

They didn't wear these ridiculous
helmets, for a start.

These were invented in the
19th century by a stage designer

working on a Wagner opera.

He had to make one of the singing
Vikings look particularly evil

so he stuck
the devil's horns on a helmet

and the Vikings have been lumbered
with these helmets ever since.

This is what their helmets
really looked like.

The only surviving Viking helmet
in the National Museum in Oslo.

The Vikings were particularly
interesting because, while all the

other Germanic tribes headed south

and became thoroughly Italianate,
the Vikings stayed in the harsh

and windy north where
they clung to the old ways.

So, they were a barbarian
nation of a pure and exciting type.

The Vikings were a living link to
an older and deeper European past.

There were forces at work in them
that civilisation hadn't dimmed.

And that's what's
so exciting about them.

In fact, most of the time
they were simple farmers,

tending the land, keeping livestock,
growing what they could.

But in the lands of the Vikings,
you can't go very far without

encountering water.

And this constant
presence of the sea had turned them

into superb sailors.

Exactly where they reached is
still fiercely debated

but they certainly got to Greenland
and then to Newfoundland.

The Vikings discovered America
a long, long time before Columbus.

So, boatmanship was
one of their great achievements

and another of their great
achievements was art.

In the great years of Viking
expansion,

roughly 800 AD to roughly 1100 AD,

the Vikings put almost
as much energy

into making their own art as they
did into stealing other people's.

This trefoil Viking brooch was
modelled on the buckles

used by Roman soldiers
on their sword belts.

The Vikings adapted it and turned
it into a brooch for ladies.

Much of what they made is
so intricate and fine,

it's difficult to see.

So, to make it absolutely clear
what adventurous creatives

they were, I've brought you to Oslo,

to one of the great
Viking museums where

I wanted to show you this whopping
great nautical masterpiece.

On 8th August 1903,

a Norwegian farmer called Knut Rom
knocked on the door of

Professor Gabriel Gustafson of the
Museum of Antiquities here in Oslo.

While digging on his farm,
said Knut Rom,

he had come across a buried ship
and he thought it might be Viking.

Two days later, Professor Gustafson
arrived at the farm

and confirmed the discovery of this
thing - the Oseberg ship.

Will you look at that, eh?

It's made entirely of oak.

Over 60 feet long, 15 feet wide

and decorated at both ends with
these boisterous Viking carvings.

Inside the ship
were two dead bodies -

an older woman
who may have been a queen

and a younger woman, probably
her slave who was buried with her.

There were also 14 horses,
three dogs and an ox,

all sacrificed together
and buried with their master.

In the stern of the boat
was a four-wheeled cart,

the first such Viking cart
ever discovered.

But no-one seemed to sure what
the weather was going to

be like in heaven because there
were also four sledges.

But it's the carving of these boats
and carts

and sledges that makes this
particular Viking find so exciting.

Look at the elegant
line of this ship,

how it ends so gracefully up there
with the curved head of the snake.

At either end, above the waterline
where they can be seen,

are these busy expanses of carving,
so active and lively.

Scores of twisting bodies,
clutching hands, staring eyes,

sniffing snouts,
all jumbled together excitedly.

A gymnasium of animal acrobats
tying themselves into knots.

You have to get your eye in with
Viking carvings otherwise

they can frighten you with
all this amazing complication.

It's all based on animal shapes all
interwoven and overlapping.

So, that, for example,
is one animal.

There is the head and
there is the tail.

And this figure eight shape here,
that's the whole of its body.

And that's biting
the tail of this animal here.

And that animal is biting
the tail of the animal and so on.

So, imagine the 3-D vision you
need to carve this,

the steady hand, the computer brain.

So, if anyone ever says to you,
"The Vikings were barbarous,"

grab them by the ear
and tug them here to Oslo.

Runes.

More runes.

And still more runes.

All over
Scandinavia, Norway, Denmark

and particularly here in Sweden,

you find these magnificent
standing stones, left

behind by the Vikings, covered in
wobbly carvings

and all these runes.

Runes are the bits of writing
on the twisty snakes.

You usually find them
on Viking gravestones.

These ones here say,

"Gidiyor loved her husband
and remembers him with her tears."

Because they're carved on these
mighty stones

and not written down on handy
bits of parchment or vellum,

there is a tendency
to mythologise them,

to see great truths in the runes.

According to Norse mythology,
the runes were found by Odin,

the supreme god of the Norsemen,

while he was hanging in the tree
of life, the famous Yggdrasil.

For nine days and nights,
Odin stayed in the great tree,

waiting, hoping, until eventually
the runes fell into his hands

and revealed themselves to him.

Odin passed them to us.

Thus, from the start,
the runes were associated with magic

and the mysteries of the cosmos.

This splendid story about Odin
up in the trees

and the origin of the runes
is another example

of the extraordinary power that
words had in these fateful years.

Words, letters, symbols seem to mean
so much in the Dark Ages.

They were so loaded,
they had such resonance.

It's actually quite a simple
alphabet.

So, this shape here that is a V
sound, that's an A, L and so on.

So that says, "Waldemar." And in
fact this whole message is,

"Here stands Waldemar
in Viking land."

The runic alphabet,
or Futhark as it is called,

had 24 letters in it originally.

Later on,
when the Vikings attacked Britain,

they took the runes with them
and the Futhark grew to 33 letters.

The new letters were needed
to describe new sounds.

Every time the Vikings conquered
a new territory

and new words entered their
language,

they needed new letters to
describe them.

So, for example,
originally there was no W

and I had to use a V
sound for my name, Waldemar.

So, the runes were never some
cobweb-covered dead language

fit only for the museum,
they were always alive,

vibrant and constantly changing.

What a good-looking alphabet it is,
too. So energetic and upright.

It is based on vertical lines
because verticals are easier

to carve, particularly in wood
but also in stone.

This vertical emphasis gives
the runes a spiky presence and a

mysterious relationship with time,

as if every mark is somehow
counting down the days.

The Vikings were the last
of the great barbarian nations to

convert to Christianity.

It wasn't until the 10th century,
1,000 years after

the birth of Christ, that paganism's
hold on the frozen north was broken.

So, around here,
the paganism was stubborn.

And in Viking art, it's often
difficult to tell where the

paganism ends
and the Christianity begins.

This is the biggest and most famous
of all Scandinavian rune stones -

the Jelling stone.

It weighs over 10 tonnes.

It is two and a half metres tall
and, as you can see,

the entire stone seems to writhe
with energy.

What a fabulous thing.

This inscription here,
which goes all the way round,

tells us that the Jelling stone
was put here by Harald Bluetooth,

the energetic Viking ruler who is
usually credited with

converting the Danes to
Christianity.

"I am Harald," it says here,

"Son of Gorm and I made the Danes
Christians."

It is carved on all three sides
and on this side is

an image of a giant snake
attacking a stylised lion.

Now, obviously there are no
lions in Scandinavia,

it's an image they found abroad,
but the Vikings identified with

the lion's fighting spirit
so it pops up a lot in their art.

It is an image they made theirs.

Now, I know what you're thinking.

You're thinking,
"What lion and what snake?"

Well, inside the visitors centre
at Jelling,

there is a coloured replica
of the great stone which shows

you how the lion and the snake
would originally have

looked before all their paint
fell off.

But the most surprising sight is
here on the biggest side.

It is the culmination of the entire
stone but you can't see it yet.

The light has to be exactly right.

What you have to do is wait

until the twilight begins to
work its magic.

Can you see it?

It is a splendid Viking
crucifixion with this stern Christ

in the centre surrounded
by all these writhing Viking knots.

It's as if the whole stone
can't keep still.

I like the way Christ hasn't
actually got a cross,

he's just standing there
with his arms outstretched.

So it is obviously another
image that has been

imported from abroad and is now
being misunderstood so confidently.

When the Vikings began behaving
like Vikings and invaded Britain,

they encountered the most exciting
jewellers of the Dark Ages -

the Anglo-Saxons.

How do we know they were exciting?

Because they have left behind this -

the Sutton Hoo treasure.

This is the finest hoard
of Anglo-Saxon gold ever dug up

in Britain, one of the great
treasures of the British Museum.

Just look at it.

My legs go weak every time I see it

because it is in such
excellent condition.

Much of the art that survives
from the Dark Ages has been

battered by time
but not the Sutton Hoo treasure.

In the finest pieces here and there
is hardly a gram of gold bent

out of place or a garnet missing.

The Sutton Hoo treasure was dug up
out of the ground

in East Anglia just a few

weeks before the start of the
Second World War in 1939, so it

couldn't be investigated properly
until after the war was over,

and what a torture that must have
been for the waiting archaeologists.

The treasure dates
from around 620 AD

and comes from the grave
of an important East Anglian king.

The king was buried in a ship,
his transport to the next world.

And all this was buried with him
to serve him in the afterlife.

These bits of sword, here,

and the helmets mark him
out as a mighty warrior.

You wouldn't want to get on the
wrong side of this man, never.

They found a lyre
in his grave as well

so the king could listen to his
favourite music in the afterlife.

That's a recreation of it.

He had to eat well

so this fabulous cooking cauldron
was buried with him.

Look at all the intricate Celtic
decoration around it.

Most important of all,

the people who buried the King made
sure that he would look good in

the next world by burying him with
his best Anglo-Saxon ruler bling,

which is where this gold comes in
and those magnificent garnets.

If you have ever seen finer
jewellery than this,

let me know where
because I want to go there.

How did they do it,
these Anglo-Saxon wizards?

To penetrate their secrets,
I have tracked down a man who knows.

In his youth, Shaun Greenhalgh
was a skilled forger

and some of the world's greatest
museums have admired his output.

Shaun was finally caught
and sent to prison

so he has served his time and these
days puts all this expertise

to much better
use as an independent craftsmen.

The methods he uses aren't exactly
the same as the methods

of the Dark Ages - the modern world
has changed too much for that -

but they are about as close
as you can get.

And what Shaun's work gives
us is an insider's view of how

Anglo-Saxon jewellers actually
made their pieces.

So, Shaun, can you tell us what it
is you're going to be making?

It's an Anglo-Saxon disc brooch,
silver, with some enamel gilding...

covering most of the aspects that
Anglo-Saxon jewellers would use.

They obviously had lots of
different techniques in the way

they made their jewellery, so which
ones are you picking up here?

This is probably the 10th century,
it's like a late Saxon disc brooch,

the earlier ones with the golden
garnet, mostly,

but these are the ones with
religious symbolism on them.

Is this based on an existing brooch?

No, it's my own design, but it kind
of encompasses elements of other

things going off, so it's an
original design in itself.

The centre part will be
done in gold ribbon,

plus all the different
coloured enamels.

And that's a picture of an
Anglo Saxon king?

Yes, with just a generic
long-tache beard with

a sword in his right hand,

and the element I haven't actually
put in is the hand

of God over his shoulder, that will
be done in white and gold enamel.

Wonderful, let's get going.

OK, let's get on with it.

MONASTIC CHANTING

The delights of Shaun's Anglo-Saxon

disc brooch will have to wait.

First, we need to cross the Channel
and search out those powerful

Dark Age creatives,

the Carolingians -

rulers of the Franks.

The Franks were
the ancestors of the modern French.

Originally, they were Germans,

just like the Anglo-Saxons,

but they arrived in Gaul on one
of those expansionist,

barbarian waves that we
saw in film two.

And early in their story,

the Franks converted to
Christianity,

and they became particularly fierce
defenders of the faith.

Plenty of Dark Age societies
liked their art to sparkle.

A taste for gold

is one of the Dark
Ages' defining characteristics.

But when it comes to
religious bling,

the Frankish Christians were
top of the charts.

If you have ever wondered why
the French sometimes conduct

themselves as if they were
the chosen people, it's

because that's exactly what
they thought they were.

In 732 AD,

the Franks, led by the heroic
Charles Martel,

Charles the Hammer,

defeated an invading Muslim army,

which had come up from Spain,
hoping to conquer Europe.

The Franks believed that God
had chosen them

to save Europe from Islam.

They were his chosen people.

And their art seems
particularly aware of this special

position in God's good books.

The mightiest of the Frankish kings,

Charles the Great, or Charlemagne

as he's usually called,

came from a
dynasty called the Carolingians.

He was crowned in 768,

and with typical Frankish modesty,

pushed himself right to
the front of Dark Age politics.

Charlemagne was determined to expand
the Frankish empire.

After all,
it was God's chosen empire,

and the Carolingians were God's
chosen leaders.

This expansion
of Charlemagne's Christian Empire,

was achieved with deep brutality.

In Germany, the Saxons,
who were still pagans,

were given a very simple choice -

convert to Christianity, or die.

If they didn't become Christians,
they were killed.

That was Charlemagne's choice.

In 800 AD,

in Rome, on Christmas Day itself,

the Pope rewarded Charlemagne
for his efforts on behalf

of Christianity

by crowning him
as the Holy Roman Emperor.

Charlemagne was now the leader
of the largest empire Europe had

seen since the fall of the Romans.

The centre of gravity of Europe
had shifted,

and it had shifted to the north.

This is the chapel that Charlemagne
built, here in Aachen

on the Belgian borders.

And from here,
he ruled his new Christian Empire.

This is actually the marble
throne on which he sat.

There's a spooky simplicity to
Charlemagne's throne...

..four slabs of ancient marble,

a few metal clamps.

Six marble steps and that's it.

A gold-loving Emperor

is pretending to be a simple man.

Charlemagne began building this
chapel in 786 AD.

And at exactly the same time,
in Spain,

the Muslims were building the Great
Mosque, in Cordoba,

which I hope you
remember from the last film.

Such inventive,
and dramatic architecture,

with those nimble, double arches,

and that gorgeous forest of columns.

Charlemagne's chapel, this chapel,

was intended to be a deliberate
riposte to the Muslims.

A Christian answer to
the Cordoba mosque.

Look up there, at the arches,

and see how they have these
alternating

bands of colour,

just like the
arches in the Cordoba mosque.

But in Aachen, the stripy arches
don't float or soar...

..nothing does.

This is architecture drawn with
the biceps, not the wrist...

..effortful, and ponderous.

I don't like this building,

it feels brutal, clunky.

This round shape,

was based originally on a Roman
mausoleum, and you can still

sense the doomy and cold atmospheres
of the mausoleum in here.

Gloomy,

expensive,

intense.

Frankish Christianity bulldozes the
senses.

But it doesn't really pleasure
them, at least I don't think so.

In the battle
of the northern Christians,

give me Anglo-Saxon art, any day.

Christianity arrived in Britain
from three directions at once,

in a three-pronged religious
assault.

In the south, in ancient Kent,

a team of monks led by St Augustine

were sent here by the Pope in Rome.

They brought with them the official
Roman version of Christianity.

Up here, in the north of Britain,
it was Irish

monks from across the sea,
who came over to convert the pagans,

and they brought with them,
a harsher, more basic,

more penitential form of
Christianity.

locations, and where they produced
glorious art with an ecstatic

and insistent tone to it, like the
chanting of a great monks' choir,

The third type of Christians
found in Anglo-Saxon Britain,

were the ones who were already here.

Remember, in film one, how the
Romans converted to Christianity,

under Constantine, and how one of
the earliest known Christian

house churches was found in Roman
Britain, in Lullingstone, in Kent.

We don't know much about these
existing Christians,

they were a modest Christian
presence.

But perhaps,
tiny droplets of this modesty were

thrown into the melting pot,
as well.

So, the Anglo-Saxons
would have had wood-heated kilns?

Charcoal brazier, I should imagine.

This is the stuff I'm going to
make the brooch out of.

It's basically about 82% silver,
a bit of copper,

quite a lot of lead,

which designates as Anglo-Saxon or
Viking, a few other bits

and parts of it, all the trace
elements

you don't get in modern silver.

Shaun melts down the Anglo-Saxon
silver and, to turn it into

something useful, pours it into some
moulds made from cuttlefish bones.

So tell me about this cuttlefish,

is this what was used in ancient
times to make moulds?

It's been used for centuries,

I should imagine it's a Roman
tradition, actually.

I take them out the mould,
they should be relatively cool now.

Right, that's actual ingot there,
that's for the pin,

and the pin mount,
so I'll quench that first of all.

So that basically cools it down...

It cleans all that other stuff off.

Right...

..the next thing to do is to reduce
this piece of silver

for the main body down to about
one and a half millimetres,

to replicate Anglo-Saxon disc
brooches

that have been in existence.

So, first of all, you have to beat
from the centre to the outside.

You always go outside to inside,
inside to out, reversing every time.

So you're making it thinner?
Yeah, basically, yeah.

On the other side, you start at the
centre and work to the middle.

That's keeping a uniform thickness,
because it tends to bowl,

to an actual bowl shape
cos it starts to split

once you start to spread it
out even further.

You hear the dull thud of it now,

because we're hammering it, it gets
higher and higher, the pitch.

With the ear, you can tell
when it's hard enough,

so you don't crack it.

That has more or less brought it,
to the next stage,

so it's just a matter of us
now repeating the process,

and as we reduce it,
the area will get larger.

And once we've made a big enough
piece,

and reduced it to
one and a half millimetres,

or thereabouts, we'll have a large
enough piece to cut the disc out of,

so this is one and a half
millimetres, as you can see.

That is just the same as this, it is
just the same silver,

but I've worked on it,
it's taken about two days' work,

a lot of hammer-work,
and a lot of earbashing.

Fallen out with your neighbours,
and what have yous

to get it to that,
so we'll start on with this now.

But that is the basic
shape of the brooch?

That is
the basic shape of the brooch.

While Shaun Greenhalgh
bangs away in his lair,

back at the front line
of the Dark Ages,

the Anglo-Saxon custom of burying
the dead with things that would be

useful to them in the afterlife,
was, of course, a pagan custom.

And, unfortunately,

when the Anglo-Saxons were converted
to Christianity,

that custom was stopped.

For a Christian burial, you buried
the body and that was it,

so nothing as sumptuous as the
Sutton Hoo treasure

has survived from the Christian era.

Instead, we get another
kind of Anglo-Saxon treasure.

It's a treasure made of granite
and limestone...

..the resilient,

spiritual treasure that is
the Anglo-Saxon funeral cross.

Earlier on, we saw how the
Vikings commemorated their dead,

with these mighty standing stones
covered in runes.

This idea,
that stone is somehow eternal,

and lasts much longer than you,

is something that was shared by all
the voyaging tribes of the north.

There's something splendidly basic
about these Anglo-Saxon crosses.

They're supposed to be Christian,
but somehow, their Christianity

feels superficial
and confined to the surface.

Underneath, you can still sense
the atmospheres of Stonehenge -

a connection with the faraway past,

and the central
mysteries of Creation.

See all this decoration here?
It's called interlacing, it's

Celtic in origin, you get it on the
Anglo-Saxon crosses, but also the

great manuscripts written later in
the monasteries like Lindisfarne.

A lot of people have written
a lot of books on the subject

of Celtic interlacing -

what it means, why it was used.

It's so beautiful to look at, but
also, so intrinsically mysterious.

They say that its origins lie in
basket weaving and plaiting,

and we'll never know for sure,

but my guess is that this is also an
attempt by the Dark Age mind

to grasp and mimic the rhythms of
Creation, to convey the sense

that the cosmos goes on and on,

and that everything in it
is interrelated.

This is a rather wonky specimen,
which is why I like it so much.

It's not quite right,
so you just want to hug it.

but because it's so wonky, the
interlacing on the Lonan cross

in the Isle of Man, is particularly
clear.

We're going to be seeing a lot of
this Celtic interlacing

in the marvellous manuscripts that
are coming up,

so I just wanted to show you
quickly how it was done.

It looks immensely confident,
but it's actually relatively simple.

So first,
you need to mark out a grid.

Say we want to do a decorative
border on a Gospel book,

so, if here's the border,
and we know from unfinished

bits of manuscript the monks have
left behind that the way

he did it was to make this grid
with dots to guide them.

So, three dots, two dots,
three dots, three dots, two dots,

two dots.

They're like the dots on a dice.
Three, two, three, two.

Then you start
filling in the spaces in-between.

Now the big rule in interlacing is
that one line goes over...

..and the other line goes under.

Over, under, over, under, over,
under - all the way along.

And when you're about to get to
the edge, you stop,

because you need to work out
how you're going to do the edges.

Now I'm just going to square
them off,

that's the simplest way of doing it.

But they also did all these
elaborate things,

they'd leave out bits of the
pattern and create this

kind of asymmetrical symmetry.

That's too complicated for me,
I'm afraid.

And once you got your over,
under, over, under -

then you start to fill in the
bits of the background.

Red and black.

There you are.
A bit of Celtic interlacing.

So I've done this very big,

because I've got insensitive
and stubby fingers.

But if you're a Dark Age monk,

poring over a precious manuscript,
then the borders you made were tiny.

I mean, these people must have had
extraordinary eyesight.

Of course, if you're
a sculptor on the other hand,

once you've designed your
interlacing,

you need to carve it into stone.

And it is mightily difficult, too.

And with this cross,
the Lonan cross,

you can see that the interlacing,
it's OK when it begins up here,

but as it comes down, it gets
wonkier and wonkier and wonkier.

HAMMERING

Back in Bolton, Shaun Greenhalgh
has engraved the symbols

of the Four Evangelists round
the edges of his silver brooch.

And he's now ready for the really
difficult bit in the middle,

the Anglo-Saxon king, created so
carefully, with cloisonne enamels.

The cloisonne enamel technique
is a very old technique,

practised by the Romans,
and the Celts even, before them.

It's just powdered glass, ground up,

and mixed in with water
and just fired in the kiln.

The Anglo-Saxons
and other people in the Dark Ages,

and into the Middle Ages,
would use Roman glass tesseras,

ground up, the kind of thing you
see in wall mosaics

in Ravenna and such places,
Constantinople,

and such like, because although
they had the technology to make

glass, they didn't have the oxides
to get the various

colours, as you can see,
of the yellows and greens and blues.

The first stage is to lay down the
king's outlines in a delicate

framework of itsy-bitsy
bits of pure gold.

So fiddly, these little bits,
you know...

..the eyes and the nose.

'Then the really tough work begins.

'Getting the powdered glass into
this labyrinth of gold cells.'

Just filling in the background now,
the dark blue.

It's always better to get
the background in,

the largest area,
to fill the largest area,

and it kind of holds
most of the wires in position,

so, you know...
pushing everything about.

Careful you don't drop
any into the other cells,

otherwise it all has to be
washed off if you do that.

Start again.

Right, just got to work out
the colour schemes now.

I think the yellows can go in next,
so I'll mix some yellow. Right.

Here we go.

Now.

The difficult part, to fill
the small pieces,

cos just touching them, the surface
tension tends to glue them

to the damn brush.

So...

Slowly does it, I think.

Then we'll put the tache in that.
Long droop here.

Edward the Confessor tache.

That's the hair. Bit yellow.

A General Custer hair-do.

It's just slow, fiddly work,
you know,

always fighting the surface
tension with it because...

Now some pale
green into the cloak itself

and then we're ready for firing
when we've dried it out.

All right.

'While Shaun prepares to pop
his Anglo-Saxon king into the kiln,

'I'm thinking that his brooch
reminds me strongly of the most

'famous of all Anglo-Saxon jewels -
the so-called Alfred Jewel.

'They say that originally it was
the top of a reading implement,

'sent out to the bishops
by King Alfred himself.

'It's now found
in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford,

'and what a beautiful thing it is.'

So this style of brooch was
obviously a late Anglo-Saxon...?

Yeah, probably 10th century,
I imagine, in the design.

A lot of people always say that
the Anglo-Saxon jewellery

was at its peak earlier than that.
They think of the Sutton Hoo horde.

The garnet stuff
and the garnet jewellery,

the gold or what have you.

Fashions change,
I suppose. I prefer the later stuff.

I think it's more elegant
and there's far more to it.

Any way, that's the cloisonne
finished. Beautiful.

So that's obviously an echo, if you
like, of the Alfred Jewel, isn't it?

Yeah. It's kind of like a mishmash
of various things,

but it's all of its time and period.

Can I have a look at that?
Yeah. I see, yes.

Beautiful. And who is this figure
you've put on here?

It's King Alfred, is it?

No, just a generic...figure
of a Saxon king, I suppose,

with the long tache
and the pointy beard

and the blond hair and blue eyes,

kind of how they liked to portray
themselves, I imagine.

Anyway, we just have to get on now
and assemble it. Yes.

We'll do that next,
shall we? Yes. Right.

First thing to do is put the crystal
into the silver gilt collar.

Then that just drops into there.

And then this piece will be riveted
on the back

with these little rivets.

So I'll put them in now so we can
have a bit of fiddle with this.

And there we have it. That it?

I'm finished. That's beautiful!

Thank you.
The Shaun Greenhalgh Jewel.

Move it about in the light,

you can get the edges of the actual
gold cloisonne and it sparkles.

Beautiful.

I love cloisonne work. Love it.

SEAGULLS CRY

WATER SPLASHES

Up in the harsher
corners of the Anglo-Saxon world,

the Irish monks who converted
the north of Britain

were deliberately cutting themselves
off from life's little comforts.

Exiles for Christ,
they called themselves.

Lindisfarne up there,

where the monastery was founded
by St Aidan in 635 AD,

was deliberately out of the way,
secluded.

When the tide was out, the only
way across was along this path here,

The Pilgrim's Way, it was called,
marked out with these wooden stakes.

But if you were coming
from the other side of the island,

from the sea, then Lindisfarne
wasn't cut off at all.

In fact, it was very tempting.

MEN SHOUT

'The Viking raids on Britain,
which did so much to tarnish

'the reputations of the Norse men,
began with a raid on Lindisfarne

'in 793, and for the next century
or so,

'the Vikings kept coming back.'

Monasteries were easy pickings.

They were basically undefended,
manned by peaceful monks,

and they were packed with sumptuous
religious treasures

and excellently
positioned for Viking raids.

'The monasteries of the Dark Ages
were Aladdin's caves of treasures.

'Jewel-encrusted relic boxes...

'golden crosses studded with rubies
and pearls.'

'We live in a world in which
Louis Vuitton luggage

'and Jimmy Choo shoes seem precious.

'In the Dark Ages, they knew
better.'

For the Vikings, the main
attraction of the monasteries

was obviously all that fabulous
Christian gold in them -

the rubies, the pearls -

but it's recently been suggested
that there were other reasons

why they targeted the monasteries.

Religious reasons.

Remember, in 793 AD when they raided
Lindisfarne, the Vikings

were still hardcore pagans,

stubborn believers in Odin, Thor
and Freya.

'For these Pagan Vikings,
the fierce missionary

'enthusiasm of the Irish monks
and the brutal conversion

'tactics of Charlemagne constituted
an assault on their religion.'

The Vikings liked being pagans.

They didn't like being told they
were worshipping the wrong gods,

so when they attacked
the monasteries,

it wasn't just to grab all this
fabulous Christian loot,

it was also a form of religious
payback.

"You think our religion's wrong,
we think your religion's wrong."

'The monks on Lindisfarne were also
fighting a religious war.

'Their monastery was a hive of busy
missionary activity.

'But unlike the Vikings
the preferred weapon of the monks

'wasn't the sword, but the word.'

You must have noticed that all the
way through this series,

I've been harping on about the power
of words in the Dark Ages.

I'm like a stuck
record on the subject.

'Words, letters, inscriptions.
They keep appearing in this story.

'And wherever they appear, they seem
to glow with Dark Age urgency.'

If you controlled the word in the
Dark Ages, you controlled the world.

For me, the most captivating
evidence of this immense power

that words had was the great book
created here

by the monks of Lindisfarne...

..the Lindisfarne Gospels.

'This isn't just one of the great
masterpieces of British art,

'this is one of the great
masterpieces of all art.

'Written and decorated
on Lindisfarne

'by a monk called Eadfrith,

'the Lindisfarne Gospel contains
a calligraphic cosmos

'of exceptional vitality.'

It contains the
four Gospels of the New Testament -

the story of Christ as told
by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,

and each of these evangelists gets
a portrait to himself.

So there's St Matthew
writing his Gospel, and it says,

"Matteus", Matthew, up here.

All the portraits in here
are rather traditional.

They could easily be Italian
or Byzantine.

But then you turn the pages...

and you come across this.

This certainly isn't
traditional or Italian.

This is a uniquely British
contribution

to the art of the Dark Ages.

Look at all this amazing Celtic
inter-weaving that's filling

all the letters,

and all these cosmic swirls and
twirls and spirals.

It's like a magnificent
garden of paradise

that's erupted across the pages.

And yet, it's got this pagan
kick to it as well.

This is St John, the writer of the
fourth Gospel. That's his portrait.

And there above his head, the eagle.

That's his sign,
just so we know who it is.

And this is the actual
beginning of John's Gospel,

and look how astonishingly
beautiful it is.

Do you know what this says,

what all this amazingly
complicated interlacing

and all this cosmic calligraphy,
do you know what this says?

It says, "In principio erat Verbum.

"Et Verbum erat apud Deum."

"In the beginning was the Word.

"The Word was with God."

In the Lindisfarne Gospel, Christian
energy and Celtic inventiveness.

Pictures and letters
have come together

in cosmic adulation of the word.

So that's the story of the
Dark Ages. They weren't dark at all.

The Christians' struggle to imagine
their god

was one of the most exciting
struggles in art.

The barbarians were inventive
peoples who made glorious bling.

Islam spent these years
reaching for the stars,

while the Anglo-Saxons were
magnificent goldsmiths

and brilliant wordsmiths.

When William the Conqueror
invaded Britain in 1066

and brought the Dark Ages to some
sort of official end,

he brought to an end
one of the great ages of art.

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