Vikings; 1; Hammer Of The North; SD-Base

Vikings is made possible by a grant from Lutheran Brotherhood. For about two and a half centuries from around 800 to the crucial year of

ten Sixty-Six Scandinavia was the crucible of the north. A fiery crucible that forged a distinct and distinctive people. The Vikings one early historian called Scandinavia the womb of nations. Others have cast the Vikings as merciless barbarians who erupted out of their homelands in an orgy of death dealing destruction and mindless savagery that left all Europe stricken and spoiled. But there is another and less you will read way of looking at the Viking age as an astonishing outburst of energy an activity that extended and enrich the horizons of the known world from Russia to North America. Whether by raiding or trading by blood and iron by art. And I have to declare an interest here because I come from Iceland and Iceland was discovered and settled by the Vikings during the Viking age and our knowledge of the Viking age has been very largely based on the literature of the great Icelandic sagas which were

written by the descendants of Vikings and treasured and read aloud in every farm in Iceland for a thousand years. The greatest of the mediæval saga writers of Iceland was a historians not restored listen. He's one of the few saga writers whose name we actually know because he was written about by his contemporaries. Most of the sagas are anonymous. An immense outpouring of literature and learning of fact and fiction about the Viking age. They were written down laboriously on sheets of vellum cough skin using goose quill pens and glossy natural thanks. Alone among the Nordic countries the Icelanders remembered their common biking past and wrote about it in their common language.

With its class years and mountains. Iceland might seem an unlikely place to foster great literature but beneath the ice there was fire. It's not as good this is home in Iceland was named after the natural heat below the ground. Break off the steamy clearing. Every great man thinks is great his thoughts in his bath and noticed of this no doubt was no exception. It was he who designed and built this open air bath a great cost filled with piping hot water straight from a nearby natural hot spring. He'd come from his house through that covered passageway that led from his basement. And here he would sit in the pool with his cronies talking about politics and history and books. It was you might say the original thinktank and it was here a great cult and he wrote some of the towering saga masterpieces of the 13th century including an account of Norse mythology called snow days at death and also a majestic history of the Norse Kings known as him scream love from the first two

words in the book clean like him since the all of the world to which mankind inhabits the all of the world which mankind inhabits is riven by many fjords. So the great seas run into the land from the out ocean that it is known that the great sea goes in a novice and then up to the land of Jerusalem. From the same sea a long sea by stretches towards the north east and is called the Black Sea. This sea divides the three continents of the earth. To the east Asia. To the west lies Europe. And to the north of the Black Sea lies Russia. In Asia there was a land called. The land of the ICM. Its chief city was called. That city was ruled by a chieftain called Odin. And it was a great place for sacrifice. As a Christian intellectual snob most of us and was trying to explain the

origin of the Norse gods as a migrant Asiatic tribe led by a chieftain would become the principal god of the Vikings. Odin the old Odin was a God of War The Lord of the slay the patron God of warrior. His constant companions were to brave those scavengers of the battlefield. He sent out every day to bring him back news of his happening throughout the world. He was also the God of magic. And poetry and the rooms runes were an alphabet of twigs like letters originally used by the Norseman for writing mostly memorial inscriptions but also magic charms or curses. They represented occult power which Odin had mastered at a terrible cost to himself. I know that I hung on the windswept tree for nine whole nights by the spear and given to. Myself given to myself. On that tree whose

roots no one. Else. They gave me not bread nor drink from the horn. Into the depths I peered. I grasped the runes screaming I grasped. The soul or the thunder was a second main god of the Viking pantheon. He was a God of the sky the ruler of storms the wielder of thunderbolts. As a patron God the fisherman and the farmers. And his mighty hammer guardian of world order was also a lucky charm to hallow weddings and the marriage ban. The third God of the Norse Trinity was Frey the god of fertility and prosperous increase. These three and a host of lesser deities inhabited the paradise all housecarls the

home of the iceage which not Mr Dawson had located far away in Asia. This was the poetic heaven of the Vikings. They got stones of Sweden. Give us some obviously vivid archive of everyday life and death in this world and the next. And one stone can tell us the whole story. A sculpted saga in itself of the ages of Viking man. At the bottom of the farmer carefully tending his land and livestock in the middle of the Viking skimming over the whales past to augment his income with a bit of private enterprise the less acceptable face of Viking capitalism through medieval eyes and at the top. The other world which welcomed all true warriors who died in battle. Free transport on the magic horse to haul the whole of the slain while Kerry is serving endless horns of ale and an eternity of friendly battle in

which the dead and the injured are miraculously restored every night. Was. This concept of the other world a volatile or Valhalla was essentially literary the poets view. The ordinary Viking was more concerned simply with survival. According to the words of the highway down to earth advice said to come from within himself. Praise no day till it's done. No wife till she's bedded no maid till she's bedded no soul to its tested no ice to be crossed no till it's dark. A man of mock should be reticent thoughtful and brave in battle. Everyone should be happy and cheerful till he reaches the end. Be cautious but not too cautious. Above all be cautious with

another man's wife. Be a friend to your friend. Match gift with gift. Meet smiles with smiles and lies with dissimulation. Confide in one never to confide in three in the whole world knows. One Icelandic saga about the Orkney Islands sums up what it meant to be a prosperous freelance Viking. Winter he would spend at home on gas but he entertained some 80 men at his own expense. His drinking hole was so big there was nothing at all to compare. In the spring. He had more than enough to occupy you with a great deal of seed to sow which he sold to Cafferty. Then when that job was done he would go off plundering in the Hebrides and an island of what he called his spring trip. Then back just after midsummer. But he stayed to the corn fields have been reaped and the grain

was safe. After that he went off raiding again to the first month of winter was and. This he used to call his own to drink. Thank you. Ponies in Iceland. Purebred descendants of the Viking horse. It was of course that opened up the distant land reaches of the Nordic countries for settlement and commerce growing trade gave tremendous impetus to the Viking Age trade in iron in slaves and in luxury goods from the far north. Around eight hundred and eighty a prosperous Norwegian merchant called Oak came to England to the Court of the great.

I said that he lived the furthest north of all Norwegians. He said that he lived in the north of Norway on the coast of the Atlantic. He told how on one occasion he wished to find out how far the land extended north and whether any one lived to the north of the way. He went north along the coast keeping the waste land on his starboard and the open sea to port continuously for three days. He was then as far north as the whale hunters go at their furthest. Apart from surveying the land he went mainly for the walrus because they have a fine ivory in their tusks and their hide is excellent for ship ropes. A very wealthy man in the property which constitutes their wealth that is in wild animals. Walrus ivory was a valuable substitute for elephant. Martin and timber wolf by the lapse in the far north where the main specialized trade in luxury goods that were highly prized in the Royal Courts of yore.

In central Sweden the island trading settlement. I grew up with the Viking age as a major market place for the North. In summer but in winter the water froze solid for miles around. And so during winter the best time for fires. The Vikings use of which hundreds of pears have been found elsewhere until recently not all scholars believe that these smooth animals shin bones had been skates. So I tried them out for myself. This is easier than you think. Right. Now there's a skater home in the city. We made it.

It's quite difficult to start with. And I'm sorry for that performance but obviously it it it can work. Now what really thrilled me today I think most of all is that this case was coming from the Oslo museum where used by a Viking and I felt very much part of my own heritage on them even though my answers would have been ashamed to look at me. The main thing is that we know now that these were states that they worked as Kate's and far more importantly that Viking technology as it's described in the sources actually does work. The range and quality of that technology and craftsmanship were truly astonishing. I.

Think metal workers used silver to cast superb ornaments and trappings. But. The. Good couples choose old intricate patterns to adorn their houses their furniture their utensils and in the ultimate of their art their ships and. The weapons Smiths made beautiful swords.

Shipwrights made boats of great elegance of line and functional seaworthiness boats whose direct descendants are still being built in Sweden to this day. It. Always is. Emphasis on Patton and intricacy and the richness of silver and gold. For me the most exquisite of their artwork was lavished on their ships. Thank you.

Ships dominated their lives their minds their poetry. One great poem of that age the seafarer expresses to perfection the intensity of a man's feelings towards a sea of loving and hating. I sing my own true story telling my travels how I have often suffered times of hardship in days of toil and have experienced bitter anxiety. My troubled home on many a ship has been the heaving wave. Where grim Nightwatch has often been my lot of the ship's problems as it beats past oppressed by cold my feet were bound by frost and icy bones. Why what is simmered hopped about my hot. And hunger from within one of the CDs. But he knows not who lives most easily on land. How I have spent my winter on the ice cold sea. Richard I'm anxious in the paths of exile lacking Dear Friends hung around bicycling. While Hale flew past in

shallows. And yet to the heart's desires insite me how that I myself should go on towering seas among the salt waves play. Constantly the heartfelt wishes urge the spirit to venture that I should go forth to see the lands of strangers far away. The heroic ethic of the Vikings was a curious blend of fatalism and courage or defiance in the face of death and very natural concern to avoid a possible they weren't foolhardy man the Vikings they weren't reckless of life and limb death and glory boys but if death was inevitable if there was no alternative but to die then all that mattered was to die bravely because they knew that their immortality depended upon that. As it says in the poem The However mouthed the words of the high one. Well thise kinsmen die. You yourself must one day die. But word fame never

dies for him who achieves it well. And it's this weird fame of the sagas that has kept the Viking idea alive and immortal to this very day. Was. Was was. Was. Was. Was. Was was. Was. Was we were. Up. Thank members of the Norse film and pageant society. Now the largest active medieval society in Britain could spend their weekends re-enacting bloodthirsty scenes of Viking mayhem. The the wind was.

It. I'm in an old potato warehouse in holy Minnesota. Miles away from the scene. Mr. Bob ASP has spent eight years building his private dreamboat a full scale replica of the magnificent stad ship excavated from a burial mound in Norway a century ago. The Gog stud ship is everyone's idea of the quintessential Viking longship 75 feet long lean and predatory clinker built with overlapping strakes swan necked and Swan breasted. Yeah. I.

It is Bob. Asts dream to steer his boat back to the land of his forefathers one day. Thank you. In the summer of 1979 another replica of the gods that ship was sailing across the northern seas. It had a crew of 16 volunteers five from Norway 11 from the Isle of Man the helmsmen was Manxman Eddie caca harbor master Peele. Odin's Raven. It was a scaled down version of the gods that ship specially built to celebrate a thousand years of Viking history on the Isle of Man. Thank.

God it's been a voyage of some 10 days from no time for the start of the island man's millennium celebration. With. The and. With. Far away to the north out in the Atlantic Ocean other Islanders still remember their Viking had a change. The people of the Farrow islands. In the Pharaohs a harrowing past is kept alive in folk ballads sung to accompany intricate bring dances was the world

was yeah. Was it said that some of these battles actually last for three whole days and nights recounting endless tales of Viking daring do. For as long as anyone can remember the words and stay the course. I was told. Was the one. A. Boy. OK I was there was I. The people have to rekindle memories of a golden age of

the north. But the fire festival of up in Shetland is not only a celebration of Midwinter behind it lay a grim awareness of the inevitable doom of the Viking gods the destruction by fire of the Viking world itself. Brothers will battle and kill each other sisters kids commit foul acts as well in a world of wanton as rampant an X age a sword age shields or some good a

strong Wolf age before the world crumbles. No mercy or quarter will man give to man. Sun rose dog sings in the see the bright stars fall from the skies the flames range fires by. Heaven itself. See. Out of this dark and cataclysmic view of the world and with this terrible certainty of death and extinction it's absolute for knowledge of the end of the Viking surge there was born a fierce instinct for action a ferocious appetite for life itself. And over the next few weeks we'll be taking to the whales part of ourselves following in the wake of these Vikings of old across half the known world from is here to North America from Russia to Greenland from the Mediterranean and the Black Sea to the North Sea and the Atlantic. And if you'll pardon my bias home

to Iceland the heartland to this day of the Viking experience. But. The. Igloo. For Vikings is made possible

by a grant from Lutheran Brotherhood.