Vikings: Surviving Winter

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at dhs.gov slash bluecampaign. Hello and welcome to Gone Medieval. I'm Dr. Kat Jarman. We're now well into winter here in the Northern Hemisphere. And when you're listening to this, it might be cold and dark outside. Maybe you're even somewhere that has snow. Today, we're going to be going back to the Viking Age again and talk about the fact that the Vikings not only travelled to some pretty inhospitable places with fairly extreme winters, but they survived and thrived.

in places like Northern Scandinavia, Iceland and Greenland. So today I want to find out more about what that meant in the Viking Age. How did the Vikings survive the winter and what social and cultural adaptations do we see as a result of living with snow and ice?

I've invited medievalist James McMullen to tell me more because he has a background not just in museum studies, but also in medieval Icelandic, meaning that in particular, he has insight into what the saga literature can tell us about this topic. So James, thank you so much for joining me here on Gone Medieval today. Thanks very much for having me.

Now, this is such a brilliant time of year to talk about winter and what it was like in certain parts of the world. And I'm especially interested in this North Atlantic region. These sort of really quiet... inhospitable places where winter really was quite severe. And I think the fact that we get people like the Vikings managed to come in, they managed to come in and settle and do so very successfully.

about how they dealt with winter. And just to sort of start with this North Atlantic region, and I know you've lived in Iceland yourself, haven't you? Yes, I have, yeah, for quite some time now. Yeah, and you're currently based in Canada, so you're the perfect person to talk about this. But just the names, Greenland and Iceland. And I'm not sure some of our listeners will be aware of this, but just the origins of those names and the Viking link to those.

Can you just explain why have we got somewhere called Iceland and somewhere called Greenland, which isn't actually very green? Right, of course. So we'll start with Iceland. It got its name... in The history of Iceland, the sort of mythological history of Iceland, which is not really mythological because, you know, this happens around 865 CE. A fellow from Norway by the name of Hrapnoloki Vilgersson, so literally raven...

Floki. He was sailing. He went to Iceland. He went to an island, rather. He wasn't calling it Iceland then, but he was looking for a new place to settle. He landed in what is now... the eastern part of Iceland. He had his flocks with him, and the winter there hit, and it just devastated him. Most of his livestock... died, his crops failed, it was just not something that he was prepared for coming from Norway, so he went back and said, hey, listen, you know, there's this place out west.

That is just the worst, most inhospitable island you have ever come across. It is a land of ice. And there are some other mentions of sorcerers having visions of islands that are just... covered in ice. And when you come in from the east to Iceland, that's what you see are glaciers and cliffs, and it does look very inhospitable. But as soon as you get around the east coast, get down along the south coast and along the west...

It's really a gorgeous, relatively fertile country. And especially in the 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries, there was a lot of flora. growing there. Lots of trees. Some estimates are about a third of the country was covered in woodlot. Woodland, rather, excuse me. So, you know, it was not... an inhospitable place. So it got the name Iceland just because of, you know, a real bad winter one time, which is kind of the exact opposite of how Greenland got its name, which is kind of hilarious and...

The first sort of example of, you know, false advertising in the medieval Scandinavian world that we have. Yes. That's very true. Yeah. There are some parts of the internet that are very... Very much familiar with Ea Nasir of Babylon, who was, you know, this Babylonian copper merchant whose only reason we know him is because he sold a lot of bad copper and we have a lot of complaints.

written about him. Kind of the same thing happened in Greenland with Eric the Red, Eric Roudy, who settled the East Settlement in Greenland first. He got there and it was... Not exactly the most hospitable place. It's kind of like Hrapnafloki. He gets there and it's ice and snow and the winter is rough. But unlike Hrapnafloki, he sticks it out. He's used to harsh winters. And he says, you know what?

I can do something with this. I can get people here. I'm going to go back and let them know about this wonderful fertile place called Greenland and have them come and settle there and I will be their chieftain. And it worked. Greenland was... in the early period before about the 14th century, much more...

fertile and hospitable than it is now. There was a big climactic shift around the 14th century where it starts going into what's called the Little Ice Age, and that's when things get real cold. But... Even still, still a chilly place. Still the sort of place that you don't necessarily want to go if you're not prepared.

And a lot of the settlers initially were not prepared. They get there, they're expecting Greenland. It's gorgeous. It's, you know, common vacation in sunny East settlement. And then they get there like, oh. Well, there is sun for six months of the year because we're so far north, but the other six months of the year, it's pretty much darkness all the time. Oh, this is not what we signed up for. But at that point, you've already sold everything at home.

So you've got no place to go back to. You've got to tough it out. So it's one of those fun things. Yeah, so it sort of worked, the naming worked. And those stories, they're all from the saga literature, aren't they? So they're from the Icelandic saga literature. Do we know, are we quite confident that those names were used by the Scandinaves or by the Vikings?

Absolutely. At the time? Yes, absolutely. As far as we can be certain about anything before the 12th century, we can be certain about that. The reason I say anything before the 12th century is because... vernacular writings in Iceland, in Old Icelandic or Old Norse, don't really exist before about...

1115 or so. That's when we get some early scraps. There's plenty of fragmentary literature beforehand, but that is mostly liturgical or ecclesiastical material, and it's written in Latin. And so it is like... specifically for the running of the church or for more administrative things. We get into like the really nitty gritty of it being... where people live and where people who are literate are writing for other literate people in about the 12th century.

So I want to get back to some of those written sources and the sagas a bit later on. But first of all, just let's focus on this idea. As you were just describing, you know, coming here to settle in these really quite inhospitable places. I mean, I wonder what sort of cultural... adaptations we see that relate to those cold winters. So for example, what do we know about the houses that people lived in in somewhere like Greenland and Iceland?

Okay, well, I'll focus on Iceland because that is where my sort of academic focus has been for the last almost a decade now. But, you know... Housing in Iceland in the settlement period, so up until about the 14th century, really, it was of the longhouse type construction. And when you think longhouse, you know...

The advantage of it is that it is exactly what it says on the tin. It is a very long house, typically with one main room, a bath stove, where beds and dining tables and just kind of the daily living. There would be a long central fire to provide heat and light and a cooking area. And that warmth would go all through the house. There would be a separate...

storage area like a storehouse or an animal buyer for, you know, larger farms. Smaller farms, they just keep the animals in there during the winter, depending on how many they had. So you have these houses which are... stone along the bottom, but timber in the main. And the roofs especially are made of timber. And that's actually something that is very, very important in...

the culture at the time, the timber roof, not for any sort of display of wealth or social thing, but just as a way of keeping yourself warm and dry. And, you know... Keeping that maintained throughout the course of the winter is also an important thing because it's wood. It will soak up water. Even if you, you know, grease it or tar it, it's still going to get wet. It'll still crack and you're still going to need to go out and replace it on occasion.

So that's really quite well adapted to that sort of climate, which is great to see. And what about things like clothing? Do we know much about what people wore to keep warm in these sort of quite severe winters? Yes, actually we do. We have... Not as much from Iceland, but a lot from mainland Scandinavia. We have a lot of archaeological finds of clothing. And unsurprisingly, the clothing tends to be wool.

fur, leather, so they don't last very long. When we do find them, they're not in the greatest of conditions, but we do know the materials that were used, you know, wool, fur, leather, and as... Anyone who has gone out in, you know, a minus 10 wind in a good Icelandic lopapesa can tell you, that'll keep you warm. That'll keep you nice and toasty. A good thick wool sweater will do a lot.

These woolen outer garments would be great proof against the cold. To a point, of course. I mean, you're not going to be going out into a blizzard and just going to plow through it perfectly fine. But these materials...

are there for a reason. They're naturally occurring in those regions for a reason, right? Yeah, exactly. So that's really going to help, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, the woolen over tunicas and the woolen trousers are what everybody kind of... sees and thinks of but underclothing is also very important underclothing is weird because as anybody who has worn a wool sweater can tell you it can get a little scratchy and that's not necessarily something you want

as your underpants or as an undershirt. So linen would actually be the material of choice, which in Iceland means they're really expensive things, underclothes, because linen, flax... does not grow naturally in Iceland. The Icelandic climate makes a lot of things that Scandinavian settlers were used to.

very difficult to get and to deal with once they get to Iceland. It's an entirely different ball game once they get to Iceland from mainland Scandinavia, because things that they are used to just... don't work anymore.

Yes, that shows, I suppose, those trade connections overseas become really crucial, don't they? And it's probably quite surprising to think of things like linen garments being something that sort of desirable. But actually, it's a really good point, this sort of thing that people need.

back to some of these archaeological finds as well because one of the things i really like looking at is the most of transport and i know that things like skates were used as well? And what about things like skis? Do you know anything about that? Yes. So skates are weird. Skates are really, really weird because there is no mention of them in saga literature.

Skating is not something that is mentioned at all in the Icelandic sagas, period. However, that said, we find lots of skates, archaeologically. In 2016, Rune Edberg and Jonny Carlson did a really phenomenal analysis of, I think, 640 or so sets of skates that they found in Birka and Sigtuna in Sweden. And it tends to be mainly associated with youth, right? It's, you know, it's going out and having fun times skating with the kids or as a kid, just playing around.

As anyone who has grown up where lakes freeze over regularly will tell you, skating is fun. But it's not something you want to do across a big body of frozen water. It's not safe, because that ice could be thin, you could fall in. But more so, it gets real cold when there's nothing to break up the wind, because the wind will come right across that frozen lake.

and it'll chill you to the bone. Scheme, however, that we have plenty of records of, and we have literary records as well as archaeological records. Archaeologically, Skiing and skating both go back beyond the Scandinavian Bronze Age. These are ancient things. But skiing in particular in Norway is mentioned quite a bit. Most famously, in Halkon's saga, Halkonarson, so that the saga of King Halkon of Norway, it's mentioned...

Right near the beginning, when King Halkon, as a baby, is rescued from his enemies. Now, he's born during the Civil War period to his father, Halkon III, who is a Birkebeiner. which is one of the two factions. And he's born in Baglar territory. The Baglar, the sort of... city people, the southern faction supported by the church, where the Berkebeiner are the northern faction who tend to be more rural in their support. So he's born...

in the south and surrounded by enemies. His father is dead before he's even born. He needs to get to someplace safe. And so, you know, a dozen Birkebeiner warriors say, we're going to take... the infant king north to King Inge Bardoson. And King Inge Bardoson is in Nidaros, Trondheim, which is quite a ways away from where they are in the south. So they got to go north and they take off. And as they're going north...

they get hit with a blizzard because it's winter. And the only way they can get the baby safe, because the Baglar are closing in... is to give him to two of the best skiers in this group of warriors, Thorsten Skevla and Skervald Skrpla. He says, okay, you guys got to get this kid out of here. We'll hold him off, run with the baby. And they take... young King Haakon north over the mountains at Lillehammer to Osterdalen. And then they bring him north to Nidros where he's...

you know, safely ensconced in King Inge's court, and then eventually he grows to become King Halkan IV of Norway, Halkan the Old, and he rules it, the longest ruling king of Norway. He rules for 46 years. But if it weren't for the skiers, you know, he wouldn't be there. And skiing was certainly popular enough and common enough, especially... in norway to have a god dedicated to it mythologically there's uh the god who in gilfagening he's describing

So he's described, you know, as this bowman so great and skier so amazing that none can compete with him. Right? It's such an important thing. It's linked with hunting. It's linked with travel. It's linked with... Even warfare. You can see this bowman who is a fast mover going from place to place on his skis. No one can touch him. It's important there. Brilliant. So yeah, so clearly skiing is a crucial part of the culture.

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I just wanted to ask you about other literary sources and saga sources that talk about this winter and the... difficult to be winter and what other effects that might have had on society if you have people stuck indoors and you know actually struggling in quite harsh conditions. Are there any other sources that tell us of sort of bad things happening because of that? Absolutely. Winter is, especially in Iceland, winter is...

You know, at this period, a very harsh season. It is a very lean season. You get a lot of shortages of food. Because of the way Icelandic climate was at the time... Not much grew there. You know, you could get some barley, but the main crop was grass and hay. So the main food source becomes... livestock, cattle, sheep, and horses. And if you have a harsh autumn, a harsh spring and summer and autumn, and it's not a lot of hay...

all of a sudden your food supply through the winter is going to start dwindling. The preservation of food in Iceland is done with whey. which is a byproduct from cheese and butter making. And so, you know, you need livestock for that. And if you don't have that, because you're culling the herd to preserve what little fodder you've got, you're not going to be able to preserve that meat.

Anyway, you can keep it outside in the freezing cold, but if it's not freezing cold, if it's just cool and damp, that's going to rot. So you've got all sorts of scarcity happening. And in the sagas, especially, we have stories that take place during winters where, you know, people are sitting there and thinking, oh, God, we're running low on food.

or where the main conflict takes place because of a lean winter. There's a saga called Heinz Thoris Saga, so the saga of Hen Thorir, where a farmer is a landowner by the name of Ketzelblund. He, you know, has a big bunch of farms that he owns and his tenants are getting ready for the winter and it's been a really bad hay harvest. So he goes around and he says to them, listen, this season...

You're not paying me rent in silver or vadmar, which is the sort of homespun fabric which was used as a trade medium. No, you're paying rents in hay, and I'm going to keep the hay harvest. And bowl it out as needs be because I'm a good landowner. I'm a good, you know, chieftain of this area.

But you also need to listen to me and slaughter exactly as many animals as I tell you to. You need to slaughter more than we normally do because there's not a lot of hay. And this is a problem for a lot of farmers because... Livestock was currency. The more livestock you have that survives the winter, the more they'll breed. And more breeding stock means that you'll have more livestock for the next winter. More money, more food, more tradability.

If you start slaughtering them, well, you're going to have less breeding stock come the summer. In spring, you're going to have less food. You're going to have less tradability because you're going to have less byproduct, less fur, less wool, rather, excuse me, less milk, you know, less meat. Everything is going to be less.

So some of his tenants say, sure, sure, we'll listen to your kettle. It'll be fine. And then as the winter goes on, they come to him and say, hey, listen, so we lied. We're out of hay. Can you hook us up? And he does this a couple times, and by the third time, he's out of hay himself, and he goes to his neighbor and says, hey, listen, hensothorir, hensothorir, I need...

to borrow some hay. I will give you silver and gifts. I will pay you way more than the going market rate. You have lots of hay. Can you hook me up? And Heinz Thorin, because he's the villain of the story. Despite being the main character, he's not a nice guy. He says, nope, I'm not giving you anything. And so an argument ensues and Keterblund decides, I'm just going to steal it and leave you a bunch of silver and gifts.

And if you want more silver, more payment, you can come to my farm and I will give it to you. But my people need this hay now. And then it starts a huge conflict that goes throughout the rest of the saga. It involves a hall burning and assassinations and all sorts of crazy stuff. So it gets intense because this is people's livelihoods. These are the ways that they are... showing and demonstrating their wealth and their power.

Yeah, that's such a fantastic story. And it is a really, really good example for exactly what you're saying, the importance of these commodities, these basic things for sustaining yourself and your family and the people, all of that, but also that sort of...

it has on social relationships, which is great because we don't really get that from the archaeological record. But this gives us an insight, doesn't it, into what exactly is important and what that means for people. Well, that's exactly it. And in Halvermar.

which is, you know, the sayings of the high one. It's a sort of, in undergrad, my professor, you know, called it the Viking Age 140 commandments. Yes, that's a good one. Yeah. You know, right at the beginning, there's a sort of... If you're a good host, if you are a good person to be in the community, these are the things you need to do. And the third entry in Halvamal is, you know... You know, it's fire is needed for those who come in with frozen knees.

And food and clothing the wanderer craves who has gone over the frozen mountains. You know, they know it's cold. This is a pan Scandinavian thing. You know, this is not specific to Iceland. So it is, you know, when someone comes to your home, you need to be ready to give them dry clothes, a hot fire and good food.

You know, Huffle Mall 60, which is, you know, if you're going to be a householder, these are the things you need to know, right? That's right in that section. It says specifically, make sure you have enough firewood, like dried firewood logs, and roof... timbers and roof bark to store for at least a quarter, if not a half of a year.

Right? So you've got to be prepared because it is cold, it is wet, and your responsibility is to everyone in that home, whether they are family, servant, tenant, or visitor, to keep them warm and dry. I love that idea. I love the idea that it's building in that social contact with a wider community and making sure that people who are coming to you, that you are providing that hospitality, which is a really interesting insight, isn't it, to the culture?

It is, and it's a social adaptation, I think, to the climate. If you are going from one area to the next, if you're visiting family, you know, three or four farms away, that can be 40, 50 kilometers. And you're going on foot. And a storm can come in unexpectedly, you know, off of the mountain or off of the sea. And you need shelter. You know, you need to be able to know that you can rely on people having this social...

agreement that, hey, if someone comes, I've got to take care of them. It's my responsibility as a householder to take care of somebody who comes in. And then you know that that's going to happen to you as well. Exactly, because you'll reciprocate it if needs be.

And Fimbelwetter is an important element of Ragnarok, which is the sort of end of the world. It's the judgment of the gods. It's when... All of the Aesir and Vanir, so the sort of good guy gods, the gods we all know, you know, Thor and Worven and Hemdall and Tyr and Freyja and Frigga and all them, they face off against... Surtur, the flame giant, the Jotnar, and his armies of, you know, Jotnar giants and armies of the dead and monsters, they all come together in this apocalyptic battle. And...

Fimbovetr is the winter that happens afterwards, right? So we have in Vaftrudnismal, which is a poem in the Poetic Era. You know, in stanza 39, we have Ervaftruthnir and Woden discussing the end of the world. Stanza 44 is when he talks about the famous Fimbulweter. Stanza 51... is when we get into all of the aftermath. We've got this terrible, harsh winter. All the humans have died. The big battle is occurring. Flame washes over everything. Everyone is gone except for...

the sons of Thor, Freya's folk from her hall, and these two humans, Lif and Lifthrasir. And then they go on and they live happily ever after in a hall called Gimli. which is the shining place, you know, on a windy hill and everything is great. They don't have to worry about food or water because they're sustained by the morning dew. And it becomes all very familiar to a Christian audience, that sort of post-apocalypse.

post-revelatory heaven idea. How much of that is true to form for the pre-Christian pagan belief, that's still up in the air. And will probably always be up in the air. Until we, you know... can figure out some way to get someone from the 10th century to tell us exactly what's going on.

I'd be good, although I'd probably lose my job, so maybe we shouldn't. Yeah, it'd be awkward. We'd all of us be either out of a job or really quickly scrambling to realign. All my thesis is completely... garbage now what is this yeah exactly but i think what's so interesting about this though is that

This really severe climate, this really frosty winter, which obviously would have a devastating impact on people. And, you know, for so many reasons, as we've seen, that that sort of linked to this whole idea of the end of the world. You know, that's quite telling, I suppose. just how severe that threat was to this sort of society.

Yeah, it absolutely is. Because climactic cycles occur and we have evidence of them occurring, you do have to look at these things as peaks and valleys in the pre-modern time. Like I said, around 536 or so was when that big cold snap happened. And then it got into what's called the medieval warm period, right? You know, from like 730 to around 1100. So right at that sweet spot of settlement age Iceland.

is this warmer period where everything is good and relatively bountiful and there are still trees in Iceland because they haven't all been clear-cut and turned into grazing pasture and you can still grow barley fairly easily. But... By around 1100, 1115, we start seeing, in like ice core samples from Greenland, a very decided shift. to getting colder weather. And by 1150 or so, there's sea ice and polar water.

showing up in Greenland and in Iceland, and we know at that point by 1150 it's getting into the medieval cold period, the Little Ice Age. You know, it culminates in a period from about 1150 to like 1370 or so. where it's just freezing cold, right? All the time. So, again, you know, it's not necessarily Fimble Vettel coming back, but it is a taste of this mythological freezing unpleasantness.

that is coming back to them. Yeah, so you can kind of see how this must be very much at the forefront of people's minds. So these sagas are, you know, this is literature, these are stories which are based, as we can see, in the reality of medieval life. But in Norse mythology, there's one particular aspect that relates to snow and ice.

And it's something that also has been possibly linked to climatic changes, which I'm going to ask you about in a moment. The thing I'm talking about is the thimble winter. Can you explain what that was? Hey, what's up? It's Mario Lopez. Back to school. It's an exciting time, but it can also be overwhelming and kids may feel isolated. A vulnerability that human traffickers can exploit. Human trafficking doesn't always look like what you expect.

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Hey, Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I don't know if you've heard, but Mint's premium wireless is $15 a month. But I'd like to offer one other perk. We have no stores. That means no small talk. Crazy weather we're having. No, it's not. It's just weather. It is an introvert's dream. Give it a try at midmobile.com slash switch. Shhh. Sure, as far as anyone can explain what Fimbulwetter is, yeah, I'll take a swing at it. Fimbulwetter is a very... It's a weird concept.

to us because when we think of apocalypses now in a western sort of very christian idea of the apocalypse it tends to be you know flames and fire and very hot things In Gilfagining, where we have Fimbelwetter come up, it is an apocalyptic event that is cold. It is such a terrible, harsh, cold winter that only two people on all of Earth survive. We don't get much detail because of the nature of Vafthrutenismar, which is the poem that it occurs in. It is a poem. It's a dialogue poem.

Where Vafthrudnir is, you know, answering questions that King Girfi is giving him. But, you know, it basically says... Fimbulwetter, I'll tell you, sure, I'll tell you about it. It's a terrible cold winter that happens, and the only two people who survive are Lief and Liefthrasir, because they hide in these woods. Everyone else freezes to death. Winters are that sort of thing. And we do have evidence that around 536 CE, there was a very sudden, very devastating cold snap in.

Scandinavia. Is the Fimblevetter mythology a sort of reflection of that? Very possibly. No one can say for sure because Guilfaginning is, you know, it's a 13th century. And, you know, the Edda is a 13th century creation of a Christian's account of what was possibly...

specifically Icelandic versions of Old Norse myths from 300 years ago, right, that have been passed down from grandma to grandpa to so on and so forth. So we have to take it all with a grain of salt, but we do know that these myths persisted. And we do have climatological evidence of this sudden shift in around 536, which would, of course, make its way into folklore and mythology, and then away we go.

So we've talked quite a lot about all these negative impacts and the sort of disastrous parts and the violence it might lead to and all of this. But just to end off, let's sort of have a few more positive thoughts. Of course, in Iceland, you have things like the hot springs. Do we know if the hot springs were used? I mean, obviously they were, but what sort of evidence do we have for that? Absolutely. So hot springs in Iceland are really cool. You know, they're everywhere.

No matter where you go, you're going to bump into eventually a hot spring somewhere. And they took advantage of this. Probably the most famous hot spring for people who are interested in saga scholarship. is the bath at Reikholt, which is a farm north of Reykjavik. It is Snoroloig, the bath of Snorri Sturluson, right? And, you know, he lived in Reikholt and he found a...

a hot spring that's called Skrifla. And he dug three channels from it. Two went to this hot tub. And that's what it is. It looks exactly like a modern hot tub that he built. Behind his farmhouse. And the third goes into the farmhouse proper. So you have this hot spring feeding a hot tub to just kind of... You know, oh, I'm going to go and relax and have a soak. But you've also got this channel of hot geothermal water.

going under the farmhouse. Now, we're not 100% sure what it was used for. Was it a source of hot water for washing up and things like that? Possibly. But we do know that it would have been warm. And it could have been a very early form of, you know, subterranean heating. You know, sort of like how the Romans have heated floors. A sort of analog to that, but using this geothermal water. And hot springs, of course...

Because of their nature, you know, you go into a hot spring, your muscles relax, the tension flows out. They get, you know, mystical healing properties. They also become like very important religious sites once Iceland converted around 1000 CE. People from northern and southern Iceland were baptized in two different hot springs. The north were baptized in Reykjalojg, which is later called Vígdalojg, the consecrated or holy spring, in Lógyrvatn.

And then from Western Iceland, they were baptized in a hot spring that's called Lundarekjedalur, which is later named to Krosloig, the spring of the cross. And these both then get the sort of reputation of having... healing abilities because this is where you take the sign of the cross. This is where you become whole in Christ.

And also now, because it's a holy place, you know, we'll ignore the fact that it's just this really nice soothing hot spring to relax in and have your muscles relax finally. you'll get some good healing, some magical healing out of it as well. So it's a really neat sort of place that they occupy in culture. That's fantastic. I love this. It's the idea that the environment and the climate and all of these things just really...

help us essentially explain some of these social and cultural and even religious aspects of those societies. And I mean, it's not surprising perhaps, but I think in places like that, that are so extreme, you can really see it quite sort of clearly, can't you? Yeah, oh, absolutely. Yeah. And that's the cool thing. One of my favorite quotes is that, you know, humankind is not just an animal in the environment, but it's an animal that shapes the environment. But the environment shapes us as well.

Right? So we are both informed by and inform the environment all around us. And you can really see that with stuff like winters and hot springs in Iceland specifically.

Fantastic. Well, I think I'm going to go and Google flights to Iceland now because I want some of those hot springs. Fantastic. James, thank you so much. That's been absolutely brilliant. And before you go, people can follow you on Twitter.

can't they what's your handle on there if people want to yeah you can follow me on twitter if you want a lot of a lot of leftist yelling and a lot of occasional viking misinformation correction and museum related uh stuff uh you can follow me the viking gym at twitter.com fantastic well people can have a have a follow if they're interested

fantastic so that's been all about winters and the vikings and adaptations hopefully when you're listening to this it's not as cold and that you're not worried about the end of the world but in any case thank you so much for listening my name is Dr Kat Jarman this has been an episode of Gone Medieval by History Hit don't forget you can subscribe to the podcast and you can also subscribe to our Medieval Mondays newsletter to get more medieval information in your inbox

every monday just look at the episode notes to tell you how to do that thank you so much for listening and hopefully come and join me again next week