Who were the Vikings?

gonna be super fancy and like a real studio. But right now we are actually recording in some odd office that has windows. Yeah, this is really weird. This's the first time we've recorded a show outside the regular studio, and um, it might sound a little different. Jerry has explained that there's something called room tone, and it's different from room to room. Jerry just made that up. I bought it. Plus, it looks like the walls are closing in on us. We're actually a lot closer than a

little cramped. This is just odd. So if if we seem a little angrier than usual, it's because of the stupid room So uh, I think we're gonna call this, what do we determine? I voted for the Reconstruction Tapes of the Reconstruction Era, and I made the joke saying that we should call it the Eponymous Era because that was a much better album. But that was just the greatest hits collection by Orim. No it wasn't. It was, well it was, That's why it was so good. All right,

So what's your witty intro? Or is this all just out the door? It's way off the door, buddy, Okay, you see it, yes, leaving Chuck, Josh. Have you ever met a Viking? Uh? No, I haven't. Well, you know the football team, right, Minnesota Vikings. Yeah, I've seen them. You can tell their helmet a mile away because they have those horns on the side, which are very Viking.

Se No, not true, Yes it is. Uh. It turns out a bunch of archaeologists were um digging around, uh, the north, the Nordic area Scandinavia, which includes what Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and yeah I think Finland, sure, Norway too,

can you forget the Norwegians? Um And they found an ancient helmet with some horns on it, and this was before we had um reliable carbon dating technology and they said, well, it's a Viking, but it turns out that it was probably from the pre Viking era, right, Well that's when it was popularized in the in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. You know, the the enormous woman would come out with her bosom very prominent and uh, you know, a helmet

with with horns or wings. And it turns out they wouldn't have worn this because these guys were or dedicated to battling as efficiently and as brutally as any group that's ever sprung up on the global map. Yes, they were very good at what they do. And I just want to point out this is a listener request, a very recent one actually that piqued our interest, and this is from David d from Waterloo. He said, can you do something on vikings since you've covered Ninja and um,

what else did we cover? Pirates? He said, I hear vikings. You stuff warriors called berserkers who would eat magic mushrooms before sending them into battle. And uh, we're going to talk about that, so stay tuned. It's a teaser. So chuck there there does seem to be a lot of

um misconception around vikings. But one of the things I took from this article by the Grabs their a Grabanowski he writes good stuff he does, um, was that there's also a lot of accuracy in the history associated with with Vikings, Like they were extremely brutal, they would indiscriminately kill men, women, children. Um. So let's let's peel this apart. Let's separate fact from fiction as it were. Right, Yes,

when were they around? H josh? The Vikings were prominent in uh Europe in the ninth through the eleven centuries, commonly known as the Age of the Viking. Right, and Um, you tend to think of Vikings as Nordic. They were sure they were from Scandinavia, which are the countries we listed off earlier. But this These weren't communities of Vikings. Vikings were like a job. Yeah, it was a profession, basically,

a you were a professional conqueror. Yeah, because Scandinavians are also farmers and um did many other things weavers, and uh, they weren't just Vikings. It's not interchangeable. Viking and Scandinavians not interchangeable. Weaving has never really been a lucrative job. You know, it's not not even back then. But yeah, so there was a group that that were dedicated to moving out of the North Lamb downward into Europe. Yeah, because Scandinavia it wasn't a very hospitable place. I imagine

it still isn't, you know. Lots of ice, lots of winter snow, not that much land, and the land that is available isn't all arable. So yeah, they went and took it, you know, like broadwater. Uh. There was also evidence that population pressure led to Viking plundering, yeah, because they started to grow and then obviously as they grew,

they needed more things. And this is before they started spreading out, because eventually they would do that, but at first they would just go plunder and then return home to Viking land Scandinavia. You said that they were around from the ninth of the eleventh centuries, right, So there

were Scandinavian cultures before the ninth century. There were Scandinavian cultures after the ninth century, so two years basically, um, this population explosion forced this group out to go get more resources, to more conquering, to conquer more land, and then the end point at the eleventh century actually generally

represents the adoption of Christianity. The Vikings did readily. Yeah once you once you converts, like, you can't plunder any longer, at least not you know, only plundering in the name of God. And Vikings were were pagans pre pre Christianity, right, and which also means that they worshiped the pantheon of gods. There Um, their religion was actually highly personalized. There was no central church in any of the Scandinavian cultures and

their their religion was actually highly personal Uh. It evolved in relative isolation without a central church and any of these Scandinavian cultures. Um, but there was a a pantheon of gods that were recognizable across these cultures generally, right, two groups should we talk about them real quick? Yeah, Uh, the s and the Veneer were the two groups of gods, and the scre were very warlike. That's Odin and Thor, and then the Assir were kind of like hippies like

fertility goddesses and gods. Uh. They lived. The gods lived in Asgard and it was a kingdom connected to mortal Earth by a rainbow bridge, which I didn't know which is you think Okay, so um, Scandinavian pre Christian pagan religion is pretty sweet. They've got hippies, they have rainbow bridges. They had evil giants and dark elves. Yeah, here's where it gets dark dwarves. And apparently the gods were destined to fight against these giants and evil forces in a

battle known as Ragnarok. Right, and they were also predicted to lose, which would plunge uh Mortal Earth and uh Asgard into chaos, darkness, disorder, which I mean to think about that, chuck. All of our religions today are pretty hopeful, Like, even if there isn't into the world, if you adhere to that religion, you're gonna be saved. You won't be around for like the torment. Right, this this religion as loose as it was predicted, Like, no, our gods are

gonna lose and we're all gonna be in really big trouble. Right. But if you were a noble, awesome warrior and you died in battle, you would go to Valhalla, which was warrior heaven, and you would be transported there by the Vulkyrie, which were little warrior angels at the command of Robert Duval right, and uh, what happened was in heaven you would fight alongside Odin and feast and die in battle every day, and you would get up alive the next day and do it all over again. Right, that's their

idea of heaven. It was who was pretty funny. Yeah, so them that that battle part is really significant because, um, in Scandinavia and many of the Scandinavian cultures, a young man proved himself by going, I Viking. Yeah that I'm gonna get a T shirt made it says I Viking. And just see how many people know what that means. That's like the verb of what Vikings did, leaving your homeland,

going down, butchering, raping, pillaging, studying, churches on fire. Churches are actually a big target of their's because the churches are where most of the gold was stored, livestock, spices, jewels, whatever, um. So they would target churches and and kill everybody or else they would take them as thralls slaves, which I looked up the etymology of enthrall. Then that's where it

comes from. So when you're telling somebody you're enthralled by them, you're saying that you're enslaved by their by how interesting they are interesting. And you know that Actually all the church thing is kind of key too, because that's how the that's like, the only written history about the Vikings where it was was written by the hand of the

church that was plundered. So that's one reason. Because the Vikings only told oral orald stories folklore, right, but scrawls, scrawls which told saga's it's where all these words come from. And uh, but the church was the ones who actually wrote down stuff. So that's why a lot of the written history of the Vikings is so brutal, because they were the people that were just you know, had someone went I Viking on them, right, chuck. And they also

attribute the word Viking to um Europeans who were conquered. Yeah, I mean there are a lot of different uh theories there on the word. There are most of them. Do um. Either the Norse adopted a word that was that they were called by the Europeans like um uh, an old English word vic w i c means port port of trade um, which is where the Vikings like to attack. Another theory is that it came from the Norse word vic big different, but this one's v I k meaning

bay or body of water. Or there's another word that sounds similar that means to turn away or to leave on a journey, which is as we said, what going. I Viking began with um. And then there's the last one, which makes a lot of sense, is called um. It's an old Norse word called viking or which means pirate. That's that's my guess, right, But they think that they picked that up from the Europeans they conquered. So either way, these people were written about by Europeans, they were named

by Europeans. They were just going to get some food and gold cheap. Yes, how they do this though? Should we talk about that? Yeah, I Viking. Yeah, they were famous for being experienced seamen. They were built awesome boats and built boats that traveled really fast through the water.

So when the when the Christian uh you know, let's say a monastery would see the Viking ships approaching and dragon ships, yeah, dragon boats, they didn't have much time because they would get there really really fast because they were very experienced fishermen. And uh, I guess since we're on the boats, we we should talk about that for a second. Yeah, they had pretty particular boats as Um,

you know, I think anybody could pick one out. They had a double sided hole, which I thought was pretty cool because you can go forward or backward without having to turn around. You just pick up your butt and turn around and start rowing the other way right, or just switch the sail around. Um. They had a keel,

They had riveted wood construction. Um. And then they had a single mask, and this mask could be as much as um or the the sail that that was attached to the mass could be like three thirty square feet of double sided wool, all hands sewn, usually painted red to symbolize the blood that was about to be spilled by the people who saw it approaching. UM. And then you see pictures of Viking ships with like the little

circles along the side. Yeah, that's actually accurate. Um. Most Viking ships had mounts where somebody could put their shield up as extra protection to to protect the guys who were rowing. Of course makes good sense. Took about a seventy ft Viking long ship. Josh would have required about eleven trees to make it about three ft in diameter each, and then one really tall tree to make the keel.

So I guess it was all one piece. Yeah, and these things could haul but through the water apparently because they're real narrow and they used wind power and manpower. Viking manpower was that was something. So what happened when you saw a dragon boat chuck? You saw a dragon boat docks and all of a sudden, this horde of Vikings just comes streaming off at you. You poop your pants the first thing you do. I would have rolled around the ground crying like a baby and offering up

my cattle to be spared. But you might not be spared. They generally would not leave much. Anything woulden was burned. They would just burn the town to the ground. Kill people, take women if they wanted, or kill them, take children if they wanted, or kill them. Take the cattle. Probably wouldn't kill the cattle now they wanted the cattle. They

were more useful in humans generally. Um. And you would also see these guys coming at you with the acts, which, as everybody knows, is my weapon of choice for a zombie apocalypse. Right, you would go I Viking on zombies, sure, and Josh. As far as their battle gear, like you said, the sword was huge. The swords are about as long as the uh as a man's arm, right. They also

had bows and lances and javelins. Uh, And they wore like you would think, they wore big heavy iron helmets with a little nosepiece that came down a lot of times they wore iron on their breastplate unless they had some dough and they could afford chain mail. But this kind of indicates how strong these dudes were. Do you know what, Like an iron Viking helmet would weigh a lot a lot and actually Vikings, well not Vikings, but

skin Navians, I should say. Skin Navian cultures were really really adept at doing whatever they wanted to do with iron because they've been pulling it from bogs um very easily without any need for mining for many, many centuries. So they were kind of ahead of the curve as far as the iron age goes. And chuck. When these guys died, let's say you were a Viking, had had

some successful raids, garnered some powers, some money. The concept of a Viking funeral, you know, being put on a ship instead of fire a fire and pushed out to see, that's actually accurate. Yeah, that's one way they did it. They also, Yeah, the other way would be that they entombed you in uh an earthen barrow, which is like

a mound. It was called mounting. Right. The thing is, if you were a thrall, let's say you have been captured in battle and taken back to Scandinavia, and you were a servant to this guy, especially particularly useful servant, you would probably be murdered and entombed in the thrall or the barrow. Yeah. The deal there was they believed in a life after death. Um. Whether it was like an eternal life, didn't really know, or just like a temporary life until you get to your old life. But

they definitely believed that you did not just die. So that's why they would send you along with maybe your favorite slave or your possessions. They would your cat, they would bury you with your clothes on, and maybe with your your acts, and they would send you along with these things that they think you would need in the following life to go I Viking. Uh. You know there was another a stratified class almost um in Viking warrior culture. UM. And there was this little subgroup that the guy who

called for this podcast mentioned berserkers. So these guys I want to talk about berserkers yeah, if you've seen the movie Clerks. Did you see Clerks? Yeah? Remember uh Silent Bob's cousin Olaf from my Russia. He sang a medal. He was in a Russian metal band he had. It's long called Bezerka. I don't remember that. That was the first time I heard Berserker And wait, we can't say

the lyrics because they're really filthy, but it was funny. Well, what he was talking about where this this group of warriors that were they think that they grew out of a bear cult, like these people worship bears. They were nuts. They during battle especially, they would go nuts. They would um. It was told in the Sagas that they would take on they would either become a bear or a bowl for something like that. They would shape ship or else they would take on the qualities of a bear like.

They would go into battle naked or shirtless, or at the very least armorless. They would cut five people's heads off at once with one swing of an axe. They couldn't feel pain. Supposedly, they would scream a lot. Their eyes were kind of glazed over. Part of the problem was is they would get into such a um war frenzy, a battle frenzy that if you were near them, even if you were on their side, they'd kill you just

as soon as they would kill somebody else. And as the guy said, they do think that, um, this bear colt that went berserk, the berserkers um were on mushrooms during battle. That may be the case. Can you that? So you would take this regular already super badass warrior viking then jack him up on magic mushrooms and give him an ax, give him an ax and tell him to like take his clothes off and wear like a bear skin. And uh, it was That was it. It was all over. I've read a little bit more about them,

and what's weird is the same guys. They also think it's possible that this cult was largely made up with them mentally ill, right or else maybe a little slow? Yeah, Um, these same guys would also go berserk during like physical labor sometimes too. You just didn't want to hang out with the berserkers, basically you wanted to be in battle with them. But like fifty meters to the left or the right, nowhere near him, I would go in way

behind there. I would drag up the rear behind the berserk also saw another theory that um, they weren't in fact on magic mushrooms, but they uh drank heavily and got wasted basically on mead before battle too. Huh. Wouldn't that slow you down? Though? Um, I would think so, but it would also kind of make you somewhat impervious to pain and not care as much. And yeah, I've gone berserka on a Friday night. Yeah, yeah, I subscribed to the mushroom theory for two reasons. One, it's awesome

to uh. Ritual use of mushrooms in certain Scandinavian cults is known for a fact, so it's entirely possible. These guys, all right, we're Truman, So David d from Waterloo. That's what initially piqued my interest, and that's why we did this podcast. So Josh says, yes, okay, uh, chuck, these guys weren't all berserk, right, No, the the Vikings and the Scandinavian cultures they came from actually were pretty good

at democracy. Yeah. Supposedly, the the the common farmer would have just as much say in matters Viking as as the higher ups. Right, they had um assemblies. I don't know if they were annual or more frequent, but they had scheduled assemblies where everybody got together talked about matters of the day, divided land. Um. And they called them things because I think they just couldn't think of the word at the time, right, Maybe they were a little slow.

And there was a guy. I love this part. There was a guy who was in charge of running the meetings. He was an impartial judge and they called him the lawmaker, So he was the lawmaker of the thing. Pretty generic stuff, primitive democracy, you could call it. Um. And they actually extended this downward to the lands that they conquered. Um. These guys made it a lot further south than I realized. Did you know all this? And now I didn't as far as going through Europe? Yeah, Um, they the Vikings

um conquered a town called Ulster. A Danish Viking did an eight thirty nine and crowned himself king, and um founded what is now the town of Dublin. Did you know that? I did not know that until I read this. Uh. They said they actually laid siege to Paris at some point. They controlled part of England half of England from the late nineteenth century to the eleventh century Danish Vikings, and they struck a deal with France with Frederick the Simple Charles, Charles,

Charles is simple. You don't want your king to be called the simple, No, especially when the Viking leader was named Rolo. So they were causing a lot of problems with the Franks. And so Charles the Simple, poor thing sat down with Raloh and struck a deal and said, hey, um, why don't you guys leave us alone and convert to Christianity and I'll give you Normandy And they said okay, said and uh, Frederick the Simple went that was easy.

Charles is simple. Yeah, he's a simple guy. Yeah. Um. And like we said, the Vikings were they readily converted to Christianity. These lands that they conquered and held um for centuries, and they especially in Ireland and England. The the Celts and the Anglo Saxons would defeat the Vikings, and then more Vikings would come in and defeat whoever. So it changed hands pretty much constantly. But through this interaction, even though it was fighting, Vikings eventually became absorbed into

these local areas. They brought their customs, but took on new customs, and the the whole milange or the whole area of Ireland, England, France. Um is a milange actually of Nordic culture and Southern European culture. I learned a lot with this one. And they actually had trading routes all the way down in North Africa. They did. And Chuck, we've talked about this before. You know that they settled North America. Of Eric the Red. He was exiled for murder.

This is another thing that they probably did it the things they tried people. Uh, Eric the Red was accused of murder. He was convicted, so they exiled him. He took a bunch of guys with them and went from Sland over to Greenland. His son was born there, Leif Ericson, son of Eric, Right, and he said, you know, I'm going to travel even further west and he ended up

in Newfoundland. This is just part of the oral tradition until the nineteen sixties when an archaeologist discovered the traces of this um of Leif Ericson's Viking settlement in Newfoundland. He found a horned helmet, right, He's like, oh, it's a Viking of course. So yeah, they were all over the place. Yes, And if they sound like all they did was rape and pillage and plunder. They did a lot of that, but not so much anymore than anyone else at the time. That was just kind of the

action of the time. But they were just so much better at it than anyone else. They got this rep. But they also, Josh had entertainment. Did you know that? I did not check layd on me. They did. They socialized, and when they socialized, they it was generally competitions because they were clearly big on competing. There was cutting, so they would compete in friendly games like running and wrestling and horseback riding. Uh. They had acrobats and entertainers, poem

tellers and tall tale tellers. And they actually ice skated. What they did they made ice skates out of animal bones and played a game on the ice skates, similar to hurling, which I looked at hurling hurling. Hurling is sort of like the best I can say is, uh, it looks sort of like a cross between rugby and field hockey. I think it was on ice because you had a stick and you're hitting a ball toward a net, So maybe it was the first ice hockey. No, nothing

to do with hote. Uh. Yeah, so they were. They were into all sorts of games. Actually had a game called Kinky Bat, which was like ping pong, except they used shields. I wanted. So they would use a shield to hit like a ball back and forth over. I don't know if it was a net or just back and forth on some surface, but they potentially invented ice hockey and ping pong. Wow, how about that? That is something. Speaking of Viking culture, Chuck um Vikings made it into

our culture popular culture big time, quite a bit. Obviously The You Got Thor, the Marvel superhero, one of my favorites of all time, soon to be a movie next year. Yeah, made at least one appearance in um Adventures in Babysitting. Oh I didn't see that movie. He played the mechanic. Oh really very interesting. Uh yeah, Kenneth Brandon was making that movie. Um, Anthony Hopkins plays Odin and some Australian

guy plays Stor. He didn't look very thory though. When I looked at the pictures, I'm sure they're going to deck him out and give him long blonde hair. Oh. Actually, I meant to mention that apparently some of them used to um bleach their hair. Blond because I guess it was more intimidating, so that that is not a myth. So where else popular culture led Zeppelin? Can we we

can't not talk about led Zeppelin? Go ahead, Well, anyone's ever seen song remains the same obviously, or listened to some Zeppelin songs knows that they were big on aside from Lord of the Rings, Valhalla, Vulkyrie, that kind of thing, Hammer the Gods was the name of their biography. Uh did you ever read that on crazy? Uh? And the Immigrant Song is the most clear example after the famous Whale.

At the beginning, Um, you'll hear lyrics like we come from the land of the ice and snow, from the midnight sun, where the hot springs blow Hammer of the Gods will drive our ships to land to fight the Horde, singing cry Valhalla, I am coming. So I always thought that song was about apple Chians. No, that is Vikings. Huh. Yeah, Robert Plant was big into that and uh, Spike TV. Have you heard of the show Deadliest Warriors? I have. Actually,

it's pretty cool. They picked like warriors against each other, and the Vikings actually in their scenario lost to the Samurai. I could see that barely though, these uh shallon monks samurais. But I know they said the samurai UH wanted a squeaker because they were a little bit more disciplined than the the Crazy Eye Viking. I wonder if they took mushrooms for that show. I don't know, and I think that's it. Oh, actually I got one a couple of more myths if you want to hear him. Vikings were

not dirty. They have the reputation of being dirty, filthy people. They actually bathed once a week, which was a lot for back then. Yeah, definitely, and they washed their face every day apparently. So you were just saying before the podcast, so you're the cleanest person that we know you were the Vikings, I'm cleaner than a Vikings. Sure well sure. And they did not drink from the skulls of the conquered.

That was a mistranslation apparently into Latin. And they they apparently would drink mead from a horn occasionally as as like a ritual, but ordinarily they would just drink from a mug. That's it for the Vikings. Chuck for real, nice additional research. Appreciate that, um and Uh. If you want to learn a little more see some cool picks, including some actual swords, which I thought was pretty cool.

What about you, Chuck loved it. You could type vikings into the handy search bar how stuff works dot com, which leads us to listener mail. Not quite yet, Josh, you always do that. I'm teasing. Uh, actually, I'm not teasing. We just want to plug. We did a little interview with the dude named Wayne and Omaha, Nebraska. Yes, Worlds of Wayne. Worlds of Wayne podcasts which he interviews artists and musicians and cool people. So I don't know why he called us, but he did. And uh, it's actually

already up. So if you want to hear a pretty fun interview with us and go to Worlds of Wayne dot l I B s y N dot com or Josh said, you can just google Worlds of Wayne and that's the first thing that comes up. It is, I've done it. So apparently there's no store called Worlds of Wayne, which is good, and it's episode one thirteen and you'll see our big logo there and click on it. It's

kind of a cool, fun little interview. No listener mail, right, yes, Okay to Josh, I'm gonna call this another list of first from Patrick Okay is our our our super fan, Patrick compolsies list of first in our show, which I think we're kind of cool because I wouldn't take he is. So. The first podcast, of course was how grassoline works? And was that you and Poulette? Yeah? And is that accurate? I don't remember. Okay, that was like two episodes ago.

I know, well, uh what what we're close to that? Actually? Um? The first podcast with Candice Gibson was now Candice Keener was how altruism works? First podcast with me remember doesn't does come stay in your stomach? I thought it was the introduced toothpaste? That was it. It was one of those two Patrick, que might have to take issue with your steps, buddy. Uh. First mentioned the fight or flight response was how hysterical strength works. That was a great one.

First podcast with three people, How contagious yawning works. First time Josh mentions being born in Ohio. Oh, how the eye of the Tornado works? No, that's what he says. First bleeped out swear word, first of many, how swearing works obviously. First mention of Josh and Chuck's pets are dogs of Shark's favorite meal. First podcast over ten minutes. How can a cat scuba dive? Remember scuba cat Sure?

First over twenty is Quitting Smoking Contagious? First over thirty, How lobotomies work, and recently the first over forty, How witchcraft Works? And then just a couple of more. First listener mail was issued in How Einstein's Brain Works, and the first podcast that Patrick listened to is is the World Going To End? In twelve? Awesome? I love the first there's some great stats. This is the first one

in the new the new room. Yeah, make a note, Patrick, and then we'll have the first in the awesome studio. I don't like this room at all. Yeah, Like my neck feels weird. I'm on the opposite side. Everything's wrong, and I'm bury out of sorts. Well, if you have a story about going berserk, we would love to hear it. You can wrap it up in an email and send it to stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit

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