Original subtitles

No other ancient people have such a strong hold on our imagination as the

Vikings. But the truth about them is shrouded in the mists of Dark Age

In this series, I'll be searching for evidence to unravel the story of the

Vikings' invasion and settlement of these islands.

What really happened when Vikings attacked?

Were they only here to plunder, or did some stay and make Britain their home?

To find the answers, I'll be investigating ancient monastic writing.

the latest discoveries in archaeology and genetics.

We've commissioned a nationwide genetic survey to find out where in the British

Isles today the descendants of the Vikings live on.

To start, I'm going in search of the Vikings' hit -and -run raids and new

evidence for what accompanied them, death and destruction.

For the first time, the saga of the mighty Viking hordes who swept across

world, breaking every commandment of heaven and earth.

as they put an age to the torch.

They enjoyed war, didn't they? I mean, it was their thing, you know.

To a Viking, there was no life except life in battle.

They were very violent people who were into stabbing and raping and pillaging.

There was no death except death in battle.

Ugly, hairy brute.

Yes. There were no women except women taken in battle.

Monks kneeling down and getting their heads taken with axes.

Over the centuries, our picture of the Vikings has become a sensational mix of

fact and fantasy.

For example, the horned helmet. One of our most powerful images of the Vikings.

And yet archaeologists have never found a single Viking helmet with horns.

In fact, this is the only real Viking helmet ever discovered.

It was found in the Viking homelands of southern Norway, alongside the burnt

remains of its owner in a pagan burial mound.

The Vikings have a powerful image.

Daring and ambitious, certainly, but also vicious, aggressive and barbaric.

So what is the truth and where's the evidence?

To find out, I need to go back to the beginning of the story.

To the late 700s.

Britain has been revolutionised by a new religion.

But Christianity doesn't simply mean a new faith.

It's also brought literature and art.

And by acquiring land, the church has become immensely rich and powerful.

One of its most important and sacred monasteries, St Cuthbert's, lies off the

coast of Northumbria, safe on the holy island of Lindisfarne.

The year was 793, and here on Holy Island, the monks of Lindisfarne lived a

peaceful existence.

But all this was about to be brutally shattered.

The Vikings' raiding of British and Irish monasteries was just beginning.

In us is fulfilled what the prophet first foretold. From the north, evil

forth, and a terrible glory will come from the north.

See, the pirate raids have penetrated the north of our island.

The

attack

was vicious and has gone down in history as the start of the Viking Age.

The feeling of the time is encapsulated in this stone found here at Lindisfarne.

On one side, a sun, a moon and a cross.

The signs of the Day of Judgment.

And on the other, what appears to be a band of ferocious Viking warriors.

All over Britain, people now lived in fear of one of these attacks.

But we only have one report that was written at the time.

The apocalyptic words of a Northumbrian monk, Alcuin of York.

The pagans have desecrated God's sanctuary, shed the blood of saints

altar, laid waste the house of our hope, and trampled the bodies of the saints

like dung in the street.

It's compelling stuff, and lies at the root of how we see the Vikings.

But how reliable is it?

What's interesting is that when Alcuin wrote his gripping and bloody account of

Viking raids, he wasn't even in Britain.

He was hundreds of miles away in Aachen, safe at the court of the Christian

Emperor Charlemagne, an arch -enemy of the pagan Vikings.

And so when Alcuin wrote about them, he probably already formed his own fairly

strong opinion about what the Vikings were really like.

Orquin's writings may have been highly political.

But the only other accounts from England are in the Anglo -Saxon Chronicles.

Written by monks nearly a century later.

Details are often sparse.

There's only one more raid on England recorded during the 40 years that

the events of 793.

But again, the attack on Lindisfarne is painted in biblical terms.

It's preceded by omens from the heavens, like whirlwinds and lightning, followed

by famine, and then Vikings.

It's no wonder we see them in the way we do.

Behind these accounts, there surely lie real events.

But how do I reach back to them?

The best hint of a Viking raid from the archaeological record in Britain is a

discovery made in Shetland.

In 1958.

Underneath the floor of an ancient church, someone had buried this.

A fabulous hoard of Pictish treasure.

Silver bowls and brooches dating from Viking times.

Some argue it was hidden from Viking raiders.

But no signs of pagan destruction were ever found. No victims of murder.

No real evidence to pin this on the Vikings.

Apart from the stories, evidence in Britain for Viking raiding is

thin.

Could Christian monks have deliberately exaggerated what happened, perhaps to

frighten their flocks into repentance?

So where can I look for something more convincing?

Within a few years, Vikings would be sailing right round Britain into the

Sea, where from the mid -800s onwards, the Welsh Annals reported a new and

deadly threat.

Here on the north -west coast, according to records of the time, the locals were

subjected to repeated attacks by Vikings.

But for archaeologists, the frustration has been finding any evidence for the

Vikings being here at all.

That was until a few years ago, when a metal detectorist turned up some unusual

objects in a corner of a field at Llanbedagoch on Anglesey.

The actual field leading on to this, we found quite a rare coin.

And there's a lot of interest generated with it from the museum. And we started

finding weights, lead weights, and I didn't actually know what they were at

time, you know, until they were sent to the museum and I was told.

They were Viking weights, which sort of hit the jackpot.

The lead weights that Archie had found were soon followed by other Viking

objects, including a collection of hacked silver, fragments of silver

These were used by the Vikings not as jewellery, but as currency.

Bits were hacked off as required and spent instead of coins.

A major excavation is now underway at Llanbedygoch.

It's run by archaeologist Mark Redknapp from the National Museums and Galleries

of Wales.

Just leave the sound there for a moment, because that's interesting.

For years, he's been on the lookout for evidence of Viking activity.

Could this new site shed any light on the events reported in the annals?

As Mark's team excavate, they uncover the remains of an ancient wall.

It's massive, over two metres thick, and encircles an area 100 metres across.

The wall, together with its ditch, would have been a formidable defensive

structure.

What threat were these people defending against, so close to the sea?

Who were they afraid of?

As the archaeologists continue to excavate the ditch, they make another

discovery.

Something totally unexpected.

The remains of five skeletons start to emerge.

The first to be discovered, that of a young woman, is radiocarbon dated to

time between the mid -700s and the late 900s.

By this time, Wales had long been Christian, but these burials don't

any sort of Christian pattern.

the local population would have normally been buried in an east -west

orientation. Here we've got north -south casual burial. No sense of laying out

of the body or of ritual.

Exactly the opposite.

And the impression you really get when you look at these is that they were not

deposited in the ground by people who cared for them or who loved them.

These are very casual burials.

In the fill we're getting animal refuse, joints of meat, suggesting that they're

really just thrown out with the kitchen waste and awful, and then covered very

unceremoniously with large lumps of limestone, which have been really

crashed down on the bodies to cover them with this rather thick layer of rubble.

So what sort of explanation can you come up with for this? Well, there are a

number of options we should consider.

One is that perhaps they died as a result of some illness or plague, and

that it wasn't possible to accord them normal Christian burial. You just wanted

to dispose of them, basically. Dispose of the dead in an emergency situation.

But probably the favoured option is that these are the victims of some other

cause of death, perhaps violent death.

We know that the animals record first Viking attacks on whales in 855. We have

recorded attack on Anglesey. I think I can see what you're getting at here. Do

you think these are victims of Vikings then? Well, I hope that during the

of the exposure of these bodies that we can accumulate enough data to actually

come to a reasoned, rational argument as to the cause of death.

It's going to be great to see these emerge.

Well, I'm hoping that you're going to offer to do that for us. I'd love to.

I'd love to. I've got my trowel with me, so... Excellent.

It looks like it's a male.

It soon becomes clear that there are the remains of two men, a woman and two

children.

But how did they die?

As the bones are fully uncovered... we discover the first unsettling hints that

violence might have been involved.

One thing that does show up very clearly now, though, is the odd position that

that one's lying in.

Because what is it? I mean, it's lying partly on the left side, isn't it?

That's right. Head to that side.

Shall I move this one?

Yeah. That one's like that.

What about my arms, though? Where are they?

This arm is really straight back behind, like that.

And this one you've got to tuck under.

That one's right underneath.

Well, it's incredibly uncomfortable.

But do you think that does suggest that this body might have had its arms tied

behind its back?

I don't think we can rule that out.

Both males look as though they were tied up, so it seems unlikely that their

deaths were peaceful.

Were they local, captured, slaughtered and disposed of by pagan Vikings?

Or could anyone else have buried them in this way?

Six months later, radiocarbon dates on all of the skeletons are in.

They've narrowed down the likely date of the deaths to the second half of the

10th century, still a period when Viking raids were common.

So what's Mark's best theory about what really happened?

Looking at the circumstances of burial, the evidence there seems to suggest that

they were not buried by the native population.

And I think the candidates that best fit the bill are, of course, Viking raiders

at this time.

And there seems little doubt that the adult males were likely to be captives.

And perhaps we have, with these five burials, the actual remains of the

of a Viking raid.

Scotland and Wales, seem to have little more to offer in terms of evidence for

Viking raids.

So can I do any better on the other side of the Irish Sea?

The coast of Ireland was reputedly a hotbed of raiding, and Irish monks

the activities of the Vikings at the time.

Professor Donnach O 'Corain is the world's leading authority on the Irish

Annals. I think people tend to overlook the enormous amount of detail in the

Irish Annals about the Viking Wars.

And this detail concerns not just Ireland, it concerns Scotland and it

England as well.

In comparison to the writings of English monks, the Irish annals tend to take a

more sober view.

They don't squeal and they don't blame their sins. They don't say this is God's

vengeance on them for their evil living. They take it very deadpan, very

realistically. That's life, so what?

The first Viking attacks were reported quite simply by the Irish, without any

mention of Omand.

794.

Devastation of all the islands of Britain by heathens.

And this was soon followed by... 798.

The burning of St Patrick's Isle by the heathens. And they took the cattle

tribute and broke the Shrine of Newton.

In their matter -of -fact way...

the Irish annals record a story of incredible violence.

In the 40 years following Lindisfarne, while just one raid is reported in

England, there are more than 30 in Ireland.

Could this onslaught have happened without leaving any trace?

Archaeologist Dr John Sheehan believes that a clue may lie underground.

Thousands of tunnels or souterrains have been found in ancient settlements

throughout Ireland.

They've always been thought to be for underground storage. But a fragment of

timber from one of them has recently been dated to the time of the Viking

attacks.

And John now believes that they had a radically different purpose.

So do you think that these were places where people hid from Vikings?

I do, absolutely.

Because any Viking who wants to follow people down here

head first along a very narrow chamber and finally then come up through the

floor of this chamber. And even a child sitting here with a rock or a pointed

stick could render that Viking out for the count. So it was a very easy place

defend and you could fit maybe 15, 12, 15 people in here. Yes, because I was

quite surprised at how big this chamber is.

I can't imagine what it would be like, though, huddled in here in the dark,

knowing that there were marauding vikings rampaging around inside your

settlement. Yeah, I'd say it would be scary enough.

I mean, you might hear sounds, although we're at the very end of the Souterrain.

We probably would be fairly soundproofed. But you might hear sounds.

smell burning going on, perhaps.

But in general, you'd probably feel reasonably safe because you'd know that

apart from digging out the Souterrain...

The only way they could take you was to come down that passage, and you have

them at your mercy.

In Ireland, there are accounts of attacks on Britain that aren't

anywhere else.

For instance, the monastery on the Hebridean island of Iona suffered a

raids, including a particularly vicious one in 825.

Hearing of an impending landing by Vikings, the monks rushed to bury the

shrine of St Columba. The Vikings were after it.

But the monks refused to reveal its hiding place to heathen and were

martyred.

But can we ever know the full extent of the Vikings' first attacks?

If Ireland's experience was like the experience of Scotland and England, that

there are a very large number of raids on English monasteries and churches and

Scottish monasteries and churches that have not been recorded.

It is impossible that the Vikings could be on the rampage in Britain and not do

the same things as they did in Ireland.

Feeling that I've exhausted all my leads in Britain and Ireland.

I'm turning to the homeland of the perpetrators for evidence.

The Vikings came from all over Scandinavia, but the early attacks on

Ireland were probably launched from somewhere in Norway.

It's hard to imagine, but 1 ,200 years ago, this little bay was full not of

pleasure boats, but of Viking ships, because all the way along the edge of

water there stretched the Viking port of Kaupang.

Kaupang is now the site of one of the biggest Viking Age excavations in

Scandinavia.

It grew up at the time of the early Viking raids and developed into a major

trading centre, perhaps the first Viking town.

Because of the site's importance, every grain of soil is being sieved for clues

about life in the town.

But is there any evidence here for the raids?

In one of the plots, They found a die for making a brooch.

A crucible for melting gold.

Glass beads and offcuts.

Weight and pieces of jet.

All the signs of trade, industry and wealth.

But one piece tells a more dramatic story.

We have this.

Book decoration.

It's in silver with gold.

And you can see on the back side, it's connected to something that is very,

thin. Right, it's sort of been riveted through, hasn't it?

Those kind of things were attached to ecclesiastical books.

And so this one was probably ripped off the book by some Viking raiding a

monastery or a church and then brought back here.

It's loot.

Yeah, I mean, that really is absolutely classic.

That's what you expect to find. That's what I'd expect to find on a site like

this, something that Vikings have simply pinched and brought back again.

The design tells us that this latest find came from the continent, from the

Christian empire of Charlemagne.

But discoveries have also been made of mounts from Britain and Ireland.

Over the last century...

Hundreds of Viking graves have been found, scattered over the whole of

And in many of them, amongst the jewellery and weapons of a pagan people,

Christian treasures.

A reliquary that once contained sacred bones of a saint.

Part of an abbot's crozier.

and dozens of gilt mounts from holy books.

What would the monks have thought?

Their sacred artwork, created to adorn holy objects, had ended up accompanying

Vikings to a pagan afterlife.

These objects are the best evidence for Viking raid that archaeology can

provide. In fact...

They're the nearest we can get to capturing the Vikings red -handed.

But in order to understand the raids, I need a better idea of who the Vikings

really were.

My problem is that the first Vikings left no written records.

But luckily, the archaeological evidence is truly spectacular.

The most dramatic find of all was made back in 1904.

At Oseberg in southern Norway, an entire Viking ship had been preserved in the

clay of a massive pagan burial mound.

By dating tree rings in its plank, we know it was built around 820, making it

the earliest known Viking ship.

The find tells us how these people of the sea were able to combine the power

both oar and sail, an innovation that gave them a huge advantage over their

rivals.

To me, it's little short of a miracle that all this wood has survived, and for

so long.

If ever we needed evidence of the skill of the Viking shipbuilders, then it's

here. But there's more. The ship itself isn't all that survived.

It was full of wonderful objects that show us life in the Viking world and at

the very highest level.

Much more than just a ship.

It's the Viking equivalent of the tombs of the pharaohs. The treasure trove of a

Viking queen.

Clearly, she had a taste for the finer things.

And there's something really rare.

Images of Vikings as they saw themselves.

Also discovered in the burial was a richly decorated wall hanging.

The fragile material has now faded, but a painting made during conservation

shows the scene.

A grand procession, possibly of a religious nature.

It's an image of an ordered society, of a people who are also technologically

advanced.

But the ship from Oseberg was just the beginning.

Another was discovered nearby, in a burial mound at Gokhtar.

Built several years later, it's less ornate than the Oetherberg, but highly

streamlined.

A warship, better designed for crossing oceans and landing on beaches.

The most advanced ship of its day, the Viking's secret weapon.

I know how I'd feel if I stood on the shore and saw a whole fleet of these

approaching. fully rigged, hung with shields and crewed by Vikings.

I'd be absolutely terrified.

But even though they had the technology, crossing the unpredictable North Sea to

Britain was a very risky undertaking.

What drove the Vikings to do it? Were they simply reckless thugs? Or was there

deeper reason?

It's easy to imagine how they became such good sailors, because the first

raiders probably came from the fjords of western Norway, where travelling by

water is the only way to get around.

But building just one ocean -going Viking ship would have taken huge

oak, wool for the sails and labour, resources only available to the

chieftains.

So maybe the raids were driven by the powerful.

Could there have been a political motivation behind them?

One theory suggests that the reason for the raids on Britain lay not with

Vikings, but with Christians.

The Christian emperor Charlemagne was busy expanding his mighty empire at this

time and was engaged in a bitter struggle with his pagan neighbours to

north.

One of the things he did was to actually harass and massacre a lot of the pagans

that lived just south of Denmark.

And at one point he killed something like 4 ,500 people.

in one go honestly i think that this put the fear of god literally speaking into

the nordic countries people understood that either we organize or

we get swallowed or killed i think with a threat from

the outside i think they're starting to unite and that is the kind of response

and they need

They need cash, they need something to get this political process going, so to

speak. And I think that's what the early Viking raids are about.

I find this idea fascinating.

Could Viking raids really have been triggered by military pressure from the

Christian south?

All we can be sure about is that the Vikings had the technology to launch

audacious attacks.

But are there other ways of finding out where they went once they got to

Britain?

A new branch of genetics may offer us an alternative way of tracing the Vikings.

Professor David Goldstein, a geneticist at University College London, has

pioneered the use of DNA to trace the movements of ancient peoples across the

world.

This branch of genetics is only a few years old, made possible by findings

the Human Genome Project.

So what are Goldstein's feelings about making a test case of the Vikings?

The Vikings are an extremely interesting group to look at in this way, and

there's a couple of reasons for that. One reason is that the questions are

relatively well defined.

we have a relatively well -defined geographic area for where the Vikings

from and a relatively well -defined period of time during which they came

the British Isles. Now, what we don't know is when they went to those places.

Did they establish large populations or was there just some fighting and then

they went back? And that's actually what we're trying to get at. What was the

genetic contribution of the Vikings to the British Isles? And so when you roll

it all together, it's actually an extremely interesting problem for us to

on.

The cuticle deems success.

Is that part of human DNA responsible for maleness?

It's known as the Y chromosome, and it's passed down from father to son.

Only this chromosome contains the precise information that David Goldstein

for tracking populations through time.

In my family, the Y chromosome has come down from my grandfather Charles,

through my father Albert, who passed it on to me, and I in turn passed it on to

my son Barnaby.

And this has been going on for countless generations, and will continue to do so

as long as this male line remains unbroken, as long as there are male

Now, this particular chromosome alters very little from generation to

generation. So as I trace this line back through my male relatives, the Y

chromosome in my family will hardly have altered at all.

And this is what makes the Y chromosome such a powerful tool in tracing

populations.

For the study, Goldstein will recruit males who live in small towns and whose

own male line can be traced back several generations in the same place.

This way, he hopes to reduce the effect of modern population movement.

The small towns are chosen to be evenly spread across Britain.

But there are also a few places of particular interest, such as those with

historical Viking link.

What are you saying? The country's not wide enough for us to get our point of

grade.

Goldstein hopes to estimate the ethnic mix of these islands more than a

millennium ago.

But to do this, he'll need thousands of samples, not only from Britain and

Ireland, but also from the Viking homelands in Scandinavia. I think it is

ambitious, but I think that we really now have the ingredients that we need to

take on a project of this scale.

Genetic technology is there and genetics is in fact opening up a new window

on history.

So if we could just review the ethical implications of the project as it

develops. Before he can go ahead, serious ethical questions have to be

addressed.

Amongst them is the sensitive issue of handling the DNA of volunteers.

That's right, so we will try not to include any relatives in the study.

There is one strange piece of evidence hinting that genetic clues to a Viking

presence might be found.

It's a rare genetic disease called Dupuytren's contracture, in which a

tightening of the tendons in the hand give it a claw -like appearance.

There's a suggestion that this disease may have come from a Viking genetic

inheritance.

Now, I don't know how scientific this is, but there does certainly seem to be

lot of this disease in northern Europe.

And as you move down towards the Mediterranean, it gets less common. And

get to the equator, it's virtually never seen.

And among its sufferers are the mice to discover.

are two modern -day warriors of the North Atlantic.

According to the president's surgeon at Georgetown University Medical Center,

the president was delighted to know that he was among such good company as the

Vikings.

And tonight, Mrs. Thatcher has gone into hospital for an operation on her hand.

She's suffering from a condition called Dupuytren's contracture, which could

cause the loss of movement in her little finger if untreated.

Could Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan really be the descendants of

Today, the disease is treated surgically by cutting tendons to free the hand.

There's good reason to believe that Vikings suffered from this disease.

Several mentions of such a condition are found in the sagas, stories written by

the Vikings' descendants.

One story in the sagas tells of Goodman the Good.

an Icelandic priest.

He has a servant woman brought to him to massage his feet, but the massage isn't

very good because three fingers of the woman's hand are clenched into her palm.

Gudmundur's frustration finally boils over.

By kicking out, he ruptures the tendons in the woman's hand, but as a result,

she's cured.

The story of Dupuytren's contracture is encouraging in the search for a Viking

genetic legacy.

But now David Goldstein must begin the task of recruiting volunteers to donate

their DNA.

One of the places where

samples will be collected is Orkney.

What you do is just break open the swab.

Goldstein's colleague, Jim Wilson, a native Orcadian, has returned home to

for volunteers.

Cells taken from the inside of their cheeks should provide enough DNA.

The reason I'm so fascinated by the Orkneys is because I grew up here and

everyone here is really interested in where they come from and their heritage.

I think out of anywhere in Britain, here has the strongest evidence for Viking

settlement, both archaeologically and linguistically. I mean, all the place

names of Orkney are Scandinavian in origin, and we have such a strong

heritage, I wondered if I'd be able to find a genetic heritage to go along with

it. And at last we have the tools to really look into this question and

it.

In the coming months, the team will travel across Britain and Ireland

samples.

So I'll keep these cool in the fridge.

But will they find traces of Viking ancestry?

There's no guarantee of success.

Yeah, but the Vikings didn't ask people to find consent forms, did they?

Back on the hunt for evidence of Viking attacks, something extraordinary has

come up on the mainland.

I'd almost given up hope of finding archaeological evidence in Britain for a

Viking raid on a monastery, but new finds in the north... Scotland could be

what I'm looking for.

On this site at Talbot, about 30 miles north of Inverness, archaeologists have

discovered traces of a monastery that dates from the 8th century.

Now it carries on in use throughout the time that Viking raids are starting up

and it certainly lies in a very vulnerable position because it's right

the coast.

But up till now...

This monastery, along with all the others we know from this period, have

no archaeological evidence of a Viking raid.

Professor Martin Carver, who's been working on the site for six years, began

uncover clues that this monastery might have suffered a violent attack.

The first sign was large fragments of broken Christian sculpture.

When we found the pieces of sculpture, we noticed two things about them

away.

First, they are astonishingly beautiful and very, very fresh.

Every body working on the site was, you can imagine, hugely excited.

Digging up works of art is something that doesn't happen very often in one's

archaeological career, or ever, in fact.

The carving just seems like it was made yesterday.

We also noted that in many cases they'd been sort of really just smashed and

cracked. Look at that.

And in many cases we could fit them together again, you see.

Clearly some one or more great monuments had been broken up and broken up

forcibly and quickly and violently with a sledgehammer.

Right, we are going down to visit the revetment wall now.

At the site, Martin shows me the spot where he'd uncovered the sculpture.

It's this layer here. You see the black one that goes across?

That's the one that produced all the sculpture, the broken pieces of

There's some big bits of charcoal in that. There are. This is burnt wood and

there's nails as well in the same layer.

So what do you think is actually going on here?

Well, somebody has burnt down buildings, but I think not here. This isn't

burning in situ.

They burnt down a building probably near the top of the hill where the church

now stands, broken up sculpture and tipped it down here.

So the heart's been torn out of this monastery.

Given that there's lots of documentary evidence for Viking attacks on

monasteries, but no archaeological evidence up to now, do you think you've

the first evidence of one of these attacks?

I think we may have.

I mean, this burning layer may well be a clue.

And if we can confirm this as the violent end of the monastery and we can

it to the 9th century and ascribe it to the Vikings, and why not, I think that

will be down to opening a really big area.

But that's not all.

There's other evidence at this site that point to a Viking raid.

The bodies of murdered monks.

Most of the monks' burials probably lie underneath the present churchyard, but

some of them were discovered when the present church was investigated and its

floors were dug up.

They're really what you'd expect of a group of monks.

They're mostly middle -aged males, but several of them showed signs of sword

wounds.

They may have been a group of peaceful monks, but some of them seem to have had

a very violent death.

Could this have happened during the period of Viking attacks?

Martin has sent bones from three of the skeletons for carbon dating.

Two of the skeletons are from what looks like part of the monastic burial

ground. A third is from a different part of the cemetery, and carbon dating

reveals that he died after 1100, once the monastery had been destroyed.

But the two skeletons thought to be monks tell a different story.

They died sometime between the years 700 and 1000.

A large range...

but it fits perfectly with the period of Viking attacks.

Look at the injuries. You'll see that the kind of injuries they sustained are

the kind of injuries that come from sword cuts.

So what sort of injury did this person sustain, Martin? Is it these?

Yes, two grooves here made by a heavy blade, but then

healed up.

Now, this one here was less lucky.

I mean, that is a very, very... That's a massive cut and a very heavy blade

that's cut that through.

And there's another little... Do you see that little one there?

So that's two slicing blows to the back of the head.

And then that one, coup de grace, so to speak, that's a cut across here, and

then this fracture has spread as a result of that massive blow.

Do you really think that these are the victims of Vikings?

Well, I think they could be.

These two people have both suffered blade injuries. This one certainly died

the attack.

And at the same time, our monastic establishment seems to be coming to an

As a result of this evidence, I at least find it easier to believe in tales

of Viking attacks on monasteries than I did before.

are surely the best archaeological evidence from the British Isles for

raids.

But they're exciting for another reason.

No raid at Tarbert was ever documented.

Indeed, not even the existence of the monastery was known until the recent

excavations.

So how many other raids went unreported?

But this isn't the end of the story.

The Vikings didn't only hit and run.

In Anglesey, where I've seen evidence for attacks, there are also hints that

Vikings later settled.

Viking silver, weights and other objects suggest a trading post.

And nearby, at the Church of St Therial, I met someone who believes that the

Vikings eventually returned and left their mark in sculpture.

So what is it? Is it somebody holding something in their hand? Well, that's

right, you see, it's holding what appears to be a hammer or an axe in its

And there is nothing like it in Wales.

Now, it could be a sheer coincidence, but the only example that I know of

in a church at Gotland in Sweden.

Now, as you can see, it's a similar bearded figure, but he is holding in his

hand. hammer but more interestingly in his other hand and sadly this one has

lost his other arm and hand he is holding smith's tools and we know

this little gentleman is he is the dwarf god of smith's pure north

there may be a connection but there certainly is

clear -cut evidence for a more permanent viking presence elsewhere across the

british isle

found in pagan grave goods, place names and sculpture.

But what does it all mean?

Did Vikings stay a while before heading back to Scandinavia?

Or did some never leave these islands?

We hope to find some answers in the genes of the Vikings' descendants.

David Goldstein has come to Bergen in western Norway because before he can

identify Viking roots in the British Isles, He needs to know how to recognise

Viking genetic signatures. To find these, he'll collect blood from a number

locations across Scandinavia, starting close to where the first Vikings may

set sail.

Some men here ought to share DNA with those first raiders.

I'm wondering how you view your own ancestry.

Do you view yourself as having Viking ancestors?

Yes, I do.

It's a sort of mixed feeling because you're sort of proud of your history and

the same time you know that these people were barbarians.

I've heard that the Vikings settled in Dublin, or made Dublin,

so if we Norwegians can claim Dublin back to us, that would be great.

What Professor Goldstein finds in the DNA of these samples would be critical

the success of the project.

He must be able to distinguish the Norwegian samples from those of another

important sample area, Castlereagh in Central Ireland.

Because in contrast, this is a region unlikely to have been invaded by the

Vikings or anyone else over the last 2 ,000 years.

So it should give Goldstein the signature of the ancient indigenous

the people who occupied these islands before the Vikings arrived.

These first results will indicate if it's going to be possible to distinguish

the DNA of Norwegian Vikings from that of the indigenous Britons.

Fortunately, The first signs are good.

What we're showing is the result of looking at Y chromosomes from both

In doing that, we can identify particular types of Y chromosomes, and

represent those types with colors here.

So if you look at the Irish sample here, what you can see is, in fact, just two

types of Y chromosomes. The type that we've designated in yellow, that's very

dominant, and then you see a second type represented in blue.

When you look at the Norwegian sample, immediately you see that it's quite

different. And, in fact, you see a set of types in the Norwegian sample that

aren't found in the Irish sample at all. So this is a pretty good start to the

project, isn't it? Yeah, that's right. I mean, fortunately, the differences are

so great, which I should say is not something that happens all that often

you do this kind of work.

But here, the differences are sufficiently great that we can see some

immediately in terms of identifying Scandinavian signatures in the British

Isles. So this is really extremely encouraging that the project that we've

up to do can be done.

The vital first step, finding the key for tracing Norwegian Vikings, has been

successful.

What will it tell us about where they settled?

We'll be following the project as it unfolds.

in Blood of the Viking.