Original subtitles

Last time, in Blood of the Vikings, I found new evidence for hit -and -run

by Vikings from Norway.

Tonight, my journey follows the first invasion of England by Danish Vikings.

The first Viking warrior to be excavated in modern time.

How did he get such brutal wounds?

Are these brooches evidence of the Vikings' trading?

Or settling down?

And can genetics help us to track Viking immigrants in Dark Age Britain?

They were described as a great raiding army, bigger than any Viking force that

had been seen before.

By 865, they'd laid waste to much of Europe.

Hungry for new targets, they set a course across the Channel, to Britain.

English monks reported that it was somewhere here, along the coast of East

Anglia, that the Vikings first came to Britain as a full -scale army.

It marked the beginning of a century of fighting, not just for the land of

England, but for the very souls of its people.

Historical records are sketchy. We don't know what triggered the invasion.

but it's likely the force numbered several thousand, gathered from a ragbag

pirate groups and led by Danish chieftains like Guthrum, Halfdan and the

ferocious Ivar the Boneless.

Once ashore, they took horses and headed inland.

The area that is now England.

was populated by a mixture of indigenous Britons and invading Angles and Saxons.

There were four separate kingdoms.

Wessex was under Saxon rule, while Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia were

controlled by Angles.

Divided, they were vulnerable to the Vikings' tactics of surprise.

866, here the raiding army went from East Anglia over the mouth of the Humber

York City.

An immense slaughter was made of the Northumbrians.

The Vikings' trail of destruction is easy to follow from grim accounts in the

Anglo -Thaxon Chronicle.

869. Here the raiding army took winter quarters at Thetford.

And the Danish killed the king.

870, here to Reading in Wessex.

A great slaughter was made. There were many thousands killed and fighting went

on till night.

These writings paint a vivid picture of the impact of the Viking army on

England. But were events really this dramatic?

And did Viking warriors eventually become Viking settlers?

I hoped to find new evidence by following in the tracks of the great

873. In this year, the army went from Lindsay to Repton and took up winter

quarters there, and they conquered all that land.

My journey brings me to a village in the Midlands.

Repton, in the 9th century, was home to the main royal monastery of Mercia, so

capturing it was an important victory for the Vikings.

But for once, we have more than just the monks' words.

What's really exciting to me is that this is the only place in the whole of

England where archaeological discoveries bring us face to face with this

terrifying Viking army.

The first clear evidence appeared at the ancient parish church of St Whiston's.

In the 1970s and 80s, an excavation was mounted here by Oxford archaeologists,

Professor Martin Biddle and his Danish -born wife, Birte Kolby Biddle.

It was this place with its stone buildings, its wealth, its people who

ransomed, its books who could be ransomed, that attracted the Vikings in

autumn of 873.

When they came, this place was the most important place in Mercia.

And they caused mayhem.

They damaged the church.

so that it had to be rebuilt afterwards. They turned it into a fortress. They

buried their people outside it and inside it.

It's a pivotal site in the history of England.

But there's one thing that is certain.

It would be best not to be here in 873.

The Middles started by investigating the history of the church.

But before long, strong evidence emerged in Repton for the presence of Vikings.

Well, we might have a ditch in here.

So we're trying to find the edges of the ditch.

The ditch was part of a massive D -shaped enclosure that ran between the

and the River Trent, a classically Viking defensive structure with the

part of the fortress.

Then pagan burials began to appear right next to the church.

And we were digging here, and gradually we came down to the lair.

We found a stone, a little stone mound here.

a broken sandstone.

Excavated that, and below that we found two graves, and one of them was lying

just there.

We were excavating it. It seemed special, maybe, because of the stones

A very experienced volunteer was digging the head end of it, and she said, I

found something strange.

And I said, what is it, Joan?

Well, it's shaped like an anchor.

I said, oh my God, it's a sword hammer.

And Thor's hammer is the mark of the pagan god Thor, and pagan Vikings, men

especially, would be buried with that as a sign of his power, like we could be

buried with a cross.

And I was actually digging the foot end, and I said, it's very strange, he's got

three legs, and I said, oof!

We've got a sword. We've got a Viking sword.

And I just ran off to find Martin and tell him all about it. And there it was.

Mysteriously, a boar's tusk had been placed between the man's legs.

And at the top of his femur was what looked like a particularly nasty wound.

It's the first Viking warrior grave in England to be excavated using modern

archaeological techniques.

He was buried with a companion.

And nearby, a third skeleton was found buried with a Viking gold ring.

But if these were members of the Great Army, where are the others?

The Biddles turned their attention to the vicarage garden.

So there was this mound in the garden, and the vicar said to us, look, we might

have to sell off the vicarage garden.

Never happened, fortunately.

Please come and have a look at this mound first, tell us what it is. And so

that's how we started here in 1980.

So when you came here, there was still a mound, was there?

There was indeed, yes.

The Biddles' research uncovered a strange report of an excavation way back

1686.

One Thomas Walker told the story of how he dug up an enigmatic mound and

discovered a stone coffin containing a humane body nine foot long, surrounded

a hundred other bodies.

Was this the same mound as the one at the bottom of the vicar's garden?

Martin and Beata wanted to know.

Well, now, what on earth is it?

The worst possible is that it's a Victorian garden feature when the house

built. Next possibility, medieval mill mound.

Next possibility, Viking burial mound. So we don't know and we'll have to find

out.

Gradually, as the first layers were removed, evidence of a pagan burial

was revealed.

But what they eventually found...

was beyond all their expectations.

They unearthed the bones

of 250 people lying in an ancient charnel house which had later been

a pagan mound.

80 % of the bodies were male.

And even though many of them were particularly tall, there was no sign of

giant mentioned in 1686.

But among the bones were clues that pointed to the great army.

So we had this extraordinary mass of completely disordered human bones, but

also got four and a half silver pennies, absolutely datable to 873 -4, exactly

when the Anglo -Saxon chronicle says the Vikings wintered here.

The evidence from the coins points to the use of the mound at the time of the

Great Army.

But what about the missing giant?

By coincidence, one of the army's original leaders, Ivor the Boneless,

his immense physical stature, is thought to have died in 873.

One might discuss whether it's either or not, but this is a very coherent

suggestion that it is. It has to be an absolutely major leader.

We know it's 873 -4, so it's one of those very, very rare occasions when

archaeology actually does confront a historic event.

We have the historic event in the Anglo -Saxon Chronicle. We've got these things

happening here. We now can flesh out that enormously.

We've got this great person buried.

It might be either.

The big problem is who are these people buried around the central burial?

Are they English, are they Mercians, or are they Scandinavian?

We may not have found the Viking's leader, but we do have the warrior with

Thor's hammer and sword.

His skull has been sent to medical artist Dr Caroline Wilkinson at

University.

She'll use the anatomy of the skull to put a face to him.

Initially, this technique was developed as a forensic tool for the

identification of...

unidentified bodies.

As you can see here the muscles of the face have been built onto the skull one

by one.

So we start with the larger muscles that you use for eating and talking and

opening and closing your eyes and then we end up with these finer muscles that

you use for facial expression.

So at the finished muscle stage that you can see here you can already see the

shape and proportions of the face and the overall shape.

You can already get some idea of what this person's going to look like.

By coincidence, while Caroline was working on the skull, a pathologist

passing by noticed something unusual about it.

Prompted by his comments, the Biddles invited him to take a fresh look at the

whole skeleton.

The probable cause of death is two superimposed penetrating wounds here.

Two separate wounds delivered one after the other. The width of the wound is too

narrow for an Anglo -Saxon sword.

The only thing that really fits the bill is a two -edged long thin spear.

But there are other wounds.

For example, the arm here.

has been struck by some very sharp object which has cut right through

and into the bones of the lower arm. So that is a slicing wound, then? It is a

wound that has come straight down the arm.

Effectively, he's had a chunk of his arm cut out.

But is that the sort of injury that you could sustain if you were fighting, you

know, glancing sword black or something like that?

Yes, but that wouldn't kill him immediately.

Then... In the spine, there is an area here in the lower

thoracic spine where there is very clear evidence of a cut like this across the

body of the vertebrae. But is that inside?

That is inside. That's done from the body cavity.

So this man must have been at least partly eviscerated.

Had his guts taken up?

That was an injury that was brought about after death.

But this is deliberate mutilation, isn't it? Yes.

And what about this wound on the thigh?

Yes, that's certainly a wound, and it extends actually just onto the edge of

the pubic bone.

You can see the continuity of the blow. Oh, I see. So it's not just in there. In

the process, he would probably have lost his left testis and most of his penis.

The blow would have come from just about where I'm standing, I think, and it

would be something like a blow like that, right down, with...

A long -handled iron axe. We've looked together at the shape of that cut.

It's quite a big blade, isn't it? And we are all of the opinion, I think, that a

thickening axe blade is the more likely implement.

And you'll remember, Julian, that it was just in that position, lying across the

bottom of the grave here, that we found the tusk of a wild boar.

And we've always had the suspicion, without, of course, the medical

be certain, that that might have been a substitute for his missing parts, so

that literally he would be complete on going to Valhalla.

There is also evidence of hacking at the feet.

We've placed the bones of the feet here in no particular arrangement because

they are so cut about.

Surely, whoever did this must have really hated this person to have treated

in this way. This treatment reflects not only what the Anglo -Saxon population

feels about the Vikings, but also what the Vikings did to the local population.

So this is revenge, basically? This is revenge.

Here is a vivid picture of a violent death, a gruesome

expression of the hatred of the time.

But this man, who was so brutally butchered and who was laid to rest with

companions in the shadow of the church that they desecrated, is not the only

evidence from Repton for the Viking dead.

Just two miles away in the hills near the village, around 60 other mounds have

been found which point to more pagan Viking burials.

Over the years, The occasional artefact has been uncovered here, like this sword

with human bone burnt onto it.

Prompted by the discoveries in Repton, archaeologists have decided to find out

what else might be here.

The excavation is being run by a man who I've met before in a confusion over a

hotel booking at an archaeological conference.

Hello, Julian.

Hello, Julian.

It's my namesake, Dr Julian D. Richards.

Yes, in fact, there are two mounds here.

There's a large one that we've nearly completely excavated and then a smaller

mound to the south of it.

Unlike the Biddle's mound at the church, these are not yielding complete

skeletons.

Instead, there's evidence of a very different burial rite.

There's loads of charcoal, isn't there? That's right. It's just coming up where

we're trowing here. You can see it starting to show through.

The charcoal suggests that the bodies were cremated before burial, a practice

common amongst pagan Vikings at the time.

Some important clues to who these people were have survived the burning, like

this Viking ring pin that would once have fastened a Viking's cloak.

But it doesn't necessarily mean that these people were part of the great

If these really are the burial mounds of part of the Viking army, then why is it

that on top of this hill they're cremating their dead and then raising a

over the funeral pyre?

Whereas down in the valley, they're burying their dead in the grounds of a

Christian church.

I think it would be just too big a coincidence to have these two very

significant, very unusual Viking sites within just a few kilometres of one

another and then not to be associated.

We have one group of Vikings choosing to bury their dead at Repton, another

group choosing to go back to a very pagan, cremation, animal sacrifice

rite on a hilltop overlooking it. I think this relates to divisions within

Viking camp.

Although there's no direct evidence to back up Julian's theory, if, as he

believes, they represent two rival factions of Vikings,

It could help to explain what the monks reported next.

874. The Viking army left Repton and split up into two bands.

One band, under Halfdan, set out for the province of the Northumbrians.

875.

Halfdan shared out the whole province between himself and his men, and

with his army, cultivated the land.

This marks the beginning of a whole new phase of the Viking Age in England.

It's the first time that the chronicles make any reference to the Vikings

settling down and farming.

In the spring of 874, while Halfdan's band were heading to Northumbria, the

other group, led by Guthrum, headed south.

Their mission? To smash the Wessex Saxons.

They must have fancied their chances against the Saxons' young king.

His name was Alfred.

For four years, the Viking army batted its way through Wessex.

The Saxons were on the run.

To win power, the Vikings needed Alfred, dead or alive.

But Alfred evaded capture.

He ran away and lived deep in the Somerset Marshes.

where he disguised himself as a peasant.

And a famous legend of Alfred comes from this time.

He'd been given shelter in a swineherd's hut.

The swineherd's wife left him watching some cakes baking on the fire, but

perhaps lost in thoughts of his threatened kingdom, Alfred let them

Unaware that she was talking to King Alfred, the woman gave him a good

The king was at his lowest ebb.

We'll never know how Alfred managed to recover from these debts, to raise an

army and face the Vikings head to head.

But we do know that the decisive battle was Eddington.

I met on Salisbury Plain, the likely battle fight, by my guide, a local

expert.

Alfred would be keeping to the low ground and not trying to expose himself

much. But Guthrum would have been sticking on the high ground to be able

observe his movement.

And then, of course, Alfred would have to break cover and form into battle to

meet him.

And then they would have formed somewhere on one of these ridges up

A line of breath feels interlocked.

And they would have come against each other, shouting ruderies, banging their

shields with their swords.

And then there would have been an absolute hand -to

-hand clash.

Brutal, rough, vicious fight.

So this really was the showdown, was it? Absolutely.

Absolutely. It was totally the showdown. And the advantage, of course, Alfred

had was that he probably had more troops.

At length, he gained the victory through God's will. He destroyed the Vikings

with great slaughter and pursued them, hacking them down.

It's largely because of his great victory against the Vikings that Alfred

known as the Great.

But it's also for the way that he improved the organisation and learning

his kingdom.

My son's school in the heart of Wessex is just one that's named in his honour.

Simon, what would have happened if Alfred had lost?

Yes, I can barely bear to think of what the consequence would have been, but

certainly it would have involved a much larger spread of the Vikings into

Wessex and the consequences for the English would have been quite different.

Professor Simon Keynes has translated the peace treaty that was drawn up after

that decisive battle.

This is the earliest surviving manuscript of...

the treaty between Alfred and Gudrum. This is a very important moment in

Anglo -Saxon political history.

The treaty shows that Alfred's victory was not as complete as it's often

described.

Far from being able to banish the Vikings back to Denmark, Alfred found it

necessary to do a deal with them and carve England in two.

And the text goes straight on to describe this.

The boundary between Alfred's land and the Vikings ran from east of London to

near Chester.

Alfred's compromise with the Vikings ensured a period of stability and,

importantly, time to build up his defences.

So although he accepted Viking rule in the north, he still managed to enlarge

his own territory to include part of Mercia.

Guthrum became king of East Anglia, but he was forced to accept Christianity.

When Alfred signed the treaty, he was acknowledging for the first time that

Vikings were here to stay.

The area north of the boundary that he'd agreed with Guthrum was to become known

as the Danelaw.

But just how Viking was it?

A big problem is that the historical record for northern England now comes to

halt. The Vikings destroyed monasteries, and with them, their written records.

It was complete media blackout.

But one important piece of evidence that had survived is place names.

To start with, there are over 850 place names in England that end in B -Y.

That's the old Danish name ending for farmstead or village.

Selby and Derby, for example.

Add to this those place names that have got other Scandinavian endings, like

Thwaite and Thorpe, and those that combine a Viking name with a Saxon

like Grimston, for example, and you end up with over 3 ,000 Scandinavian

-influenced place names in England.

When the BY place names are plotted on a map of England, they fit in almost

perfectly with the area of the Danelaw.

This is strong evidence that the Vikings had a big impact in northern and

eastern England.

And if these places really are where the Vikings settled, then I should be able

to find archaeological evidence to back this up.

But until recently, no clear signs of a Viking settlement had ever been

discovered.

It's something that's puzzled historians for decades, but new evidence is

starting to emerge. And it comes not from archaeologists, but from amateur

enthusiasts.

It's difficult to describe an emotion. It's just a buzz to think that I've got

something that was lost all those years ago. It's just a buzz.

that when I pick an object up, I really get a sense of connection to the person

that owned it and lost it.

The best thing I have found recently is a Viking harness pendant with the two

stylised serpents swarming their own tails.

I remember very clearly the first Viking object I ever found.

It was just in the middle of a cloud field.

and it was a lovely trefoil strap distributor.

And as soon as I unearthed it, I knew what it was, and I just sat there, gave

out a yell, and sat there cheering in the middle of a muddy ploughed field.

To actually hold a Viking artefact would mean that I'm taking myself back

in history, back in time to when the Vikings probably first

came here.

They may be plundering a village.

They may be having a fight and they've lost whatever it is that I found.

And a very interesting Viking buckle, which is complete with its signed

That is a very unique one.

As an archaeologist, I've got very mixed feelings about metal detecting.

I've seen the damage that it can do to ancient sites.

And personally, I feel that the only people who should dig up artefacts are

those who are going to make sure that they end up in a museum.

But having said this, I can't deny that objects of Viking date excavated and

recorded properly and reported to museums have made an enormous difference

our understanding of this period.

A new scheme designed to encourage metal detectorists to declare their finds has

yielded hundreds of Viking artefacts from the Danelaw. It's very stiff.

Dr Kevin Leahy, from the North Lincolnshire Museum, believes that they

very important story to tell.

Until recently, until these detective files started to come out, it could be

seriously argued that all we saw in 877 was a change in leadership.

The leaders of the Great Army came in and took over. They just sacked the

and took over the running of Lincolnshire themselves.

and there was no folk movement. Now we're getting good evidence for a

of people.

And this pattern of Viking signs corresponds fairly well with the

of Danish place names, all the B -Ys and Thorps that we've got in Lincolnshire.

It's the everyday objects that are getting Kevin excited.

Small metal fittings.

brooches, things like that that were worn by Danish women and we'll be sure

they were worn by Danish women because they're such

Danish peasant women because they're such poor quality. They wouldn't be

acceptable to an Anglo -Saxon woman.

No Dane is going to come over here and give a little brooch like this to his

English girlfriend and expect her to be impressed.

The woman who wore this little brooch was making a statement about her Danish

ancestry, about her cultural links.

This sort of poor quality metalwork doesn't really travel between cultures.

Are these objects changing our whole picture of Viking settlement, then? It

a real folk movement, but not just a wholesale uprooting of people, leaving

Denmark absolutely empty.

We now have a picture of Danish Viking invaders bringing their women with them,

perhaps settling down.

But where are their houses and their farms?

A couple of years ago, detectrists searching a remote area of North

turned up a small cluster of unusual Scandinavian -style objects.

A geophysical survey of the area revealed what looked like the outline of

buildings.

Their investigation was another task for Dr Julian D Richards.

And we moved northwards, we moved... and put a trench in the direction over here

where we're going. So it's on the crest of the ridge here. On the crest of the

hill, that's right.

And here we found what we think is an Anglo -Scandinavian farmstead, a Viking

settlement.

It had a massive entranceway looking to the south, looking down this valley over

there.

And this had a huge ditch with a bank.

behind it, probably a palisade on top of that, probably a wooden gatehouse as

well. Surely this wouldn't have been the only farmstead in the area, though,

would it? No, I think there would have been lots of Anglo -Scandinavian

settlements around here, probably one every mile, for that matter. So how many

of these do we know about, then?

We don't know about any of them. This is unique, and the Vikings do seem to be

invisible.

At last, some evidence for a Viking village.

But perhaps they preferred to live in towns.

My next stop is York, which, according to the history books, was a major power

base for the kings of the Danelaw.

And the city is full of Viking names, roads ending in gate, the Scandinavian

word gata meaning street.

In the 70s, on Coppergate, archaeologists raced against time to dig

Viking Age York before they disappeared under a new shopping centre.

We thought that there would be Viking remains of some sort, but the finds

made have exceeded our wildest expectations. These fantastic buildings

six feet high and the 13 ,500 good objects we've got, way beyond our best

York provides a picture of a wealthy trading centre.

There were exotic items like amber from the Baltic and silk from the

Mediterranean.

There were dyes for minting coins, scales and an enormous amount of

York became a Viking boon town.

But none of this evidence tells us just how many Vikings settled.

So can genetics answer this question?

The BBC has joined forces with University College London.

to collect DNA samples from volunteers across England, Scotland, Wales and

Ireland.

In a pioneering survey, they'll be searching for signs of Viking genetic

inheritance in the male Y chromosome.

The DNA from Britain and Ireland will be compared to other samples taken in the

Viking Scandinavian homelands and in Northern Europe.

And you don't have to look far to find people with theories on their Viking

ancestry.

The name Rima is derived from Rima, which is Norse for a leather worker.

And curiously enough, I trained as a saddler and my dad was a leather worker

well.

Now what's your name, please?

DNA can be extracted from cells scraped from the inside of the cheek.

But in England, the scientists have teamed up with the National Blood

increase the numbers of volunteers giving samples.

The team will try and find out if the Vikings settled in large numbers, and

where. It's something that's never been achieved before.

Just from the place name, you of course don't know what happened in terms of the

people. You can imagine an elite group coming into an area and declaring the

name of the place, whatever they want it to be. It doesn't mean that they

brought an awful lot of people with them. And I think fundamentally that's

archaeologists and historians have been fighting so long about these questions,

because it really just is hard to know what went on in terms of the people from

a little bit of cultural information.

But in principle, we can get at that question directly using genetics. So it

really does simply open up a new perspective into what is an old and very

difficult debate to resolve.

But Goldstein's team have had a setback.

While there are clear genetic patterns which distinguish the Norwegian Vikings

from other groups in northern Europe, it's not been possible to distinguish

Danish Vikings quite so neatly.

Three centuries before the Vikings arrived, Britain was invaded by two

groups of Europeans, the Angles and the Saxons.

Both came from virtually next door to what would become the Danish Viking

homeland, and it's proving tricky to separate these three groups of invaders

genetically.

But at least they seem to have a different genetic signature from the

population, the native Britons.

Although we haven't been able so far to distinguish the Danish and Anglo -Saxon

contributions, we have in fact been able to learn something about the genetic

history of England anyway, because what we can do is just lump together the

Danes and the Anglo -Saxons and consider those as invaders in England. And then

we can ask the question, what proportion of England comes from that invading

population and what proportion is indigenous?

So if we lump together all the invaders, the Vikings, the Angles and the Saxons,

What do we find?

Then we can see immediate patterns in England, and in particular, when we look

in the general area of the Dane law, there's greater contributions from these

invading populations in comparison with areas farther south.

So we can see some very clear patterns in England that tell us something about

the genetic history of England that wasn't known before. So this is all new

stuff, then? This is all new. So this is very interesting that we've got this

pattern straight away.

So the people who live in the north and east of England have more Viking and

Anglo -Saxon in their blood than those who live in the south and west.

It's extraordinary that the genetic trace of these invaders is still

today, over 1 ,500 years after the first of them landed.

Although the Danish Vikings had made themselves at home in the Danelaw, the

peace between Viking and Saxon was uneasy.

Sporadic fighting with Wessex resumed, and 20 years after the finding of the

peace treaty, the Saxons were threatening to overrun the Danelaw.

But then something happened to reignite the power struggle.

In 902, the Viking kings of Dublin were suddenly kicked out by the Irish.

They headed for England.

Once more, the Vikings were a force to be reckoned with.

Only this time, they weren't Danes. The heathens described in the Irish annals

were of Norwegian origin.

The Norwegian Vikings had taken the sea road around the northern and western

isles of Scotland to Ireland.

Dublin was a major trading post and the centre of their power.

So what happened when they got kicked out?

A clue was found.

On the route from Norwegian Viking Dublin to Danish Viking York at

It was here in 1840 that a group of workmen were repairing the banks of the

Ribble. As they dug, their spades crunched into something metallic.

They discovered an astonishing 8 ,500 pieces of silver weighing nearly 40

They'd stumbled across what is still to this day the largest hoard of Viking

treasure ever found.

It dates to the beginning of the 900s, exactly when the Vikings were being

expelled from Dublin.

The leading authority on the Curedale hoard is Professor James Graham

The single largest component of the ornamented material in the hoard is of

we would call Hiberno Viking origin, made by Viking craftsmen working in

Ireland. Most particularly these very characteristic broadband arm rings that

have this very bold stamping.

Who were these people? Who were the people who buried it? It's more than

ordinary merchant's hoard or the pay of a Viking crew

member.

I quite fancy the old theory that it was in some way an army paycheque and that

it was related with the attempts of the Dublins who had been expelled from

Viking Dublin to build up their resources. I think that's the general

context in which one could envisage the sort of accumulation of silver

deriving in northwest England.

The Cuyadale hoard contained silver from as far away as the Hindu Kush.

But what caught my attention was a beautifully preserved group of coins

Viking York.

If a lot of this material seems to have come from Ireland, how do you explain

the coins from Viking York? I mean, was this...

The York Vikings giving a donation to these people to help them in their

efforts. Well, it wouldn't surprise me if that was the explanation, because so

many of the York coins have come freshly from the moneyers' workshops.

They can never have been in circulation.

Just down here, for instance, you can see how fresh it is.

The Kewardale Hoard is more than simply an amazing find of Viking treasure.

It seems to be saying something to us about the politics of the time.

Vikings raising money for arms.

Norwegians and Danes forming an alliance.

Ominous for their enemies.

Apart from the hoard, archaeological records for the period are sparse.

But there is one piece of evidence that's been staring us in the face for

centuries.

The Norwegians who came via Ireland have left their mark in stone across the

northern Danelaw.

Ancient images that still speak to us of Viking power.

Hundreds of pieces have been identified across northern England.

Their study has been a life's work for Professor Richard Bailey.

These massive sculptures called Hogback were set over Viking period tombs.

There's about 120 of them in the north of England.

So rather than cutting up a cross, this is more like a gravestone. That's right,

yes. And the shape is that of a Viking house, actually. That curved roof is

exactly like we know Viking houses were in the period.

Right. These are very expensive monuments.

We know they were produced between about 920 and 950.

That's a very high number of high -status people here who are

stones, which in some sense, they look very high. to date, as Viking

Scandinavians.

Many Viking sculptures seem to mix Christian symbolism with rather warlike

images.

What we've got here is a little warrior with his pointed helmet, spear down one

side, battle axe over here, up here a shield, a sword just here. So what sort

statement were the Vikings making by putting up crosses like this?

This is a real statement of power and control.

This is me as a warrior. This is how I won the land.

I may have been a farmer as well, but how I and my family want to be

is as a warrior.

To me, the evidence of the sculptures and the Viking place names suggests a

formidable Viking elite controlling much of northern England.

This was something that the Saxons would not be prepared to tolerate.

Despite the arrival of the Norwegian Vikings, by 937, Alfred's grandson,

Athelstan, had united England.

But he hadn't reckoned on the Scots and the Irish joining forces with the

Vikings. Their aim? To bring down Athelstan.

The Anglo -Saxon Chronicle reports a huge battle between the Anglo -Saxons

the united forces of the Vikings and their new allies.

It was at a place called Brunnenborough.

No -one's quite sure of the location of Brunnenborough, but some linguists have

suggested that this old English name evolved to become Bromborough, which

happens to be the name of this small town here on the Wirral.

The description of the battle itself is one of the most lurid and gripping

stories of Dark Age literature.

Never yet in this island.

was there a greater slaughter of people felled by the sword's edges.

Here King Athelstan, leader of warriors, struck lifelong glory in strife round

Brunnenborough, cloned for the shield war.

They left behind to divide the corpses the horny -beaked black raven, greedy

war -orc, and the wolf, grey beast of the forest.

Then the northmen, disgraced in spirit, departed in nailed boats

over deep water to seek out Dublin.

Athelstan had taken the victory.

The surviving Viking leaders, deserted by their allies, could now only hope to

regain their old power base in York.

After their crushing defeat at the Battle of Brunnenborough, the Vikings

the retreat.

The last Viking king of York, Eric Bloodaxe, was killed in 954, and his

marked the beginning of a period in which England was united under the House

Wessex.

But the story was far from over.

The Vikings would be back with a vengeance.

Next time, my journey follows the trail of the first Norwegian Viking pioneers.

Why did they set sail to the northern and western isles of Scotland?

What happened when Vikings met Picts? And what drew them irresistibly down the

sea road to Ireland?

And genetics gives us our first glimpse of where the blood of the Vikings lives

on today.