Original subtitles

So far, on Blood of the Vikings, I've traced the first 200 years of the Viking

Age in Britain and Ireland, from raids and invasions to peaceful settlement.

This time, I discover how a new generation of Danes conquered the whole

England... ..and put a Viking on the throne.

But why was rule in England short -lived?

While on the Isle of Man today, they still have a Viking parliament.

It's 991.

93 Viking longships are advancing up the Blackwater Estuary on the Essex coast.

This is the biggest raid England has seen for almost 40 years.

But these Vikings are no motley collection of pirates.

They've raised a powerful, organised fleet to threaten the shores of England

once again.

The terror has returned.

In the previous years of peace, England has become rich.

But now it's ruled by Æthelred the Unready, a young and militarily

king, and the Vikings can sense an opportunity.

They sail towards Malden and land on Northey Island to prepare their attack.

But on the mainland, the English are waiting for them, under the command of

Birknot. a veteran military leader.

This much is accepted as fact, but what followed became the subject of an epic

Old English poem, The Battle of Malden.

The Viking herald steps forward and makes demands, not for land, but for

tribute, money to go away and leave the English in peace.

The Vikings have turned to extortion.

The poem has been studied closely by historian Dr. Sam Newton.

He takes up the story as Bert Knopp responds to the Vikings' demands.

Which loosely translated...

He says, do you hear, sailor, what this folk says?

We will give you tribute, we will give you spears as tribute, deadly points and

time -tested swords, war gear from which you in battle will not profit.

It is the most immortal note of English defiance which has echoed in various

ways right down to the 20th century.

But the high tide means that so far it's just a war of words.

The two armies... have to wait until low water to fight it out.

Then, Bert not make the tactical error.

He and his men stand back and allow the Vikings to cross the causeway.

He wanted to bring this lot to battle. If not, they could sail away up the

estuary and strike at will up and down the coast, and it could be weeks or

months before the English army had a chance to get at them again.

And so the Battle of Malden begins in earnest.

The poem becomes very dramatic, centring on the heroism of the English and their

loyalty to their leader, Bertnott.

At one point, he is struck by a spear.

his shield companion beside him, draws out the spear from Brythinoth's body and

throws it back at the viking who hurled it and kills that viking with the same

spear.

But after all this heroism...

Who were the eventual winners?

Well, in, of course, military terms, the Vikings were the winners. But the poem

makes the resistance and defence of the English such a heroic deed in itself

that it becomes a kind of moral victory and a great rallying call for further

resistance. It's a bit like the Dunkirk spirit in that sense.

But there was no denying the English had lost.

In the end...

King Æthelred had no choice but to give the victorious Vikings exactly what they

wanted. He handed over £10 ,000 in silver, a huge amount of money in those

in the hope that they'd go away and stay away.

It was a vain hope, because once the English paid up, it was inevitable that

Vikings would be back again.

With each fresh attack, the Vikings demanded more and more, and the English

meekly paid up.

The payments became known as dame gang, money for the Danes, and in today's

prices would eventually total hundreds of millions of pounds.

The Anglo -Faxon chronicles tell of a rocketing extortion racket which lasted

for 20 years.

994. And all the raiding army came to Southampton, and they were paid £16

997. The raiding army brought indescribable war booty... 1002. Here in

year, they were paid £24 ,000.

1007. The tax to the hostile raiding army was £30 ,000.

1012. £48 ,000.

Only a few were brave enough to defy the Danes.

This London church of St Alfidge commemorates one, a bishop who refused

and who suffered the consequences.

Then, on the Saturday, the raiding army became much stirred up against the

bishop because he did not want to offer them any money.

Also, they were very drunk because there was wine brought from the south.

Then they pleased the bishop and then pelted him there with bones.

And one of them struck him on the head with the butt of an axe.

With the blow, he sank down, and his holy blood fell on the earth.

But such resistance was rare, and the Danes grew richer and richer.

So where did all that money go?

Back here to the Viking homeland?

More Anglo -Saxon coins have been found in Scandinavia than in England.

And I'd like to know if they were earned through legitimate trading or the

proceeds of a highly successful extortion racket.

In 1997, a hoard of 120 English coins was discovered in a remote part of

Denmark. Is this Dane gold?

All these coins are 990s.

It's a coin type that was struck from about 91 to 97 all over England.

So whose ring is that? That's Edelred II.

So that's Edelred the Unready. Yes, it is. And this is a coin with Edelred's

portrait, his name, and the inscription, Edelred Rex Anglorum, Edelred, King

of the English.

And it might be a dengue payment because...

A usual hoard in Scandinavia would be all mixed up.

English coins, German coins, a few Arabic coins.

They'll be of all kinds of dates. But this is a very, very pure hoard.

It seems unlikely that these coins have been in general circulation.

So surely this points to them being Dengeld.

Perhaps the share given to an individual Viking.

A lot of them look like perfect coins, don't they? But some of them are bent.

Why is that?

The Danes at that period were interested in the quality of the metal.

And one way of checking the quality is to take the coin and bend it.

If it's soft and you can bend it easily, it's good silver.

If it cracks, it's bad silver.

But how, in just 40 years, have the Vikings become so powerful?

What had changed here in Denmark to turn the Vikings into such an organized

fighting for One

clue lies here in

yelling in the west of Denmark Today

it's a small quiet town, but in the 900s it was the capital of a royal dynasty

and would become the birthplace of the modern Danish state.

The first king of a united Denmark was Harald Bluetooth, who was probably given

his colourful name on account of his rotten teeth.

But despite his dental afflictions, he was a ruler who changed the course of

Danish history.

And here, carved on this massive boulder, is the record of his greatest

achievements.

One side is completely covered in runes, an early form of writing used by the

Vikings.

On another side is a strange carving of a mythical monster.

But this third side is the most astonishing, because there's what

the figure of Christ.

You can make out the face, outstretched arms and hands, right down to the feet.

Now surely... At this time, the Vikings in Scandinavia were pagan.

So what are they doing carving images of Christ?

The runic inscription ought to provide the answer.

Professor Elsa Rosedahl, a leading Viking archaeologist, has come to

it for me. So what does this say?

It starts with the name of the king, Harald Bluetooth, who raised the stone.

Harald King ordered the monument to be made for...

Gorm, his father, and in memory of Tyre, his mother, that Harald,

who won for himself Denmark and

Norway, and then the last deed, and made the Danes Christian.

So his third great deed was to make the Danes Christian, to Christianize the

Danes. So that explains why you got the figure of Christ. Yes.

On this side?

Yes. And it's the oldest great picture of Christ in Scandinavia.

So what made Harold become a Christian and convert an entire nation?

Could it have been more than just his religious belief?

A very practical political reason may have been that the great country to the

south, Germany...

The German emperor, he liked to convert pagan peoples. He went on crusades, and

it's much better to do it yourself than to be conquered by a foreign power.

Harold Bluetooth's conversion to Christianity not only ensured that the

were left in peace, it also helped to enhance his own status.

As a Christian king, he was acknowledged to be Christ's representative on earth,

a position which brought almost universal loyalty and allegiance.

For the Danes, becoming Christian wasn't just a matter of exchanging a

collection of Norse gods for one Christian god. It also brought them into

European fold, into a culture that was centred on books and learning, laws and

taxes. But perhaps more significantly, a Christian king had divine authority.

which gave him huge power and the means of showing it.

Like this, the massive fort at Trelleborg.

When it was excavated in the 1930s, archaeologists found that its interior

laid out with perfect symmetry.

Divided by roads, each quadrant contained identical boat -shaped

all.

This regimented design is very similar to that of Roman military forts built

nearly a thousand years earlier.

Archaeologist Dr Lars Jørgensen has made a detailed study of Viking military

architecture.

I mean, this is a huge amount of effort to put into constructing something like

this, isn't it? I mean, an enormous amount of resources.

Were all these built of timber, the buildings?

In the Viking period, Denmark, all houses were timber built. And actually

archaeologists have tried to calculate how many timbers have been used or how

much timbers have been used here. And they have calculated 8 ,000 trees was

down in order to build this military installation.

So how many soldiers would a fort like this contain?

Well, I would say around 1 ,000 would have been possible.

So if you've got a fort like this with a thousand professional soldiers and all

the effort that's gone into this, why is the king building it?

There are different theories about that. One is that they were constructed in

order to control internal troubles in his kingdom.

The second one says that they were a defence against the German Empire.

And the third one says that they were for training soldiers.

who was going to participate in the attacks on England.

Which of those theories do you like best?

I like the last one best, actually, because we have three of these

like this size, and we have a force in northern Jutland, which is much, much

larger.

And it's quite clear that a large fortress in northern Jutland are facing

English area.

So I think actually that at that time they were planning to attack England.

Harold Bluetooth seems to have had a large, well -trained and disciplined

And England, made rich through trade and with a wealthy church, must have been a

tempting target.

Although it wouldn't be until Harold was succeeded by his son that the attacks

on England would start.

Not only did the Danes have a new military machine, but they developed new

military technology, warships capable of delivering more troops and faster than

ever before.

In 1956, amateur divers in the Roskildefjord at Skuldelev discovered

of a Viking ship, of a type that hadn't been seen before.

And as more ships emerged, this became one of the most important marine

excavations of the 20th century.

Under the stinking sludge, they found the remains of five Viking ships broken

into hundreds of thousands of soggy fragments.

Reassembling this archaeological treasure was a painstaking process and

years to complete.

But the results present a catalogue of Viking ship designs.

Of the five ships, three were short and wide, designed for carrying large

cargoes.

The other two were warships.

They were long and narrow, designed specifically for battle.

This is the biggest, a warship 30 metres long.

This ship may well have played a key role in Viking attacks.

transporting a hundred warriors at a time to battles in Norway, France or

England.

That ship, Skuldulev 2, is now being reconstructed at the Viking Ship Museum

Roskilde.

It's been built in exactly the same way as the original, even using replicas of

Viking tools.

And this has revealed why these ships were so well adapted to sea voyages.

The secret lies in their flexibility.

Here you can see one of the planks which are nearly finished and you can feel

how smooth the surface is, how very delicate it is.

And since we have made this plank in the way we have, where we have kind of

followed the grain in the wood from top to end, we get this very strong and very

flexible plank. I think you please try and step on it.

It won't break?

No, please.

See how flexible it is?

It's really a strong plank.

I'll try to stand up.

That's fantastic. Because it comes to the ground.

You can imagine when planks like this are built into ships, how these ships

move and bend in the heavy seas in the stormy weather.

I want to find out what it's really like to be part of the crew of a Viking

warship. But Skull to Left 2 is going to take another three years to build.

So I'm joining the crew of Number 5, the replica of the smaller warship.

Oh, it gets up at an incredible speed very quickly, doesn't it?

I've been a bit of a fraud, actually, in an Englishman rowing a Viking boat. Is

this allowed?

Yeah, it is allowed.

Even

on

a calm sea, I could feel the ship flexing as we pulled on the oars.

But it was exhausting.

The Vikings must have been incredibly fit.

Personally, I was quite relieved when the sail was hoisted.

Sail on!

Harold Bluetooth's son, Sven Forkbeard.

could command a fleet of warships capable of transporting thousands of

across the North Sea.

And following the battle at Malden, he led the Vikings in a series of attacks

towns along the English coast and up rivers.

But one place in particular was considered to be the greatest prize.

The City of London.

Here. A quarter of all English coins were minted.

The city was repeatedly attacked, but again and again the Vikings were beaten

off.

To get to their prize, the Vikings would have to take London Bridge, which stood

on the same side of the present one.

Today the Thames is crossed by many bridges.

But a thousand years ago, there was only one.

Connecting the walled city of London with the trading centre of Southwark, it

was made entirely of wood and was said to be so wide that two wagons could

at the same time.

The bridge was fought over many times, and lying in the Thames mud is the

evidence of these battles.

John, what exactly are these? I know they're axes, but what are they used

Well, they're battle axes.

Battle axes of a Viking type.

And they were found very close to where we're standing now.

Just behind us here, the building there was built in the 1920s. And the workmen

on the site found six of these plus six spears.

How do you know that these are Viking?

It's the shape. It's this very elegant broad blade, beautifully curved.

And they're a very handy weapon.

There's this old story that a skilled axeman could shave somebody's moustache

off in the middle of a battle simply by using his axe.

Now, these are weapons, but what's that? That's surely not a weapon, is it?

It's a grappling hook found with the axes and the spears in the 1920s.

It's the sort of thing you use on shipboard, perhaps for just pulling the

into the tide, but also to link two vessels together.

Four for battle.

Hooks like this are mentioned in one of the North Vargas, which tells of a

daring attack on London Bridge.

It describes how the Vikings attached grappling hooks to its supports and rode

off hard downstream, pulling the bridge and all those on it down behind them.

At this time, the English were burdened with crippling taxes to pay the

Danegeld, and lived under the constant threat of Viking attack.

They grew to loathe their tormentors, and there are stories of how they fought

back and took revenge.

Here in the village of Hadstock in Essex, there's a grisly tale of the

punishment inflicted on a captured Viking.

Local legend has it that for centuries, nailed to the door of the church, was a

piece of human skin.

It's said that it came from a marauding Dane who was caught by the locals and

slayed alive.

Surprisingly, some of that skin still survives in the museum at nearby Saffron

Walden. But is it really what it's claimed to be?

This is it.

A little tiny fragment that was preserved underneath one of the door

Now, I've never seen preserved thousand -year -old human skin before, so I'm not

really qualified to say that that's what it is. But it's a horrible thought that

this might really be something that's been ripped from the back of a living

Viking.

But according to the museum records, there's absolutely no doubt about what

is. When it first came to the museum in 1847, it's described as a piece of human

skin from the church door at Hadstock.

And a year later, in 1848, it was examined by Mr. Quicket of the Royal

of Surgeons, who states, I've been fortunate in making out the specimen of

you last sent me to be human.

I found on it three hairs which I preserved.

And he goes on further to say, I should state that the skin was in all

probability removed from the back of the Dane and that he was a fair -haired

person.

And in 1974, another test.

at Leeds University concluded that the grain pattern corresponds closely to

human skin and it was from a person with fair or greying hair.

So there doesn't seem to be any doubt but now for the first time we can take

a stage further and we can use modern genetic science to answer the question

this really a relic of some terrible grisly event or is it just simply

legend?

We asked a team from the Ancient Biomolecule Centre in Oxford to find

They were given permission to slice off a tiny piece and analyse its DNA.

The team leader is Dr Alan Cooper.

Alan, did you actually manage to get any DNA out of that bit of skin?

Well, we did. We were very pleased because we thought that the amount of

degradation that the skin was showing would mean that there was no DNA left.

but we were able to get quite a bit of DNA from the material inside the

once we'd taken off that outer weathered layer.

So what was it?

Well, we tried a variety of human primers to see if we could pick up human

from the material and got a complete blank in several combinations.

Then we thought we should try cow, and that came back for a roaringly strong

signal.

So we're pretty sure it's cow, unfortunately.

So how come all these scientists in the past then have been so wrong about it?

Well, I think it was a very difficult bit of diagnosis because it had been

sitting on the door exposed to the elements for some considerable period of

time, so it was quite weathered.

I think also we might be underestimating some of the powers of forgery of some

of these early artisans because what we did notice was the skin was very thin,

much thinner than you normally expect for a cow skin.

So I suspect it was taken from the underbelly or some other area. And it

therefore, a lot more like human skin.

So they might have been disguising it perhaps a little bit.

So perhaps it's just an ancient forgery.

But it's one that obviously hit the mark.

Take a piece of cowhide, add imagination, and by the 18th century,

gruesome legend.

Although the skin has turned out not to be human, this small story still seems

to illustrate a bigger picture of the fear and hatred that must have existed

between the English and the Danes.

And this hatred finally boiled over...

into what can only be described as state -sponsored ethnic cleansing.

Not all the Vikings in England were marauders bent on extortion.

Danish settlers had been living peacefully here for over a hundred

But in 1002, on St. Brice's Day, the 13th of November,

King Æthelred commanded that all Danes living in the country should be killed.

This day was Saturday, on which the Danes are in the habit of bathing, and

accordingly, at the set time, they were destroyed most ruthlessly.

From the least even to the greatest, they spared neither age nor sex.

The massacre on St. Brice's Day provoked the wrath of the Vikings, especially as

one of the victims was said to be the sister of Sven Forkbeard, the Danish

Over the coming years, bitter hatred between the English and the Vikings

continue to intensify.

Soon it was a new generation at the top.

In a tangle of invasion, exile and death, the English and Danish king

and Sven Forkbeard passed on the fighting to their sons.

Edmund Ironside and his young Viking adversary Canute were head to head.

Canute was still a teenager, but he was about to trigger the most dramatic shift

in power in the history of Viking influence in these islands.

And in 1016, after a summer of skirmishes, a confrontation in Essex

decisive.

At the Battle of Assenden, heavy losses were recorded on the English side.

especially amongst the nobles.

There was then killed Bishop Eyednoth, Abbot Wolfseer, Eyelderman Elfrick,

Eyelderman Goodwina, Ulf Kettle and Ethelweird.

The flower of all England was cut down.

With such an outcome, the English king was forced to give Canute northern and

central England.

And then... Only a few months later, Edmund died, maybe from the wounds he'd

suffered on the battlefield.

The rest of the country had little choice but to turn to Canute.

In an ancient ceremony, Canute was crowned king.

The unthinkable had happened.

The invaders had become rulers, and there was a Viking on the throne of

But today, people only remember one story about Canute.

King Canute tried to stop the tide coming in. The tide?

Trying to send it back?

Everyone thought he could do everything, but then he got his frown, he sat

beside the sea and he commanded it not to come in, and it did.

So that's why he couldn't do everything.

And got his feet rather wet, as I remember.

We all know the story, but where did it come from?

It's first mentioned in the Historia Anglorum, a 12th century mixture of

and moral fables.

This tells us that Canute gave orders for his throne to be placed on the

seashore as the tide was coming in, and that the king commanded the water not to

rise and wet his clothes or feet.

The tide obviously ignored the king's commands.

But what came next in the story isn't often mentioned.

Canute is actually making a point that no matter what his courtiers may think,

he's just a man.

Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings.

For there is none worthy of the name but God, whom heaven and earth and sea

obey.

The full story, then.

puts rather a different slant on it.

Perhaps we've had it wrong all these years, and it was really written to show

how pious a Christian Canute was.

We've no way of knowing whether this happened.

It may simply be a moral tale, but it's interesting to note how we'd sooner

believe in the arrogance of our kings than in their piety.

Having seized the English crown by force, would Canute be able to hang on

Very little is known about his reign, but there's one priceless manuscript

contains a drawing of Canute that shows how he himself wanted to be seen.

It was made at the time he donated a gold cross to the new minster at

Winchester.

As a Christian king, his power ultimately comes from Christ, seated

him. But the hand on the hilt of his sword suggests a strong ruler who should

not be challenged, and the monks are firmly in their place.

Dr Ken Lawson is a leading authority on Canute.

In a sense, it's political propaganda.

And this is important to Canute because he has no real claim to the English

throne. When the church crowns and anoints him, this gives him a legitimacy

which he doesn't otherwise have.

Canute Rex, the king, and I presume this is the queen.

That is Canute's queen, Emma.

She'd previously, of course, been queen of King Ethelred.

She came second -hand.

So it was quite an astute move on Canute's part, then, to marry the widow

previous king.

It almost certainly is. I mean, she was probably quite a bit older than he was.

I don't think it was a love match of any kind, because Emma knows the English

political system.

Canute had life on personalities, and in particular on how to treat the church.

The giving of the great gold cross is meant to show his piety and generosity

the church.

But although Canute could be generous to those who were important to him, there

was also a ruthless side to his character.

The shady side of him is partly probably very heavy taxation.

taxation which is enforced by people unable to pay taxes, forfeiting the

And the coercive power behind all that are the professional soldiers known as

houseguards, who may have employed in considerable numbers.

It's possible there were garrisons of houseguards in certain cities.

And they are the people who, in the last analysis, will come and persuade you to

do what the king wants.

So these are Canute's heavy mob, are they? Yes, they are probably very heavy.

Such was Canute's ruthlessness that he was able to build a huge North Sea

empire.

Three years after he seized the English throne, he succeeded his brother as king

of Denmark.

Then, using money from English taxes, he conquered Norway and then part of

southern Sweden.

Even the Scots accepted him as their overlord.

Knut's empire stretched from the English Channel to the Baltic.

It was the most dramatic rise to power of any Viking ruler in history.

By 1030, a large proportion of the British Isles were under Scandinavian

control, but not all under the Danes.

Earlier, Norwegian Vikings had captured the islands on the sea road from

Shetland to the Irish Sea.

And here, the picture of Viking rule was quite different.

On the Isle of Man, it appears to be a story of integration more than

domination.

A view that's championed by archaeologist Andrew Johnson from Manx

Heritage.

The Viking involvement with the island is not so much one of invasion and of

driving out the local population, seizing the best land, all this kind of

I think instead what you've got is a relatively small number of people coming

and being absorbed by the existing population, but

making a very, very considerable imprint on that population.

Evidence to support this theory came to light in the 1980s during the excavation

of an ancient graveyard under Peel Castle.

Andrew was on site when the team stumbled on an intriguing grave.

In a Christian cemetery, a woman had been buried with grave goods in the

tradition.

The first thing that was apparent were...

her leg bones, and oddly enough, it looked as if perhaps she had a third

and obviously that couldn't possibly be the case.

And the closer we looked at this, we realised that this bar -shaped thing

her right side was actually iron, it was actually a piece of iron.

The object must have been important, but no -one on the team could tell what it

was. It was like nothing they'd seen before.

Then there were a few phone calls to various...

archaeologists and the suggestion came back well what if it's a cooking spit

and that's exactly what it turned out to be a

symbol of domestic power part of a wealthy female burial

along with the spit there were other domestic objects

a knife a pair of shears into which was rusted a bone comb

and a necklace of multicoloured beads of glass, jet and amber.

These objects suggested that this woman was a Viking, but strangely there was no

sign of the brooches that were a characteristic part of everyday Viking

So who was she?

I think that she was a local Celt.

Someone who was married to one of these new arrivals. And probably this

was an arranged marriage. And this would be a perfect way for a Scandinavian who

didn't want to get into the whole risky business of fighting to take over land,

but sought to gain land through marriage.

So is there any more evidence for intermarriage elsewhere on the island?

Viking runic inscriptions on Christian crosses give the names of people they

commemorated and those who have them made.

This one declares that it was raised by Torleif Snargi to the memory of his son

Fiak. Now, this is fascinating, because Torleif Snargi is a Viking name.

But his son's name is Celtic.

The most likely explanation is that Fiat's mother was a Celt, who, despite

married to a Viking, had chosen to name her son in her own language.

This seems like more evidence of intermarriage, of the mingling of two

distinct cultures.

And the

result of this integrated society... is the extraordinary survival of a remnant

of Viking rule,

Tinwald's Day.

Each year, the island's parliament meets on this grassy mound to conduct its

business, open to all, almost exactly as they did a thousand years ago.

Learned Deansters, I exhort you to proclaim to the people, in ancient form,

such laws as have been enacted during the past year, and which have

Her Gracious Majesty's Royal Assent.

Electronic Transactions Act, which facilitates electronic transactions.

The origins of the artisanal ceremony certainly go back well into our Viking

period, but they established a form of government here on the island and

promulgated, read out, the laws which they...

We're suggesting that the public of the Isle of Man should live on there

annually. And that is really a tradition which we today, centuries later, have

been carrying out.

The Viking rulers have handed down their political traditions.

But has their genetic legacy also been handed down?

What proportion of today's manxmen are direct descendants of the Vikings?

The answer may be revealed by the genetic survey of the British Isles,

carried out by the BBC and University College London.

They're sampling males because it's the Y chromosome, which only males have,

that will clearly show Norwegian genetic markers.

Back in the lab.

Analysis of the samples is just beginning.

When we carry out just the first preliminary analysis, we see that about

the chromosomes in the Isle of Man are only found in Norway, so it looks like

those have a Norwegian origin.

So there are indications of a strong Viking presence here, confirming the

evidence from archaeology.

The genetics does indicate that there's Viking genetic input and that could be

precisely through the kind of intermarriages that are documented in

archaeological record with Viking men joining the society.

The enduring nature of Viking rule in the Isle of Man

contrasts sharply with the short -lived experience of Viking rule in England,

where it would last...

for only 26 years.

King Canute died in 1035.

His sons were unable to hold on to their father's gains for long, and within

seven years, the impressive North Sea Empire that he'd built had collapsed.

Canute had been king of all England, and he was buried like one, alongside the

Saxon kings in Winchester's ancient Minster.

But he wasn't allowed to rest in peace.

When this new cathedral was built, his bones were moved, along with those of

other kings and bishops, into wooden caskets.

And here, there's an ignominious postscript.

Centuries later, they became the target of roundhead aggression during the

English Civil War.

Cromwell's troops effectively looted the cathedral.

They rode up the aisle, some of them on horseback.

running more or less amok. When they got here, of course, looking up to right

and left, what did they see? These boxes with crowns on the top. Well, you can

imagine, a symbol of royal authority. It was precisely the sort of thing that

they had it in for.

So they pulled down the boxes from on top, smashed out came the contents, and

then they picked up the bones and used the bones as missiles with which to

the windows, which had idolatrous biblical imagery on them.

The surviving bones were later replaced in the chest, but they'd been jumbled

up.

So where exactly are Knut's remains?

Is it possible to have a look in the chests?

Well, the current feeling is that one should leave these human remains to lie

peace, so the simple answer to that is no, but I was allowed to check the

conservation state of the remains about... Ten years ago, I suppose it

also to take some photographs, which I've got here.

So this is the chest that we've been looking at on the side there.

I mean, what this looks like is just a collection of long bones, a few bits of

pelvis and some arm bones. There's no complete skeletons in there, are there?

Exactly so, and what seems to have happened is that during one of the re

-sortings, they sorted out these bones osteologically and decided they ought to

put the long bones into these two new chests.

The result, then, is that some of the other chests, For example, one which

bears the name of one monarch, and yet, as you can see, we've got five skulls in

there. So, a complete jumble.

But Canute is somewhere in amongst one of these chests, you think?

I don't think there's any reason to suppose that Canute's bones aren't

amongst this lot, even jumbled up.

finished when the Anglo -Saxon dynasty was restored almost three decades after

it had been overthrown.

In 1042, Edward the Confessor took back the English throne.

It so happened that Denmark was too busy fighting Norway to launch any more

contenders for the English throne.

And so it looked as if the Viking Age in England had finally come to an end.

But the death of Edward the Confessor meant that the crown was once again up

grabs. And this time, the Norwegians were ready.

The extraordinary tale of what really happened in 1066 is in the next and

episode of Blood of the Vikings.