Original subtitles

Born...

into a world of brutality.

Viking combat is gory, it's gritty, it's real,

it's raw, it's loud.

Trained to attack with no mercy...

He's swinging around his great ax,

cutting down people left, right, and center.

This graphic shock and awe encounter.

Built into a fighter without fear...

The Viking warrior psychology

is to run towards death.

The warrior from the north becomes a conqueror.

This is an absolute fear of the Northman.

This is terrorism of its day.

Warriors aren't born...

They're built.

Understanding how

reveals the true nature of their greatness...

From the cradle to the grave,

these are the steps to creating...

History's Greatest Warriors.

The Viking,

a fearsome warrior like no other.

A force to be reckoned with on land and on sea...

the Viking's strategic skills and technical prowess

are matched only by his brutality on the battlefield.

The people that we commonly call the Vikings now,

otherwise known as the Norse,

they're people from Scandinavia.

They are a great naval force who know exactly how to

raid coastal settlements and attack places that are

vulnerable because of their access to water.

But the Vikings best known for being the most savage

and brutal warriors of the Middle Ages.

The Viking Age is a period in history where Scandinavia,

for one of only a few times,

steps into the spotlight of history.

The Vikings make their way much further afield than

so many other people before them,

and have a disproportionate impact

on the history of Europe.

Expansion beyond Scandinavia

will require an elite warrior as fierce...

as any other in the Middle Ages.

His path to becoming a warrior

will require him to endure years of training. ...

Master the Viking weapons of war...

And defeat his enemy through brutal tactics

that terrorize the Christian world.

It is a path to greatness

first carved out centuries ago.

The Viking Age is approximately understood in

scholarship to be 8th century to the 11th century A.D.

The countries of Norway, Sweden,

and Denmark don't exist at this time.

The Viking's greatest foes lie to the west.

The Anglo-Saxons are Christians,

ruling over medieval Britain.

And the Frankish Empire is an alliance of Germanic tribes

living in what will become Northern France,

Western Germany, and Belgium.

Both maintain standing armies

that dwarf those of the north.

Scandinavia itself is made up into

small independent communities of farmsteads,

usually the members of a very large family.

In the very early society, you've got clans,

and as the clans develop into chieftainships,

it means that you have people who are no longer

blood related that are trying to

organize themselves together,

and there isn't always enough land to go around.

Just simply to survive,

you might take advantage of a less capable

Viking farmstead or Viking community.

Even if you do have land, you may decide that

subsistence level living isn't good enough.

There's a population boom in Scandinavia at this time,

and they want to go abroad to look for

more riches and more opportunities.

If he is to become a conqueror-

one that can strike fear

into the hearts of his enemies-

a young warrior must learn to live...

and die by the sword.

It is a code of honor that is instilled in him

as soon as he enters the world.

The Arabic explorer and chronicler,

Ahmad ibn Rustah, of the 10th century,

he is traveling throughout the eastern reaches of

the Viking world,

and he observes this Viking father

throw his sword on the ground.

He says to his son, "I leave you no inheritance.

All you possess is what you can gain with this sword."

The promise of greatness within the young Viking can

only be fulfilled through the strict discipline that has

created countless warriors before him.

His first step on the path to glory...

will be learning how to survive.

You need to be able to live in sub-zero degree

temperatures and those harsh Scandinavian winters.

You're also learning how to make things.

You have to learn how to make houses.

Learn how to make boats.

The young Viking strengthens his body

by working the land,

conditioning him for a brutal and merciless life.

Oral histories of heroes and violent conquests

also shape his understanding of

the ways of the Viking warrior.

We can picture a Viking father sitting around

a campfire in his hall, telling his boy about

Egill Skallagrimsson.

Egill is playing a game with various children

of his village, and he feels cheated by

one of the other children, a boy called Grimm.

So he leaves the match, goes home,

produces an ax, returns to his game and then

casually splits the brain of the boy

who had cheated against him.

And so, already at the age of seven,

he's killed his first person.

But his mother looks at him and says,

"Egill, you have the makings of a great Viking."

So, really, violence is celebrated

in the childhood of Vikings.

The ambitious youth also gains practical skills

through a competition known as "Glima".

Glima is the only sport that survives the Viking Age.

It's the national sport of Iceland to this day.

It's a kind of wrestling or grappling,

not unlike Brazilian jiu jitsu.

And part of the sport is that you grip your opponent,

and then you try to flip your opponent and

slam him to the ground.

Glima is a way for Viking youth

to impress the elders-

Those who are looking for the next generation

of elite Viking warriors.

There's an old Norse word, "drengskapr",

and that is the highest compliment one could

receive during the Viking Age.

To say that he demonstrates drengskapr means that

he demonstrates this sort of reckless courage

with an element of fair play.

That's one thing a Viking is not born with,

and what he needs to spend his youth

striving and building.

Shaped by an unforgiving land,

and honed by fierce competition,

the young Viking has a singular goal-

join the war band setting sail

to conquer new lands.

The word "Viking" is less a people and

more of a job description.

So, the Old Norse word, "vikingur",

means sort of a pirate or a raider,

a medieval Scandinavian that goes off

raiding and plundering.

The Norse first arrive on enemy shores

at the end of the 700s,

setting off centuries of carnage known as...

the Viking Age.

The Viking raid of the monastic island of

Lindisfarne, which is off the coast of northern England,

is kind of the shot heard round the medieval world

when it comes to the Vikings.

This is kind of the first recorded raid of the Vikings

in the Middle Ages.

Monasteries during the Middle Ages

are sources of immense wealth.

You have chalices of gold. Gold and silver coinage.

The monks of Lindisfarne see these longships

on the horizon.

The Vikings come out seemingly out of nowhere.

The Vikings notice these men have

no weapons whatsoever.

This is gonna be a cakewalk.

The Vikings immediately slaughter

several of the monks.

Vikings absolutely desecrate all of the religious relics.

They trample upon the altar of God

like dung in the street.

They kidnap several monks,

certainly to be sold into slavery.

They strip several monks of their clothing to

humiliate them, and then actually drowned them

in the sea as well, so it's this graphic,

devastating shock and awe encounter.

All that is left is a

handful of monks bleeding out

in the smoking ruins of the monastery...

and rumors of fearsome raiders from the north.

The Christians see this attack on Lindisfarne

by this heathen horde as an act of God,

that God is sending them to...

punish them for their sins.

And it embeds itself in the British Christian psyche

for generations.

One of the things that the Vikings specifically do in

battle to put fear into the hearts of their enemies

is the Rite of the Blood Eagle.

This involves hacking open

a high status opponent.

You pin them down, you hack them open,

and you open out their rib cage,

you spread out their internal organs

in the pattern of an eagle.

This is terrorism of its day.

To join the ranks of the elite warriors

wreaking havoc abroad, the young Viking

must first demonstrate his worth.

The Viking youth has been inspired with tales

of greatness and groomed for violence.

Now, he must be hand-selected for

the next stage of his journey.

If you're a young Scandinavian,

you want the jarl or chieftain to invite you

into his "hirth" or "hird."

These are the Viking raiding parties.

And these hirths might contain 30 warriors,

50 warriors, sometimes 100 warriors.

Viking chieftains are ultimately the tacticians

who lead the raiding parties.

They're the ones that determine the targets.

Whenever a chieftain decides that

he's going to set out to go raiding,

this would be something that occurs in the

great longhouse, the biggest longhouse-

the jarl's longhouse- and he pledges that

he's going to raid such and such village...

that he's going to select certain men within the

community to come along.

The chief end of any Viking raid is to obtain plunder and

great movable wealth so that a chieftain can reward

his followers and keep them in his service.

And you could return with material wealth that

could change the course of your destiny.

The chieftain will judge whether or not

a young warrior is ready for battle.

The skills and traits that are instilled into a young

Norseman at a very young age are the very skills that

would propel them forward as warriors.

You need to be tough.

Those who exhibit the skills of a warrior

are invited by the chieftain

to a sacred ceremony.

At the chieftain's great hall he swears allegiances

and blood oaths to his followers.

The chieftain is giving you great gifts of gold and silver,

and ornate weapons, gem-encrusted sword hilts,

you know, and, and weapons inlaid with silver and gold,

and armbands of great precious metals.

In exchange, his followers pledge to him loyalty.

You're pledging your life, really,

to the chieftain or jarl that's sponsoring you.

To join the hird is to

embrace the Viking mindset,

giving the young Norseman a terrifying advantage.

You have to die sword in hand

in order to make it to Valhalla,

which is Odin's realm- a warrior's paradise.

And those of them who are slain in battle are then

resurrected to enjoy a feast

of roast pork and alcohol and

the companionship of Odin's warrior maidens,

known as the Valkyries.

What allows the Vikings to be so successful and the

scourge of Europe for over 300 years is the hope

every Viking warrior has that

he will die a heroic death.

We do know about a few different rituals and rites.

One can almost imagine- there's a group of men that

are about to go on a Viking expedition.

A priestess comes in, and she looks and says, "Listen,

all of you, you're now going to go

on a Viking venture.

You're now going to go on an expedition.

And yes, you may die.

But you know you're going to die anyway.

We, at the end of the day, are all fated to die.

So, live life and gain honor-

that's what it's about."

The carpe diem of the Vikings.

Being chosen by the chieftain is a critical step

on his path to becoming a warrior.

Now, he will learn from the hird's

most seasoned soldiers.

There's the trained warriors, warriors that are

just going on like a raid for one year.

And then there's the berserker.

Trained to be the most

extreme warriors in the hird,

the berserkers and their violent tactics will be

studied by the young warrior.

A group of berserkers is this terrifying spectacle of

wild men howling like a wolf or like a bear,

causing themselves to froth at the mouth,

biting the rims of their shields,

flailing their arms like mad men.

And this is something which would have been terrifying.

They are brutal in warfare.

There is a debate about what their name means.

Some people think that their name comes from bear,

or like the bear skin that they would potentially wear.

But other people say that it comes from the fact that

they would attack people bare,

they would attack people naked.

And this was part of their shock value.

The Vikings are showing their victims that

they're so vicious and so powerful that

they don't even need armor.

To those who face them, the berserker appears

to be possessed by some unnatural power.

There is great debate-

Why did berserkers go berserk?

For a long time, scholars have believed that Vikings

are actually doing a form of hallucinogenic mushroom,

and it's causing them to lose sense of

where they are and what they're doing.

This might help describe

why they're acting so brutally.

Christians describe the experience of

facing a Viking horde

as being like the wrath of God,

that this is something that is so horrific that

there's no way humans could be responsible for it.

The berserker dominates the battlefield,

but for the young Viking warrior looking to earn

his place alongside him, he must first master

the chieftain's arsenal of weapons.

The Viking warrior must be equipped with

all the instruments of war.

Knowledge of the Vikings' weapons is embedded in

a source that chronicles the victory at the

Battle Of Hastings by William The Conqueror,

a Viking descendent.

The Bayeux Tapestry, which was made in England

around 1066 is a super important source for

the study of late Viking era weapons.

The Bayeux Tapestry shows lots and lots of helmets,

and mail shirts, and swords, and spears, and shields.

So, it gives us a huge amount of evidence

about the arms and armor.

The first weapon a Viking warrior reaches for

is the one that is most familiar...

and the quickest to master.

The advantage that Vikings have in using the ax

as a weapon is that they've been using axes

almost their whole lives growing up.

There's cutting wood with an ax,

and there's using an ax as a vicious weapon of war.

It is, in many ways, the Viking's primary weapon.

A simple flesh wound that might be incurred through

an ax or something like that could have

life-altering consequences.

There are some big advantages to axes.

Axes break shields more easily than

spears or swords do.

Additionally, axes are more effective against

people wearing armor, people like

the Anglo-Saxons and the Franks.

With each new opponent comes new challenges,

so the Viking warrior must learn to adapt.

It's clear to us that the Vikings

evolve their axes over time.

There are great, long,

what are called Dane axes.

And these are two-handed weapons that

the Vikings develop, particularly to respond to

the threat of Frankish cavalry.

The head of the ax,

it hooks down in such a way where a warrior,

in a single swipe, could obliterate a

Frankish cavalryman along with his horse.

In the hands of the Viking's most ferocious warrior,

the Dane ax unleashes devastation and mayhem

against a powerful foe.

The Battle of Stamford Bridge,

September 25th, 1066.

The English chronicler, Henry of Huntington,

tells us that the Vikings are taken off-guard with

English forces that are advancing.

This certain hero positions himself

on this bridge with an ax.

This means he can occupy the space and

the width of the bridge, and nobody can get past him.

And he's swinging around his great ax,

cutting down people left, right, and center.

If you're going to fight a large number of men,

the way to do it is on a bridge because

you funnel them all into a manageable number of people

to fight at any given time.

He slays 40 men, single-handedly.

And it's only when one quick-witted Anglo-Saxon

warrior sneaks beneath the bridge and stabs him from

underneath with a spear that he is slain in battle.

As the warrior is built into

a more formidable fighter,

he may prove himself worthy of the ultimate Viking weapon.

The challenge is getting one.

It's clear that the Vikings love swords,

but they don't necessarily have access to

as many swords as, for example,

people in the Frankish Empire would do.

The Franks have more developed centers for the

manufacture of these things, and they also have more

access to the mines producing iron ore.

We find out that the Vikings are interested in this

one kind of sword that's being produced out of the

region around the Rhine and,

it's known as the ulfberht sword.

It's far superior to the swords that

the Vikings are producing.

There's a lot of debate as to how it came to be

in the hands of Vikings.

One theory goes that they encounter it

during their battles with Frankish troops,

and then they start trading for it...

and, they end up incorporating it

more into their arsenal.

In fact, the trade of weapons into Scandinavia has become

such a problem that people like the Franks and the

Anglo-Saxons actually prohibit trading weapons to

their enemies because they're being raided

so constantly by these Vikings that

they don't want to keep arming them.

But the Vikings will have these blades.

What is no longer offered in trade

will be taken on the battlefield.

If a young Viking goes into battle against

a contingent of Frankish warriors,

all of them well-equipped with ulfberht swords,

you know, he's thinking to himself,

I am looking to exchange this ax

and come home with a sword so that

I can then be better equipped for the future.

Armed with the finest steel in the land,

the Viking is a menace.

But it's the Norseman's technical ingenuity

that will produce his most powerful weapon...

the longship.

The boat is the innovation that

the Scandinavians have at this time

that really is what causes them to

become the fierce warriors that they are.

Naval conflict is not well known during the Middle Ages,

and all of a sudden, the Vikings come up

out of Scandinavia, seemingly out of nowhere

as this great naval superpower.

One of the things that the Vikings love doing is

going up a river and attacking a settlement,

and in some cases, attacking fortified bridges.

One of the most famous examples this happened

was actually London Bridge.

The Vikings have come up the Thames to attack London,

But London Bridge is their great big wooden bridge

that's been fortified, and they actually use

grappling hooks to attach to the bridge and

pull a section of it down.

They attack the bridge in order to get access to

the Port of London.

Without the longships,

the Viking Age doesn't happen.

The Viking's boats will transform his warrior armies

into an unstoppable naval battalion.

Their imposing shape sends a terrifying warning

to the enemy.

The sails of Viking longships are very iconic.

Viking longships are powered by both sails and oars.

This combination of sails and oars is what

affords the Vikings mobility and speed.

One can assume that a longship could carry

about approximately 30 warriors.

The hull of the Viking longship's streamlined design

is what allows the Vikings to move swiftly,

and easily venture into shallow waters,

right into the heartland of enemy territory.

That technology allows them

to succeed in warfare

in a way that is really very different

from anybody else in that time period.

Sailing towards enemy territory,

the Viking is ready to meet his destiny.

It is time for combat.

The Viking has been trained, selected,

and armed.

Now, he must face off against his enemy.

A true Viking's mettle is tested...

in combat.

Viking warrior psychology is to run towards danger,

to run towards death, because your reward will be

potentially gaining entrance to Valhalla.

There's one particular example of Gisli Sursson,

who's an outlaw in Iceland.

He's moving up this cliff and he's, you know,

killing men who are pursuing him in the process,

and he's stabbed with a spear and

his guts are spilling out.

And the saga tells us that he takes a cord,

and he binds his internal organs up so that

he's able to fight for a few more moments,

and it's evident to him that this is not his day to win

on the battlefield, and he dramatically jumps off

the cliff, splitting a man with his sword

as he plummets to his own death.

With no fear of death,

the Viking stands his ground and considers his attacker.

They're looking to gain as much information

about the opponent as they possibly can.

Does this person look experienced?

Do they look like a raw recruit?

Eye contact is an interesting thing,

There's a psychology to it, and obviously,

staring with fury at your opponent can have

a psychological effect on them.

Viking combat is tough.

It's aggressive, it's gritty.

Your shields are banging into each other,

and you're desperately trying to push somebody's

shield out of the way with your own

so that you can get a few hacks in.

Using his own shield allows the Viking

to dominate his enemy.

The shield isn't just a passive thing that

you hold there and receive blows on.

It's something you can smash into the opponent's shield,

smash into their face-

below the level of their helmet, break their nose.

The Viking shields have a distinct element

called the boss.

It's on the front of the shield.

It almost acts like a brass knuckle,

because your hand is positioned

right behind the boss.

The metal boss, in the middle of the shield,

also serves a unique purpose in that it can catch blows.

If an enemy comes down on you with an ax or a sword,

you can catch their blow with your shield boss,

and parry it away.

The weapon the young Viking learned to use as a boy...

proves to be his most versatile tool in combat.

One of the great advantages to axes is,

apart from the fact that they hit really hard because

you've got all of the mass concentrated at the top of

the shaft- in addition to that, you can hook, because

all axes have a natural T-junction to them.

Being able to hook the shield forwards creates an opening

into which you can stab into or cut into

behind the shield.

The ax, because of the special hook that it has,

you were also able to trap individuals,

either grabbing their legs, pulling them down,

taking them right down to the ground.

In a life or death struggle,

the young Viking relies on his training

to anticipate and respond to

his opponent's every move.

Vikings definitely use glima

to take an enemy by force.

Argh!

With wrestling and glima you can actually do

anything that gets the other person down.

That's very practical in warfare,

because they're really in some ways are no rules to

warfare because basically of two sides that are

essentially trying to kill each other.

Death can be swift for

the Viking's adversary.

Or, he may suffer a crueler fate...

When a Viking sees an enemy,

he doesn't see him just as an enemy.

He sees him as...

prosperity.

They decide, why don't we take some of these people

for slaves, and we can maybe take some as hostages

and ransom them off later on.

Slavery is an essential

part of the Viking economy.

Human capital, if one can even call it that,

is something that the Vikings are very well aware of.

If you can subdue the enemy

he's worth far more alive than dead.

The Viking has been built to overpower

any enemy he faces.

But, a daunting test lies ahead...

war is upon him.

The Viking has been molded into a deadly warrior.

But to conquer enemy lands and enrich his people...

he will need to show true courage

fighting alongside thousands of his fellow warriors.

One of the things that probably makes the Norse

at this time quite different to a lot of the people

they're fighting against, is that they are used to

raiding and operating together as units.

The Great Heathen Army is a coalition of

multiple war bands of Vikings.

By the middle of the 9th century,

the Great Heathen Army has conquered all but one of the

Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

Vikings have established, at this point,

settlements in northern France, in Normandy,

which is a particularly strategic location,

as that estuary in Normandy

leads to the Seine River,

which takes you all the way to Paris.

It is a city of riches,

and the warrior's next target.

An audacious attack on an unsuspecting foe.

But to achieve victory,

the Viking will call on all of the war tactics

he has amassed over the course of his journey.

The Vikings decide to besiege Paris

on Easter Sunday in 845

because it's on this day in the Christian calendar that

the markets of Paris are overflowing with

all sorts of wealth.

People are celebrating this great holiday,

and the Vikings know this.

The Viking siege of Paris is led by the legendary figure,

Ragnar Lothbrok- larger than life Viking warrior

who is leading about 120 ships-

the sources tell us-

about roughly 5000 warriors into battle.

The Viking warrior and his fleet appear on the horizon,

without warning.

In many cases, the Norse flee with their ships

before the enemy army can get there so,

they're operating for minimal risk

when possible, and maximum profit.

The sails of his dreaded longships are designed to

stir terror in the hearts and minds of his enemy.

The first part of the Viking assault is

kind of a propaganda assault.

It's showing you the might.

You can see this sail coming at you.

You know that you don't have much time to

prepare to defend where you are.

The Vikings, under Ragnar Lothbrok,

are sailing down the Seine River,

and they come upon a group of

Frankish warriors stationed on

either side of the Seine River by Charles The Bald,

who is king of West Frankia.

He's the one in charge of Paris's defenses,

so you have Frankish defenders

on the right side of the river and

Frankish defenders on the left.

And the Franks,

they don't have boats with which

to meet the Vikings at sea.

They simply attack one contingent of

Frankish warriors, decimating them,

and leaving the other one unable to help the defense.

And there are berserks,

and the berserks roared.

And now, imagine this-

you're on the battlefield with a group of men,

and they're standing there,

and the terrifying sound that would make.

The Vikings capture 111 Frankish warriors,

load them on the Longships, and move further down

the Seine closer to Paris.

This is the next phase in the Viking's plan.

He and his fellow warriors now hold the captives-

and the city of Paris- for ransom.

This ransom is the entire reason for the siege.

The Vikings attacked the Franks to extract

as much money from them as possible.

Ragnar Lothbrok had been in touch with Charles The Bald,

and had been undergoing these negotiations,

saying, you know, "We'll leave Paris

if only you pay us enough silver."

In 845, the Franks defending Paris are

probably asking themselves,

"Well, can we hold off this Viking attack?"

It looks to be about 120 longships,

but the Franks have ballista technology,

they have great boiling vats of pitch.

They have all sorts of like counter-defensive technology

that they can use.

But evidently, to Ragnar, the negotiations weren't

happening quick enough so, those 111 captives that

he had taken on one side of the Seine River,

he brings to the island near Paris and hangs them.

We can only imagine how terrified

the defending Franks of Paris are

to see their 111 fellow warriors

hung open in plain sight.

Hanging 111 men might have been seen as

being very advantageous and strategic.

By demonstrating that you are willing to do something that

may seem to be barbaric, you may be,

in the long run, saving lives on both sides.

And it's only then that the Vikings are able to

receive 7,000 pounds of silver.

That's how much the Franks pay the Vikings to go away,

although it doesn't seem to work because in the 850s

and then again in 885, the Vikings,

they're seeing Paris as sort of a,

an ATM that they can come back to over and over again.

The Viking has mastered the art of war through

his unflinching embrace of bloodshed.

His training, his weapons, and his dedication

have made him feared across a continent.

But every great warrior must fall,

and the Viking's days are numbered.

The Viking's success in battle earns him glory...

and, a reputation for tactical brilliance.

His brutal empire is growing.

In their essence, the Vikings are seamen,

and that is the absolute core of their success.

However, as things move on,

they start to change their goals.

We see the Franks having to give them land

because that's clearly what they want.

And equally, in Anglo-Saxon England,

they go for a full invasion in 865,

and they are clearly not there to raid.

They are there to stay.

We start to see a transition from raiding to settling.

But incredible gains

give way to devastating losses.

Over time, the Vikings' enemies begin to

understand their attackers.

And how to fight back.

People like Charlemagne,

one of the things that they do to try and

combat this Viking threat is to build navies.

Building bridges, putting large chains across rivers

was something else which was done.

The Anglo-Saxons in England,

and the Slavs in Central Europe

are increasingly using more cavalry.

But, the Vikings themselves

never actually had cavalry.

Outmatched on land,

and no longer dominant at sea,

the Viking warrior loses his tactical advantage.

By the year 1066,

the Viking Age is no more.

Near the end of the century, the Norseman controls

nothing beyond Scandinavia.

Warring clans headed by chieftains

are dying out.

You have the formation of the modern countries of

Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.

You have chieftains consolidating power and

submitting to kings.

Now you have a political organization,

and a king who's basically not going to allow things

like the Vikings because it's in that king's

best interest to either

hire them as part of his army

or to get rid of them altogether,

so that's a big piece of it.

The second part is religion.

Christianity really takes hold in these

previously heathen places.

So, you know, here we see a bit of the

psychology of warfare is dying out.

Christianity is the religion of kings

throughout medieval Europe.

You know, you have the Pope in Rome as well,

who bestows great privileges on kings

who follow him and so forth.

Christianity is the social club of medieval kings.

But it's a Viking warrior who emerges to

unify all of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

William the Conqueror, who the modern day

royal family of England can trace their lineage to,

the first King of England, is descended from Normans.

He's descended from the Duchy of Normandy in

Northern France, which was founded by Rollo,

who was a ferocious Viking in the 10th century.

By creating some of the most

fearsome fighters of the era,

the Vikings change western civilization forever.

The Vikings are a warrior culture

that is so larger than life.

They leave their footprints throughout the world.

The modern-day countries of England and France

originate from Viking principalities.

They start these marketplaces

that then become towns

that then become cities that still exist today.

Dublin is an old Viking marketplace.

York is an old Viking marketplace.

Novgorod is an old Viking marketplace.

If I were to say the word Viking,

which has gone on to

bear the name of football teams and

clothing brands and ocean liners and so forth,

the word Viking means bravery, it means courage,

it means being larger than life.

And, the mythology,

the spirituality of the Vikings

is very well understood by modern viewers as well.

J.R.R. Tolkien's own mythological worlds,

The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit,

are directly based upon Old Norse literature and

given to us in the forms of sagas.

The other reason why I think

they loom large in our memory

has to do with the

freedom, individualism components of

what we think of when we think of Vikings.

I think we tend to either downplay the violence,

or up play the violence,

in our telling of these stories,

but I think that there is something about

a group of farmers

that hold Europe at ransom

for several hundred years

that just is a little bit inspiring.

Centuries after disappearing from the northern seas...

the Viking warrior is still revered.

His ferocious training,

devastating fighting technique,

and unique combination of strategy and brutality...

earn him a rightful place among

History's Greatest Warriors.