All language subtitles for Vikings S04E00 Secrets of the Vikings-The Saga of Ragnar Lothbrok.err0001

I'm fascinated by the Viking mindset
and the Viking world.

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I love digging into the raw
material and waiting for stories

and characters to emerge.

Hail Earl Ragnar.

I'm not making a documentary,
but I do want authenticity.

And I want to get as
near to the truth as I can.

Ragnar Lothbrok,
I've heard that name before.

Hail Earl Ragnar!

Hail Earl Ragnar!

Well, clearly I needed
a hero for the series.

I needed a lead character.

And so I was looking for
an important Viking.

I was looking for a Viking
who made a difference.

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But with the Vikings, obviously,

there is plenty of debate about
who is who and what was what

and what happened,

because the Vikings
were a non-literate culture.

they didn't write
anything down themselves.

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This is a real cultural treasure,

this manuscript.

It's written around 1400.

It was given as a
gift to the Danish King.

What is special about
this manuscript is

this is the only complete
manuscript of Ragnar saga

that we have.

The saga tells about Ragnar as
a young man going on raids

and acting in wars,
what he has achieved,

how many people he has killed,

how young he was when he
went to war for the first time.

And his fearlessness.

The historicity of Ragnar Lothbrok,

did he exist or not,

is also one of the endearing puzzles
of Viking's culture.

A big part of Ragnar's story is
the story of his sons

and people like
Bjorn Ironside were real,

they were absolutely real.

We know this.

We know of the things they did,
the adventures they had.

Your father is Ragnar Lothbrok.

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For so many known real Vikings to
have claimed the same person

as their literal father, that's
not going back very far in time.

Your father is a person
that people would have met,

that to me argues that
he has a basis in fact.

Ha!

Do I think Ragnar existed?

Yes, I think he did, but I don't
think that we are able to know

much for certain about him.

One of the central
characters in the TV series

is Lagertha, Ragnar's wife.

Ida, is your mother teaching
you how to use a shield?

Yes, I know how to use a shield.

Your mother
was a famous shield maiden.

- Was?
- Is.

I discovered that there was a
certain amount of ambivalence

in the books I was reading
about shield maidens,

and whether they really existed.

Vikings society's
attitude towards women

was far more enlightened than
the Francs or the Saxons.

You bear a strong
resemblance to my ex-wife.

Women could own property,
divorce their husbands,

fight, rule sometimes.

It seemed perfectly logical,
therefore, that they had to fight.

So, I was quite
determined, from the start,

not only to have a
major female character,

who wasn't just
going to be a housewife,

but to have women
fighting alongside men.

Shield wall!

There was some pushback on that.

There was some
resistance to that idea.

It's always been a source of
great controversy in Viking studies

that is, whether these women,
these warrior women, were real

or a part of the mythology.

These are great warrior
heroines doing brave things,

and sacrificing themselves
for the sake of their lovers

or taking power in their own right.

The gods are always
smiling at brave women.

Like the Valkyries, those
furies who men fear and desire.

I know that you prefer her
because she's a shield maiden,

a warrior.

The classic image of
the shield maiden

is very much one that derives
from the written sources.

So these are after the Viking age.

The key question is
how valid are they

for the Viking age itself?

And from those texts, quite frankly,
we can't really say.

They might go back to real
living people who did this.

They might be heroic embellishments.

But the way to try and
nuance that picture,

to go back to the real Viking age,

is to look at the archeology.

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Now, we find a lot of these.

They're all from the
late 9th and 10th century.

The design is of a figure on a horse,

with a standing figure
in front of the horse.

And both of them
appear to be female.

And the really
crucial thing about these

is that both of them are armed.

And just from these alone,
we can start to make tentative

reconstructions of
what these kinds of figures

would have looked like
if they were real.

What does it mean?

Because it quite clearly meant
something in the Viking age.

The first thing that
we can say about this

is that the idea of the armed women,

is absolutely there
in the Viking mind.

But that still doesn't tell us

whether or not these
depict supernatural women

or whether there really
were female warriors

in the Viking age.

Now we come to another new find,

that was actually dug
out of a block of frozen soil,

in new year 2012.

So a very recent find at a
place called Hornby in Denmark.

And for the first time,
instead of these two dimensional,

flat pendants,
we find a three dimensional

actual model of a warrior woman.

She has the same facial
features of other pendants

that we find with female faces.

She's holding a shield with the
same swirling patterns

that we find on these flat
ones, and a sword.

What archeology is
now starting to show

is that there are images of
armed women from the Viking age.

Shield wall!

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For a long time, we've known that
there are occasional finds

of the burials of women
with weapons in the grave.

But we haven't been finding what
we would call warrior burials of women.

Until relatively recently,
when a grave from a site called Birka,

a grave excavated
actually in the 1870's,

so a long time ago,
absolutely packed with weapons.

We can see it here,
two shields, a sword,

two spears, an ax,
a fighting knife.

And for a long time this has
been reconstructed in the books

and exhibitions, as one of the
absolute classic warrior graves

of the Viking age.

Fine.

But, recently, a team of osteologists,

these are archeologists
specializing in the study of bones,

lead by a very talented
Stockholm researcher,

called Anna Shelstrom,

has been looking at
the skeleton from this grave.

And I'm sure you can
guess what I'm gonna say.

It's the body of a woman.

So, this is a woman buried
with this massive collection of weapons,

on the same basis as we
tend to interpret most graves.

This would be the
burial of a shield maiden.

When we take the two
dimensional figures,

the new three dimensional
figures from Hornby,

and the grave from Birka,

that adds up to a pretty
compelling picture

of what these warrior women
may actually have looked like.

And the really important part of
this is that all these finds

are from the Viking age itself.

These are not from the literary
text world of the saga's.

This is the Viking
age as it really was.

Shield wall!

I have to be clear that there's
a range of scholarly opinions on this.

But certainly I think it's quite probable

that these women were real.

Halt!

You must be the famous
shield maiden Lagertha.

And they say that you are
now an earl in your own right.

How did it happen?

I killed my husband
when he invaded me.

The great hall was central
to Viking society.

I remember when this great hall
was always full of laughter.

In some ways it's a
metaphorical place,

and it's a symbolic place.

It's a metaphor for a lot of
the politics that goes on,

the conspiracy,
the murders, and these raids.

And it's symbolic because, you know,

it symbolizes a lot of Vikings values.

It is our custom to
celebrate such an alliance

as the gods celebrated theirs.

Skol!

We're feasting and with pledges.

Skol!

The bonds of loyalty,
of obligation, of hospitality,

are the cement that holds
Viking society together.

And the great hall is the arena

where all those things were
played out and displayed

and spoken of and demonstrated.

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And here we are in Lejre,
where we have some

of the largest Viking
age holes ever found.

What we've just stepped into here

is truly a residence fit for a king.

Definitely.

So, we're looking at what,
five meters of timber

above us here?

Yeah.

With roof supporting
posts in the middle.

And these posts, they're
almost tree's aren't they?

- Yep.
- I mean they're huge things, like this...

There probably would have been
a kind of partition wall here or something.

You don't walk
directly into the hall,

which I think is very important
in these houses,

also that they show that
access is controlled.

The king had his
own seat in the hall.

- The high seat.
- The high seat, yeah.

You would probably have
benches along the walls.

I've probably just
walked through the fire.

It's not very wise.

So you have a big
rectangular fireplace

in the middle of the structure

and this isn't just like a
small wood fire,

these are big, big things.

We're talking about something
that would have been this wide

and really long.

A big blaze of light in the middle.

So the hall is the absolute
centre of Viking life.

Here we are
in a very wet and tough walk.

Can you tell me what
we're seeing here?

Ya, I mean it might
not look like much,

but we're right in the middle
of a huge Viking age settlement.

It's going all the way up to
the green barn over there.

There's a small dip where
the settlement stops,

and it goes all the way
into the next field as well.

This is not a culture that
left behind enormous monuments

like The Coliseum or the Taj Mahal.

This is a culture that built in
wood, leather things like that.

And these are all things
that rot away.

So our knowledge of the Vikings
comes from excavations

of their settlements
and their graves.

So Anna, this is material from
your excavations at Toftegaard.

It is, it is.

This is quite high end stuff.

Not every family would
have had something like this.

You dip this into the pot

and bring out your
big chunk of meat.

It's finds like this that,
apart from anything else, tells us

about the status of this place.

Because, of course,
everybody has to eat,

- but not using utensils like this.
- No, no, no, no.

So you can see how
finely made this is.

You can see the traces of
decoration in the centre there.

This twisted band.

The feast.

Feasting is a big component
as to what goes on in these buildings.

You would receive the hospitality
of the lord of the hall.

Skol.

But, in return, you would
pledge a loyalty to him,

either in terms of,
contributing to the upkeep

of his community
or, more particularly, in war.

Now, who will be the first
to drink in celebration?

It's better without the bag.

This is really interesting.

Oh, wow!

- Heavy, too.
- Ya!

It was guilded.

So this originally would have
been shiny and bright like gold.

When we're talking about the halls,
they are very dim environments.

They're lit by the fire,
and this kind of jewellery...

The firelight would reflect off it.

So people are walking about and
they'd shimmer as they moved.

I wanna show you this bit.

It might not look of much,

but I think it tells an
interesting story.

It's probably a rim of a
bowl and it's probably looted.

We can see that, from the art,

that it comes from
the British Isles.

This is quite possibly
a monastic object,

actually from the monastery.

And given the date of Toftegaard,

which is the late 8th century.

This is exactly the time of the raids

on the British monasteries.

So they're proper Vikings.

Don't mess with them, no.

The lord would
redistribute that wealth.

You know, you helped me with
this raid, here are rings

and bullion and all kinds of loot.

And that would also then trickle
down into the rest of society.

This is also what
makes it a bit unstable,

a little bit dangerous.

What a hoard is this.

What a hoard it is!

And the earls, they only
existed and survived

as long as they provided for
their people, in other words,

as long as the raiding
parties were successful,

as long as they were strong.

If they weren't,
they were just disposed.

It was just as simple as that.

The world is changing,
and we must change with it.

People are ambitious and they
like to go up the social scale.

So it's a society that's in a
constant kind of tension.

I've even heard some people say

that Earl Ragnar
is becoming like Earl Haraldson.

People would rather
like to get up there,

and the people up there
would rather they didn't.

But they still need them

in order to maintain
their own position.

And all of this is being acted
out in the space of the hall.

Ragnar Lothbrok.

Do you imagine ships
such as dead things?

We've blown miles off course.

Who knows where we are.

I joke about many things,
but never about ship building.

It's my fault,
and the gods love my faults.

The ship is like the
symbol of the Viking age.

It's amazing to me that nobody else

had boats anything like them.

The Saxons had no way of
protecting the coastlines

or rivers from Vikings.

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One fantastic thing about
the Skuldelev ships

was that it represented
five different ship types.

Finding these fantastic
Skuldelev ships

allowed us to build reconstructions

and then we could do
experimental archeology

by building them, by sailing it.

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I've just noticed
some of the repairs.

There is actually one right here.

It's a bit difficult to see from
the outside, but we can try it.

Here you can see the plank.

It's one plank put
into another plank.

There is a new overlap here.

That is exactly how
we do our repairs.

I can tell which trees would
make the best planks

just by looking at them.

I can look inside the tree.

This is one.

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When you cleave a plank out,
you make it very strong

because you follow the
grain in the tree.

And that's the
problem with the saw,

it would just cut straight.

So it would cut all
the fibers in the tree

and that's not only the planks,

that's also all the curved pieces.

You have to go into the forest,
find the right piece of curve.

You're not cutting over the fibers

if you have the right
shape of piece.

That's why it's so
important for boat builders

if they find the right piece
in the forest of an oak tree,

you have to bring it home.

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The advantages of
clinker build is that

the two planks,
when they overlap,

then the overlap it's
kind of a strength itself.

It's not stiff,
the result is flexibility.

And if you think
like in your modern head,

that you have to
build strong and stiff,

it will break when
you're going into sea.

This means the boat won't butt
against the waves like a goat,

but move over them like a ripple.

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It's not as if we can experience
exactly the same things

as the Vikings did,
but you get an idea.

And that is how we use
experiments here at the museum,

because you go out and you
get an impression

of what it is like
being on board the ship,

instead of, you know,
sitting behind a desk

and just reading about it.

When I was on board
as a crew member

I functioned as a mid-ship man,

which means I was located here
in the middle of the ship,

around the mast.

What I experienced there was that

I tried to get an idea of
the special conditions

of being on board such a long
and narrow ship as this is.

Crewed with 60 people.

This is where you would
have the helmsman,

and you would have
the skipper or the captain in that sense.

The crew see's it here,
would work with the sheets,

controlling the sheets of the sail.

In front of the ship, the very front,
you have the lookout.

Which has a very
important function on the ship.

Hoist sails!

You can imagine 60 people here

in this very long and narrow ship.

And you would have
a big square sail.

And you would have
the elements out there

when you're sailing the ship.

Then it's basically impossible
for the lookout here to shout

all the way to the aft of the ship.

Jump ship!

And the way that it has been
solved when we are sailing

with the Sea Stallion,
is that we have used a middle man.

By direct orders from the
skipper and the helmsman,

which need to be
known by the whole crew.

Sail down!

The whole experience
of being on board,

being able to be
a part of that crew...

Heave!

...trains you into becoming
sort of a very coherent military unit.

So, my theory is that being
on board these ships

could be seen as a training camp.

The ships are shaping the crew.

It might be part of the success

that the Viking has in
the military of raiding,

was basically that they were sailing
on board these ships.

This is a place of God!

Viking raiders were very
real and very bad indeed.

There should be treasure.

But that's very much a tiny
fraction of the whole picture.

Proper Vikings, real Vikings
they're quite special people.

Quite unusual people.

So this is very much
the top end of the scale,

but, when you go down to the
ordinary farmers building,

it's the same traditions of hospitality,

and the importance of
the hearth and the home,

but just at a different scale.

To friends and freedom!

The characters break the
mold of historical truths.

I like that sense of getting a
character who clambers

out of the coffin of historical
necessity and starts to be real.

And starts to be plausible.

It's the way into the Viking
mindset and the Viking world.

Hail Earl Ragnar!

Sync & corrections by Elderfel
www.addic7ed.com