Original subtitles

1,200 years ago, the North Atlantic was pristine and pure

A land ruled by gyrfalcon,

by walrus,

by reindeer

But ancient people came to claim these lands too

People like the Vikings

This was a world they exploited, but it was a world they also

nurtured and revered

Now travel back in time to see the natural world

through ancient eyes

Travel back in time to experience the wild way of the Vikings

Born of fire

And shaped by ice

The islands of the North Atlantic are among the harshest

places on Earth

But the seas and coasts here hold vast natural riches

From the 9th century onwards, these wild lands were conquered

by the most advanced seafarers the world had ever seen

The Vikings

From their homelands in Scandinavia,

to the coast of North America,

they traversed the ocean in the greatest adventure

of the age

but there was another side to the Vikings,

one we are only just starting to understand

Their profound relationship with the natural world

Its fabulous wild animals

Its awe-inspiring spectacle

And above all, its pristine wilderness

It's late winter in the Viking heartlands of Central Norway,

and the reindeer are on the move

After six months of broken twilight,

at last the sun has lifted itself above the mountain peaks,

and the animals sense the change

Big herds of reindeer range these mountains

Herds, many thousand strong

They are perhaps the single most significant wild animal

for the early Vikings

Every part of the animal is used

Their hides, their antlers, their meat, their sinews

And hunting them is a regular activity

Broad Birchwood skis with bindings of twine and leather are the best

way of moving across the snowbound landscape

It's a chance encounter with a herd, but one no Viking can resist

Just a single opportunistic shot, but the alarm wave surges

through the herd like an electric current

It's a defence strategy, designed to confuse any predator,

whether wolf, bear, or Viking

But achieving a clean kill in a swirling melee like this

is difficult

Hunting reindeer is a communal activity,

using knowledge of animal behaviour to nudge them

towards the perfect shot

There will be another chance tomorrow, with more hunters.

The herd is heading west now, west to the calving grounds

In the year 800 AD, the Viking peoples are also pushing West

West, across the Atlantic

With a wooden hull latched together with flexible whalebone strips,

Viking ships can travel faster and further than any vessel

of their day

Driven by the desire for conquest and trade,

the Atlantic was crossed an island step at a time,

taking the Viking adventurers into inspiring new worlds,

full of remarkable birds and beasts

By the year 810, the Vikings had reached the Shetland Islands

They weren't the first people to live here

The Iron Age tower of Mousa Broch had stood for 1000 years

when the long ships first arrived

For settlers arriving in this strange and windblown world,

Mousa Broch is a critical navigational tool

Viking sagas tell of it being used as a hideout for lovers,

eloping from Norway to Iceland

But most Viking Age people seemed to have given it a wide berth

Perhaps because these ancient walls echo with unearthly sounds

But these are no trolls or demons

Not even bats or moths

They're storm petrels

At the size of a sparrow, the tiniest sea bird in the world

For early mariners, storm petrels are an ill omen

One of these tiny birds taking refuge

on a ship crossing the Atlantic

may warn of an approaching storm

But darkness and ill weather are things that storm petrels

are well adapted to cope with

Using a remarkable sense of smell, they can navigate back to their nest

cavities in the pitch darkness

Each pair nurtures a single egg

Carefully brooded on the bare rock

Incubation duty can last for many days, and changeovers can only

happen under the cover of darkness, when there's a gap in the weather

By any stretch of imagination, it's a life of hardship for such

a tiny ocean wanderer

Shetland soon became a vital staging post in the Vikings

great North Atlantic adventure

The archipelago of over 100 islands offered many sheltered anchorages

for the settlers

Surrounded by bountiful seas

Seas which are also perfect for a mammal that seems

to have appeared here at the same time as the Viking colonists

The otter

Because the islands are well beyond the swimming range of animals

in Norway and Scotland, it's thought by some experts

that it was the Vikings that first brought them here

We don't know whether they arrived as pets,

or were imported to be farmed for their fur

But they quickly established themselves in the wild here

With its endlessly cryptic coastline, Shetland is a wonderful

place for an otter family

Females here often raise three cubs

Feeding them up on a rich diet of shallow water fish,

crabs, and octopus

The seaweed-covered inlets and bays also offer plenty of spots to rest

and bed down in between fishing trips

In Norse mythology, Otter was the son

of the magician, Hreidmar

A man by day, but at night, a fisherman to surpass all others

Like otters, the Vikings are adept fishermen

Limpets are used as bait to catch species like coley,

using nets weighted down with stones

Archaeological records have revealed that fish often made up

more than 25% of the Viking diet

In Shetland, much fishing is done in the shallows

alongside the otters

The catch can then be cooked and eaten on the beach straight away

The sheltered bays of Shetland also offer sanctuary for harbour seals

In the summer months, females give birth here

on these quiet beaches

Seals are special to the Vikings

Their skins provide them with clothing,

footwear, and rope for rigging

And in some North Atlantic settlements, they are

a major food supply

But the Vikings aren't the only ones on the hunt for seals

Orca

Perhaps taking the same route as the Viking colonists themselves

An orca pod can cross from Norway to Shetland in less than 48 hours

But after a two-day journey,

they're hungry

Seal-hunting orca know exactly how to exploit time and tide

The exposed skerries may offer sanctuary for now,

but as the rising tide covers the rocks, the seals

will have to enter the water

And the orca know it

Beneath the surface, all oral communication ceases

And the orca pod switches into hunting mode

Total silence

Any seal in open water is now in peril for its life

If they can hide in the kelp forest, they may escape detection

But like Viking raiders, the orca are ruthless,

well organised,

and fiercely intelligent

Two members of the pod use tail slaps to flush out hiding seals

While another pair follow silently behind

They sight a target,

and split up to cut off any escape routes

The seal makes a dash for open water

Straight towards the rest of the pod

The seal must surface,

and the circling orca are ready and waiting

Killed by the orca bull's Thor hammer tail slap,

it never stood a chance

After sharing the kill, the pod retreats to deeper water

Like the Vikings themselves, they will hunt seals

and other marine mammals across the Atlantic islands

Cast from towering volcanic basalt and petrified ash,

the Faroe Islands are a symphony in rock and water

By the year 825, the Viking settlers had established a small colony here

Living by subsistence farming, supplemented by one of the richest

natural resources in the subarctic world,

seabirds

In the breeding season, seabirds are a more important

food supply than livestock, fish, and whales combined

Puffins are eaten most often,

but the larger gannets provide a special prize

With bare feet, and a well-practised grip,

the Vikings scale the dizzying heights of the colony

The young gannets are the tenderest and most prized

But they've only appeared in the very highest ledges

of the colony

They're protected by dagger-like bills

more than six inches long

But sooner or later, the adults will have to leave

in search of food

Perhaps no other bird masters air and water like a gannet

With a long narrow six-foot wingspan, a gannet can hover,

glide,

soar,

and dive

But it's beneath the surface of the water that they really

come into their own

With the Atlantic offering up such bounty, the constant fishing trips

barely make a dent in the vast resources of the sea

The Vikings too only take what they need,

leaving the colony thriving and ready for the next harvest

In the 9th century, gannet numbers across the northern world

may have run into tens of millions

Individual colonies teeming with hundreds of thousands of birds

A few eggs are harvested too

And the light hollow wing bones can be used as cases

for needles and pins

This is the true spirit of the wild way of the Vikings

Take everything that you need, but value it for as long as you can

A single precious trinket will be used for generations

By the year 874, the Viking colonists had reached

the island of Iceland

It's possible that the Vikings were the first people to set foot

in this world of ice and fire

One of the very last places on Earth to be colonised by humanity

10% glacier, and 50% mountainous lava desert

The landscape must surely have resonated with Viking settlers,

whose religion was rich with ice giants, human mountains

and rivers of fire

Only one other land mammal had colonised this savage landscape

before the Vikings

Crossing on an ice bridge at the end of the Pleistocene period,

it's an animal as tenacious and as hardy as any Viking

The Arctic fox

In summer, Arctic foxes feed almost exclusively on seabirds

Their denning is timed exactly to coincide with the bounty

on the ledges

The first tiny pups, as black as coal, start to emerge

from their den four weeks after birth

Litters of 14 are common,

so suckling a litter of seven

is quite achievable for this experienced female

Arctic foxes are dedicated and careful parents

Even the runt in this litter is given special attention

It's an exhausting schedule for the female

And once the feeding is done,

she settles down to rest, while her litter plays

Arctic foxes can quite happily exist in temperatures of minus 70 degrees

So it's not surprising that their fur is the warmest

of any mammal on Earth

The practically-minded Vikings soon put this fur to good use,

for clothing and bedding

It would also have been a valuable trading commodity for these

9th-century entrepreneurs

Farming in Iceland is challenging

But the newly arrived Vikings soon realised that one bird species

could be farmed while staying absolutely wild

The eider

Eider always nest near the shoreline,

and once a site has been chosen, the females line the bowl

of the nest with the down from their breasts

Eider duck farming is big business in Viking Age Iceland

With nesting ducks encouraged,

and predators like Arctic foxes controlled

Down can be harvested from the nests and carefully

replaced with hay without disturbing the brooding ducks

Carefully cleaned of grass and straw, the pure down

can be bagged up, used as lining for bedding

and clothes, or traded for other goods

Eider down offers superb insulation, because the densely barbed feathers

hold tiny pockets of air

This also makes it very buoyant, which can create problems

for a newly hatched duckling

By the year 950, the island of Iceland was booming

with an influx of new settlers from Norway,

Scotland, and Ireland

Its economy was completely driven by the resources

that the North Atlantic was able to offer

Natural products were fashioned into valuable commodities here

Antler from Norwegian reindeer could be carved into combs

and traded for timber

A hugely valuable resource

in a landscape almost devoid of trees

Tiny animal immigrants were also arriving,

stowing away in sacks of imported feed

House mice

Analysis of Icelandic house mouse DNA has revealed

that all the animals on the island have Norwegian ancestors

It seems that these enterprising little creatures carry the genetic

signature of human history

The ecology of Iceland was changing fast

But some things stayed resolutely the same

Norse mythology was celebrated here

for much longer than in the Viking homelands of Norway

The oral traditions of saga and history became so intertwined

that fact and fiction merged

Much of what we know of the pagan Viking past,

before the adoption of Christianity originates from stories told

and then written down in Iceland

These stories are alive with animal characters

But one bird takes pride of place

The raven

Wiley and highly intelligent, this the world's largest crow,

would've been a familiar sight to the Vikings

RAVEN CAWS

Both hunter and scavenger, ravens are great survivors

RAVEN CAWS

On the seashore, they're happy to scavenge carcasses,

outranking the smaller, hooded crows

In the Icelandic villages and townships,

they're given a special status

Perhaps even a seat at the King's table

Odin, the All-Father god was attended by two ravens,

called Huginn and Muninn

Spies for the god,

they would fly the world to bring him news of the ways of men

There are even accounts in the sagas of captive ravens

being used for navigation,

guiding ships to land after being released at sea

In the year 985, a rogue adventurer called Erik The Red

reached a strange new land

Even further to the west of the known Viking world

Greenland

The colony Erik established here flourished from harvests

of caribou, seals, and whales

but especially from the bounty offered up

by one very significant species

The walrus

In 10th-century Greenland, huge colonies of walrus

filled the beaches north of the Viking settlements

In late summer, after the breeding season,

these groups can be thousands strong

With a big male weighing in at more than 2000 lb,

these animals are the biggest seals in the northern hemisphere

The Vikings harvest these giants during seasonal expeditions,

using their hides to make ropes for rigging

But the most valuable parts of the animal, by far,

are their tusks

Ivory

Genetic analysis shows

that items like the chessmen found in the Hebridean Isle of Lewis

were fashioned in the ivory workshops of Norway...

.. using tasks from the western Greenland walrus colonies

Precious items like carved chesspieces

were treasured by the Vikings

And like all their personal items, they were used, valued

and passed on from generation to generation

This was no throwaway culture

In lands with such scant resources,

pure beauty was as important as material worth

But ivory wasn't the most valuable resource found in Greenland

Prized above all other birds,

trade in the white gyrfalcon was a cornerstone

of the far westerly Viking economies for two centuries

Gyrfalcons are the largest and heaviest member

of the falcon family

Hunting the subarctic tundra

for mountain hare, ptarmigan, and grouse,

they can reach speeds of 90mph in level flight

Historical and archaeological evidence has revealed

the Vikings sustainably caught young gyrfalcons

and then traded them across their entire network,

to be used in a sport that was rapidly growing in popularity

Falconry

Trained to fly to allure,

a big female gyr could command a price so high

that only the highest echelons of European nobility could afford one

Owning a white gyrfalcon is the ultimate statement

of power and glamour

By the year 1000, the Vikings had reached the very extremes

of the Western Atlantic

Icelandic sagas recount that in this year,

Erik The Red's son, Leif found himself blown off course

while on a mission to bring the new religion of Christianity

to his father's colony in Greenland

In an age before magnetic navigation, Vikings lost at sea

may have been able to plot their position using a sun compass

But above all, the movements of birds and mammals

gave the Vikings important clues about their position

Breeding seabirds will always guide a ship to land

But the sagas reveal that the mightiest pathfinders of all...

.. were the great whales

With a range that covers the whole North Atlantic,

humpback whales are special travelling companions

to the Vikings

Humpbacks always feed in inshore waters

So a whale located at sea will eventually lead you to land

The sagas tell us that Leif eventually made landfall

in a place that he called Vinland,

but we now know it as Newfoundland

Could Leif's guides to this new world have been the whales?

Did they pilot his ship to this new land

which seemed so strange and yet

so similar to the Viking homelands in distant Norway?

We'll never know for sure

But it's certain that the seas around this part of North America

would've been teeming with whales at the time of Leif's voyage

And it's certainly possible they led these 11th-century

pioneers to landfall

The first Europeans to reach North America

In less than 200 years,

the Vikings had traversed the North Atlantic...

.. learned how to work with its vast natural resources...

.. and created a trading network

that covered much of the known world

So, what can we, in the 21st century,

learn from the wild way of the Vikings?

Our world has tipped in humanity's favour

There are seven billion more people on planet Earth

than in the age of the Vikings

But despite that, the humpback whales,

the vast seabird colonies and herds of reindeer

are still with us, and it will be our legacy

as to whether they remain

We'll never see the wilderness of the north

as the Vikings did in those ancient days

But we can still value each animal and its place in the world

We can watch them...

.. live alongside them...

.. protect them...

.. and above all, be inspired by them,

and their wild ways

The Wild Way of the Vikings film was, by some stretch,

the most exciting, ambitious, and ultimately rewarding project

I think I've ever been involved in

So, the whole film turned into something of an essay,

not only about the wildlife of the North Atlantic,

but the wildlife of the North Atlantic in the Viking Age

Without a doubt, the most exciting thing to film

during the Vikings project for me was the orca

I'd been based up in Shetland for three months at that point,

and on my very second day in the Shetland,

I'd seen orca from Sumburgh Head and at that point,

you're maybe thinking, "Oh, this is great,

we're going to get all these" "opportunities to film the orca

And in those 12 weeks, I never saw the orca again til the last week

Richard and myself, the other cameraman who did the drone filming

would get up at six o'clock every morning and have a phone call,

thinking about where they'd last been seen,

where we think they might be today

When you're following the orca, even if you pick headlands to go to,

they can swim past you in just a few seconds,

and all you get is a glimpse of them as they pass you by

So, to actually spend enough time with them to film behaviour

was what was going to prove to be a challenge

On one particular day, I think it was the 24th of July,

we watched as the pod came in, and quickly identified

there was a seal on the bottom, and we were almost in disbelief

as we watched them kind of circling just over one spot,

knowing that somewhere down there,

there was a seal desperately trying to escape for its life

You just remember this huge splash

And this is something that's maybe only been seen a few dozen times,

certainly only may be filmed once or twice ever before

I think one of my favourite bits in the film is the Vikings

as they move amongst the gannet colony

And when you watch it, it's so dramatic

And I think the actual shoot was probably just as dramatic

The most difficult job I've ever been given as a drone operator

was to fly amongst the gannets

Naturally, I was slightly nervous

But on the positive side, what we knew about gannets is that

despite the fact they're very territorial at their nesting sites,

actually, when they're in the air, they're quite passive

So, the risk was minimised

We also had spotters, as well, but it wasn't to say

it wasn't hairy, cos it was

We had a drone which was like the ultimate game of space invaders,

3D space invaders

There was a couple of times when some gannets flew

really close to the lens, and yeah

my heart fluttered

Definitely fluttered

They were climbing up the cliffs, and we thought, you know

They'd look so much better" "in barefoot

So the two re-enactors were slightly surprised when we said,

Could you take your shoes and socks off,

and just scale this cliff" "for us, please?

But they were pretty game, and we checked in with

all the health and safety crew, and it looks amazing

I think it's one of the really, really exciting shots in the film

For these Icelandic sequences, it's the camera assistant,

Stephen McGee-Callender, who appears in those Viking scenes

We asked him to grow his hair long

Stephen had to walk through an Arctic tern colony

Arctic terns are very aggressive

if anything goes anywhere near their nests

They took a particular liking

to Stephen's rather long hair and beard

So, it felt like they were dive-bombing him to try and pluck

out some of that hair and beard, possibly to line their nests

Or maybe they just didn't like the look of him, I'm not sure

So, with the storm petrels, to film that scene,

we were filming between 11pm and 2am, as these birds only

actually return to the nest sites under the short hours of darkness

that you get in summertime

That was a real challenge, working with low light,

and also obviously trying to minimise the disturbance

to the birds

Because we were camping on Moussa, it's an uninhabited island,

we had to bring our own fresh water

We had no electricity, no heating

So, the conditions were probably not dissimilar to something

the Vikings would've experienced

We heard over the radio that a storm was coming in,

and true to form, one of the great storms came

across the Atlantic

We're talking winds of 60mph, pouring with rain,

so, it proved to be a challenge to not only film in those

conditions, but it was actually quite challenging

for the animals, themselves

I brought two tents with me, fortunately,

but both of them were actually destroyed

!My tent was the best tent

All the other crew's tents blew down

The crew, we were stuck out in this bad weather,

so, I think the storm petrels, to be honest, they had...

They had a better idea of how to hide away than the crew did

I think the single most outstanding scene that we filmed

was the scene involving the Viking hunter and the reindeer herds

Our Viking archer, who's called Dag,

turned up and executed this scene, and it was just fabulous

He had this amazing set of birch wood skis that were replicas

of like 1000-year-old Viking skis

And these had been found at the foot of a melting glacier

So, to see this guy turn up with moose and beaver pelt boots,

with the amazing Viking clothing, and a set of birch wood skis,

we instantly thought that this combined with the reindeer

would really create a spectacular sequence

Just seeing that number of reindeer thundering around together,

I mean, natural history's kind of filmed everything,

but that felt new and fresh

For a project like this, it really draws on the passion

and work of so many people

When we started this film, I had no idea the level of stories

that would unfold as we started to dig into it

Just the sheer resourcefulness of the Vikings, and their intimate

knowledge of nature has been a real eye-opener