How the Vikings Worked

In most films Vikings are depicted as bloodthirsty, relatively ignorant berserkers who did little more than plunder and pillage their way across Europe. However, the story doesn't end there -- tune in to this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined by staff writer Jane mc
grath Pagans. I think that Vikings are some of the
coolest people and all of history. They really are. They're

(00:22):
like pirates um at times ten and they're just like,
they're so awesome. And I think that one of the
best things about Vikings is that their religion. They were pagan,
so they had a pandeon of gods, and their foes
in the universe were evil giants and dwarves and dark elves,
and it's just like a storybook come to life. I
think it's just so fascinating. It is original. Their religion, sorry,

(00:45):
is very fascinating in that. Um. I guess everybody's heard
of thor uh. Yeah, they got a thunder at the hammer.
He was actually he was really strong. Obviously, he's also
known as being kind of stupid. Um, but he wasn't.
What I found is shying is that he wasn't their
ultimate god. They had a for an ultimate god. There
there's Zeus so to speak, was named Odin and he
was the main god and they had this whole drawn

(01:06):
out like mythology about Yeah, like you said, the giants
and this battle would happen. I think it's called reg Norak.
I'm not sure how that's pronounced, but um, yeah, this
they had this whole idea of this battle would happen
between their gods and the and the enemy giants, and
that the world would be consumed in this fire and
everything like that, and and just in the world would uh,

(01:29):
there'd be enough members of both races to just barely
survive a new world after that. And they just had
this all mapped out for the future. Yeah, And it
was sort of strange in the context that it was
a very self defeatist sort of religion because they thought
that evil would triumph over good, and so Vikings and
warriors would continue to fight alongside Odin even in their afterlives,

(01:52):
but evil would ultimately overcome the good and the universe
would be plunged into darkness and chaos. Who wants to
we wants to make up a story like that? Like, well,
it got me thinking, Jane, because we know that Vikings
have this reputation as being pillagers and raiders, and I
thought maybe they were living for the here and now,
you know, steal from all the good people and enjoy

(02:12):
the money and the resources while you have them. And
so we may be getting a little bit ahead of ourselves.
So let's start back at square one. Viking itself as
a term that the origins of which are are pretty nebulous.
It's sort of lost in the annals of history. And
Viking history itself is is also pretty nebulous because most

(02:33):
of the written record about Vikings come from Christians because
they were literate at the time, and when Vikings came,
monasteries and churches were hotspots for them to raid because
there were so many riches contained within. So of course,
you know, the monks and the other religious authorities there
wouldn't have written very complimentary things about the Vikings, so
that's why they have such a predominantly negative reputation. On

(02:56):
the other hand, the Viking side of the story has
been handed down through epic poems and saga's. It's all
oral history, and you know very well that oral history
changes as it goes through the year, so don't know
a lot about them. That's true, and it's interesting comparing
it to like stories like Beowulf and stuff like that.
Those were also stories told in in similar time periods

(03:18):
by these these poets and for Vikings, those Scandinavian peoples
at least, uh, they were told by these people named skalds,
and they would just recite these very intricate, detailed stories
um and some of which were eventually written down after
the people were assimilated with with the Europeans, but a
lot of them have been lost to history exactly. So

(03:38):
we don't know what the term Viking itself means, but
we have some guesses, and those guesses range from pirate
to ports an even body of water. And the raids
that Vikings would go on were known as I Viking
sort of like iPod different words right right now. It's
interesting because our article on our site actually makes a

(04:02):
good point in that, uh, we should differentiate between Vikings
as sort of an occupation of like they were really
just pirates, and they were part of these peoples from Scandinavia,
like Sweden and Norway and Denmark and these areas um
north of Europe um, and so we should differentiate when
we talk about them, definitely, And Vikings were such courageous people,

(04:27):
and I think that that's a fact that gets lost
in the more glamorous aspect of the Viking legend, which again,
as you know, the raping and pillaging and plundering, that's
the sort of juicy stuff we'd like to hear about.
But other scholars point out that they were also incredibly
well organized and very very sturdy men. And another important point,

(04:47):
all Vikings were men. Women didn't have a place and
that particular part of the culture. And we know that
they found a Dublin, they conquered Normandy, they ruled half
of England, They sailed to North America, they traded with
the Middle East and North Africa. We even have some
archaeological evidence that points to the fact that they traded
with Turkey and Russia. And we did an earlier podcast

(05:07):
um about a month or so ago about Easter Island,
and we talked about how the Easter Islanders left their
home and sailing in these you know, sturdy but rather
makeshift boats to who knows where they were going. And
the Vikings were kind of like that too. They had
these clinker built ships which were made of over overlapping
planks of wood, and some scholars wonder if Vikings knew

(05:28):
exactly where they were going, or if like the Easter Islanders.
They were just setting out sail hoping to find land somewhere.
So you have to think that these people who were
on these ships, these these crews were up against high
winds and stormy seas. There was very little opportunity to sleep.
Sometimes you know, they may have just landed just to
get some rest. That's right. And it is regardless of

(05:49):
like what motivated them or whether they knew where they
were going. UM, it is amazing how far they went.
Like if you look at a map of where they went,
it's just interesting. You never think of them going down
of the Mediterranean, but they did and um, and their
ships were amazing feet of technology at the time too.
They had uh square sales, but they also had or

(06:10):
so it's both stale and or um. And they're about
between forty five and seventy five ft long. Uh and
they were double ended, many of them, so that they
could basically go either way without turning around. And historians
speculate that it is actually motivated by the nature of
their land. Where they came from is very inhospitable. Uh.
It was it's mountainous and it's cold, and and what's more,

(06:32):
when you think of Scandinavia. You also think of lots
of islands and peninsulas and smaller parcels of land, and
so the Vikings expanding their empire, they needed more land
or they needed to go to places that had resources
that they couldn't support on their soil and bring it back.
And you were referring to this this population boom in
the Scandinavians, and some historians think that there was a

(06:54):
warming trend and that contributed to the ability to grow
more food, which led to a bigger population and eventually
the clans that existed within the Vikings, you know, the
Scandinavians encompassed the Swedes and the Danes and um other
groups of Scandinavian tribes. They were they were fighting each
other so much they had to go out and strike

(07:15):
new territory, It's true. And we also contributed to this
because they were surrounded by water and so there was
a great source of food for them was to go fishing,
and they were lucky enough to have like plenty of
trees around and so they quickly developed good good ships,
as we mentioned, and this all came together and that
they wouldn't go raiding exactly. And another factor was that
whether you were in Norwegian or Swedish or Danish, it

(07:37):
was very much a matter of tradition to be a Viking.
Maybe your father was maybe your father's father, father's father's father,
and it was considered, you know, very manly and very
virile to be a part of this culture. And some
of these men were so virile that they were called berserkers,
and they would fight with the intensity of beasts, even
drape animal pelts on themselves, and they acted as that
they were immune to pain. It's sort of wild, but

(07:59):
again part to this tradition, and other historians speculate that
Viking raids could have been carried out by exiled Scandinavians.
They would have put criminals, convicted criminals on ships and
just told them to sail away, get out of dodge.
And if you are a hard up criminal on a
ship in the middle of nowhere, you would probably be
tempted to steal from the first percel of land that

(08:20):
you saw. You would take the resources. Sure, sure, And
that makes sense. That theory doesn't make sense if you
think about the story of how um some Vikings founded
Greenland Um, because you might know that the Vikings had
settled Iceland pretty early on, and uh there was this
one Viking named Eric the Red who actually committed murder,

(08:41):
and so the Vikings exiled him. And so he had
heard stories though there's land to the west um sort
of legendary stories, and so he um took his boat
and he had it out there with his people, his men,
and so he founded Greenland after that, and his son,
aptly named leaf Ericsson actually went west further after him

(09:01):
and founded um Land on North America. And it's interesting
to look at the type of government that Vikings had
in Scandinavia, because we've said before they were extremely well organized,
and while they may have been somewhat bloodthirsty, there was
a method to the madness. And we know that they
had a primitive democracy. They had assemblies called things, and

(09:23):
they met pretty regularly, and so it was very much
a controlled procedure whenever they went out. And the raiding
parties that settled at different ports in different countries eventually
evolved into armies, and so they would sometimes stay behind,
not all of them, but some of them and the
lands that they they rated, and they would either assimilate
among the people or they would strike deals with the

(09:44):
leaders to get part of the land. And one of
the most interesting stories about that is how they came
to acquire Normandy and one of the Viking rulers struck
a deal with the Frankish king Charles is simple and
it was. It was pretty civil deal. The deal was,
if you convert to Christianity, uh Viking leader, then I
will give you Normandy. And that's Vikings got Normandy and

(10:09):
France was appeased. And it was almost not exactly but
it was similar to your way of paying tribute, and
that was something that Vikings would demand of other lands.
And we've discussed tribute on another podcast before, but basically
the promise of having someone pay you money so you
don't bully them, sort of like, yeah, that the bully
taking your your lunch money and agreeing not to meet
you at exchange. Sure, and a similar story actually happened

(10:32):
in England. We were talking about Normandy. Um. England has
this famous Alfred the Great. He was like the only
English king. I think it was given that that's the
great title. But he is mostly famous for holding off
the Vikings and he did at one point make an
agreement like that one, and that the Viking leader this
one was called Gootherum, he promised to convert to Christianity

(10:53):
and Alfred actually ended up being his godfather. Um. Yeah,
and this is an exchange. So he said, oh, you
convert to Christianity and you're gonna some of this land.
And he also made deals, like you said, of of
paying them uh to for to stop fighting and it
worked for a while. And so we've been mentioning that
Vikings weren't just raiders but traders, and you may be asking, well,

(11:14):
where's the evidence for that? And if you look at
some of the sites that archaeologists have uncovered, you can
see that it reads like a variable map of where
have the Viking Vikings been. And we see that some
Vikings buried in Sweden are buried in um Chinese silk
garments made of Chinese silk, and then other Vikings who

(11:35):
were buried in burial ships are they're painted blue. And
whether it's Indian Indigo or it's Lapist from the Middle East,
we're not sure. But it's definitely evidence that they were
trading with these people. And we know for sure it
was a trade and not a raid because there were
these thin silver coins called Durham's and they were manufactured
in Bagdad. But it would have been a way of

(11:55):
of bartering and trading and giving commission for these goods
and paying back instead of just taking. That's true, and
it's interesting. I guess it would make sense that we
believe now that they set up trading posts in the
in the places where they did raid. Um. It's interesting
going back to how their ratings works. They're like when
they ended up raiding uh the coasts of Europe and such,

(12:17):
they would use very advanced uh technological weapons. UM that
would and they were so swift about it that people
could hardly muster their defenses when when the Vikings came
storming in and what they particularly used. They used longswords, javelins,
but especially the battle ax. They're known for using the
battle ax and throwing it um, but also bows and

(12:38):
arrows and stuff like that. And forum protection they used
up padded leather UM and breastpeed plate of iron often
and like the very rich could use a mail shirt,
which it was expensive and it took a while to make,
but um they had that technology and their helmets were
made of iron. Was interesting about their helmets. You you
may have an image in your mind of a Viking

(12:59):
helmet has like a metal piece down the middle for
the nose to protect the face. But if in your
mind you might also be picturing the famous horns on
a on a helmet. You see this in like Capital
one commercials, you know, like Vikings with their horns on
their helmets. And this is actually kind of uh not true,
or at least archaeologists believe now that they wouldn't have
warned these in battle, and then it would have added

(13:19):
extra weight. It would have been awkward. And it's true
that archaeologists have found some of like evidence that these existed,
but um, they believe it predated the Viking Age. And
if you're wondering what the other Scandinavians who were not
Vikings were doing, if we have an answer for you.
They were farmers, they were fishermen, uh, they were merchants.

(13:40):
And we know for sure that these professions existed because
there are different types of ships dating from around the
Viking era, and they're all different sizes, and they're built
in different ways for different functions, and we know that
there are separate ones that exist for carrying cargo, for
conducting war raids, and for fishing. So if you weren't
a Viking, you could still be involve from Scandinavia. All

(14:01):
hope is not lost and there's just so much more
for you to learn about Vikings and about Scandinavia and
that particular time period. So would be sure to check
out our articles on how stuff works dot com for
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(14:23):
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