The World of Vikings

By Justin Pollard and Michael Hirst

The official companion book to the first three seasons of the hit History Channel show inspired by a legendary Viking warrior.

MGM’s hit show Vikings on the History Channel has drawn millions of viewers into the fascinating and bloody world of legendary Norse hero Ragnar Lothbrok, who led Viking warriors to the British Isles and France. Covering the first three seasons of the series, this official companion book delves into the real history as well as the behind-the-scenes stories. Viking historian Justin Pollard explains shipbuilding and navigation, Norse culture and religion, and the first encounters between Viking warriors and the kings of England and France. Interviews with cast and crew reveal the process of dramatizing this gripping story, from reviving the Old Norse language to choreographing battle scenes and building ancient temples for human sacrifice. This ebook is a must for fans of the show and history buffs alike.

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Praise for The World of Vikings

“A gorgeous companion book to the hit series . . . The World of Vikings is an excellent piece for the avid Vikings fan. I highly recommend it.” —Geeks of Doom

“This is a whole new way of learning about Vikings. This book is full of the legends and the lifestyle, with pictures to boot. It is a great read for any proud Scandinavian.” —Grand Forks Herald

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781452153001

Book preview

part one: Scandinavia

Gathered on the Kattegat quay. The sea was the Vikings’ highway.

VIKING SCANDINAVIA

— saga of ragnar

THE PEOPLE WE TODAY CALL VIKINGS had their home in the Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Theirs was a diverse land, covering over 300,000 square miles and stretching from the rich farming plains bordering Germany to the far north, deep inside the Arctic Circle. In the north, the land was rugged and mountainous, and in summer the sun still shone at midnight. It was a hard land to farm, and the people relied on fishing and hunting to supplement what little could be grown on the land. But if the soil was poor, the mountains, forests, and shores were rich, providing furs, amber, and walrus tusks to trade.

To the south, a more forgiving terrain allowed for extensive agriculture as well as trade with Christian neighbors and, through them, access to an extensive trade network that reached tenuously out across Russia and the Middle East, down the Silk Road as far as China. Thus, before the sea kings of the sagas, such as Ragnar, erupted onto the European stage, the earliest Vikings were farmers and traders rather than pirates and raiders.

Scandinavia at the beginning of the Viking age was not the series of discrete countries ruled by kings that it would become by the end of the period, scarcely three centuries later. The people shared a group of mutually understandable languages, which they called the Danish tongue and we call Old Norse. They also shared a religion. In these pagan lands, people adhered to a belief in the old Germanic gods. Never having been subsumed into the Roman empire, their ancestors had watched from outside as it waxed and waned. Emperor Constantine the Great’s conversion to Christianity, and the subsequent conversion of the whole Roman empire, passed them by. Older gods still dwelled in their forests and lakes, gods who had once ruled all the Germanic lands of northern Europe but who were now confined to the remote, secluded far north.

With no contemporary Scandinavian records to help us, it is hard to be sure what turned occasional raiders into seasonal war bands and, later, into European settlers. It may be that the Norse and Danish warlords who sailed to Europe could no longer find a place for themselves in their homelands, which were coming increasingly under the control of a few powerful families. We know from a later Norwegian traveler who came to King Alfred the Great’s court that his country had very limited agricultural land, confined to a narrow coastal strip, so any growth in population must have forced the weak or adventurous out to seek their fortunes elsewhere. With escalating dynastic crises in European royal families, they perhaps also saw an opportunity not simply for financial gain but for carving out new kingdoms for themselves.

By the late eighth century, only one thing was certain: The Vikings had arrived.

Ragnar Lothbrok is the first real Viking personality to emerge from the hazy accounts of this period. Even so, he belongs as much to the fable-filled pages of the sagas as to the sober entries in the chronicles of the period. Just who Ragnar was is still a matter of debate, due in part to the eagerness of contemporary writers to kill him off—an event dutifully recorded a number of times, with a number of dates, and accompanied by a number of different reasons.

The meager chronicles place him variously in England and Frankia (the territory inhabited and ruled by the people known as Franks, which would later form the core of France). By one account, he dies of dysentery at the siege of Paris; in another, he survives, only to reappear in Scotland and the Western Isles before arriving in Dublin, Ireland. An Irish tradition has him dying at the hands of rivals on Carlingford Lough, but his saga drives him on to Anglesey and then Northumbria, where he meets his nemesis, King Aelle.

That these early pirates should become folk heroes is less surprising than it might appear. The currency of the emerging Viking leaders was one we still understand today: fame. To command a great army, a Viking leader needed fame—to bring men to his side, to persuade them to follow him to danger and perhaps death, to put fear in the hearts of his enemies and rivals. Reputation made and broke Scandinavian warlords, and tales of their achievements were vital to their success. No doubt these were often greatly exaggerated even at the time, and then further embroidered with each retelling, so by the era of the saga writers such leaders had often become impossibly heroic.

Of all these heroes, the archetype was Ragnar. In fact, many who followed would be called Sons of Ragnar, a title that was often as much a mark of honor or aspiration as a statement of genetic fact. To be a Son of Ragnar, and there were many, was to be set apart, to be a terror of the world. So successful was this family that, for generations to come, every great and powerful Norse leader would claim to be descended from the Sons of Ragnar. Their fame may still be seen in a surviving piece of Viking graffiti in the Scottish chamber tomb of Maes Howe on the Orkney Islands, which describes them as what you would really call men.

CHAPTER

1

HOME

RAGNAR ON THE NORTH LANDS:

IT IS THE FATE OF MEN such as I to spend our days far from home in foreign lands. There is a word for it—our folk say we have gone Viking. But why, some ask, should we leave our farms and risk our lives on the cold ocean?

The lands of the Northmen are not like the sweet meadows of the gods or even the fields of the English. Ours is a land of high mountains, of dank bogs, shimmering lakes, and dense forest. Ours is a land of barriers, where sinking marsh and towering rocks conspire with the wild animals of the woods to make each step slow and dangerous. In winter the land becomes harder still as the snow falls, and we must take to ski and skate. Then the night seems almost endless and the cold creeps around the hearth.

And so we have always lived at the edges of our land. Some grow crops in the South where the land is soft, and others hunt in the wide forests, but for many of us, the sea is our larder. It provides us with fish and seals and eggs from the birds that dwell on the cliffs. The water itself is our road. The ship is our horse and so, to us, crossing the sea has often been an easier thing than crossing the country. So perhaps we go Viking because we can. The ocean is an obstacle to our enemies, but to us it is an old

Reviews for The World of Vikings

[amaliagavea · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The book provides interesting behind-the- scenes information, accompanied by beautiful pictures. We read what the main characters have to say about all the aspects touched in the TV series, from religion to warfare to daily life, and we are given valuable information concerning the actual historical (or legendary, if you like) figures that are in the heart of the story. Now, if the writer of the series could use the wealth of the sagas and the actual history of France and Britain faithfully...I mean, Harald Finehair, the actual first king of Norway, serving (or whatever one may call it) Ragnar? Halfdan the Black becoming Harald's brother?Rollo and Gisla having a loving relationship? Really...Write the actual facts in the second installment,please.