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Show 69 - Twilight of the Aesir

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History

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  • Viking History’s Complexity
    • The story of the Vikings is complex, often romanticized and demonized.
    • They were real people with linguistic and cultural affiliations, whose beliefs were targeted. Transcript: Dan Carlin Show is sponsored by Sega’s Company of Heroes 3, available February 2023. This story begins, well, probably like most stories, before this story begins. I mean, what historical account doesn’t have its precursors or its backstories or its prologues? In this case, we had an entire show and an extra show devoted to this very story. We called it Thor’s Angels, and you’ll hear me say that a couple of times in this discussion upcoming. This is the last chapter in that story involving a people history often calls Vikings, but Vikings are not a people. And how connected the people in this era are to today’s modern day Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes is iffy. And the idea of ethnicity and cultural aspects and everything else is fraught with all sorts of baggage. (Time 0:00:00)
  • The Pope and the Franks
    • The Pope’s lack of military power after the fall of Rome posed a problem.
    • This led to a partnership with the Franks, significantly shaping Europe’s future and Christianity. Transcript: Dan Carlin Course, the Pope can’t provide any. The number of divisions that the Pope has is zero. This sums up a problem that has existed for the Popes and the center of Catholic authority in Italy since the fall of the Western Roman Empire. And the way that they managed to solve this problem goes a long way to explaining why Europe turned out the way it did. Now, full disclosure, we’ve already discussed this process in an earlier show called Thor’s Angels. We even did an extra show, a Thor’s Angels extra, utilizing some of the cutting room floor stuff that we had to cut out. But that show is about what happened to a religion that started off as a minority offshoot religion from Judaism, goes to a much persecuted religion, a minority religion in the Roman Empire, to eventually getting a Roman emperor converting to christianity and then a later roman emperor converting the whole empire to officially christian and you have the pope And christianity in a pretty good position until the roman empire in the west disintegrates which means roman protection in italy goes away at a time when the entire western European Area, Italy included, is becoming a very dangerous neighborhood, a time when the pope really could have benefited from having a few divisions. The (Time 0:05:32)
  • Charlemagne’s Saxon Wars
    • Charlemagne waged a 30-year war against the Saxons, forcing their conversion to Christianity.
    • This brutal campaign involved mass executions and the death penalty for religious infractions. Transcript: Dan Carlin Famously involved in a multi-generational war against a people to his east who are called the Saxons. Now, using ancient sources to describe people’s ethnicities, cultures, or political affiliations of tribal peoples is difficult because they’re not always consistent and people Change. The Saxons, though, were a people that before this period were part of the great immigration of peoples from Western Europe around the north of Germany and Denmark and those places To England. And they create a fusion of peoples that history calls Anglo-Saxons. And these Anglo-Saxons will convertianity eventually and then send missionaries from england back to saxony where the saxons are to try to convert that pagan people as you might imagine Sometimes the saxons were amenable to this and sometimes they weren’t charlemagne isn’t about giving them choices in the matter though His wars against the Saxons will go on for like 30 years and get progressively nastier. Saxony is a tough place to fight, by the way. In his book, Charlemagne, Father of a Continent, historian Alessandro Barbaro sets up the conflict this way, quote, It was a ferocious war in a country with little or no civilization, With neither roads nor cities, and entirely covered with forests and marshland. The Saxons sacrificed prisoners of war to their gods, as Germans had always done before converting to Christianity, and the Franks did not hesitate to put to death anyone who refused To be baptized end quote that was not normally policy in converting the heathen but charlemagne’s geopolitical goals and his religious ones dovetailed and it’s hard to know where One ended and the other began he will famously have 4 500 and you know you never know about these numbers 4 500 saxons beheaded in a single afternoon at the edge of a river in a town called Verdan because they were allegedly the leaders of one of the many saxon rebellions against him Every time he would take his army away from Saxony after chastising the Saxons and go fight One of his other wars, they would rise up and rebel, and they would often destroy monasteries and kill monks and raid and all kinds of things. The victory conditions that Charlemagne set up in this war were that the Saxons had to give up their traditional religion. They were going to convert to Christianity, or else they were going to die. (Time 0:10:29)
  • Saint Lebwin’s Bravery
    • Saint Lebwin, an Anglo-Saxon missionary, bravely preached to the Saxons, risking his life.
    • He warned them of a king (Charlemagne) who would conquer them if they refused God’s commands. Transcript: Dan Carlin Favorite amongst these is a saint called lebwin and lebwin like so many of these other people trying to convert the people in what’s now northern germany or the netherlands is from anglo-saxon England and lebwin is not going to be martyred he’s going to be one of these ones who survives. He goes to preach to the Saxons. And these guys would come in, by the way, and they would do things like burn or chop down their sacred trees that they believed, you know, like held up the universe or were the pathways From the gods to man. I mean, sacred sites, they’ll come in here and chop them down. I mean, what kind of guts do you have to have to be an unarmed cleric who comes in and does that amongst a warrior people that don’t even leave home without weapons? But the story of St. Leibwin involves one of the greatest speeches ever given by a figure in the Middle Ages, if it really happened. And if it really happened, this guy is absolutely one of the more gutsy people you will ever see. The version I have comes from a book called The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany, translated and edited by a guy called C.H. Talbot. He claims that this version of the story of Leibwin is from an unknown author and that a later version that is attributed is simply taken from this version. But he describes this saint who wasn’t a saint at the time just a missionary named lebuin who goes to the saxons during one of their big assemblies that they have it to call them democratic Would be false but they didn’t have a king who ruled over every little thing they would get together and have assemblies and hash this stuff out but what that meant is that there’s a lot Of armed barbarians in a single place at a single time and this story has lebwin just sort of appearing amongst them it’s hard not to see how many of these figures would have made great Superheroes in the marvel cinematic universe and you know for reasons of not wanting to be accused of blasphemy i understand why the marvel universe did not include the monotheistic Religions like Islam and Christianity in their universe, but they have the Norse gods, they have the Greek gods, and yet who wiped out all those gods? Well, in Europe, it was Christianity that killed pantheism, right? And if you read the account of Leibwin, he sounds like he can make himself invisible. They don’t explicitly say that, but he appears out of nowhere. And when they want to kill him, he can manage to disappear. And when he first appears to these people in their assembly, he’s wearing his religious vestments, which might have looked like a superhero outfit to these barbarian types. He’s got the gospels in the crookok of his arm which is like a book of magic and he’s got a cross with him which is almost like a religious weapon if you’re looking at it from a people who believe Heavily in things like magic and according to the unknown author who chronicles lebwin’s life this is how it goes quote suddenly lebwin appeared in the middle of the circle clothed In his priestly garments, bearing a cross in his hands and a copy of the Gospels in the crook of his arm. Raising his voice, he cried, Listen to me, listen. I am the messenger of Almighty God, and to you Saxons I bring his command. The author says, astonished at his words and at his unusual appearance, a hush fell upon the assembly. The man of God then followed up his announcement with these words. The God of heaven and ruler of the world and his son Jesus Christ commands me to tell you that if you are willing to be and to do what his servants tell you, he will confer benefits upon you Such as you have never heard of before. Then he added, as you have never had a king over you before this time, so no king will prevail against you and subject you to his domination. But if you are unwilling to accept God’s commands a king has been prepared nearby who will invade your lands spoil and lay them waste and sap away your strength in war he will lead you into Exile deprive you of your inheritance slay you with the sword and hand over your possessions to whom he has a mind, and afterwards you will be slaves both to him and to his successors. End quote. Now, I can’t figure out if that is a warning or a prophecy or a threat, but that king he’s talking about is Charlemagne, and he does just what Leibwin says he will. And when (Time 0:15:04)
  • Vikings: Aggressors or Defenders?
    • The Vikings, often seen as aggressors, may have felt threatened by the expansion of Christianity.
    • The Danish king fortified the Danevirke, a defensive structure against Charlemagne. Transcript: Dan Carlin Flee to Denmark Denmark during this time period is like the rest of Scandinavia. It is not any kind of a unified kingdom or state of any kind. There are lots of what are called petty kings. Sometimes these sorts of entities are referred to as chiefdoms. I mean, Norway, for example, I believe during this period has something like 15 different petty kings who are more like warlords in a lot of these cases university of oslo historian And viking expert john vidar sigurdsson estimates the scandinavian population around this time period to be about 650 000 people half of which would fall into the realm of what would Be controlled by Danish rulers. He says those numbers will rise to about a million. These are just estimates he cautions in the year 1050, so sort of brackets the Viking Age. But the petty king who’s ruling the part of Denmark over by Jutland that butts up against Saxon territory is about to have Charlemagne for his next-door neighbor when Charlemagne’s Conquering the Saxons. So his involvement in this war between Charlemagne and the Saxons may be a little like a proxy war situation where he’s hoping to help the Saxons defeat Charlemagne so that he doesn’t Have to directly fight him. One of the main leaders in the Saxon rebellion is a hero in Germanic history called Veedukent, who may be married to one of the daughters of one of these Danish petty kings. And when Veedukent is fleeing Charlemagne, He flees to Denmark and is given sort of sanctuary by one of these Danish petty kings. This is where the story gets interesting, though. And 100 years ago in his book, The Art of War in the Middle Ages, Sir Charles Oman describes the situation as it might have been seen from the Danish point of view. And remember, by about this time, your history books are going to start labeling this entire era in this region as the Viking Age. And people like the Danes are one of the key peoples who make up these so-called Vikings, who we always think of as aggressive pirates who are on the attack all the time. But a people that more modern day historians are starting to see that from their point of view they may have felt like they were the ones threatened and interestingly enough a hundred Years ago sir charles omans already saying stuff like that when he writes quote perhaps the first seeds of trouble were sown when vidakint the Saxon, fled before the swords of the Franks And took refuge in Jutland. We need not doubt that he told his Danish hosts terrible tales of the relentless might, the systematic and irresistible advance of the Iron King of the Franks. He means Charlemagne. The danger was now at their doors. The fate of Saxony might soon be that of Denmark. The kings of the southern Danes gave shelter to Viedekind, but they sent fair words to Charles and did their best to turn away his wrath. Yet when Viedekind yielded and was baptized in 785, they must have felt like their own turn to face the oncoming storm had now arrived. End quote. The (Time 0:20:16)
  • Viking Age Piracy
    • The Viking Age can be seen as a spike in piracy, fueled by factors like trade centers and new ships.
    • These centers allowed Vikings to fence stolen goods and convert wealth into usable commodities. Transcript: Dan Carlin The pre-modern world is best thought of like a campfire, maybe. And when there’s a lot of root causes and fuel thrown on the campfire, the flames burn brightly and with a lot of heat. Without those things it can die down to just glowing ash-covered embers but those embers always have the potential with more fuel thrown on them to blaze up again right or maybe think About piracy like a stock market and sometimes you’re trading at low level ranges and then something occurs you know the root causes pile on other root causes and you get a spike in the Stock market maybe even an extended sort of bull market and maybe you could look at the viking age as a three or so century unprecedented bull market in piracy. Another key root cause that’s often cited for this era’s explosion in piracy is we’ll call it the equivalent of having a place to fence your stolen goods, right? I mean, if you steal something, how you convert that into cash, for example? Or how does cash get converted into something tangible that’s usable? Because during this era, you see the growth in these emporiums, these trading centers, these nodes of economic activity in the Scandinavian world that pop up. Places like Berka in modern-day Sweden which i’ve been to but there’s several other sites like this that become places that get tied into what passes for a global trading network at The time right something that ties you into the trading web that includes europe and asia northern Africa and the Middle East. Places where you can take stolen goods and fence them. Places where you can convert cash or pretty metals that don’t have any other purpose into usable goods. And Berk is a good example of one of these places where there’s a ton of legitimate commerce going on here. If you have a farm in, you know, what’s now modern day Sweden and you want your excess food to make you some money or get bartered for something else, you bring it to one of these trade emporiums And you can do it there. Maybe you’ve got wood that you’ve chopped or maybe you have traded with another peoples like the people the indigenous peoples in the north for skins and furs and you want to trade those Or maybe you’ve just gotten back from a raid someplace else and you have slaves or you have silver or something like that that want to convert into more tangible usable goods that fit Your needs well these places crop up and create the economic dynamism that makes this period a little bit of a gold rush era and that incentivizes people to do things that they might not Have been as incentivized to do before perhaps it’s (Time 0:27:51)
  • Monasteries: Easy Targets
    • Monasteries, wealthy but poorly defended, were easy targets for Viking raiders.
    • Pagans were not bound by the religious restrictions that deterred Christians from attacking. Transcript: Dan Carlin Also possible that all this wealth coming into scandinavia through piracy is creating a level of inflation i mean they’re finding uh tons and tons of coins from the islamic states in Viking era scandinavia and have. It may be the largest repository of certain kinds of Islamic coins anywhere, but that might mean that the cost of everything’s going up. I mean, Scandinavia is a society where gift giving is the road to power, right? Gift giving is how you create friends and relationships and friends and relationships are the sort of supporters that propel Scandinavian leaders into rulership roles. According to historian John Vigard Sigerson, he says that violence was the Vikings’ most important export, but that at home, quote, they were not particularly bloodthirsty. In most cases, local power games acted out peacefully as the players competed to display their wealth in the form of great feasts and gifts. Consumption was a Viking’s most important virtue. The brutality we usually associate with the Vikings was displayed abroad, end quote. In addition to these trading centers cropping up you get a lot of people pushing the root cause about the engineering and technological and navigational developments that create A singularity of its own these incredible viking ships which will continue to be enlarged and improved upon during this entire viking era if you go look at pictures of either um recreations Artist conceptions or even the skeletons of these ships that they’ve found it’s absolutely terrifying to think of going into the open sea in these things for days on end. But not only could you brave the open sea in these incredible engineering marvels, but they could be used in the river systems as well. And during the pre-modern era, you know, when you’re talking about before railroads and highways and all these kinds of things, traveling the river system of a place like Europe or Asia or any of those areas is the quickest way to get around. It’s like a giant subway system. And so the use of this naval technology as a way to penetrate deeply through the river systems into all these areas opens the door to the kinds of raiding that might have been difficult If not impossible before this era also add this idea to it too and that’s that in the north they didn’t previously as i understand it use much in the way of sails it was strictly rowing that Got you from place to place but during this era sales are adopted and you get the better ships with the sales and the nodes of trade operation and i mean it starts to come together in a way That you can see what neil price is talking about when he talks about a singularity and by the way there are more things that might go into the singularity we only scratch the surface i Mean neil price brings up new evidence that suggests there might have been volcanically induced climate change working on the Scandinavians during this era, right? Reducing crop yields and things like that and putting more pressure on these societies to get what they needed to survive from farther afield. So there’s never any shortage of possible root causes. I tend to myself always default towards this idea of collective human behavior. And I’ve talked about this many times. And it’s the idea that as individuals, we are unpredictable as all get out. But when you get us in larger groups, we sort of devolve toward the mean. And then our activities become a little bit more understandable and predictable in advance. And can you imagine being in, let’s just say, some small Norwegian fishing village during this era with no centralized kingdom where you have hundreds of different, you know, chieftainships And somebody in your neighborhood, your neck of the woods is out there in the nice weather one day flashing around a whole bunch of conspicuous wealth better clothes wife running around With some very expensive looking brooches to pin their cloaks with they paying for everybody’s drinks at the tavern with some hack silver and maybe a new slave or two by their side you’re Going to sit there and say, hey, Olaf or Leif or Eric or Harold, where’d you get all that good stuff? And if they say, oh, well, me and the lads joined up with my cousin and their people over at the farming community next door, and we got 40 or 60 guys together, a rich person paid for a big Ship, and we went over across the water and took all this stuff from a mostly undefended monastery um you’d want to get some too wouldn’t you i mean wouldn’t it be just the most normal thing In the world to say wait there’s practically free practically undefended stuff somewhere nearby well count me in i want to get some stuff too and the undefended nature of these places Is probably another root cause that explains why these happened it should be pointed out that these pagan heathen as the christian or islamic for that matter um religious groups would See them, that these people were immune to special protections that kept other people from stealing the same sort of stuff they wanted. (Time 0:31:09)
  • Charlemagne’s Demise and Viking Raids
    • Charlemagne’s empire fragmented after his death, leading to civil wars and weakened defenses.
    • This instability contributed to increased Viking raids, escalating the Viking Age’s intensity. Transcript: Dan Carlin Viking Age, the raids as mapped, is a useful but comfortably distant way to approach these events. A violent reality check is needed, a corrective and necessary acknowledgement of what the maze of dates and place names and labeled arrows really meant. He continues, quote, at their most immediate on the spot on the day for many the raids were the most bitter of endings. Behind every notation on our maps lay an urgent present of panic and terror, of slashing blades and sharp points, of sudden pain and open wounds, of bodies by the wayside and orphaned Children, of women raped and all manner of people enslaved, of entire family lines ending in blood, of screams and then silence where there should be lively noise, of burning buildings And ruin of economic loss, of religious convictions overturned in a moment and replaced with humiliation and rage, of roads choked with refugees as columns of smoke rose behind them, Of utter ruthless brutality expressed in all its forms end quote now if you are made homeless or turned into a refugee or even killed during one of these viking raids at least most of your Trouble is behind you the worst is over maybe imagine being taken prisoner and held in slavery by these kinds of people imagine being in their total power you know tied up not being able To do anything a bunch of armed viking raiders i mean tom holland in his book the forge of christendom which is a great book by the way he quotes a norman poet from after this period who talks About, you know, some of this activity. And take this for what it’s worth, although there’s not much that’s unsupportable here. I mean, they talk about heterosexual gang rape on slaves, but that’s something that’s attested to by eyewitnesses in other sources with the Vikings, but also homosexual gang rape And urinating on these recently captured people. I mean, it’s all part of degrading them, mistreating them, and maybe just, you know, trying to figure out a way to entertain a bunch of bored Vikings. It’s horrific. It’s part of the human condition, though, especially in the pre-modern era. And it’s interesting to kind of figure out why that’s the case, because it shines a light on why it’s so hard to stop things like these Viking assaults. We mentioned earlier that piracy was basically omnipresent in the pre-modern world, but piracy is sort of just a subcategory of raiding. And raiding has been around, well, at least since Neanderthal. Man, I think I’m safe in saying. I mean, if you want to study the roots of warfare, you’re going to find that the earliest historical accounts you can find and read about are from the middle of the story. I mean, you need to go into things like archaeology and anthropology and stuff like that to try to figure out, you know, where things like raiding starts. And raiding is probably a subcategory of war. So piracy is a subcategory of raiding. Raiding is a subcategory of war. And you need to go back in time to like, you know, what anthropologists do when they study conflict between simians that come together, right? I mean, you know, talking apes, right? How the roots of war go and there’s almost a newtonian reliability in the idea that if you have tons of stuff people want right tons of wealth whatever counts for wealth you know at whatever Time period and you don’t protect it somebody’s going to take it right not every society is a raiding society but all that has to happen in your geographical neighborhood in your period, Is that somebody in your region needs to be a raiding society, and that’s going to change everything. I truly believe that raiding is one of those prime movers in human history because of all the sort of the downstream effects it has, right? The Newtonian pinging for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. And if you live next to a community of people that raid, you have to defend yourself, right? That’s the equal and opposite reaction. And you can choose defense, you could choose offense, or you could choose both. But not choosing anything is an option that will get your people wiped out, taken into slavery, absorbed, and eventually have them disappear. Some societies do it defensively, right? Some Native American societies will build these tall sorts of abodes or in rock cliffs where they can pull up ladders if the dangerous raiding peoples nearby them show up, right? So we’re just going to flee and escape them in a Native American version of a castle. And my goodness, one of the most obvious examples of a defensive downstream adaptation to dealing with people who want to take your stuff, who live near you, are walls. I mean, walls can serve a lot of purposes, obviously, but the Occam’s razor reason that you have them and that you have them from the very beginning of human cities. I mean, Jericho is one of the oldest cities in world history. What is it famous for? Walls. So walls is another one of those downstream sorts of Newtonian impacts and you see walls by the way if you go look at drawings and paintings of cities you have walls until cannons started Reliably knocking them down (Time 0:42:29)
  • Godafried’s Death and Danish Instability
    • The death of the Danish king Godafried, possibly orchestrated by Charlemagne, destabilized Denmark.
    • This instability further fueled Viking raids, demonstrating the consequences of political meddling. Transcript: Dan Carlin That it’s pretty well understood that both the Swedes and the Danes had something akin to a royal family, but that kingship was something that was sort of, if not elected, then appointed By a group of also powerful chieftains or warlords, and they could choose other people from other branches of the… I mean, it’s very confusing. But the reason it matters is because the first, not the first maybe one of the first of these scandinavian kings whose name makes it into the history books is this guy that charlemagne Runs into when he conquers the saxons this guy who for five minutes looks like he’s going to fight a war against charlemagne and the record shows that that’s a suicidal thing to do charlemagne Beat everybody he came from a time period in frankish history where they were just badasses and they beat everybody which is why it’s so shocking it’s like mike tyson when he eventually Loses it’s so shocking when charlemagne goes away and then all of a sudden this badassery collapses but for five minutes there’s this challenge where this king of the danes in air quotes A guy named you’ll see it a bunch of different ways gottfried gottfried gottfried he will sort of puff up his chest as einhard says one of the primary sources and think he can compete with Charlemagne. This is the guy that we mentioned earlier had strengthened the old ramparts and walled defenses of Denmark, right? The Dane work, and anyone who could get that kind of labor forced together and the money and resources required to do a centralized task like that is seen by modern historians as an example Of the beginning of the process of centralization right in a place like Denmark. It’s a spreading disease if you’re looking at this from an old fashioned Viking viewpoint who worships the Norse gods and believes that, you know, all Vikings are equal. There’s a famous story of a Viking ship pulling up to a port once and the guardian at the port saying something to the effect of, you know, who is your leader? And the voice coming back yelling, we have no leader, we are all equal. And that’s sort of an age-old Viking. It’s a trope, but at the same time, it’s part of their culture mentioned by contemporaries, by the way. And yet that’s going against the tenor of the times, right? The trends, what’s happening in places like the Carolingian Empire. Now that’s the trend that’s taking over the one that’s the hierarchical society with a king at the top, you know, in a pyramid position in the state with a powerful church and a hierarchy Of classes and a Christian religion. And that’s spreading and it’s been spreading northwards for generations. And that’s what Thor’s Angels about. And as we said, we’ve stumbled back into the middle of a process here. And this. Trend is continuing northward Norway and Sweden are still farther north from here the first of these Scandinavian places to feel the real pressure of living next door to a place that Is both centralized and Christianized are the Danes and the process that’s going on with this guy, Gottfried, is he’s one of these early Danish kings where it seems like, you know, the Process of turning from a place with hundreds of chiefdoms into just a few or maybe even one king is now underway. And it makes them more dangerous to a person like Charlemagne. The Franks love, by the way, to meddle in Danish and Viking leadership contests, and they like to have a strong leader in these places when that leader’s a friend of theirs, and they like To instead meddle and create chaos and disharmony and all kinds of things if the leadership is not prone to like them. You can see how dangerous, though, these powerful Viking-era kings might be when Godefrid at one point brings an army to negotiate with Charlemagne so they have armies facing off. And then in 810 famously raids the Frisian coast. Friesland is where it’s mostly the Netherlands coast today, but there’s a little bit of Germany, too. And it’s right by the viking danish territories but he allegedly and take this number for what it’s worth um has a fleet of 200 viking ships attack the coast um using roger collins’s conservative Way of estimating how many vikings per ship because we don’t know how big each of these ships were probably a mix he estimates 30 is a good conservative number so if you really had 200 ships Then that’s going to be about 6 000 vikings and the primary sources at the time period say that these vikings absolutely scoured the coastline of frisia which is carolingian territory So this is asking for war against Charlemagne, isn’t it? And this face-off is about to happen. And then all of a sudden, this powerful, sort of unifying, maybe early Viking-era Danish king, Godefrid, gets shanked in the back or something like that by one of his bodyguards, allegedly. And there’s a, you know, a little JFK assassination type speculation going on here about exactly who might be responsible for that. But wouldn’t that just be like a Charlemagnean move? Why do I have to fight you when if I just kill you, your relatives will fight over the kingship and dissolve into those same viking band of you know feuding barbarians you always were and Charlemagne should know because you only have to go back a few generations in his family and they’re not that different in the life of charlemagne the primary source account by Einhard From Charlemagne’s era, wrote about this. This is his entry into the affair we just talked about, and he writes, quote, The last (Time 1:11:23)
  • Post-Godafried Danish Civil Wars
    • Following Godafried’s death, Denmark experienced numerous civil wars between rival kings.
    • This internal conflict further incentivized raiding as a means to gain wealth and power. Transcript: Dan Carlin Of these wars was the one declared against the Northmen, called Danes. They began their career as pirates, but afterwards took to laying waste the coast of Gaul and Germany with their large fleet. Their king, Godfred, was so puffed up with vain aspirations that he counted on gaining empire over all Germany and looked upon Saxony and Frisia as his provinces. He had already subdued his neighbors, the Abodratai, and made them tributary, and boasted that he would shortly appear with a great army before Aachen, where the king held his court. Some faith was put in his words, empty as they sound, and it supposed that he would have attempted something of the sort if he had not been prevented by a premature death. He was murdered by one of his own bodyguard, and so ended at once his life and the war that he had begun. End quote. Now, if the shoe were on the other foot when it came to an assassination, if that’s what this was, if the so-called, in quotation marks, king of the Danes here, Godefrey, had assassinated Charlemagne, you would have seen one of the advantages of one of these centralized hierarchical sorts of societies. You would probably have a stable transfer of power. Now, this is not guaranteed at all, but you probably would have. I mean, Charlemagne had already sort of set his son Louis up for this gig. The church would have supported it. You have this internal sort of system designed for a peaceful transfer of power. You don’t always get it, but it’s designed to provide that. That’s not how it is in Viking-era Scandinavia. In fact, it’s almost a recipe for the opposite sort of result. So when this Danish king, Godefrid, is done away with, the place just collapses for a while. Roger Collins has sort of a rundown of how unstable these conflicts between all of these kings was in Denmark after Godefrid died. And he points out that all of the sons of Godeford were called kings. So this is like a civil war amongst kings. But listen to how often they’re fighting amongst each other as opposed to what Charlemagne in a centralized sort of organized state is doing. Collins writes, quote, It has been questioned whether a single kingdom could have existed in Denmark at this time, but the Frankish chronicles do not refer to rival territorial kingdoms In Jutland and the islands, but rather to civil wars between members of an extended royal dynasty. Such conflicts are recorded in 812, 813, 814, 817, 819, 823, 827, 828, 850, and 854, and there may have been others. End quote. So if Charlemagne was figuring, again, all conjecture here, that by knocking off this early centralizing figure, things would go back to sort of retributional, chaotic, barbarian-style Violence, turns out he was right again. But this is sort of built into the system here. It’s got its pros, it’s got its cons. One of the things it does play into, though, is the whole rating question, because as we had mentioned earlier, the Vikings have been called a consumption society. What’s really going on here is, you know, if you were to put it into modern terms, these people who gain power, leadership type roles, you know, petty rulerships, these are people who Build up large followings of powerful supporters. They’re building up posses and they’re doing it over the course of their careers. The problem with the Scandinavian system is that when these people die, their posse just dissolves, doesn’t get transferred to their kid for a stable transfer of power. It just starts over, which leads to a need to find stuff to give these people, because that’s why they’re your posse generally, right? There’s a trickle-down economic effect here that plays into the whole dynamic for why this society can get so addicted to raiding, because it becomes addicted to the stuff, because The stuff is required to keep your posse happy. And if you don’t have a posse, well, then you’re probably in somebody else’s posse in his history, the Viking Wars. Historian Max Adams writes about this perverse, interesting sort of, you know, government by posse. And these posses even have a name. I mean, if you’re a fan of the Vikings, you’ve heard of the herdmen or the house carls. That’s just a fancy Scandinavian way of saying, my boys. Max Adams writes, quote, By the turn of the ninth century, a network of elite clientele with all its benefits for stabilizing kingship was deeply embedded in the Christian kingdoms. In the pre-Christian geographically disparate lands of Scandinavia, the state was the king. With his death, it collapsed. Networks of affiliation, loyalty, gift exchange, and obligation built up during his reign were reset to zero. Each new king had to reinvent his kingdom. End quote. Historian Neil Price had a really interesting line that stayed with me too that’s also part of this dynamic that of addicts these societies to the rating and that’s that from the standpoint Of a non-powerful person right not not one of these people striving to be a petty king or chieftain or what have you just an average you know scandinavian joe i was going to say but it’d Be more like a scandinavian life or something. Price says one successful raid, if you got lucky, could change your life forever. I mean, that’s the equivalent of striking it rich. The temptation for young men, especially from the poorer communities, must have been intense, right? Not only are you going to get honor, make something of yourself, show off to the Valkyries your prowess to get you a better seat with Odin eventually, but you’re going to come back a made Man and maybe even, you know, hit the jackpot. I mean, it’s something that would attract young enterprising people from all over the world, right? If that’s part of your dynamic. And truthfully, dynamic is the right word because you can see the same dynamic in a lot of warrior societies that practice raiding. They’ll have war leaders or (Time 1:17:44)
  • Louis the Pious and the Carolingian Decline
    • Louis the Pious, Charlemagne’s son, faced internal strife and weakened the Frankish empire.
    • This instability led to escalating Viking raids, including the significant attack on Dorostad. Transcript: Dan Carlin And impact to anything that it’s seen, you know, up to this point with monasteries and small towns and things like that, the occasional extra intense attack. But as we mentioned, if you look at a timeline, there are going to be a period after the initial first 20 years where it seems like things calmed down a little bit, but it’s only sort of by Comparison, right? Compared to the big spike initially, it got quiet again, but it’s not going to get as quiet as it was before the Viking Age kicked off. It’s going to be, though, in about 830 when things get very serious again, 840, 850, 860. It’s shocking what happens, but that’s all precipitated by other shocking things that happen in the various places that are going to be victimized by these Vikings. Charlemagne’s empire falls apart. The wheels completely come off in the next ruler’s reign. And he gets a lot of flack for this. It’s hard to know now how much he deserves it, because after all, Louis the Pious, as he’ll be known, Charlemagne’s only legitimate surviving son when he takes over, Louis the Pious Has a very different job than his predecessors who had to conquer a place. He has to rule it. And there’s a lot of different entities that make up this Frankish empire that don’t want to be in this Frankish empire. And Louis has to deal with them. He also has to deal with a bunch of male relatives most importantly his sons who do not like his plan for the inheritance a little bit about lewis the pious now because he’s very important But you wouldn’t think inheritance should matter right away after charlemagne dies but famously lewis the pious has like a near-death experience a bunch of people are killed in an Accident he’s almost killed, which makes him think right away famously, I better get this inheritance thing in order just in case. So he divides the empire amongst his sons, which is typical Frankish practice. Unlike typical Frankish practice, though, he’s not dividing the family farm here. He’s dividing a full-blown giant empire, the likes of which no one has had, certainly no one in Frankish history. So it’s a little bit different. So he mandates that even though the division will be the same, you still have to have the emperor and it’s going to be this son and you all have to give your allegiance to the emperor. None of the sons end up liking this and they will cause a lifetime’s worth of problems for their father over it. The trouble will begin like four years after he takes over and will dog him the rest of his life. He will be involved in three civil wars. He will be deposed from the throne and returned to the throne multiple times. This is not exactly conducive to stability. And when stability is required to do things like, you know, make sure the coastline is defended from pirate attacks and all this kinds of stuff. Well, you can see how if you’re fighting for your existence, right? If it’s an existential threat you face as the emperor of the Franks. Piracy is going to fall on the triage scale of importance quite a bit. And that’s exactly what happens. In his book, Powers and Thrones, Dan Jones sort of describes a little bit about, you know, what the Carolingian Empire descends into. And he writes, quote, between 830 and 840, a series of three major rebellions broke out in which Lewis’s sons banded together in various combinations to try to improve their portions Of the imperial inheritance. Murderous and disgraceful deeds were perpetrated, including further, further, blindings, drownings, and exilings, accusations of witchcraft and adultery leveled against Lewis’s Wife and Empress, Judith, and a general commitment to naked self-advancement. In June 833, he writes, at a meeting in Rothfield in the Alsace, Lewis was confronted by his eldest son, Lothar, who had proven himself an attentive student of Carolingian family history And persuaded Pope Gregory IV to back him as supreme ruler. Lothar’s play for power spooked Lewis’s supporters, and almost to a man they abandoned him for his eldest son an act of collective spinelessness that earned the meeting the nickname The field of lies end quote the field of lies though would not end lewis’s career he would get the throne back basically forgive the children jones says and this would be his opinion, But he says that like Alexander the Great before him, Charlemagne had built an empire that quickly proved itself possible only as an extension of one man’s political self. Well, this echoes what German historian Hans Stelbruck had written 100 years ago when he said, quote, Charlemagne’s empire had no inner unity. It was the creation of the dynasty, the Arnuff family, end quote. But Charles Omon pointed out also over a hundred years ago that the various sons of Lewis were being also used by the component parts people who represented parts of the empire like the Lombards who didn’t want to be a part of the empire so you use Lewis’s son as a way to you know help break up or help secure a better portion of the empire for yourself or whatever it might Be What this means, though, is that every piece of the empire and a bunch of the empire’s surrounding peoples become like pieces on the chessboard for all these different players in These civil wars to use. The Slavic peoples, for example, will become one of these pieces on the chessboard, and so will the Danes. In the same way that the Carolingians had meddled in Danish politics now for a long time, trying to, you know, see if they could get the kind of ruler that they wanted on the Danish throne, Well now turn about fair play, and using one of Lewis’s sons, or having one of Lewis’s sons use them, depends on your point of view, able to throw their hat in the ring and try to influence A little bit about who the ruler of the previously so intimidating and dangerous Frankish empire is going to be and that’s why you get this next level of the Viking age when you do because The former apex predator in the geopolitical environment right this frankish state was so dangerous just you know what a couple decades before when charlemagne was destroying the Saxons and the danes felt like they had a gun to their head and now all of a sudden the tables are turned by the 830s and if you look at your (Time 1:27:14)
  • Vikings in the East
    • In the East, Vikings encountered established trade networks and powerful empires like Byzantium.
    • They focused more on trade but still engaged in raiding, including a notable attack on Constantinople. Transcript: Dan Carlin Yes, it sounds like the root word for Russia, because it probably is. But when the Byzantines start writing records that we can still, that were preserved, that made it to today, that we can look at about these people, we already have found out about these People because they showed up in Western records first. It’s a little ironic, isn’t it? This brand new people, because that’s how history always treats it, right? The illusion of the written past. It’s like the old parable that if a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, did it really make a sound? Well, if the people weren’t written about, were they really in existence until somebody chronicled it? And the first chronicled account that’s made it to us today so we can read it, right? Because some things were in inadvertently lost, of course, and even the stuff we do have went through permutations and fragments and all this kind of stuff. But in 839, that’s when that name gets heard first, right? Ross. And it happens in the court of Louis the Pious, Charlemagne’s son, the year before he dies. 839 is right before he dies. And, you know, we’ve already told you the kind of life he had. And by 839, most of it’s behind him. So this is a guy who’s had, you know, his sons deposed him multiple times. He’s watched his dad’s empire and his inheritance crumble. He’s got Vikings nibbling large chunks of his land away. He’s got Viking PTSD, let’s be honest. And then the Byzantines, his frenemies, show up at his court in 839, which is chronicled in the records, and want his help getting some people back home. And when he says, who are these people? The Byzantines say the Russ and Louis the Pious and his court have never heard of these people. Thoroughly confused and suspicious because they look at these people. And as I said, he’s got Vikings on the brain already. PTSD from Scandinavian raiders. And these look like vikings to him and he does a little checking because these byzantines want lewis the pious to help these people get home he says that there’s dangerous ferocious Tribes between byzantium and where they’re from and then they need his help he does a little checking and they determine that these people who call themselves ross are swedes from one Of the groups who live in viking era sweden um lewis the pious and his advisors are suspicious that these people might be spies and they promise the byzantines that they’ll do some checking And that’s the last you ever hear of them in the records anyway must have freaked a guy out though who’s already worried about where these Vikings are going to find Vikings appearing At his court coming from a completely unexpected geographical direction. What the heck are they coming from Byzantium for? But you can see how in his head he must think, well, they must be going in the other direction too. And they were. So if you think about like the Baltic Sea as being a Viking lake during this period, well, most of the Vikings we’ve been talking about take, you know, the direction of the Baltic that Exits into the North Sea, right? And then you’re in the open road, you’re in the Western Highway there. But you don’t have to go to that direction. You can go the other direction you can put your boats as many in in modern day sweden at the time did and some in denmark and you know the vikings could all talk to each other language wise So there was a lot of hiring on for jobs i mean go read beowulf and things like that lots of soldiers of fortune so you often had mixed crews that would do this but generally because of the Location, it’s going to be mostly Swedish groups of Scandinavians who put their boats in the water and go the other way towards what’s now like the Baltic coast or Russia up by St. Petersburg or the Polish coast, and they get into the river system. And all this happens sort of under the radar, but you can tell, you know, sometimes you can infer that historical things are happening because when they do burst on the historical stage, They’re often fully formed. So you can say, well, something was going on in the darkness, you know, so that this could burst on the stage like this. It’s like when they find planets because they can sense, okay, we can tell by the gravitational forces, there’s another planet pulling on them somewhere, and then they find it. Well, you can tell that these Scandinavian peoples were making their way down the river system because you start to see the trading posts either arise or get larger, right? So we talked about Berka earlier and Hedeby and all these places, you know, Dorstad, all these places that are these nodes of economic operation. You see this exact same thing in the East right around the same time period. And you can almost track the movement of these Scandinavians down the river systems of the East by decades. If you want to get a mental image of the area we’re talking about, look at Eastern Europe. Look at the modern-day countries of Belarusia, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, the Baltic states, that whole area from about the Baltic Sea in the north, where those boats first go in the Water, all the way down to the Black Sea in the south, which is the major slaving area, and by the way, is alongside Byzantium. They have found all sorts of bioarchaeological signs that point to interesting things in this area. And the amount of trading is incredible, and incredible because of the trading system that was already in place that these Scandinavians plug into. We talked about Berka in Sweden as one of these things that all of a sudden plug the Scandinavians into a system that was, you know, essentially as far as these people are concerned in This time period worldwide. And I thought historians Matthew Gabriel and David M. Perry in their book, The Bright Ages, did a great job describing what we mean when we say worldwide. And as I said, these Scandinavians, this isn’t stuff that you can go and read in the history books because this was happening in the historical darkness. You know about it from things like archaeology and whatnot. So when they run into the Byzantines and the Byzantines write about it, you can tell that something’s been going on for decades. That something is cataloged in the Bright Ages. And those historians write about these Vikings in the East and the situation in the East, quote, the story in Western and Central Asia plays out very differently than in Western Europe Because the pre-Viking situation was so distinct. Instead of fragmented states and wealth hoarded in easily rateable religious institutions, Vikings found themselves on the northern edges of scattered settlements within vast Trading networks that stretched from China and India to the Mediterranean. Constantinople offered one node, Baghdad (Time 2:24:07)