[MUSIC PLAYING]
Express.com.
“It's spring, 845 AD, we're on the River Sen,”
the broadwaterway that winds through northern France.
A fleet of 120 Viking long ships moves majestically along it. They are manned by 5,000 warrior sailors. Although fitted with masks, for now the ships are powered by the muscle of their crews,
great oak ors pull against the current. A man stands at the prow of the leading vessel. His piercing blue eyes scoundered to reign ahead. A sword hangs from his belt. His red woolen cloak is held by an ornate golden brooch,
marking him out as a man of wealth and status.
A young and important chieftain.
His name is Ragnar Lockbrock.
“Ragnar is flanked by his most loyal followers.”
They wear the gold arm rings he has given them to secure their allegiance. And as a reward for their support in previous campaigns, boats swan upon them are sacred. As the fleet rounds along slow bend,
Ragnar sees what he is looking for. A huddle of honey colored buildings that seem to emerge out of the river itself. As they draw closer,
he can make out the uneven line of the old Roman walls,
partially fallen into disrepair. Here and there, Bell towers rise into the sky. It is the object of Ragnar's expedition. The jewel in the crown of the West Frankish realm, a city right for plunder, Paris.
But before Ragnar can lead his man through the city's streets, he must confront the army of Charles the Borde, King of the West Franks. Charles has split his army into two divisions, one on each side of the set.
The soldiers stand in disciplined ranks waiting for their orders, the sun glinting on their armor. (dramatic music) Ragnar weighs his options. If he sells his fruit through the middle of the enemy,
Charles's archers can rain down flaming arrows upon him from both river banks, but Charles has made a huge tactical blunder. The force drawn up on the right bank is much larger than that on the opposite side.
The Frankish king wants to protect the abbey of San Denis,
“an important Christian shrine, with its wealth of gold and silver.”
Naturally, he assumed Ragnar would target it. But Ragnar is not a man to be out thought or out thought. Instead, he decides to attack the smaller weaker division on the left bank. With no bridge across the river here,
the soldiers on the other side will be unable to come to their comrades aid. Instructions are issued. Ragnar's skippers expertly manipulate the tillers, which are mounted on the right hand side of the boat's halves.
They're steorn-bordy, or stear-bord, from which we get our word starboard. In silence, they drift into position. And then, as the Viking long boats are pulled ashore down river, the Frankish archers unleash a blizzard of arrows.
But this holds no threat now for Ragnar Lothrock. He is out of range, with his acolytes round him, he throws himself into the midst of the fighting. His keen stare, Mrs. Nothing, he identifies those in the opposing army
who are fighting most skillfully, and directs his men not to cure her, but to take them captive. The action is brief, but intense. From the other side of the river, Charles the Bold and his men watch helplessly
as the smaller division is routed. Many are slain, others flee into the countryside.
By the end, Ragnar has taken 111
of the Bravest Frankish warriors captive.
“For the Vikings, 111 is a magical number.”
But he is not spared them. He intends to turn them into another weapon to use against his enemy, a weapon of terror. Ragnar has the captive's dragged to an island in the middle of the river.
He then calls upon his god, Odin, to receive the sacrifice he is about to offer. With our hands tied behind their backs, the men are hustled to a line of trees and fool view of Charles's remaining army.
A new sis placed around each man's neck, and one by one, they are strung up.
King Charles and his soldiers can only look on
as the men ride and kick the air, until all 111 of them are hanging lifeless.
“utterly demoralized by the grim spectacle.”
Many Frankish soldiers deserve. Leaving the great city of Paris practically undefended, and fully at the mercy of Ragnar's men. I'm Ian Glenn. From the noise of podcast network, this is real Vikings, part two.
(dramatic music) But let's go back. In the last episode, we heard how the Viking attack on Linda's farm, the seizure of its religious treasures, but left Anglo-Saxon England reeling.
The devastation visited upon a remote, unguarded monastery, not to mention the slaughter of its inhabitants, is unprecedented. Dr. Pragyevora. The Viking raid was a bolt from the blue,
“the idea that there could be a seaborn attack”
of the kind that happened in 793 is astonishing. In general, in this period, when bad things happen, it's considered punishment from God. The Linda's farm raid is followed by others. Their abbey at Montgomery, Mouth, Jaro,
also in the Fumbria, is plundered in 796. While in Scotland, Iona Abbey and the Inner Hebrides has repeatedly hit. Island two is the target of Viking aggression, starting with the monastery of Rathlin Island,
of modern day County Andrew. There are raids in Inishmari and Inishboffin, with some Patrick's Isle County Dublin attacked in 798. The shock waves reverberate throughout Europe. Dr. Elena Baraclav.
Never before has such a tarot appeared.
You know, these invoids from the sea. Professor Elizabeth Row. And so these Vikings are described as terrible, ferocious, they kill Christians, they desecrate monasteries. There is nothing good about them.
They are entirely bad characters. The Vikings are the ultimate disruptors. Their greatest weapon is the terror they inspire. Even in those who have not yet suffered at their hands. Every day, monks and villages in coastal communities
scoured the horizon for the sudden appearance of the distinctive dragon-proud boats. And no matter how fervently they clutch at their prayer ropes, willing these burgum and to keep away, there's no question the world has become a more frightening place.
But it's not just the remote monasteries of the outlying British Isles that are under attack. Across the channel, the very heart of Christendom is about to find itself plunged into a war against these marauding heathens.
At the end of the 8th century, mainland Europe is dominated by the kingdom of Francia, which broadly covers modern-day France, the low countries, Germany and Northern Italy. The King of the Franks, Charles I,
sweeps all before him, conquering territory and converting pagan tribes to Christianity. We know in better as Charles the Great, or in French, Shal La Mania.
Shal La Mania is the grandfather of Charles the Bold
from our opening parish raid.
“With fair hair and a drooping moustache beneath a prominent nose,”
Shal La Mania is a charismatic and physically imposing man. Radiating strength and a serene confidence in the righteousness of his actions, he sees himself as gods anointed ruler on earth. His reign has been impressive, under Shal La Mania,
Frankia has developed into a sophisticated and cultured society, bastion of the faith and center of Western civilization. Shal La Mania oversees an era of prosperity, building towering cathedrals and establishing his royal capital
at Arkham, a town which sits today
on the German Dutch Belgian border intersection. Other Christian kings, such as the Anglo-Saxon ruler,
“King Offer of Mercia, view him as the model”
to which they aspire. To his loyal subjects, he is both wise and just, and as far as the church is concerned, Shal La Man can do no wrong. He is the man and so, in the year 800 on Christmas Day,
Pope Leo III crowned Shal La Mania Emperor. His Karolingian realms will be the basis of a new, revived, and holy Roman Empire.
He is the first emperor in the West for 300 years.
Shal La Mania's power and prestige are now absolute. Revenue from every corner of the expanding Karolingian domains swells his coffers.
“For Shal La Mania, conquest and Christianity are inseparable.”
In converting the hedon masses and taking over their lands, he is carrying out God's will after all. It follows that those who defy him are defying the Lord Almighty, and it is a position that will bring him into direct conflict with those pagans that sit on the empire's northern border.
Those Viking kingdoms of Scandinavia. It won't be long before the Vikings discover what Shal La Mania's mother enemies already know. But behind the emperor's mask of Christian party, lies a ruthless, tolerant, capable of acts of barbarous cruelty.
In 782, in a forest near Verden, in what is now northern Germany, Shal La Mania's men conduct an execution of noblemen from the province of Saxony. This is not a discrete killing. It's a mass murder, a slaughter on a biblical scale. Four and a half thousand men led into the woods to be richly beheaded.
And they're crime. They are being sacrificed for clinging to the old ways. The old people got us. The emperor even chops down their most sacred shrine. It's called Irimansal, a wooden pillar dedicated to Woden,
the Germanic variant of the Norse god Odin. In the most emphatic terms forged in blood, Shal La Man has laying down a marker, a warning to anyone who would resist both the loving embrace of Christendom and the benefits of his rule. With Shal La Man, it's not a question of gentle missionary work.
It's a question of political conquest and enforced Christianity and a strong state that needs to demonstrate its strength through violence. News of the massacre of the Saxon nobles, the bloody verdict at Verden, as it becomes known, travels fast. It reaches the court of King Zigg Fred in Denmark.
He's been sheltering the leaders of the Saxon resistance. Denmark, as a unified country, doesn't exist yet. Zigg Fred is just one of several chiefdoms competing for dominance. But their collective reaction is one of outrage at the brutality meted out to their fellow followers of Odin.
It's also tinged with fear. The dread realization that the Danes may well be next in Shal La Man's sights. For the Danes, the Frankish King's ruthless crusade to conquer and convert represents an existential thread. Paganism is not just a matter of faith, it's the basis of the Viking Chieftons power.
In the pagan belief system, the best afterlife goes to men who die in battle.
These are the men who get to go to Valhalla.
“And so if the Danish kings want men to fight for them, the traditional Norse belief system”
is what's going to get those men to fight to the death, rather than Christianity, which has a very different idea of the afterlife, and who is going to go to it. For the Vikings, that religion is a fundamental part of life. They experience the divine every day, wherever they go. Their gods are not abstract ideas.
They are living beings who walk the earth alongside men and other supernatural entities. Professor Stefan Brink.
It was an unimistic religion.
The landscape was considered charged in different ways.
“trees, wells, hills, mountains, groves, etc. could be sacred and worshiped.”
Offer water in the form of wells, rapids, lakes, etc., were kind of interfaces in the landscape, where people could communicate via offering rituals with the Dates and also the ancestors. There was no priesthood, there was no holy scriptures or anything who was decentralized. There was a famous story of Swedish Viking being asked, "Who do you worship?" Then he says, "I worship my strengths."
At the head of the Norse Pantheon are two families of gods, the Asa and the Vaanir. Although they had once fought each other, the Asa and the Vaanir now live together in Asgard, the realm of the gods. Asgard exists in the sky above Midgard, middle earth, the home of men, a divine rainbow bridges the two worlds.
Below the earth is Hell, where those who have not been fortunate enough to die a glorious death spend the afterlife. Spelled HE single L, this is not the same sort of place as the Christian Hell. It's not known if the words are related, but there is no sense that Viking Hell is a place of punishment. The Great Odin is the head of the Asa family, husband of the goddess Frig and father of Thor.
According to the legend, Odin hangs himself on the sacred tree of Edrasil, equivalent to the Saxon monument which Charlemagne pointedly destroyed. Odin embraces death in return for the ability to read. He also sacrifices one of his eyes so that he might gain another kind of vision, the ability to see everything that happens in the world.
“Wisdom and knowledge are clearly important to the one I'd all father.”
But Odin, armed with his spear, gunned near, is also the god of war. He rides an eight-legged statue and is closely associated with the Volcaris. In keeping with their name, which means chooses of the slain, these warrior handmaidens pick out those who will die a glorious death in battle. But in armor, the Volcaris ride across the sky towards the fray.
They are demonic embodiments of carnage and mayhem. The Viking spirit given female fall. Then there is Thor, the mightiest of the gods, who rules over the weather, summoning storms and dispensing thunder. His trusty weapon is the hammer, Mjolnir.
Our popular symbol for armulets throughout the Viking era. Evoden is the god of wisdom and foresight. Thor represents the indomitable power of brute force. He is a formidable warrior. The shape-shifting trickster Loki seems the hardest to pin down.
A spirit of mischief and chaos he is promiscuously bisexual and could even switch genders, both fathering and giving birth to monstrous offspring. These children include your man-gander, the gigantic serpent encircling the earth.
Loki will ultimately betray the gods and fight on the side of their enemies, the Yutna,
and Ragnarok, the battlet at the end of the world.
The only religion I know of that has an ending, you know, like Ragnarok was t...
like the wolves chasing the sun and moon would one day catch it and then all the world
would be plunged into eternal darkness and the gods would die and it's incredibly pessimistic. The vania branch of the gods meanwhile is headed by Nied. Like Odin, Nied is associated with wisdom but also fertility. He is the father of Frère and Frère. God of Son and Raine, Frère has dominion over the fuels.
His sister Frère is the goddess of women and childbirth. The role call of Norse gods is almost endless. And then there were minor dates and supernaturals, such as alvar, elves, dwarves, giants, etc. And they were very important ingredients that we find in the mythological sagas. Somewhere between gods and mortals exist the heroes of mythology who stories are told in the sagas,
men like Ragnarok. But if you cut through the bewildering multiplicity of gods, supernatural beings and mythological heroes,
you come to a very simple and powerful principle at the heart of the Norse religion.
“A good life is one which ends in a good death.”
To die in battle heroically would give you a fast ticket up to Odin and to Valhalla. And if they were a heroic warrior, they could spend the afterlife having fun and by fun they meant fighting each other in the day and in the evening had a fantastic banquet in the Valhalla hall eating the pig, swine, serimner, every evening and every morning he just resurrected and became alive again. That was the ultimate, fun life or a warrior.
This outlook then provides the basis for the Viking Pood of Honor and places Viking paganism
on a collision course with Christianity.
From Sharlamain's point of view, the spread of Christianity is inextricably bound up with his political power. Since Sharlamain sets down the path of political conquest and forcible conversion, there is really no way to go back from that. There was widespread resistance to the conversion and Sharlamain responded with equal or
greater force killing thousands of people whatever the exact number was or naming them having a hand cut off something like that. And so it's necessary in his view to show the unbending power of Christian kingship.
“Remember, there is no such country as Denmark, not yet.”
But the threat from Sharlamain prompts the rival chieftains across Jatlin and the islands to lay aside their differences. By the year 800 and 4, their unite under one king, good threat, proving that there is nothing like a common enemy to bring people together. And Godfrey turned out to be a really effective military leader against the Frankish threat.
Goodfrey is credited with rebuilding the Donavak or Dane work, a 20-mile protective earthwork stretching across the Jatlin peninsula, along the border between Denmark and Old Saxony. We often think of Vikings as the aggressors, the violent marauders who conduct lightning strikes against defenseless victims. In some ways it seems the Vikings are no different to other people.
They value peace and security at home, just as much as anyone else. But goodfrey knows that the best form of defense is attack. Being a true general, he doesn't challenge Sharlamain directly. He will instead hit him in his pocket. Before Sharlamain withdrew the map of Europe, Denmark has been part of a trading network
extending across the North Sea and the Baltic. It stood at the crossroads of lucrative trade routes passing from both east to west and north to south. The enforced Christianization of Saxony and neighbouring areas has disrupted that flow.
“For small, the pagan daines have found themselves exclusive from many important trading hubs.”
Not part of the cozy Christian club, which has led to a significant loss of income.
In response, goodfrey plans a brilliant counter strike.
The year is 800 and 8, the place is Ray-Rick, a major trading settlement or imporium
on the southern edge of the Baltic Sea.
“It's a natural harbor in the north of present-day Germany.”
Near what is nowadays the port of Rosno. Ray-Rick is one of those lucrative markets from which dainest traders have been squeezed. Like many imporium, Ray-Rick is laid out in a regular grid with streets running parallel to the waterfront, where traders boats and ward and business is conducted. Today is a day like any other.
Goods have been traded, raw materials, textiles, foodstuffs, metal work, beads, and human beings.
Silver changes hands, fortunes are made.
Suddenly the peaceful bustle is disrupted. A fleet of long ships crashes into the merchant vessels in the port.
“Viking warriors wearing battle armour and wielding axes clamber across the Keysight.”
They run at the waterfront stalls smashing up the tables and goods, slicing down awnings and terrifying the traitors. The intruders rip through the market like a hurricane of liturating a shanty town. Eventually the havoc and destruction settles. The merchant's carer has an army of thugs looms threateningly over them.
The mob of north men devised.
The man who's clothes and bearing mark him out as a chieftain, a royal even, makes his way to the front. At his side is a herald, who announces in the local Slavic language that this eminent personage is none other than goodfred, king of Denmark himself. With his rugged features and true gaze, goodfred cuts an impressive figure, his expression
is business like one of resignation rather than cruelty. As if to say he didn't want to do this, but he had no choice. Through his herald, goodfred points out that the mighty Emperor Charlemagne is incapable of protecting them. Take a look around, goodfred's men have just destroyed Ray-Rick with ease and taken away
the traitors' livelihoods. This should not have been allowed to happen, and if the merchants do what goodfred proposes, it never will again. His herald conveys the gist, come with me to a place within my kingdom, where I will protect you so that you can trade and peace and prosper.
“The merchants' faces, register their astonishment, is this some kind of joke?”
Seeing their uncertainty, goodfred expands on his offer. This is a great opportunity, he says, with his protection they will do bigger and better business than before, besides, as they can see, their current premises are no longer fit for purpose. Like a classic mob boss, goodfred is made the traitors and offer they can't refuse.
As the sun sets, a convoy of merchant men escorted by Viking longships, begins the voyage north to the port of Kiedeby, on the Danish side of the Great Darn of Yig. Like a restless sports franchise owner, goodfred is relocating their entire enterprise lock stock and barrel, the very definition of a hostile takeover. This was an attack on Charlemagne's allies, so it's indirectly an attack on Charlemagne.
As a result of goodfred's initiative, Charlemagne appears weak, and the mighty empire of the francs is shown to be vulnerable. Not only that, but by relocating the traitors of Rayric to his own territory, goodfred receives a huge financial boost from the taxes they pay, taxes that would have gone to Charlemagne. This period, all of Viking age, has most of the early periods, were very violent times,
and wars and fighting. How was it possible to have a secure trading place where traders could trade without being attacked by raiding parties? The king guaranteed the traders a peaceful trade. Under goodfred's protection, the town of Heideby thrives.
It's sort of a pro-toe urban site that is a place for international trading a...
and all sorts of interesting things that are going on in a place like Heideby.
The 10th century Arabic traveler, Ibrahim Ibn Yakube, a keen chronicler of Viking life, provides us with a fascinating portrait of the busy settlement. Ibrahim Ibn Yakube tells
“us, for example, that women are able to divorce their husbands in this place, and I think”
he describes it as, you know, the town, the edge of the world or the ocean. It's a beautiful way of thinking about it, because from his point of view, the geographically and culturally, it really is. He also describes things like how both the women and the men wear, I make up, sort of, cool, make up on their eyes. He describes their singing. He says it's absolutely
awful. They sound like dogs howling, but worse.
Ray Rick isn't the only frankish asset that good-fred targets. In 810, he sends a fleet of 200 ships to raid the coast of Frigia, part of the Karelinian Empire, which roughly equates to today's Netherlands. He is again showing up Charlemagne's weakness by targeting one of his vassal days. The growing impression is that the Danish force can now strike with impunity whenever they like.
“The franks don't have ships. Understandably, they're a land-based empire. Their armies”
are foot soldiers and cavalry, and so the Vikings can come and go a lot faster in their
attacks than Charlemagne can pull his forces together and move them across the countryside.
So we see from all of these actions that God forbid is really extremely effective and more than a match for Charlemagne. In the end, good-fred becomes a victim of his own success. Embolden by his power, he plans a whole-scale invasion of the frankish lands. It's a step too far for the Danish nobles on who support he depends.
Soon after, good-fred is assassinated, according to one version of the story during the dark hunt.
“But then, plot twist, four years later, in 814. Charlemagne dies too. The twin bonds that”
held the Danish territories together, the external threat to its existence and the strong unifying leadership of good-fred are dissolved. Once again, the country is divided. After a period of turmoil in 827, good-fred's son, Horick, emerges as King of Denmark. Meanwhile, in a reversal of fortune, it is now frankier that his fast ascending into chaos. It is a situation ripe for exploitation.
Professor David A. Zorry The Vikings are attracted, essentially, to places that are wealthy and that show weakness. So they see some increased opportunities here as opposed to when Charlemagne was in control when he was building fortresses along the coast and keeping them in that bay. And so, Horick resumes his father's policy of harrying the franks.
In 834, Horick's Viking army attacks the trading settlement of Dora's start on the river Rhine. Located in the present day province of Utrecht, it is a major source of revenue for the Karolingian Empire. Compared to Linda's farm and other soft targets, Dora's dad represents an escalation in Viking raiding strategy.
The psychological impact on the franks is devastating. Dora's start is the equivalent of a terrorist attack on a western financial centre today. With Horick's encouragement, Viking raiders plunder the region every year for the next fall, slaughtering, terrorizing and enslaving the inhabitants. Again, without a navy, the new Karolingian Emperor, Louis the Pires, is unable to defend
his territory against these incursions. He hits upon a unique solution. He turns to Viking mercenaries to police his vulnerable coastline. But hiring professional Vikings as coast guards as little like allowing a pack of wolves to look after your sheep. Between 834 and 836, the island monastery of Noa Moutier at the mouth of the Luar is repeatedly targeted. The attacks are so intense that the monks
Abandon it.
From Noa Moutier, they can now control the coast of Brittany and carry out further raids
“along the Noa. And there is nothing Louis the Pires can do about it.”
When Louis dies in 840, civil war flares up once more as his three sons fight for control of the frankish empire, the Danes once again are poised to take advantage. With their new base of Brittany, their actions are no longer limited to coastal raids now,
and the amazing versatility of their shallow killed launchers enables them to penetrate
deep within frankish territory. The major rivers of the empire, the sand, the somme and the Luar become conduits of mayhem and destruction. The Viking spirit thrives on chaos, and the particular chaos of the Frank's internal conflict
“draws them like blood in the water attracting sharks.”
As the sons of Luar the Pires deplete their resources fighting each other, Viking bands identify and attack weak spots. Some of them even profit by serving not just as coast
cards, but as full blown mercenaries for one side of the other, stoking the conflict, extending
the bloodshed, feeding the disorder. In 843, the treaty of their done settles the issue by dividing the Carilingian Empire into three parts, with each of Luar's three sons taking a share. Before in the time of Charlemagne and the time of Luar the Pires, those rulers could command the entire resources they had the entire empire to draw on to counter Viking
“attacks. When the empire was divided into three pieces each piece was much weaker than the”
empire that had preceded it. It's peace of a kind for the empire, but it's an invitation
to create more mayhem for the Vikings, and one of them to take up that invitation, a man whose
name will enter the pages of legend, is Ragnar, Ragnar Lothbrok. When talking about Ragnar, we have to be careful to separate the historical from the legendary. Ragnar was Danish. We don't know much about him personally. On the basis of his name, it's possible that he was a member of the Royal Dynasty of Denmark, but in any case, because he was a warleader of a large Viking force, it seems very likely that he was an aristocrat.
Possibly a chieftain may be more likely a yarl, the highest level of aristocracy. He appears in several Scandinavian saga sources, which are legendary and mythic and have things like dragons and balconies and ties to cigarette the dragon slayer. Ragnar is a king in Denmark, and he has these famous sons. I wore the boneless and cigarette snake in the eye and Bjorn iron side, great names, all of them for sure. In Ragnar, those things like he kills a dragon
and wins a princess, but then he also appears in some other sources from continental Europe and in Britain. Maybe. Perhaps it's a different person, or perhaps it's the same. There's a lot when we're talking about Viking history that is sort of on that hazy cusp between what we would think of as history, something that is historically very fireball, you know, with proper dates and evidence, versus the more storytelling aspect of these legends and myths.
So, Ragnar, well, we know if anyone's a fan of the TV series, Vikings, Ragnar, of course, is the chief protagonist, but at the siege of Paris in 845, it's said that the Vikings led by someone called like Ragnar's and he's been linked to that legendary character, Ragnar Lothbrok. Back on the left bank of the River Sen, where we began this episode, having executed 111 of the Bravers' Frankish warriors, Ragnar's army sweeps on.
Charles the Bold watches, powerless. Ragnar leads his men towards the ill-delacited,
The island in the Sen, where the city of Paris is concentrated.
On the way, they come across the undefended abbey of Surgeum and April,
as to be the temptation to resist. The Danes don't just loot the abbey, they take it over and use it as the base for which the launch their Parisian siege. On Easter Sunday, March 29th, they enter the city over the Patipon. Conveniently, it takes them close to the cathedral of Notre Dame, another soft target with easy pickings.
If Ragnar chose the date of his attack deliberately, he couldn't have picked one more likely to shock the Christian defenders. They're God cannot protect them, even on this holy day. The Danes go on the rampage, destroying buildings and setting fires. Anyone unlucky enough to get in their ways either killed or taken into slavery. But perhaps the Christian God has not turned his back on Paris after all.
In the days that follow, the Vikings are struck down by a mysterious illness. The symptoms described are similar to dysentery, many men die, and Ragnar can do nothing but watch as his forces dwindle. The pagan warlord doesn't know much about Christianity, but he understands the principle of revenge. Could it be that his blasphemous occupation of the Abbey of Sanjama
“as aroused the wrath of the Holy Saint who protects Paris?”
Is the sickness punishment? Ragnar summons Odin once again, but to no avail, his men continue to die.
Finally, he orders one of the Christian prisoners to be brought before.
In desperation, he demands the man telling what he should do to save his army. The prisoner instructs Ragnar in the ways of Christian penance, advising him and his men to fast. Whether it is spiritual intervention or simply the effect of abstaining from possibly contaminated food, Ragnar's men begin to get better, but the sickness has taken its toll on his army. Fortunately for Ragnar, Charles has had enough of the fighting.
He simply wants the pagans out of the Abbey, and his city back. And we have our first mention of what will later be called "Dane Guild" is essentially tribute. The kings of Western Europe start to pay off the Vikings to lead them alone, at least for a season, so Charles Abald coughs up 7,000 pounds of silver to get Ragnar and his band of Vikings to leave. That's a substantial amount of wealth, and it turns out not to be a winning strategy,
because this is not, you know, modern diplomacy, you can't really hold them to their agreement. So buying them off, you might get a year, but they'll be back.
The problem is, and this is something that's monics on both sides of the channel
will realise quite quickly, paying off the Vikings is essentially like trying to get a stray cat to leave, by feeding it. It's just going to keep coming back, and this is very much the Viking tactic. Basically, okay, we'll go away now, but once we've spent all that money, then, well now we know
“that that's what you'll do, we'll come back and scale you again and take some more, thank you very much.”
The concept of Dane Gelt, literally Dane Yield, or Danish payment, is going to add a whole new dimension to the Viking age. Not surprisingly, Ragnar accepts the offer of good hard cash, his army is weakened by war and disease. He was ready to leave anyway. So why does Ragnar lead a Viking fleet 200 miles up the river sand to attack Paris? Of course, the need to acquire wealth is a constant in all Viking operations,
but there are surely sources of silver and slaves closer to home, unless fraught with risk. Paris is an extremely significant choice, a major centre of both religious and political power deep in the heart of the Frankish Empire. The very hazard of the undertaking is the point.
“Paris wouldn't be a very symbolic, symbolically important target to choose.”
Some historians suggest that Ragnar may have believed he was a distant relative of King Horick,
Thus had acclaimed to the Danish throne.
can be read as a power play, a bid for the crown. Alternatively, Horick himself may have
“encouraged Ragnar's activities. Either way, after the raid on Paris, Ragnar presents himself”
at Horick's court. Here he boasts of how he defeated the cowardly Franks. He even has a piece of the abbey of Sajama to backup his claims. But then it seems as though, in front of all this boasting
before the king, Ragnar himself is finally struck down with disease, and he suffers a terrible
and it must have been just horribly embarrassing attack of disentery in front of everybody in front of the court, and he dies three days later. Not surprisingly, this ignominious hand is not the one
“recorded in the sagas. According to legend, Ragnar then leads an expedition to England”
where he is defeated and battle by King Aela of Northumbria. The proud Viking is captured and as a
punishment for his attack is thrown into a deep pit. As his eyes adjust to the gloom, Ragnar realizes
that he is not alone in there. In the flickering torchlight, he sees that the ground is seeding with movement. Snakes. I don't know if he had this pit paired before or if you can get enough snakes in Britain to fill a pit of venomous snakes, but the story says that Ragnar's thrown
“by Aela into his snake pit, and he's wearing a magical shirt in the sagas legend, which Ella has to”
remove after the shirt is removed, the snakes bite him and he's going to die. His death speech
is famous, and the sentence that he says was resonates across the northern world is something along the lines of the piglets would grunt if they heard about the suffering of the bore. Now, Ragnar and that analogy is the bore, the dead pig, and the piglets are the vicious sons of Ragnar. His final words are according to the poets. The gods will invite me in. In death, there is no sign, the hours of life have passed, laughing shall I die. Unlike in real life,
in the great Norse myths, Ragnar achieves an ending worthy of a great Viking hero, guaranteeing him a place in Valhalla, and it is a death that is going to be avenged. In boldened by their foreras, the Vikings escalate their raiding. Under the sons of Ragnar Lothbrock, a massive invasion force, the great hedon army, overwhelms England. The only holdout is the kingdom of Wessex, whose ruler Alfred must reconcile with this unstoppable
foe. That's next time. You can listen to the next two episodes of real Vikings right now, without waiting and without ads, by joining Noisa Plus. Click the banner at the top of the feed, or head to Noisa.com/subscription. to find out more.
