Viking Lives

To conclude our first series of Viking Lives, Richard & Kári are bringing you a special episode: we’re tracking the strange ride of the goddess Sól across the skies of the Norse world. The Vikings of Scandinavia lived through unimaginably harsh and dark winters, confined to their cramped longhouses for weeks at a time while blizzards raged outside. Then, when the world warmed up and the sea ice broke, they could sail out once more into the wider world. Kári also recounts here some of the rituals he remembers from his boyhood in Iceland that marked the shift from the long winter dark into the eternal light of summer.  

In this episode we follow the fleets of the Viking raiders as they break into Muslim Spain, North Africa and Italy for the first time. Richard and Kári present the story of Bjorn Ironside, famed for his brutal skill as a warrior that made him virtually invulnerable to the weapons of his enemies. In 859 AD, Bjorn led a Viking fleet on an extraordinary voyage into the Mediterranean. They seized loot and slaves wherever they went. And then, when they landed in Italy, they hatched a mad scheme to make Bjorn the emperor of Rome.  

Lagertha the Shield Maiden appears only briefly in the medieval Viking stories, but she retains a powerful hold on the modern imagination. In this episode, Richard and Kári are joined by Dr. Lisa Bennett, author of Viking Women, to explore the concept of the Norse shield maiden, and to examine the evidence for the existence of these fierce Viking warrior-women.

Last time we brought you the mythic tale of Ragnar Lodbrok. In this episode, Richard and Kari go on the trail of the real-life, flesh-and-blood Ragnar, whose life is recorded in the chronicles of medieval Europe. This Ragnar is remembered as a ruthless chieftain, hated by the kings of Christendom, who led a Viking invasion of France, and then put the city of Paris to siege.

This is the first of two episodes on the life of Ragnar Lodbrok. Richard and Kári begin with the story of the legendary Ragnar taken from the mythic saga that bears his name.  In this telling, Ragnar is an impossibly strong Viking warrior who kills a dragon, marries the princess Aslaug, and becomes a king.  Ragnar’s adventures make him famous, but when his sons' reputations threaten to overshadow him, he embarks on a final disastrous invasion of Britain.

Kári and Richard present the strange tale of Amleth the Mad: the Danish prince whose uncle murders his father and then marries his mother in unseemly haste.   Amleth, alone and in great danger, pretends to be mad until he can figure out how to take his revenge.   This was the original story that inspired Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and formed the basis of the recent film The Northman’, with Alexander Skarsgard.

Richard and Kári dig up the remains of a Viking king named Yngvar. Yngvar was long thought to have been a figure of legend. But in 2008, a ship-grave was excavated on a Baltic island that was dated to the year 750 AD. Inside the ship were the remains of 34 wounded warriors and their mysterious leader, who was found with a gilded sword and a chess piece lodged in his mouth.  

Kári and Richard plunge into the tale of Beowulf, the legendary Norseman who sets out to kill a murderous creature named Grendel, and then must face an even more dangerous monster: Grendel’s mother.

Richard and Kári delve into the semi-mythic tale of the Viking heroine Gudrun the Vengeful, and her destruction of Attila the Hun.

Kári and Richard go to Oxford to speak with Professor Carolyne Larrington on the mythic origins of Odin, the doomed chieftain of the Norse gods, who makes a sacrifice of himself to himself in the pursuit of wisdom.

Introducing a new podcast by Richard Fidler and Kári Gislason, in which they travel to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne in England where Viking plunderers stepped ashore in 793 AD, generating a shockwave that rippled across Christian Europe.