Vikings, Ragnar, Berserkers, Valhalla & the Warriors of the Viking Age | Lex Fridman Podcast #495

Lex Fridman and Lars Brownworth explore the roughly 300-year Viking Age, beginning with the 793 AD raid on Lindisfarne and the terror it spread through Christian Europe. They cover Viking ship technology, the speed advantage that made raids so devastating, figures like Ragnar Lothbrok, Rollo of Normandy, and Canute the Great, and the rapid transition of Vikings from raiders to state-builders. The conversation digs into Norse religion, Valhalla, Ragnarok, the berserkers, and the Viking spirit of exploration that took them to Iceland, Greenland, and North America 500 years before Columbus. It then turns east to the Swedish Varangians, the founding of the Kievan Rus, Greek Fire, and the Varangian Guard of Constantinople, before broadening into the Byzantine Empire, the great-man theory of history, and lessons on why societies rise and fall.

• Viking longships could average 70 to 120 miles a day versus 10-15 for English armies, letting them raid and escape before any army could respond.
  00:14:32
• The Vikings deliberately used terror as a weapon, attacking on high holy days like Easter and Christmas because they had scouted targets in advance as traders and knew the entire Christian calendar.
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• Ragnar Lothbrok's son Ivar the Boneless was reportedly the first person to perform the blood eagle, on King Aella, who had killed Ragnar in a pit of vipers.
  00:30:42
• In the 911 Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, Charles the Simple let the Viking Rollo settle and defend the French coast against other Vikings, giving rise to Normandy.
  00:41:22
• Leif Erikson reached North America (Vinland) around the year 1000, roughly 500 years before Columbus, but the Vikings abandoned the settlement after about three years.
  01:06:14
• After failing to take Constantinople, Swedish Vikings joined the Byzantines as the Varangian Guard, the emperor's elite bodyguard loyal to the throne but not always its occupant.
  01:20:46
• Brownworth argues the Roman/Byzantine collapse traces to 1025, when the post-Basil II bureaucracy deliberately chose weak rulers, leading to the disastrous 1071 Battle of Manzikert.
  01:43:43

• Alcuin, Charlemagne's favorite scholar, is largely credited with introducing spaces between words, a result of his work on literacy.
  00:04:52
• A famous story has a Swedish Viking placing a sword in his newborn son's crib, saying 'May you have nothing in this life but what you can gain with this.'
  00:09:41
• King Ethelred the Unready paid Vikings 7.5 million silver pennies in one year (about 48,000 pounds of silver, the weight of 50 elephants) to go away.
  00:25:22
• Berserkers, considered Odin's chosen warriors, would feel no pain and attack with nails and teeth, fighting on even with arms hacked off, giving us the word 'berserk.'
  00:53:13
• Erik the Red named Greenland 'green' as deliberate propaganda to attract settlers, calling it the greatest real estate scam in history.
  01:10:32
• In the Hagia Sophia's second-floor marble balcony, Norse runes carved by bored Varangian Guards during long sermons can still be found today.
  01:21:16
• Leif Erikson named the new land 'Vinland' because he found things he could ferment into wine, and called the natives 'Skraelings,' Norse for screechers.
  01:13:14
• Vikings did not wear horned helmets; their disproportionately blonde hair came from using lye to dye it, which also killed lice, and they bathed so often the English mocked them as 'soft.'
  01:51:51
• Canute the Great built a North Sea Empire over England, Denmark, and Norway, introduced the penny, and staged the famous scene of commanding the tide to demonstrate his lack of real power.
  01:31:04
• A Buddha statue was found in a Swedish Viking coin hoard, evidence of how far the eastern trade networks along the Volga reached.
  01:23:27