- The Viking longships could

average 70 to 120 miles a day. They could hit a place, raid

it, drag off whoever they wanted, and get away before

you could get your army there. That's just absolutely terrifying. - What do you think it felt

like for Alcuin and the monks to see the Viking

ships on the horizon? - Honestly, I think it's the end of the world,

and I don't think they were wrong to think that. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

says the night before Lindisfarne, the monks saw sheets

of lightning in the sky in the shape of dragons, and this obviously

meant to foreshadow the dragon ships coming up. But if you

were brave, then you got taken to the House of the Dead, which

was Valhalla. Every day you would fight, and whatever wounds you got would be

magically healed that night, and then the next morning, you'd get up and do it again,

so you're essentially practicing for Ragnarok, the final battle.

You know, there's this poem by Tennyson, Ulysses, my

favorite poem. I think it captures the Viking spirit. The last

line of it is to strive, "To seek, to

find, and not to yield." I think

that's very much like the Viking, you know, my purpose holds, to sail beyond the

baths of all the Western stars until I die. We may die, but I'm gonna do

this, I'm not gonna yield. - The following is a conversation

with Lars Brownworth, a historian and author of many excellent

history books, including The Sea Wolves: A History of the Vikings

and The Normans: From Raiders to Kings. He's also the host of two

history podcast series. The first called 12 Byzantine

Rulers: The History of the Byzantine Empire is

one of the first, if not the first ever, history

podcasts launched over 20 years ago in June, 2005. His second series, Norman Centuries,

explores the remarkable rise of the Normans from Viking

raiders to the rulers of kingdoms stretching

from England to Sicily. In this conversation, we focus

primarily on the Vikings, the

seafaring Norse warriors

and explorers who, over a period of just 300 years,

reshaped the medieval world and the trajectory of Western

civilization as we know it. This is a Lex Fridman podcast. To support

it, please check out our sponsors in the description where you

can also find links to contact me, ask questions, give

feedback, and so on. And now, dear friends,

here's Lars Brownworth. Your writing and podcasts take us from

the Vikings to the Normans to Crusades, to the collapse of the East Roman Empire,

also known as the Byzantine Empire. There's a thread, I think, that connects

the Vikings through all of it, so let's start at the beginning. Let's

start with the Vikings. So the age of the Vikings

was intense and violent, as you write about, often

dated from 793 AD to 1066 AD.

It lasted less than three centuries. So

the start is often dated to June 8th, 793. What happened on June 8th, 793? - In June of 793, a group of Vikings,

probably originating from Norway, arrived at the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, which

was a monastic community, and they essentially slaughtered everyone,

burned a couple of buildings and grabbed everything that had any

value and left. And that was the first Viking raid that

came in force. And I do think Lindisfarne is a good beginning

date because the terror that it brought really signified what was to

come for the next two to three centuries. - So the word of it has spread. Like there's a bunch of accounts,

like the monk Alcuin wrote about this event in a letter to King Ethelred of

Northumbria, quote, "It is nearly 350 years that we and our fathers

have inhabited this most

lovely land, and never

before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have

now suffered from a pagan race, nor was it thought that such an

inroad from the sea could be made." What made this race so psychologically

devastating to this monk and to the many other monks on the island

and then to all of Britain? - That's a great quote. Um,

Alcuin was not just a regular scholar, he was

Charlemagne's favorite scholar and he's largely responsible, as

much as one person can be, for the Carolingian Renaissance that had done so

much to elevate the early medieval world. In fact, the spaces we have,

the punctuation we have, spaces between words are likely

a result of Alcuin's work. He was an extremely literate

man, and you can hear the terror creeping into that. Um, and part

of that has to do with monastic communities, the Church and the- what they thought a monastic community was. So

the Church was viewed as a sacred

place. Everyone in Europe,

everyone in quotes, is nominally Christian, and the Church

is an area of safety. It's a literal ark from the troubles of the

world that you can flee to. I believe there are even rules in England,

for example, that if you had killed someone, you could flee to a church

and the civil authorities were not allowed to enter for up to 40

days. So you could have sanctuary there. And to violate this

would've been the worst possible offense you could have

given, which is why, you know, Thomas Becket's murder is so, so

horrible in England. And the monks had dedicated themselves

to a life of studying the Bible, to copying scriptures to

prayer, to removing themselves literally from the temptations of

the world. And so they would seek monasteries that were remote, and

the most remote locations you could find were islands in the North

Atlantic, because it's just so difficult to get there.... So the

ocean was considered a place of safety. Not sailing on the

ocean, but these islands were

literal havens of peace and

security and closeness to God. And so the fact that the Vikings hit this

place of all places you could hit was the worst, the most terrifying kind of

offense against medieval sensibilities. - So there's a kind of line that you

understand you don't cross. Like, everybody agrees. - That's right. - It's the kind of thing that there's a social

contract that most societies, most civilizations sign. There's a line that we

don't cross. Let the scholars do their scholarly work.

That's one line. The other line is more kind of from a

military perspective, from a, Mobility perspective, you

just assume the sea is not a place from which a threat could come- - Yeah, that's exactly right - ... especially the north. So your

conception of the world is shattered by, one, the brutality

that can come, two, that the sea can bring a threat, and

three, that you don't give a damn about any of the lines that

we as a society, as a Christian society, have established.

- That's exactly right. I mean, even Alcuin,

I think he writes a little later on that the dead were left as dung in the

streets. So he's describing dead monks as literal dung in the streets. And, you

know, who would do this to men of God? Inhuman monsters. - So who were they, the Vikings, coming

from the north? How did they think of the violence that they were doing? - Now, that's a very good question because...

and it brings up a central problem, of looking at the Vikings, which is

the story is almost always told from somebody else's perspective largely from

the pens of those they're attacking. So they're not gonna come across well. Um,

they're often portrayed as demonic and inhuman. The Vikings themselves

though, as much as we can piece together from archeology,

from the stories they wrote later but that was another problem

there, the written alphabet, the runes. It was mostly used for spells, naming

your sword, things like that, cursing someone, but it wasn't really useful for

writing long poetry or literature. So the

only Norse literature we have comes

at the end of the age when they had adopted the Latin alphabet. So it's... you can almost never see

the Vikings in their own words as they saw themselves. But we can piece certain

things together. Most importantly, Viking was not their day job. They were were mostly merchants and

farmers, mostly farmers who lived in little bays called Viks in

Old Norse, which is probably where we get the word Viking from. Um, one other note about how hard it is to- to

tease apart what's happening here is the- the English and the Frankish

and the Irish writers all call them Danes, no matter where they came

from. They didn't stop to ask, "Now, excuse me, are you from Norway, or are you

from..." So they're all called Danes or Pagans, heathen, or Northmen. Um, so this is not very helpful in

figuring out where they came from. Um, the language was interchangeable. You

know, Old Norse was spoken in all three of

those Scandinavian countries. But living in the north, so far

up near the Arctic Circle, is... that's at the very limit of where technology

of the time could allow humans to survive. And that kinda, that kinda harsh

climate bred, I think, very hard people. Mercy was not

a quality they seemed to favor, value. There's a very

famous story of a Swedish Viking putting a sword in

the crib of his newborn son, and saying, "May you have nothing in

this life but what you can gain with this." I mean, I can't imagine doing that. You know, to any of my children, you

know, putting a gun in the crib, or- ... you know, I'd be carted away.

But the... I think that kind of underscores the kind of violent

life that was... you could expect as a Viking. I mean, strength

was valued more than anything else. - So the understanding

of the world is harsh, and that strength is the

way you must face that world. So when you have those people,

and especially the ones that self-select

to get on a boat, to face the

ocean with all the uncertainty, that results in the kind of

brutality that we got to see. - I think so. I mean, the way they would build their

ships, they were clinker built, so they were overlaid, like planks overlaying.

So they were undecked as well. And so they'd have tents. So can

you imagine crossing the Atlantic, the northern Atlantic, you know,

with these huge waves splashing over with an inch of oak

between you and the ocean? I mean, the amount of bravery that

must have taken to undergo is astounding. Plus they didn't have

a compass. They navigated by, "Where's the sun? Where are the stars?

What... are there birds in the sky? Do I see a different color of water? Do I see

leaves floating?" I mean, it's terrible. If you're traveling 2,000

miles, that's not great. So it's kind of an

intrepidness to them that I think is part of the reason why they're

so fascinating to us in our sanitized, more or less sanitized world. That

this incredible courage to do this,

and some horror at what they did on

the other end when they arrived. But, you know, we'll talk a little bit

more about their religion, but they- they do not view the Christian God in particularly flattering terms.

I mean, to them, he's a weak God who won't protect his adherence, and

they can just come in and plunder as they... I mean, they'll... One Viking

famously says, "On land, I'm a Christian. When I'm on the sea, I worship Thor." It was very much the kind of

pragmatic take that the Vikings had. - Yeah. There are gods, and they

have many, but Odin and Thor are pretty hardcore gods. So everything, just their whole philosophy on life

is pretty- pretty hardcore. Probably some of the toughest

humans to have ever lived. - I think so. Yeah. I mean, their

gods are horrifying. They're polytheistic. There was no

universally accepted, Head god. I think Marvel has also

led people astray in this. - Well, we'll talk more about,

religion, but since you mentioned the boats, what-

what do we understand about the technology that they were using? Can you just speak a little

bit more to this one inch of oak idea? So, these were

these long ships that, Were also able to travel

on rivers. So they're not... Like, what- what is structurally,

do we know about the boats that allowed them to be so flexible in

terms of where they can travel? - Yeah. I mean, and this was the Vikings'

great secret, and I think it's underappreciated. They built different

types of ships, obviously for different purposes, but the thing that

blows my mind is that they built these ships that could cross

an ocean, cross the Atlantic Ocean, and at the same

time, when they had a draft of less than two

feet, so they could sail up rivers that were two feet deep. And

if they came to an, you know, a block or something, 20 men could pick up

the ship and port it around. They were incredibly portable and their

speed, the speed was the

most frightening thing about the Vikings. - So the... These are the same kind of

ship that they sailed the ocean on. - Yeah. I mean, it's insane. - So they're pretty sufficiently robust

to handle the ocean and sufficiently mobile to travel on rivers

and do so really fast, so- ... you mentioned speed. That seems to be, from a military perspective, the

great advantage of the Vikings- ... because they can move much

faster than the land armies can. So, and not just the element of

surprise, which they often had, but the element of speed was the thing that

gave them such an extreme advantage against the British armies. - That was the big one. So,

an English army, if it had access to a good Roman road that was well

maintained, which frankly there weren't tons of them, but they could average

something like 10 to 15 miles per day- ... on a good day, if they didn't have a large

baggage train to slow them down. If you had a cavalry unit that didn't have to

travel with the army, they could

average about 20 miles a day. The

Viking long ships could average 70 to 120 miles a day. So,

they're just moving in super fast motion. They

could hit a place, raid it, drag off whoever they wanted, and get away

before you could get your army there. That's just absolutely terrifying. - What do you think it felt like for Alcuin and the monks to see the

Viking ships on the horizon? Do you ever think about trying to put

yourself in the mind of those folks and imagining... In that time, you don't have a full

map of the world, right? And the oceans are not mapped, and you have a hazy conception of the world. And

so out of the darkness from the ocean where you thought nothing can come,

comes this terrifying, this brutal force. What do you think that felt like? - Honestly, I think it's the end

of the world, and I don't think that's... I don't think they were

wrong to think that. The Anglo-Saxon

Chronicle says the night

before Lindisfarne, the monks saw sheets of lightning in the

sky in the shape of dragons. And this obviously meant to, you know,

foreshadow the dragon ships coming up. I can't imagine the horror. It would

shake my faith, I'm sure, to have these- these giant men jumping out of their ships

with swords raised. And you're... What do you have? Your cross? - Were the Vikings aware of the

fear that they had caused? So, did they use fear as a kind

of weapon, or was this just a side consequence of their actions,

or did they understand and use it? Like the Mongols, Genghis Khan,

the Mongols used the fear and the terror on purpose- ... to increase the chance that they

wouldn't have to avoid fights, basically. - Yeah, yeah. The Vikings absolutely

used terror. It was a main weapon in their arsenal. They would attack specifically on high holy

days like Easter, Christmas,

because they knew there'd be higher value

targets there with richer clothing, richer offerings. There'd be a lot of money

available. So they were rather sophisticated, which I think is

something also that they don't get much credit for. It's like they were

just dumb brutes attacking and just destroying. But they were... It was

very sophisticated. They would show up. That's what I mean when I say Viking

wasn't their day jobs. They would be traders in say an English

port, kind of looking around. They'd get everyone's schedule,

then they would sail away and come back as Vikings, and they knew exactly

where to go. They knew where all the money was held. They knew where all the,

you know, the churches were, when to attack. They knew the entire Christian

calendar. They knew when someone's baptism was, when someone's confirmation.

I mean, they were aware of all of this. And they would... They would

definitely attack to increase terror. - One of the signs of the intelligence of the Vikings is that the

Viking Age is so short. So what happens is these explorers and

these Rough men who do the raids, they

very quickly are good at

conquering and then start state building, or conquering and

then establishing trade routes and stop being the

quote, unquote, "Vikings." So basically, they just... They

conquer, and then they start doing the usual instit- build the

institutions, start a state, and now they're normal kind of nation, civilization kind of thing.

So this kind of force that is the conquering, raid, violent,

intense explorers, it's like a short-lasting thing, a couple

of generations at most. - Yeah, that's right. I mean, the

Vikings were ultimately a pragmatic people who, if it worked,

they would keep it, which is frustrating because they

disappear so quickly because of that. - With very little trace in the records- - With very little trace. That's right. - ... with very little writing. - That's right. - No time for writing it down. - No. Yes. Not doing that. - Yeah. Why were monasteries such

good targets for these early raids?

- This is where I imagine myself as a

Viking and one of my ancestors perhaps. And sailing in... I mean, they must

have thought they had won the lottery. You got this rich, these rich

buildings, rich gold everywhere. Decorated books, jewels,

all guarded by old men who don't know how to fight. You just take it. - I mean, we should make clear that the

monasteries had... They were used as almost like storage for gold. - Yeah. And this goes all the way back to,

you know, the Roman Empire where, you know, think of, for example, the Emperor Augustus.

When he was writing his will, he put it in the Temple of the Vestal Virgins

as well as Mark Antony and Cleopatra. They'd all done

that because there's this additional protection of religion- ... and this taboo against violating

that. And the same thing happened when Europe was Christianized.

Monasteries were... I mean, rich people, their faith had to be an active

faith. They couldn't just say their prayers and go to church on Sunday. They

would have to do something to publicly

show that they were, you know, worthy

of forgiveness or, or whatever. And so they would donate

huge sums to the church. I think, you know, by the time of the French

Revolution, which is obviously way in the future, the Church is the largest single landowner

in France. I mean, the monasteries where... These, these monasteries filled

with monks who had taken vows of poverty were some of the richest places in Europe.

It's kind of a strange dichotomy here. - And then we should also say that the

Vikings, many of them pragmatic people, so a lot of them would eventually then

convert to Christianity, so you get- - That's right - ... you integrate

yourself into the system. - That's right. - In some sense, religion creates this backbone of a society that

stabilizes it, and then you create a bunch of rules about behavior, how you're

supposed to behave. One of the rules is you don't mess with

the church buildings and- - That's right - ... the religious- ... institutions and therefore they

become great storage places for gold. - That's right. - And then the Vikings here

just test the system. Uh, I mean, it's the fortune

of geography for them

and the fortune of their way of life, To be able to raid, to become extremely

rich and therefore this... It both spreads the terror across England, and the message across

Scandinavia that there's a lot of riches to be had. And so the raids,

that's why there's an explosion of raids. - That's right. And I think it's not a

coincidence that it happens when it does. I mean, you have both... So there's two

main theories about why the Viking Age starts. The first, Will Durant puts it, I think,

the best. He says, "The fertility of the Viking women outstripped the

fertility of the Viking land." It's basically overpopulation. Um, and then they're searching

for food. And then the second is there's this technological breakthrough

with the keel and maybe pressure put on Charlemagne's consolidation

and a little worries like that. I don't see why both

can't be true but I do, I do also think Europe... Like, Charlemagne

puts together this vast empire that,

you know, fairly approximates the

Western Roman Empire. If you squint- ... it looks like the Western Roman

Empire. He's calling himself, The new Roman emperor.

This will eventually mutate into the Holy Roman

Empire. But it's very much this idea that it's back.

The Roman Empire is back. He's crowned on Christmas Day in

the year 800, and the empire is back. Unfortunately, it was sprawling. It

hadn't been thought through. There was... The communication was terrible.

You just couldn't do it. And so it was wealthy and weak, and that

kind of attracts predators. By the time the Vikings crash into it,

you also have the added bonus for them of really feckless rulers. - And we should say, going to Perplexity

here, that Charlemagne, also known as Charles the Great, is the

Frankish king who became emperor in 800 and ruled much

of the Western and Central Europe in the late eighth and

early ninth centuries. And,

There's a theory that the

Viking Age was also a reaction to the South expanding

north, as you're talking about. You tell the story of Charlemagne

weeping because he foresaw the evil his descendants would suffer. Did the Franks accidentally wake the sleeping

giant by crushing the Saxons and removing the buffer zone between

them and the Vikings? - I'm sure that had something to do

with it. But yeah, as power was consolidated throughout specifically

Central Europe it did put a little pressure on the areas of Denmark. And

those are the areas that first kind of erupt down toward, um... Norway and Denmark contribute

most of the early Vikings that hit the Franks. And the Frankish Empire is the most wealthy state in

Europe. It's poured money into religious houses for the reasons you outlined. And all sitting there,

easy pickings for people who've just developed the keel.

- And so the word of the

raids sent terror through, through England and through Europe. How much of the raids were

reconnaissance, and how much was it just raids, and how much

was it preparing for greater scale? - That's a good... That's a really

good question. I think a lot of the early raids are probing

raids, to see what's there. Um, definitely when Ragnar Lothbrok,

for example, sacks Paris in 845, that definitely results in waves of

Viking attacks throughout the 860s, trying to copy that. And he

actually is the template which everyone wants to follow. And

so that provokes large-scale invasions. And they hit

England. They kind of switch off. When France is pretty much exhausted,

they switch over to England, and then when England is pretty much conquered,

they switch back to France.

So I think a lot of these are just probing

raids at first, but they're proof of concept and then they come in

force. For example, there was one king in England, his name was

Ethelred the Unready, which is a pretty funny... Pun on his

name. But he paid, in one year, 7.5 million silver pennies to the

Vikings to get them to go away, which is a bit like someone's mugging you, so you

pay them more money so they'll go away. It's- - That's not gonna work, is it? - It's not gonna work, but it

will bring more muggers. Um, so he paid the equivalent of 50 adult

elephants, 48,000 pounds of silver, to get the muggers to go away. And

it's unsurprising that throughout the course of his reign,

he paid something like 20 tons of gold and silver, which

he had to tax his people for. - Um, yeah, the Vikings are not the kind of

people that would make go away, right? - Nope. That's not gonna happen. - Yeah, they would just come back in force. - Yeah, they trust silver

to do the work of swords.

- Uh, you mentioned Ragnar Lothbrok. Who was

Ragnar Lothbrok? Did he actually exist? Some people believe he's a composite

from several real ninth century Viking leaders, versus an

actual singular human. - Yeah, I'm a romantic. I would

like to believe he existed. Um, I think probably he's a compilation of a lot of different... There

probably is a seed of truth there. There probably

was someone named Ragnar. The last name's a little

suspicious. Lothbrok means hairy breeches. He supposedly had magic pants

that would prevent him from being poisoned by dragons or snakes. That's maybe a clue.

We're dealing with myth here. But he is really the template for Vikings. You

want to figure out, like, what the Vikings wanted, who's their success story, it's

Ragnar Lothbrok. He's born Norway, Denmark, countries argue over that. Maybe

Sweden. Some sagas say he's in Uppsala.

Anyway, he is, you know,

penniless, and when he is in his late teens or early 20s, he

decides to invade, sail up the Seine. Uh, there is a well-known city on

the Seine and he raids it. Supposedly, he takes the hinge of

one of the gates from Paris to prove that he's been there. The- the Frankish king, I love the

Frankish kings because they- their citizens give them names

based on how much they hate them. So you have- you have Charles the Great,

right? Charles the Great, Charlemagne. He's followed by Louis the Pious.

That's probably the best one. And Louis the Pious is

followed by Charles the Fat- ... who's followed by Charles the Bald- ... who's followed by Charles

the Simple or Stupid. - Nice. So you can trust the names- - You can trust— - to give you the TLDR of how

good of a ruler they were. - Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. - So Charles the Great, widely

acknowledged as sort of one of

the great leaders of the Frankish

Empire- ... aka Charlemagne. Uh, so what else do we know

about him? So, there's going to Perplexity, "Ragnar's portrayed

as a Scandinavian warlord, often called a Danish or Swedish

king," like you mentioned. Uh, "Active in the ninth century during

the height of the Viking raids." And then descriptions of

the raids and the exploits. "Medieval traditions link Ragnar to

famous raids on the Frankish realms, especially the attack on

Paris in 845, where he reputedly sails up the Seine and extorts

a huge ransom from King Charles the Bald." He's also associated

with repeated attacks on Anglo-Saxon England, embodying

the archetypal Viking chieftain, charismatic, brutal, and focused

on wealth, fame, and honor in battle. So that, those are the ideals of

the Vikings. Charisma, brutality-

... and focusing on wealth, fame, and

honor, especially honor in battle. - Then also, what does he do with it, right? What does he

do with it? So, he gets about 7,000 pounds of silver from Charles the Bald, which destroys,

essentially destroys Charles the Bald's kingship. But he goes back home to Denmark, and the Danish king

doesn't want him around, because he's too powerful,

he's too rich. He's a ring giver. You know, think Beowulf

here, right? He's got this large personal army which wants to

join him for ad- he can do, you know, they'll follow him, and he

is a threat, and so he kind of is encouraged to go elsewhere. He ends

up raiding England for something like 15 years, and then there's a, probably the most famous bit of the

story is he's shipwrecked, and King Aella of Northumberland

captures him and decides to kill him by throwing him

into a pit with vipers. They throw him in this and the snakes are biting

him, but he's got his hairy breeches on, so it's not working. So, he's

singing a hymn to Odin

and he gets pulled out and

he's asked why he's not dying and he explains, rather foolishly, that he

has these hairy breeches. So, they take the pants off and throw him back,

and his last words are, um, "When the boar bleats, the

piglets come."... by which he means, "My s- I have sons,"

he had 12 of them, "and they will avenge me." And they

do, they lead the the Great Heathen Army to invade

and eventually conquer England. Aella, fun fact,

not so fun for him, is the, supposedly was captured

by the son of Ragnar, his name is Ivar the Boneless, which is

somewhat terrifying of a name. And he is, he's the first person that a

blood eagle was performed on. - What's the blood eagle? - It's when they remove the lungs, they,

while you're still alive, they cut you open and remove the lungs and

put the lungs on your back. And then when you try to breathe, they

flutter like wings, so it's called, like an eagle. It's called the blood eagle. - That is horrible. - It's disgusting, yes. And this is

what Aella, you know, deserves,

according to, you know,

Bjorn Ironside and Ivar the Boneless, the sons of Ragnar.

Like, this is what they get. - Offense. - This is the piglets coming- ... to their own boar, you know?

One last thing about Ragnar, is his wife is also an

important part. He had something like 12 sons, the

accounts differ, and probably three marriages. But his most

famous wife was named Aslaug, and she fell in love with him. He was

on a ship, he was passing through, so- ... kind of a glamorous sea king,

right? With his, he's living the dream. And she sees him and she wants

to be married to him, and he says no. He says, 'cause he wants a clever

wife, and so he says, "If you can accomplish these three things, you can

marry me. So tomorrow, I'll be here tonight, and then tomorrow, I want

you to come to my ship. I want you to have no clothes on- ... but not be naked. I want you

to have not eaten a meal, but

not have fasted. And I want you to come

without a companion, but not alone." And so she shows up with a dog. She doesn't have a companion,

but she's not alone. She's taken a bite out of an onion, so she's eaten. She

hasn't fasted, but she hasn't had a meal. And then she has very long hair, and

so she's using the hair to cover herself. So she has no clothes- - Oh, she shows up naked, but she's- - ... but clothed. - Right. Wow. - Yeah, so in this, so this is kind of the

cleverness that would be expected of a, of a Viking woman. So they're well

matched, they're like the ideal couple. And then they have 12 kids, 12

sons. Not just 12 kids, 12 sons. - And many of them end up... - Many of them end up almost

as famous as their father. - Ivar the Boneless. Uh, Bjorn

Ironside, and many others. These sons later appear as leaders of major

Viking forces in England, particularly the so-called Great Heathen

Army- ... that invades in 865. - And they are historical. They are,

I mean, there's no, these were the names of Vikings who attacked

and conquered England.

They end up attacking Islamic

Spain. They go all over Europe. - Well, for them, it sounds like glory

in battle is really important. - That's right, yeah. - And so it's not even- It's just

part of the culture, it's part- - That's right - ... the honor culture. - Men die, but names live forever. - Uh, as a small aside, since Ragnar

is the star of the Vikings TV series, I don't know if you've

gotten a chance to watch any of it. Is there any accuracy to it? - I think it's well done. My

one quibble, Ragnar's brother is Rollo in the show, right? They weren't brothers. In fact, by some

accounts, they were born 80 years apart. But as a storytelling

device, I applaud that. - Yeah, they basically take all the main

Vikings and put them all together. Just so it's a- - I mean, I get it. I get it, it's confusing.

Honestly, in writing a book about it, the hardest part was coming up with an

organizational scheme. Like, what's the

overarching thing that

links them together? - Well, there's certainly an

overarching thing, but we don't have information about it. This is, the problem

is we get to see just slivers of the information- - That's right, that's right - ... from the raids. There might be

just this rich history that we know nothing about. Like where did

this warrior culture come from? Like, what was the evolution of these ideas

of honor and battle? I mean, maybe it's being overly romantic, but you can imagine

the ideals of battle from the Roman Empire, from the Roman Republic

and the early imperial period coming up north to Scandinavia. And we

just know very little traces about that. - Yeah. Even the name Scandinavia

is from a Roman author. I mean, they thought it was an island. They

thought Scandinavia was an island with one tribe, the Scandia tribe, but

you know, close enough.

- And uh, who was the, what was

in this Great Heathen Army that invaded England in 865?

What can we say about that? - Well, there's this famous scene in the

Viking siege of Paris in 845, which is really the Europeans'

introduction, or Europe as a whole, to a Viking army, not just a

raid and then what it could do. And the king, the emperor, Charles, said, "You know, let's find

out what they want and how much do I have to pay to get them to leave?" And so his ambassador went to a

Viking and said, "Who is your king?" And the Viking looked at him, he didn't

understand, and he said, "We have no king. We are all kings." So they're very like

decentralized, tough. They only valued leaders who could prove that they had, they had won. You know,

could give out the rings. - So flat organization, very meritocratic. - Yes. - If you're good at what you do,

you demonstrate that skill in

battle. That means you get to

have maybe a leadership position. - That's right. - And the moment you're no longer effective,

you don't get to have this leadership position. We're all kings.

That's gangster. Throughout history, the Mongols, Genghis Khan

was famous for this meritocracy. - That's right. Yeah. - That's one of the components of an

extremely effective military force is if meritocracy is prized.

Same is true for who gets to rule. How do you determine

the succession? If you're just giving it to your oldest

son, that's gonna be a problem. - Yeah. Yeah, that... I could not agree

more. There are some problems with, with meritocracy in civil war because it

tends to... The only way you can find out, like Alexander the Great, right? Who does

your empire belong to? To the strongest. That kind of guarantees the civil war. At

least with giving it to your older son, you know who's gonna be... There's

an element of stability there although you may end up with a Caligula. More likely than not, you're gonna end up

with a Caligula, I would say, human nature

being what it is. - It's— It's... Yeah, yeah, it always converges

to the asshole, and the asshole holds power, a crazy asshole. Uh, so

yeah, Great Heathen Army, 865. - So the Great Heathen Army, they were war

bands that... Each followed this guy and this guy. "And I'm gonna sit you down in this room. I'm

gonna tell you my plan. You're gonna listen or you're gonna push back. I'm gonna push back,

and we'll just have this kind of creative discussion and come up with

a plan we all agree on." - So it used to be relatively small

Viking groups that were doing raids. And then the Great Heathen Army is

this large coalition of Viking groups- - That's right - ... without a real leader that was able to somehow stabilize enough

to have something like governance. Basically, there seems to be a

very rapid evolution of a Viking in every part of the world they

touch. You go explore, Raid, conquer,

establish state- ... And trade routes,

and always maintaining a grand ambition, but no longer doing the

violence, and always being sufficiently programmatic and

flexible where you can accept a conversion to Christianity,

for example, if it's useful- - That's right - ... and then they accept the culture, accept

the language. So that's why they integrate and the thing that we think of as Viking dis-

kind of dissipates and disappears pretty quickly. - Yeah, and I think the best example

of this is France, right? So the Vikings, which is we'll talk

about this more probably with Rollo, but, you know, the Vikings

settle in France, in the North Man's Duchy, which is shortened

to Normandy. And they, within a generation... I mean, Rollo, whose

real name is Hrolf, he names his son William. That's not a Viking

name. And within a generation, the language is gone. The

Viking names are gone. The

worship of Odin is, as

far as we can tell, gone. And the Normans are building

churches and marrying into the local aristocracy in there. Their...

Essentially, their Viking-ness is gone except for one thing, their,

like, incredible vitality, which the Normans essentially conquer

kingdoms at both ends of Europe, Sicily and England, and found

two of the foremost powerful states in medieval Europe. - Yeah, so the ambition is there. - Is there. - The vitality is there, but it's- - The methods have changed. - Yeah, and they change rapidly,

which is fascinating. So you have a book. You

have a podcast series on, The Normans, so let's talk

about Rollo. Who was Rollo? The famous Viking war leader

who became the first ruler of Normandy, Northern France. - Well, first I should say, as someone

of Norwegian descent, I'm gonna fall down on the Norwegian side of

the argument here because- ... Norway and Denmark almost came to blows

over which was the birthplace of Rollo.

But the consensus seems to be Norway-

Not just biased. Um, so he was... The only thing we... The only glimpse

we get of Rollo as a young man is he was very tall, so he's

called Hrolf the Walker, Hrolf Ganger because he was so tall he couldn't

ride the little Viking ponies. So he had to walk everywhere. But... Kinda

poor probably raised on stories of Ragnar and the other Viking

lords, and he goes. He may have participated in some of the

earlier, like the 860 raids that the Vikings did on Paris or

the Seine, you know, and then he eventually ends up plundering the, what will become the Norman

coast. And in the, in the year 911, he makes a treaty, the Treaty

of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte with the Frankish King, Charles the

Simple, which is not stupid. It's, it's more like straightforward. There's

no guile in how he talks. Uh, and

Charles makes a really interesting deal

with Rollo, which is, um, "Why don't you settle here, integrate

into the local aristocracy and defend the French coast

against the Vikings?" Which I don't know. It's like

putting a burglar in charge of your security or some- I

don't know, but it works. It works. And Rollo, by the time he

makes that deal, he's probably in his mid-fifties to mid-sixties. It's unclear when he was born, but the point is

he's lived the Viking life. He's, he's got something like 20 or 30, if

you add up all the sagas they say that he... they gave him this many coins

or whatever. He has probably 20 or 30 tons of silver that he has acquired and

then probably given out to whatever. So- - So yeah, so he's done the full- - He's done the thing. Yeah - ... and then the conquering and then- - And then the king says, "Can you settle

here?" "Can I give you legitimacy?" - So he does the diplomacy of a treaty.

... then he does the good

statecraft and state building and then becomes, I mean, European. In one

life, he goes through the full journey. - It's... Yeah. - And then his son, William Longsword-

... succeeded him and, uh ... - Gets assassinated, but he does

enlarge Normandy. So basically, every ruler after Rollo enlarges

Normandy until it- it essentially becomes more

powerful than the king— ... By far. There's a

wonderful scene when Rollo, Signs the treaty. He becomes a liege lord

of the French king, and there's this great scene 'cause Rollo has to bend

down and kiss the foot of the king. So Rollo's probably, you know, he's

a Norwegian Viking. He's probably, I don't know, six foot. Charles, this

little Frank, he's probably five ten. So he's like Rollo's towering over him, and there's a large- both armies are

watching. There's a bunch of people who have come in from the countryside. They've heard

something's going on, and this important part of

this feudal ceremony, you have to kiss

your lord's foot to- to, you know, be in a subservient role. And Rollo says, "I'm

not gonna do that." So he turns to one of his guards and says, "You kiss the foot,"

and the guard's probably taller than he is. So he bends down and he picks

the king's foot up to his mouth- - That's the way to do it - ... which Charles goes

falling on the back. I mean- ... I can't think of a better example

of the relationship between the Norman dukes and the French kings. I

mean, it's perfect. It's perfect. - Oh God, I love the Vikings. So as you've covered, and maybe you

could speak to that a bit more, for a long time to come, Normans

have influence on Europe and beyond. - Yeah, it's hard to overstate Normandy's

impact on Europe in the Middle Ages. Of course, they will go on

to conquer England as well. But Rollo, when he signs the treaty, it's

an ambiguous treaty. He's given a title

which is rather ambiguous. He's

not a duke, and it's not clear. He's not an earl. He's not a duke.

He's just subservient to the king. Which means Normandy is

not a duchy. It's not a principality. It's kind of this

ambiguous, no one really knows what it is. And so Rollo, being a good

Viking, and his descendants being good Vikings, despite becoming

French, they just call themselves Duke. And they essentially seize

whatever power they want. There's one Norman duke, I think he's the

grandson of Rollo. He's kidnapped by the French king when he's 14. He escapes

the captivity and kidnaps the king. As a 14-year-old, I mean, it's just-

these are- these guys are crazy. - How far geographically and in time

does the influence of the Normans and Normandy go? So what should we

understand about the impact of Normans-

... in history? - I'm a romantic, so I, when

I read history, I usually end up rooting for the losers. Um,

I want Harold Godwinson to beat No- William the Conqueror. You know, I

want Hector to beat Achilles. Never works, no matter how many

times I read it. But I was always interested in the Normans

because of the Norman conquest of England. And my I have a twin brother, and he asked

me, we were taking a walk, and he asked me, "How did Europe..." Uh, 'cause we, I

was reading about the Dark Ages at the time, the the early Middle Ages. "And how

did Europe, this kind of backwards place, become the dominant-"

"... force in the world?" And I started thinking about that,

and my answer really is the Normans. The Normans, that's the

great change between Europe as a backwards, inward-looking

place, and Europe as a kind of confident, outward-looking place.

And that change happens under- under the Normans. I mean, the Normans,

it's not a coincidence that they-

they lead the charge in the First Crusade. They create the state of England.

If you look at England before the Vikings arrive, there are seven,

it's the Heptarchy, there are seven kingdoms in England, and the

Vikings destroyed all but one. Only Wessex is preserved, and they've

conquered about half of Wessex. And there's a young king.

What's he gonna do? But that king is Alfred the Great, and

he conquers the rest. And then his grandson, Athelstan, is the first man

called King of England, king of all Angles. And then they do the same thing

almost wherever they go. They help create modern

France by ripping apart, uh, Charlemagne's empire,

which was unwieldy. It looked good on paper, but it was

unwieldy. It was replaced by this leaner, meaner, compact thing. They figure

out how to deal with the Vikings by essentially building fortified bridges,

changes to their army, and so forth. The Vikings, I—I like to call it

creative destruction. It—they, by

destroying the things they destroyed,

they cleared the ground for something stronger to grow. - Uh, that's brilliant. The creative

destruction engine that created Europe was the Normans and the Vikings. And then you also, you have another

book that talks about the Byzantine Empire, so you have the creative

destruction that resulted in Europe, that Europe led to this Western, quote-unquote,

civilization that we think of now. And the thing that protected

Europe for centuries was the existence of the Byzantine

Empire, the East Roman Empire, because of all the threats- - That's right. - ... That came towards Europe. This strong, stable empire that is the Byzantine Empire protected the forces from

everything that came from the east. - Yeah, that's right. - They were a buffer. - They were a buffer, giving Europe this kind

of vital time to develop the way it needed to develop.

- So it's—it's interesting to think that

the world as we see now was a result— ... of a sequence of quite

lucky geographical and leadership decisions in history.

I mean, it really does pivot on a few points of geography and a few

special leaders- ... that conquer. - Yeah. Had Constantine chosen

his side a little less wisely, the world's going to be very different. - Yeah, so Constantine is the guy

who moved the capital of the empire from Rome to Constantinople, thereby

giving a lot more focus to the east. Thereby protecting Europe from

the gigantic threats that— - That's right. - ... loomed in the east. - That's right. And the Islamic invasions

of the seventh century, they couldn't get past that choke point of Constantinople.

So they had to take the long way across Africa. You know, and

by the time they get to Spain,

And conquer Spain and into,

that's the Battle of Tours, you know, Charles Martel is able

to stop them, and they're, they're massively overextended. You know, I think

it's a very different story if they can come in through the Black Sea. - And all the times the East Roman Empire

almost died from all the invasions, all of those invaders would have just

conquered the entirety of Europe. - Yeah, I mean, I don't think they

would've met much resistance. - Yeah. So rewinding back,

what was the religion, the religious beliefs, the gods

that the Vikings believed that we've mentioned a little bit of? Thor and

Odin, how did they see this, this world and the universe? - It's, so the Viking gods are... I mean,

they've been sanitized, but they're quite terrifying. But their

basic conception of the universe is an eternal

struggle between chaos and order, which chaos will

eventually win. So I think the

best view of cosmology is

of concentric circles, with Utgard is the outer realm and that's where

the chaos is. And those are the, that's where the frost giants are,

all the monsters that seek to destroy. The gods represent

order and stability, and the monsters represent chaos, and it's an

eternal war between the two of them. Um, so there are different categories

of gods depending on which circle you come from. The gods don't all

like each other. They're not... Sometimes they engage in wars. Some of the most famous gods, the Norse

gods, you know, Loki or Freya, come from outside the Aesir, the main

gods. So it was kind of a fluid thing. - It's more a way to understand the world. - I think so, yeah. The thunder is Thor fighting the ice giants,

and that's what that is. - Uh, going to Perplexity. Vikings

followed the polytheistic, ritual-heavy religion centered on a

pantheon of gods and spirits with no

single holy book or unified church,

and practices varied a lot by region and family. And so the major

gods were Odin and Thor and Freya. Odin was, his domain was

war, kingship, wisdom, death. Thor was protection, thunder,

fertility. Freya was love, magic, battle dead. Um, typical worshipers for Odin were

chieftains and elite warriors and poets. Typical worshipers for Thor were farmers and "ordinary people,"

and typical worshipers of Freya were women, magic

practitioners, and lovers. - Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've heard it... I think

you can break it down saying like, Odin was the elite. He's kind of

more aristocratic, right? - Yes. - He's the god of poetry, you need to read, et

cetera. Only the elite would know how to do that. A farmer wouldn't really care about

that. Wherein Thor is a more earthy god. You know, you want the waves to be

less, you know, pray to Thor. Um,

I find Odin, I think, most

disturbing. He's the god of madness and the god of poetry,

which, I guess those are related. - Yeah. - Um, but in battle, I mean, the berserkers,

probably the most famous type of Viking warriors, were considered to be Odin's

chosen warriors. They would show no pain, and they'd just run at

the enemy and attack with their nails and their teeth. Even if they could have their arms

hacked off, they would still keep going. Like they would just... And they would

attack other Vikings. They were berserk. That's where we get the word from. - Uh, what do we understand

the mindset leads to that? I mean, it wasn't religious in

nature. There's not this kinda ideology. It's just the way

of life and then the prized honor and intensity in battle. - Yeah. I mean, one of Odin's names

is the raven feeder. I mean, you were, by creating corpses,

which ravens feed on, you are, you're doing the work of

Odin. And, you know, the, the Viking view of the afterlife was

unique. There weren't really punishments,

not really, for doing bad things.

Unless you did something really bad. Then you ended up as basically an

evil spirit, haunting your grave. But if you were brave, then you got

taken to the house of the dead, which is Valhalla to... And you were

resurrected. Every day you would fight, and whatever wounds you

got would be magically healed that night. And then the next morning you'd get up and do

it again. So you're essentially practicing for Ragnarok- ...the final battle, which you would lose. So I'm not sure.

It seems, it's rather pessimistic. - The battle's what... I mean,

it sounds like losing is not a thing. The battle itself

is what matters, so Valhalla...It's a place where

you fight a battle every day. - Every day. - Unlimited food, there's

like a boar or whatever. - Yeah. Yeah, that's right. - There's unlimited wine. - Yep. - And you can die as much as you want- - As much as you want, yeah - ...and you'll be born again. And

this is the idea of the highest...

This, I guess, if there's such a

thing as heaven in this kind of construction of the

universe, this is heaven. - This is heaven, yeah. - This is the highest form. This is the

highest place you can go to is Valhalla. Is fight every day, eat as much as

you want, drink as much as you want, die and are reborn the next day. And this is forever, preparing yourself

for the final battle of Ragnarok. - Ragnarok. - So this is where, this is the end of

the world, this is the cataclysm. - Mm-hmm. That's right. Odin's gonna die, Thor will die. He'll

get killed by one of Loki's children, the Midgard Serpent. Odin will

be devoured by a wolf. The sun and moon, which

are being chased by monsters, by giants, will be caught

and swallowed by the giants, plunging the world into eternal darkness.

Essentially all the gods will die and darkness and chaos will then

ensue. And then at the very

end the... This is mostly from a

guy named Snorri Sturluson who was living right at the end of the Viking Age

and writing this. And he was, I believe, a Christian. So there's... I

think we're fusing things here. So then there would be a new Earth

and a new heaven and a new god, who's all powerful. - Yeah, if you think of religion

as a kind of technology, a social technology that stabilizes or helps

guide the evolution of a society, it's interesting to see what the Vikings

came up with. And do you ever think from a history, the grand view of history, how effective these different

technologies of religion have been? - Yeah, I mean, I think that's certainly... I'm thinking of the Viking

rituals. Hospitality is very important in a northern climate

where, you know, food is scarce, winters are long and harsh. And if you

don't share your hearth with, you know, someone knocking on your door, then

someone else might not share it with you

and you could be facing death. So in this

case hospitality becomes a core belief and— ... you know, the idea was

that Odin would travel incognito, knocking on people's doors,

and he would remember if you let him in or not. And if you were

hospitable, he would bless you, and if you were inhospitable, he would murder you. And— ... you know, I think these rituals

are obviously intended for, "How do we survive this winter?" - Yeah, how do we effectively spread the

message that hospitality is pretty? Good thing and it's

characteristic of religion. If you do a good thing, you'll be

rewarded. If you do a bad thing, you'll be punished. And then different

religions play the different ways of communicating that. - Yeah. I mean, I think also

religion gives you, it gives you a world view, right? It gives you a morality

and these are core parts of society. - And the beautiful thing about religion

is it interplays with human

nature and it guides humans. But then of course,

human nature and humans project themselves onto the religion,

sometimes they use their religion. It's to accomplish goals in a pragmatic sense, in

a political sense, in a geopolitical sense, in a military sense, in a social

sense. And so there's that dance of how religion invigorates

and guides the peoples, and then how the peoples use the religion

to guide the direction of the world. And that's certainly the history of

Christianity has a big role to play in the history of Europe, in the

history of the Byzantine Empire, And that part of the world. And it

was an incredibly effective religion, Once Constantine converted. It spread extremely quickly, relatively

speaking, across a couple of centuries. Just to linger

on the Viking views of the

world and the afterlife. So we

mentioned Valhalla. There's the Norns, which are the three spirits that

represent the past, the present and the necessity. They spin the fates of all

men and gods at the Roots of Yggdrasil. - Yeah. Yggdrasil. - Yggdrasil. So there's a notion

of like determinism and fate to the Viking life. And there's

Valhalla, there's Hel, Niflheim. This was the destination for

the vast majority of people. So if you don't make it to

Valhalla, this is where you go. - That's where you go. - Unless you're a real bad person, then there's

some punishment for the truly wicked. - And we should point out that Hel, spelled

with one L was a daughter of Loki- ... And was not the same as the... - Hel with the two L's. - Hel with the two L's. Very different. - It's more like purgatory

type of situation. - Yeah, so it's the house of the, it's like the

house of the dead, the house of the underworld. - A colorless twilight, not necessarily

a place of punishment but simply the inevitable end for most, unless

you end up in Valhalla, which means

you're a great warrior dying in battle. - It reminds me of the Greek view of the afterlife, right?

Where you essentially get amnesia and forget who you are unless someone makes a sacrifice

and says your name, and only then you'll remember it. So

your destiny is ultimately to just become gray and fade

away. So you might as well- you might as well be brave. You

might as well run at that spear. - So that was the engine of their- the warrior culture that

was core to their society. - I think probably. - I have to ask about Vikings as explorers.

They were...... truly one of the greatest explorers in history. What can you say to, what is it in their spirit that motivated

them? I mean, they sailed, they reached North America 500 years

before Columbus. They sailed, Obviously to England, Spain, Italy, Russia,

North Africa, the Middle East, Paris, and I'm just showing here a map

of the ocean routes and the river

systems that they connected to and

sailed. What do you think drove them to explore the unknown? - This boggles my mind. This,

like this map here just, it messes with me because

they didn't have a compass. I mean, can you imagine shoving

off from some fjord in Norway west. That's your only, west. And there was a Viking named

Naddodd. He's actually the first Norseman to reach Iceland, though it was a

total accident. But here's the, here's the mind-blowing part. He

decides to land and explore, and he gets off and he sees two

humans. They're monks from Ireland. They got there in a canoe. You look at Ireland, look at Iceland,

that's even more impressive. They got in a canoe, a skin boat- ... and they just went north because they

were trying to get away from the world. They found Iceland, and in a very excellent move on their part, they

ran away as soon as the Vikings arrived, which is, you know, pretty smart.

- I don't know if you know there's

this video of the deranged penguin with the Werner Herzog documentary, where Werner Herzog is like, overdubbing, explaining

the thinking of the penguin. But the penguin leaves the tribe and he just goes out into

the mountains. I have to show you this video. This is my favorite video of all time.

There's this low-key documentary where they're talking about penguins, and

then there's one penguin that leaves- - I'm out. - ... leaves the tribe and just

goes towards the mountains, and as Werner Herzog says,

"Towards certain death." It always reminds me of this kind of Viking

spirit or the— ... or the monk spirit. There's something, one human or a small

group of humans just decide to go. - Just go, yeah. - And not look back. - Are there sea monsters out there? Maybe. - Maybe. - Is there any land? Are we gonna fall

off the edge of the earth? Maybe. - And just as Werner Herzog says,

you know, "There's certain death."

Now, he doesn't romanticize it. He says

the penguin is just deranged and crazy. But look, the penguin

did look back briefly. - Right. - He did think about this. So this— ... there's two ways, there's

multiple ways, but you just highlighted two ways to explore.

One is 'cause you're this hardcore dude that just is looking to raid and just goes and goes and just

you have the resilience and the will- ... to keep going. And then there's

the monks that just want to leave. - Escape, yeah. Yeah. - They just go toward the,

they want to leave far away- ... so they could be closer to God. They

could be closer to themselves and to- - And away from sin. Yeah. You know, there's this poem by

Tennyson, Ulysses, my favorite poem. Uh, I think it captures the Viking

spirit. The last line of it is to strive, "to seek, to find, and not to yield."

I think that's very much like the Viking, you know, "My purpose holds, to

sail beyond the baths of all the western

stars until I die." You may die, but I'm

gonna do this, and I'm not gonna yield. - That spirit is one of my favorite

aspects of human beings. - I think that's why the Vikings

remain so popular today, you know? We name our satellites, our football

teams, you know, our cruise ships. There's this like, there's this romantic

hook- ... of a people who did not yield. - Yeah, they embodied the part, the

flame that burns in all of us that we admire most about human beings.

Is that like unyielding focus on going out there, of taking

a leap into the unknown, into the scary, and never stopping. - That's right. It's not too

late to seek a newer world. - I have to ask you about, speaking

of a newer world, America. And Leif Ericson. But first, a

quick bathroom break if it's okay. Quick 30-second thank you to our sponsors.

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knowledge exploration. Choose wisely, my friends. And now, back

to my conversation with Lars Brownworth. All right, we're back. Let's talk

about this incredible fact of the Vikings, that Leif Ericson,

who was a Viking explorer, was the first European to reach

North America around the year 1000, five centuries before

Columbus reached North America. Tell the story of his journey.

What do we know about him? - So let's begin with his dad. His

dad's name is Erik the Red, who was forced to flee Norway when

he was probably 10 years old

because his dad had killed some

people. It's kind of hilarious. In the saga it says,

"For a few killings..." Okay, I guess that's a

thing. So he went to Iceland and he got a farm in Iceland which

was already starting to become overpopulated. They had cut

down all the trees. There were some climate problems of deforestation and farms just blowing

away, so the population was essentially beginning to

crash in Iceland. And he got into a fight with his neighbor

and ended up killing his neighbor, and so he was exiled from Iceland. He was exiled

from the place his father had been exiled from. - So it runs in the family,

this whole outlaw thing. - What also ran in the family

apparently was this streak, this courageous streak. And he had heard

that there had been people... So the, the Norwegian Vikings, they

were aiming for England, and they hit the Hebrides, which are

these kind of treeless islands above Scotland, and they found they were

good for refueling 'cause they'd get,

pick up water or whatever, and then

on your way to Scotland to raid. And then a Viking had missed

the Hebrides and discovered Iceland, and then another

Viking had AIMEd for Iceland, missed, and hit

Greenland. And a little fun fact about Greenland, it is both

north, south, east, and west of Iceland. So it's any direction,

you're gonna hit Greenland. - So Greenland is hard to miss. - It's hard to miss, which is not

to take away anything from the extraordinary danger, the certain

death of going further west. But there was this... By this time, there was

this idea that, you know, enough people had become famous by sailing

west into the unknown and discovering things, that I think there was a

general idea of there's more out there to the west. And so he had talked to

someone who had seen Greenland and reported that there was this

good land further west. And so he hired the ship's crew of that Viking.

So it's kind of the deck was loaded, and he went to Greenland where he was able

to settle two different colonies. One

was called the Western Settlement in the west, and one was called the Eastern

Settlement in essentially the extreme south. And that was essentially the edges

of where Viking technology could be. A cool factoid is that the

Vikings practiced husbandry, raised animals, and obviously

this is not an option in Greenland, although they couldn't have known

it at the time. But they brought plants with them. So, and then they were able to

trade with the native Inuit for walrus blubber and things like that,

and they made a go of it. But what's obvious, you know,

anyone who's seen Greenland, there's, there are no trees. It's

almost impossible to survive by practicing husbandry. It is

impossible to survive, as it turns out, just practicing husbandry. And

by this point, I think this extraordinary Viking pragmatism is

beginning to be played out. Because one of the reasons the Greenland experiment

fails ultimately in 300 years is they

fail to adapt. It's clearly they

should, they should focus more on fishing, on other sources than, than

just raising pigs and cows. But- - Oh, so we hit the limit of the, the Viking adaptability which they have

demonstrated throughout the world, I'd say. Interesting. - So Erik the Red is this, he

makes his name by exploring, and he does in fact, once he discovers

Greenland, he calls it green. He says there's so many salmon in the

rivers of, in the fjords that you can just scoop them out with your

hands. You don't even have to fish. - Was this real? - It's a lie. - Okay. - That's not true at all. - So he's doing propaganda. - He's doing propaganda. - So is that... Is this story true that he

called it green just so he can attract- - It is. - So- - The greatest real estate

scam in history. Yeah. - Okay. Genius. I mean,

just stuck to this day. - Yeah. It's the most misnamed

place in the world. But in the Europe of the

time, even in Iceland, the

dream was to have land. I mean,

land equaled wealth in Europe. And here he says there's enough

land for the taking, like anyone who wants it, which is true. It's

the largest island on earth. I mean, it's, it's unusable, but it

should be called Iceland, Glacier Land or something. But

it worked. He took 500 men with him from Iceland. It's gotta

be a significant chunk of the population, but there's enough people, kind

of land hungry, there's no more room in Iceland. It's too restrictive. We're gonna

go further west. So he takes 25 ships and then 14 make it, which is pretty good.

And then those 14 ships with their 300 or so people start the

western colony. And then word gets back to Norway, but Norway's 2,000

miles away, 2,000-plus miles away. So it's, you know, contact... They're having to get

resupplied. In the first winter, all their cattle die. That's not a great,

that's not a great start for

people who practice husbandry. So they've

got to get resupplied from Norway, but, you know, the chances of making

it to Norway and back are actually not that great if you're

sailing without a compass. You're just kind of hoping. But they

do it. They do it. And the colonies survive until the 1400s,

where they just go silent. - So let's talk about Erik the

Red's son, Leif Erikson. How does the journey continue west? - So Erik is getting a little older.

The Greenland settlements are becoming filled up. Erik is happy where

he is. He's been kicked out of enough places. He's made his home here, and

this is where he wants to be. But his son... They're running out

of resources. There's no wood. You know, there's limited food, et

cetera, et cetera. And so his son proposes going west because he's

heard stories that there are other lands. So another Viking had

gotten lost, AIMEd for Greenland and missed, and had seen

something. He said he saw clouds and mountains and there's

land there. And then he had

turned around. And Leif again did the

same thing, he hired the man's crew. He asked his dad to come, his dad wouldn't.

He went with his half sister Freydis, who was a whole nother story by

herself, and a bunch of other colonists, and they went,

and they landed in a place. He called it Vinland because he found-... things that he could ferment. So, of

course, the Vikings, they made wine, or a wine-like alcohol. So Leif Erikson is,

he's landed. He doesn't know this, but he's landed on a new continent with

essentially inexhaustible stores of food and timber and everything he

needs. It's the perfect place. Unfortunately for him,

it's also inhabited by some natives, probably the

Algonquin tribe. He calls them the Skraelings, which is just

Norse for screechers because he can't understand their language. They

just yell at them and attack immediately. They stay there for three

years and then give up

and go back home. So ultimately, it... and

then really don't tell anyone about it. They just keep it in their northern sagas. - Why do you think they left? Why do you

think they didn't stick around longer? - I think there are a number of things working against them.

Of course, I would like to believe there's an alternate history where the Vikings

successfully make it down, you know, maybe down to Maryland or

something, and there's an alternate history of the US and Canada here, but I

think there's a number of things working against them. The

first is they stubbornly refused to give up husbandry, so

they're trying to make this work. L'Anse aux Meadows I think is where they

were, in Newfoundland. It doesn't work. The climate's too cold. It's not...

the grasses aren't appropriate, you know, it's just not gonna work and

they do not adapt, number one. Number two, they're 2,000-plus miles

away from Norway and getting resupplied, and although they are

extremely good sailors and explorers and traders, I think this

is a little too far. And then thirdly is the native

resistance. It's just too

incessant. They are outnumbered,

you know, millions to one. And the Algonquin do not

want them there. It's clear, and they're not gonna stop attacking. - It's so fascinating because

they really didn't understand the full scale of the land

they've encountered, right? - That's right. That's right. I mean,

had they known, had he known- ... what he had found- - That there's more south.

Maybe they, their intuition- - That's right. - ... was like there's not... it's

just all northern land, it's void of resources. We can't do the

whole husbandry thing. But you would think they

could go down the coast. - I mean, if they could have gotten

enough people from Norway, you know, or Iceland or whatever,

you know, a sizable enough colony, and build some kind of defenses to

fight off the incessant attacks- ... then I think that's the difference there,

'cause there certainly the resources are all there. - Mm-hmm. Or just keep staying in the

water, keep going down the coast- - Yeah. Yeah. - ... not necessarily camp out until,

until you get further south.

It is fascinating to think about that

alternate history where they would have discovered America and

settled there. So this is 500 years before Columbus. There's... first of all, they could have

done a lot of the stuff we think about the European nations doing, including brutality towards the

natives. But there could have been a coexistence also, and some

of the diseases that come with them could have done the damage that

they did 500 years later. But now, it would have stabilized the populations

to where the Europeans, the French, the Spanish, and so on who come, the

natives would be more ready. So they would... Europe would then encounter a sizable population of the

Viking descendants and the natives to where the two

could hold onto the land and bring a different kind

of civilization there. Because ultimately Europe, with

the European ways, of the Western

civilization, expanded

out into North America, but there could be this whole Scandinavian

vibe- ... that would have taken over. - Just a hair's breadth. My favorite

museum in New York is called The Cloisters. It's part of the Met, and in

the Cloisters, there's an ivory cross. And the ivory cross has been richly

carved with Christian scenes. It was carved in England, but

it's made of walrus ivory, and they got it from the New World. And the Viking, you know, Viking traders.

It represents, you know, the great arc of the northern trade. So it's

walrus ivory from the New World via Norway to England to New York.

It's a great symbol of that trade. - This whole just period of

thousands of years of exploration that we no longer can do, so it's kind

of geographic exploration of the world,

is fascinating. It takes true

courage. It takes true wander. Uh, the kind of exploration we could do now

is more in the scientific realm and the realm of ideas and then maybe in terms

of geography out into space and exploring the universe. - Yeah, I think the closest analog is

probably Mars, right? I mean, what would it take for you to be like, "All right, I'm

gonna leave and I'm gonna go to Mars"? You're, never coming back. There's nothing

there as far as you know. You know, all the accoutrements of civilization are

not there. It's- that's the kind of courage you would have taken. - Yeah, but there's, on top of that, with

Greenland, with Iceland, with Finland, there's just so much uncertainty,

like literally what's beyond this hill. So with Mars,

everything is mapped. So, so it's really you, you understand

the full harshness of the situation. - Of what you're gonna face, yeah. - So it's more, it's that's more akin

to like, all right, I'm running an ultra-marathon. I

understand the challenge. I think more akin would be

like traveling out into

like the Oort Cloud, like

beyond the solar system. - What's scarier, the known or the unknown? - I think that deeply, the human

nature pulls us towards the unknown. - No, it's true. Yeah. - All right. Speaking of

which, going to the East. So like we mentioned, the Vikings

really went all over. And one of the directions they went that ended

up touching the Byzantine Empire in Constantinople, is they went

East. What can you say about the 8th century journey East in the river

networks that the Vikings did, the Swedish Vikings, the Varangians, as they began

to explore the river systems of Russia? - So this was the most surprising

part for me when I was first thinking about writing the book

and, you know, discovering where the Vikings went. I never... In a million years,

it would've never occurred to me that the Vikings went East. But a- a

good way to think of this is the Vikings launched themselves in

whatever direction their country is

facing. So Sweden goes

to the East, Denmark goes down toward Germany, and

Norway goes England and the New World. So there's a Viking

named Rorik who goes East and manages to set up an encampment

on this lake called Staraya Ladoga. - Which is a launchpad to both the

Volga River and the Dnieper River. - Yeah, and these are major river systems

in the East that take you all the way down to the Black Sea and the

Caspian Sea. Because the Vikings, you know, such sea-born people,

they can sail up rivers. This allows them access

to the caliphates in the East and to the Byzantium Empire, where they, being Vikings, immediately

decide to attack the city. The Byzantines essentially set the Sea of

Marmara outside of Constantinople on fire- ... and burn up all the Viking

ships. So then the Vikings decide, "Okay, we can't, we can't take Constantinople,

so we might as well join 'em if

we can't beat 'em." And they end up as probably the most famous guard in

Byzantine history, the Varangian Guard. Varangian means the men of the oath. Or the men who've sworn an

oath. This is kind of an analog of the Praetorian Guard in Ancient Rome. They were famously loyal

to the throne, but not necessarily to the person

sitting on the throne. they're major power

players. The last of the great Byzantine emperors, Basil the Bulgar

Slayer, forms them in the late 900s. And they're there with the history

all the way up until the end of it. In fact, many of our famous

Vikings, Harald Hardrada serve in the Varangian Guard. If you go to

Constantinople today, inside the Church of the Hagia Sophia, on the second

floor there's a marble balcony, and on the railings, you can find

Norse runes that are carved in by Varangian Guards who were bored

during a particularly long sermon,

in a language they didn't understand,

but they had to stand there. - So that's a fascinating thing,

which is the Varangian Guard guarding the emperor of

the East Roman Empire, is made up initially, for quite

a bit of time, of Vikings. I mean, like speaking of pragmatic,

they just integrate into everything. Now eventually, the Varangian Guard

became less and less Viking over time. But this whole... You fast-forwarded

the story, we should mention that Staraya Ladoga in 753 AD is when it

was established, opening the connection to the two rivers, and they

began trading on the rivers and establishing more stable

states along the rivers, including the Kievan Rus in 862, 882, where the Varangians, so

it's the Swedish Vikings, they took Novgorod, they took Kiev,

and they established the Kievan Rus

there. And that is what led to the connection to the Byzantine Empire,

where they started to... Again, the Vikings went from being Vikings.

They go through this process of trading and then establishing a state, now

they're doing treaties of different kinds, and they're also waging,

or trying to wage war. And going all the way to Constantinople,

and having a deep admiration for Constantinople, enough to then begin

to dream of sacking Constantinople. - Yeah. I mean, once they're alerted to

the wealth that's there, you know, Vikings being Vikings, they show up. - Can you speak to the Greek

Fire? So this was 941 and 944 when they tried, and then Greek Fire was

this technology developed by the Romans. - We don't really know what it was,

Greek Fire. It was a form of napalm, obviously. We have the

ingredients what made it up,

naphtha and oil and things like

that. But it was this very flammable material that

would ignite on contact. So the Byzantines would fill

it into clay pots and then throw the clay pots. As soon as

it's exposed to oxygen, it would start burning. They also had siphons. They

would carry, like, flamethrowers on their back and they would just spray

it at enemies. And the real devious thing about it is that if

you launch this clay pot at a ship and the material, you know,

pooled across the wood and then dripped off into the water, being oil,

it would float on top of the water and continue to burn. So that

if you were a sailor and you jumped off the ship 'cause

it's on fire and jumped into this oil patch that's on fire,

you'd be coated with it and you'd burn underneath the water. It was a horrible

way to go. So this was a state secret, closely guarded secret. So closely

guarded—it remains a mystery to this day of what exactly it was. - Which is incredible, right? - Yeah. But it, in the 944 attack on

Constantinople, I mean the Vikings are coming

on their ships. They brought these ships from Sweden. I mean that's crazy.

They're in the Black Sea. They've sailed and they kind of

swarm at the Byzantines. The Byzantines launch a bunch of

decrepit old ships toward them that have Greek fire on them,

and that turns the tide. But the Byzantine emperor so

appreciates the strength of these horrifying Vikings that

he forms a bodyguard of them. - And hence we get just a few years

later, again, tried to sack Constantinople and then join them. - Join 'em, yep. - The Varangian Guard in 988

with Basil II and Vladimir, they make Varangian Guard into an

institution, and then the word of mouth spreads that this is a

real career path for the, for the Viking, is to join the guard. - Yeah, that's right. 'Cause not only do you get paid

very, you're compensated very well obviously for defending the emperor, particularly if

you do a good job, but you also have opportunities 'cause the emperor sends you,

"Let's go attack, you know,

this tribe," and you get to keep whatever

you take. So there's tremendous amounts of war profiteering you can accomplish. And

the other great river system, the Volga, that brings you to the the great

enemy of the Byzantines, the Abbasid Caliphate. And they had a lot of trading

links with the north. So you get things like fur and amber, lots of

slaves from the from the Islamic world going up. You even

have in a Swedish coin hoard, there's a Buddha that's been

found. I mean- ... it's Sweden. - Yeah. So these networks of trade, just

how incredible are they with geography, right? You can transform

your understanding of land from the geography of the

land to the geography of the river networks, because the way

they raid and then invade and then conquer England is

through the rivers. It's an incredibly different way

of seeing the world.

- Yeah. And if you look at the kingdoms the

Vikings created, I'm thinking particularly of like Eric Bloodaxe

in, you know, in York, he's controlling parts of Ireland parts of Scotland, Wales, England.

Like there's no... That doesn't make sense unless, unless

you're a Viking. You know, he's... That also added tremendously

to the terror that the Vikings brought, because I mean you

should probably be a little careful with absolute statements here, but I

can't think of a major European city that's not on a river. Uh, which meant now with the Vikings,

'cause they could travel up, you know, rivers, the shallow

rivers and then carry their boats whenever, they would, everything

was on the table now, even hundreds of miles inland is on the table. - Mm-hmm. And an incredible speed, much faster

than the land armies. It's terrifying. - It's terrifying. - So you're living in a

constant state of fear. - Constant state of fear. - We've talked about this transition

in several different contexts, but

you've written about this. It's really interesting. Is

the Vikings, like Ragnar, going from this mode of sea kings with

no territory to the mode of land kings? Do you have like somebody like Harald

Bluetooth, 10th century Viking king of Denmark, you go from being these

grand explorers that are free to being state builders. Was this always inevitable for all of these

Vikings? Could we speak to the different transitions, maybe in England? - I think in one way, it's

inevitable. There's so many examples of destroyers who

just wreck civilizations. The builders are much more rare,

you know? So I think it's, it's one of the reasons I think Augustus is

a much more interesting person than Julius Caesar is. Augustus was

a builder, and I like to see that. I like to see not just can

you pull down, but can you build up?

You know, just to take

Ireland for example, Dublin, Limerick, almost every major city

in Ireland was founded by the Vikings. So I don't think it's just a given that it

would have happened. I think there's something about the Vikings, and it's probably

tied to their pragmatism, their, like this pragmatic streak of, "We're gonna

use whatever. Oh, this system of king works. This taxation system's

pretty good, let's keep it." You know, "Oh, this is, this

doesn't work. Let's ditch it." - Yeah, they, I mean the,

they went from destroyer to builder very naturally and very quickly. - Yeah. There's a natural process

from conquering to building, but it does take talent and it

does take a certain something. - Can we talk about so one of the

great Vikings, Canute the Great? - I love Canute. I love Canute. I think he never,

he doesn't get his due. He's one of those unsung heroes, I think, of the

Viking world. He had a reputation. He was called the Emperor of the North.

He had this massive, you

know, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark.

I mean he's just tying it all together. He was an extremely

effective English king. I believe he introduced the

penny, sadly discontinued, but I— - Oh wait, really? Discontinued? - Discontinued. They're no longer making... - The penny is discontinued. - 2025's the last, the last penny. - Oh, no. - Everything's gonna go up by five. - Uh, so going to Perplexity.

Canute the Great was an early 11th century

Danish ruler who became king of England, Denmark and Norway.... creating what historians call

the North Sea Empire. He's often regarded as one of the most

effective kings in Anglo-Saxon English history for stabilizing the

realm after decades of Viking warfare. Again, an example of a destroyer

becoming a state builder. - Yeah. He was, he was extremely

strong. He was effective.

You know, England went from

being the whipping boy of the Vikings to controlling the Vikings. - And ended up on a pilgrimage to Rome. - Went to Rome. Yeah. - So he although a Viking war leader,

Canute ruled as a Christian king— ... Patronizing churches and

monasteries and going on pilgrimage to Rome in 1027 where he attended the

Holy Roman Emperor's coronation. - Yes, he was recognized by his

contemporaries as something special, right? You don't get invited to those

coronations if you're a nobody. But the most famous story of Canute

that I know, my favorite story, is, you know, being in positions of power,

being famous, a lot of people sucking up to you, a lot of people telling you

whatever they think you wanna hear. And so people are telling him all the

time how wonderful he is, and he takes his whole court down to the

seashore and orders his, his courtiers to carry him on

his throne into the water,

and then he commands the seas to stop,

the waves to stop and to retreat. And they don't obviously, and everyone

thinks he's a little... But his point is that, "Y'all are saying how great I am.

I have no control." I mean, this is his active humility to kind of embarrass...

"I have no control over anything. Stop telling me I'm the greatest

thing since sliced bread." - I like the leaders, and there's

a few of them in history that rise to the very top, and they're

still able to maintain humility. Marcus Aurelius in the

Roman Empire is an example that, you know, reading

Meditations is also just an insight into the mind of a man who's to himself, 'cause Meditations

is not supposed to be work that's published. It's just a diary.

To himself, he's deeply humbled. And- ... and one of the most powerful humans

in history- ... is still humble. - The two most famous stoics, one was

an emperor and one was a slave.

- So in the other part of the

world, you've written a book and you did a legendary podcast series on The Byzantine

Empire, the East Roman Empire, AKA, The Roman Empire.

Well, let me actually just as a tangent of a tangent ask you

about the podcast. So you're, you created what is widely considered to be the first history podcast. This is

before Dan Carlin, before all the amazing podcasts we

all know and love. So the podcast series of course is The Twelve

Byzantine Rulers: The History of the Byzantine Empire. What motivated you

to explore this medium of podcasting? What... In, in the

early, this must've been 2005, something like this. - It was, it was '05, yeah. - And people should go listen to it because

it, it's still, I mean, it's like, it's like we're talking about like ancient times or something, 'cause it is

now a long time ago, but it's still an incredibly good podcast.

It's a great podcast series. - Thank you. At the time,

there's a series that I would

get at the library called The Great Courses.

I don't know if you're familiar with- - Yes. Great Courses, yes. - There was one particular professor.

His name is Bob Brier, and he was, he's an Egyptologist, lives on

Long Island where I'm from, and he, I mean, it's a massive

thing. It's like 24 hours- ... of lectures about the entire

history of Egypt, and it was fascinating, 'cause he was,

he's such a good storyteller. And I was reading...

As a kid I could never figure out if I liked the medieval period

better or the Roman period better. I was constantly going back and forth, and I stumbled across a book which referred

to the medieval Roman Empire, and it was a bit like discovering

your favorite TV show had 12 extra seasons you didn't know about. And they were just as good.

So I... It really was a labor of love. I couldn't, I would

not shut up about The Byzantine Empire. So my older brother, we would go on

walks together and I would be like, "And

then Justinian, you know, da, da, da." And he stopped me, he said, "I have no idea what

you're talking about. I have no idea, like, I need a framework. Give me a framework for this."

So I went home and I recorded myself giving a framework, which turned

out to be episode one, but I think I said it, I did it in a British

accent, a really bad British accent. I was just messing around. And I gave him the... Luckily, I did

it in my regular voice as well as this goofy accent, and I gave it to him and

then I forgot about it. And that summer I was on a dig in Petra

excavating the Temple of the Winged Lions, which was

like a dream come true for me. And I get this email from my brother and he said, "Oh, I just

submitted it as a podcast." So he had to tell me what that

was. But I was going for, to the extent that I had put thought

into it, I was going for kind of a longer form lecture Great Courses

series on the Byzantines.

and then a bunch of people started emailing me

saying, "When's episode two coming out?" Oh, okay. So I guess there has to be an episode two. And then the thing kinda snowballed from

there. I had no idea what I was doing. - Uh, your brother, by the

way, is super tech savvy. - He is. It wouldn't have happened

without Anders. So Anders, thank you. - But like looking back now, what

do you think about that medium? Why do you think it connected so much, To people? Because you've

also written several amazing books. One of

them is on The Byzantine Empire. Just looking back

in a retrospective kind of way, because that from there

blew up an entire industry of incredible other history podcasts

and podcasts in general. - Yeah, I've been... That's a great

question. I've been trying to think for the past 20 years,

like why it's such a, such a niche field, right? Why would people

be interested in it? Um, I think number

one, it's a great story.

And people are people, and we haven't changed much, which is

one of the reasons why it's accessible, because it's very... These are

people you could meet today. Um, but I think podcasting in general,

because there's such a low bar to get in, or there was at the time. I mean, there's

nobody else, so just by virtue of being first, you know, it attracted

attention. Whatever its merits, being first was the strongest one. - Which is say you also did

another series on the Normans who no longer had the benefit of being first

and were still nevertheless very good, so... - Oh, I appreciate that.

Thank you. It was... But I think podcasting in a

way democratizes learning. Um, you know, it unlocked the potential

of all these armchair historians. I'm one of them who's like, "Hey this is

really cool. I'm passionate about this." You know, anything that allows

you to tap into your passion,

you know, I think is gonna

be, is gonna be great. - And the Byzantine Empire's an

interesting one. I don't understand maybe... And, and you articulated

this well, but it doesn't get like the love that it maybe deserves in history. I think the, the framing

of the book you wrote on the topic is the reason we have

Western civilization as we know, or European-based Western

civilization. In a sense because you have... They... Let's see,

maybe you can articulate the different ways they connected the

thread, but one of them is they preserved the knowledge when the West

was when- when Europe was going through a dark period, they

protected Europe in all those ways. - And then eventually they jumpstart

the Renaissance, 'cause people are... Constantinople's gonna fall. It's

inevitable. It's surrounded by hostile powers, and so they start

migrating to Italy. Um, just at the moment Italy is receptive to its Greco-Roman past.

Uh, Greek had died

out in the West actually as early as the

time of Justinian in the 500s, 560s. They needed... If you wanted to travel between

the eastern and western parts of the empire, you needed, you know, guidebooks with

helpful Latin or Greek phrases. So Latin had died out in the East

and Greek had died out in the West by the 14th century, so you needed

Byzantine teachers to be able to read Plato and Aristotle. - The book also emphasizes as

we've mentioned, a kind of great man view of history. So

celebrating people like Constantine and Justinian. Or Justinian, who would

be your number one top emperor in the history of the East

Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire? - Hmm, that's a good question. I

mean, romantically, it's gotta be Justinian. He dreams big. He dreams

big. He doesn't always get there, but he dreams big. - He dreamed and tried to reconquer

the Western Roman Empire. I mean,

he was a- a lot of wars of

conquest- ... and built the... - Built the Hagia Sophia. I mean, I

think this is... You know, we- we're interested in the Egyptians because they built the pyramids. We're not interested

in the pyramids because they were built by the Egyptians, right? It's like what is

the great thing that your society has created? I think the Hagia Sophia is that

for the Byzantine Empire. I mean, to go in it today is still the closest

you can come to the fifth century. You know, and it peeled back the imperial

splendor of what it must've been like. You know, you can still see it.

You can smell it. You can feel it. Like, it's there. - There's actually a really nice

video on YouTube of you going from I think 50 to 60 years ago. I don't know. - Seems like that. It does seem like that,

yeah. We actually were kicked out. - Oh, what'd you do? - My brother and I went. - What would you do? - Well, you know, they- as you

know, they're very strict as to guides. They want to promote the local

economy, so you have to have a local guide. You can't go in there and look like

you're being a tour guide if- without a

license. You have 15 different

organizations. So we went there early, the- the hour

it opened, and we had the entire cathedral to ourselves.

And so we went around and my brother's holding this camera and I'm,

you know, goofily pointing things out. And one of the guards noticed us, and, you know, we had to remove

ourselves from the building. - And so one of the things, I mean Justinian

was a critical person in this too. He overhauled the Roman law. The

legal system, the law... First of all, the Roman Empire in general,

the East Roman Empire propagated it. They believed in the law.

They held onto the law. - That's right. - And that's many of the legal

ideas we take for granted is grounded in everything developed in the

Roman Empire and stabilizing the Roman Empire, so they carried that flag forward. - Yeah. I mean, outside of Great Britain,

all European legal systems are based on, ultimately based

on the Code of Justinian,

and then weirdly, because of the French

connections, the State of Louisiana. Actually, if you want to be a lawyer,

you have to pass a different bar in Louisiana than in

everywhere else in the US. - Why do you think the Western Roman Empire and then the

Eastern Roman Empire collapsed? Just looking at the grand picture of

the history of the Roman Empire, it's 2,200 years starting from the

kingdom to the republic.... and to the imperial period, to

the East Roman Empire period. Why do societies rise and fall? - That's a really interesting question, and there are

probably as many answers as there are different kingdoms. But just the Roman Empire. My

take on it is that the collapse really starts at the end of the reign of Basil

II. So the year is 1025. Basil is the last monarch of the Macedonian dynasty, which had seen the empire

become the most powerful

state in the Mediterranean, much more

powerful and advanced than its Muslim or Christian neighbors. He had expanded

the empire essentially as large as it was going to be after Justinian.

It was wealthy, it was glittering, it was educated. I mean, courtiers

had to memorize the works of Plato by heart. The emperor, one of his

favorite activities was to go, and he would begin a quote, and you would have to finish

it, but you didn't know where he would begin or what he was thinking that day. This is kind of what amused

him, so they're incredibly literate. I mean, inside Constantinople

itself, the literacy rate was close to 100, which is... ... crazy. But when he died,

the court, which had been this magnificent court, this bureaucracy which

had been running the empire, and which is vital to the workings of the empire, they convinced themselves that they could run

the empire, they didn't actually need the emperor. And so they specifically

selected weak rulers, and then that led directly to the

disastrous Battle of Manzikert

in 1071, where the Turks enter the story and defeat, destroy the

Roman army under Romanos Diogenes, who's attempting to break

free of the bureaucratic constraints. And then Anatolia gets flooded by these nomadic warriors, and the Byzantine

gets pushed out on the... So once they've lost the heartland, they've

lost their source of troops, they've lost their source of taxation,

they've lost their source of food. At this point it's

impossible to recover, and the crusades are an attempt, the First

Crusade anyway is an attempt by the Eastern Emperor Alexius to recover Asia Minor, more

than Jerusalem. He wants to recover Asia Minor, and obviously

it doesn't work out. So I think at that point, it's on a

trajectory that can only end in collapse. And I think that's, you can

see that same kind of thing in the Viking world that we talked about,

this stultifying, bureaucratic, this

inflexibility. - Combined with the growing

threats from all directions. - Growing threats in all directions. Maybe

your own success is beginning to be a problem. And you can't adapt as quickly,

you're not as lean and mean anymore. There's too many traditions, too many, too

much, the weight of history breaks you. - You sort of mentioned the Macedonian

period, the dynasty where it's where the East Roman Empire flourished

once again, but like, they have gone through so many periods

like that, and they lasted. - That's true. That is true. - I don't know what the reason

is, but you can really trace the Roman spirit, the Roman state, the core of whatever that is,

through that 2200-year period. There's a real connection there, a

thread that connects all of it, and so that, there's lessons.

That's why we do need to study the Byzantine Empire for

lessons of what makes societies last. Eventually everything collapses,

but like that one lasted-

- That one lasted a long time. - ... longer. It's easier to last when you're hidden away

somewhere, but they were in the middle of everything. Everybody wanted what they had. - Yeah, they were getting hit on all sides. There was, in their entire 2200-year

history, there was not a single year they were at peace on all frontiers. - And it wasn't always because

they were looking for trouble. - No. - They're, a lot of it is defensive. - Yep, including with those pesky Normans. - Yeah, yeah. On the topic

of great men in history, so where do you land on this great debate?

How important are individual humans versus systems? So what do you think

turns the tides of history? Can individual rulers or individual warriors or individual humans have the

power to change the course of history? - Yeah, that's the question, isn't it? I... The short answer is I subscribe to the

great man or great woman theory. Um,

I think there's moments I can't imagine the Protestant

Reformation. I don't think you can just swap out Martin Luther and have a Protestant

Reformation. I don't think you can swap out Augustus and have the Roman Empire.

I mean, there are... I don't think you can swap out con- and so on and so forth.

I think ultimately these impersonal forces are insufficient for explaining,

because we are people. We are humans. We are, you know,

everything is kind of a relational thing. And but at the same time, you know, the moment needs the man, but

the man also needs the moment, you know? - Some of it is timing, some

of it is the environment— - Yeah - ... the system around it. But yeah, I've

just seen so many incredible humans that persevere through

things that would break basically everybody. And

they, the power of the belief they have. We were

talking offline about Napoleon. Here's a guy who was a student of all

the great military generals of the past.

Extremely competent in being able

to micromanage every aspect of military affairs of a nation,

but also extremely confident in his vision of the world and ability to conquer anyone. And you have

the same thing with Genghis Khan. This boy that came from nothing.

Everything was taken away. He united all of Mongolia, and then conquered

most of the known world to them, including eventually China. And it's

like, well, can you possibly have the great Mongol Empire

without Genghis Khan? - No. - And the same, and we as Americans ask

ourselves that question about the founders. I mean, George

Washington, not to romanticize it, but to give

away power symbolically is a really powerful statement

like we'll mention with Augustus.

There's... When somebody's

given power, and in some sense absolute power, what they do with

that power can reverberate through generations, and that's in

the hands of an individual. - Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly

right. That's well put. You know, Cincinnatus in

Ancient Rome, same thing. - What lessons from... This is a

big, ridiculous question, but- ... what lessons from all the

things we've talked about, the exploration of the Vikings? What

lessons do you learn from Vikings? - Lessons, lessons to learn

from the Viking Age. - By the way, I should mention one

thing. It's a very practical lesson, That we didn't talk

about that you taught me is the, the Vikings were,

like groomed themselves. - Oh yeah, yeah. - They were like clean. This

is so very surprising to me. That they like washed themselves and

then both the men and the women- ... really took care of themselves.

You don't often think about that.

- There was this whole... Like,

the Vikings, everyone at this... Everyone has this very clear picture

of what a Viking looked like- ... and also has no idea what a Viking

looked like somehow at the same time. Like, almost everything about

them is wrong- ... that we think of. You know, almost everything about them is

wrong. They didn't wear horned helmets. Um, they, their hair probably was

blonde disproportionately, but that was more because they used lye to

dye it because it would kill the lice. And then they would take baths on a more regular basis than... I mean,

this depended on where you were. So in England, for example, they were mocked

as being soft, which always blows my mind. Like, really? You're gonna

mock the Vikings for being soft? Because they took too many baths. But then in the Muslim east

one Muslim traveler writes that they were God's filthiest

creatures because of their habits of kind of disgusting shared bathing. - Oh, that aspect of it. Yeah. So, it's not that they didn't

bathe, they bathed a little too much and

together. - They bathed, but they also

like would brush their teeth- ... using like recycled water. Like, they would

then spit into a cup and pass it to the next guy. - Got it. - It was... It's not awesome. - I read that... This is, this

could be propaganda, but I read that in England there was worry that the

Vikings were a bit too attractive to the women of England because, because of how

much the Vikings took care of themselves in terms of grooming. - Yeah. In the Danelaw, like you

get invaded by these people- ... they're kicking your

rear end militarily. Now they're stealing your women just

to insult you as well. You know? - Yeah. They're... They

wash themselves daily. They've got good teeth.

What is this bullshit? - Whether they need it or not,

I know. It really is... - Why you guys can't have everything? What are you doing? Anyway, I, so yeah,

so one of the lessons I think we need to draw is shower daily. - Shower daily. - Yeah, there you go. - That's right. - That's the one thing I forgot.

- That's the lesson, that's the takeaway,

that's the big profound takeaway. - Is there something bigger about the

exploration, about the leaps into the unknown? - Yeah, I think a couple of years ago, there

were all these debates about statues. Make sure we pull these statues down. This person

did a bad thing, let's pull these statues. You know, and, and I always thought they were kind of

silly, too. I mean, I understand the point, but... Like, we don't... When you have a statue of

Christopher Columbus, for example, you're not glorifying every single thing the

man ever did and, and all the bad stuff that comes from

this or that. You're honoring something about him,

like the spirit it takes to cross an ocean not knowing what's

on the other side, and, and that's that spirit of exploration. I think

with the Vikings, it's the same. There's this way you, you approach

the world, this fearless, pragmatic approach. I think as an American

too, it's the ultimate, it's the ultimate rags to riches. It's the myth we

tell ourself. You know, the, the man who starts with nothing and ends up as a sea

king, well respected and sung

about by poets. I mean, that's, that's

it right there. You know, this is... And when you're, when you're a

society and you stop doing this, you run into trouble as well. - Uh, what about the, the Byzantine

Empire? What lessons you draw from them? - This is a much... That's

a much bigger one. Um- - 1000-year history. - 1000-year history, and it's also

what I think is so cool about the Byzantines is that in the ways that they are

like us and the way that they are unlike us. In some ways, they're

very analogous to the United States. The kind of the polyglot nature

of their inhabitants, you know, the, their roots, the Greco-Roman,

Judeo-Christian roots. And yet it was a place of incredible alien things as well. Men sitting on top

of pillars. You know, a king, an incredibly hierarchical system

which abhorred democracy. Um, so I think it's a way, it's a

route we could have taken... um,

and it's the way they handled

things. Immigration, inflation, war, peace, diplomacy. I think

there are lessons there for us. - Yeah. Yeah, I think from the Vikings,

the lessons are a bit more poetic. The lessons from the Byzantine Empire

are quite literal, like how to run a government, how to run the law, how to- - Yeah. How to build a stable society. And honestly, like you can count

on the fingers of one hand, states that have lasted a thousand years,

right? Byzantium and Venice, I think. And Venice was an offshoot of

the Byzantines. Like that's a gov- for a government to last a thousand years

is a rare thing. Like, we should be taking a look at this. Like how? And how

much of that is due to Augustus? Can we give him any credit for

this? He built the system. - Yeah. But there was a lot, like you

mentioned a lot of people along the way from Constantine to Justinian, the Basils. There's so many

emperors along the way that revolutionized and then

restabilized the empire after it

was almost falling apart. - Oh, yeah. You know what else too

though? Like what happens to a human when you give that human essentially absolute power? 'Cause the

Byzantine emperor stood halfway there. I mean, he was more autocratic than

anything other than, I don't know, the pope that we, you know, have

in the modern world. What happens when you give someone that

level of power? Like, I love Justinian, but I wouldn't have liked to know him. You know, I wouldn't like

to be one of his subjects. I love Basil I, but the man was

a bloodthirsty tyrant. Like, I think it shows you what happened. What is

it? Lord Acton, "Absolute power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Like

that's quite clear throughout Byzantine histories, and it's a long, long list. - And as technologies become more powerful, absolute power becomes

potentially more destructive, so-

- Yeah, it's more absolute. - It's more absolute. - You know? - And it's, I mean, this is the

project for the 21st century, the 20th and the 21st centuries

post-Industrial Revolution, post the computer technological revolution, post

nuclear weapons discovery. How do we construct societies

that last like the Byzantine Empire did a thousand years? It's

just like a new challenge for us. There's gonna be history

books written about us 'cause like nuclear weapons,

you know, 80 years ago, it's like Greek fire that you can apply

to the entirety of human civilization. And so— ... there's gonna be good history

books, and I hope there's gonna be these stories about the American

empire, about the rest that sound similar to Byzantine Empire,

um, versus the Viking age. It only lasted-

... three centuries. - I mean, I suppose the good news is it

can be done, right? Or it has been done. - It has been done. What gives you

hope about the future, having looked at the deep history

of us? What gives you hope? - During grad school, I was reading

Frederick Douglass' autobiography, and he said, "I could sit with Plato

and Cicero, and they would not flinch." You know, by which he meant that the great

conversation was for everyone, no matter what your skin color, no matter what your level of income,

and even no matter your intelligence, you know? And I think that's

actually what, that's why history comes alive for me, is

because these are not alien people. You had asked how similar are ancient

people to us psychologically. You know, and what their goals were

for life. And I think the short answer is they were identical to us, which

is why we can understand them. It's, why you should read things. It's

why you should read the Meditations

because this is not just some dry whatever talking to himself

in a culture that you cannot understand and can never recreate. It's

a human talking about being human, you know? And I think human nature has not

changed, and I don't think human nature will change. So we are flawed and broken, and we're—that's the human condition.

We're gonna be flawed and broken. So I don't think... I actually

think that's the great, that's the great question of

history. If you wanna understand history, you have to know

about human nature. What is our human nature? If you think it's a blank

slate, and we can kind of educate ourselves to a utopia or, you know, like the

Marxists said then, okay. Hasn't really worked out, but okay.

If you believe we're basically bad, there's a whole set of things that come with that. If you

believe we're basically good, there's a whole set of... Right? So, you won't learn the appropriate

lesson if you misdiagnose human nature.

- Yeah. I think the diagnosis

that you're kinda hinting at is seemingly the most accurate

one, which is we're flawed. A mix of good, a mix of

evil, capacity for both. - That's right. That's right. I mean,

I have to teach my kids to be kind. I don't have to teach my kids to be

unkind. I mean, one of those is natural, and one is not. I think my kids

can become kind, you know? - The capacity. - The capacity. - Is there. - Humans have the capacity

for much great things. But not perfection. It has

to come outside of us. - Well, what is it? That line of all of us are in the gutter, but some

of us are looking up at the stars. And so you gotta teach as many of us and to look up at the stars and

dream. Because once you allow yourself to dream of

a better world, you try, you try. Like the Vikings did,

go out there. Don't try to

not to murder your neighbor, but if

you do, all of us have, of course. - If you do, there's Greenland.

There's Greenland. - There's Greenland. Thank you for everything you've

done for the world. Thank you for the podcast you put out there. Thank you for your incredible

books, and thank you for the conversation today. - Thank you. I really appreciate

the opportunity. Thanks a lot. - Thanks for listening to this conversation with

Lars Brownworth. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the

description where you can also find links to contact me, ask questions,

give feedback, and so on. And now, let me leave you with

some words from the Volsunga Saga, a 13th century Icelandic prose

epic that tells the story of the Volsunga clan, a legendary Norse

dynasty of heroes and dragon slayers. "Fear not death, for the

hour of your doom is set, and none may escape it." And another

powerful quote from this saga is, "Better to fight and fall

than to live without hope."

Thank you for listening, and

hope to see you next time.