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Hi, everybody, welcome to Dance News History hit, I'm just in a forest in the highlands of Scotland, the Cairngorms National Park, I'm just beside the crystal clear waters of Lockin Island. It means in Garlick lock of the island and near the middle of the loch, there's an island on which there's a 13th century castle. It was once the castle of Alexander Stuart, who was known as the Wolf of Badenoch. Anyway, this podcast has nothing to do with this loch.

Or indeed, the Hunters Commonness podcast is a repeat. One of my favorites from the back catalogue. I went to the Lofoten Islands off the coast of Norway in the Arctic to sail on a Viking replica ship. I mean, it's difficult to fit so many cool words into one sentence. We went out with a group of reenacts people, reconstructed the ship, and quite early on in the day they started drinking Viking age moonshine. So things get a little bit loose by the second half, this podcast.

But I do enjoy it. If you want to go and check out the back catalogue of all these podcasts, they were all available at history. Hit TV is my new digital history channel. We got a couple of new programs. Got this. We've got one about a Roman villa excavating a Roman villa.

Another is looking at all the evidence about what might have happened to the princes in the tower. Both those new documentaries exclusively upon history hit TV this week. And you can, of course, go that use the code pod. What do you want? And for just one pound, you get a month for free. And then for the month after that, your first month of being a user, a member of history at TV, you get the whole thing for just one pound euro or dollar.

You can check it all out, see if you like. In the meantime, everyone enjoy this trip.

The low floating islands of. So, hey, are we just walking now past the Viking Museum? It is a pretty astonishing building. Tell me about this. It's actually a reconstruction of the biggest working house ever found in the world. And the biggest working house ever found in the world was found 40 metres away from where we have our reconstruction. So this is this indentation in the ground here. Yes. This is where it originally started. Okay, so this is a huge.

So there's a long. Well, it looks like the outline of a longhouses burrow about half a metre high, a huge, huge rounded oblong stretching right across this hill. And it would have been I mean, I urge people to go and check out my Instagram and Facebook. I'll post pictures. But this Viking longhouse that you've reconstructed is enormous. It's enormous. It's 83 metres long and nine metres wide and I believe nine metres high under the ceiling.

Also, there was a whole community. Was at one family, one the Royal Noble family.

Well, it was their waking chieftain, we believe. The last one was all of them bring Britney of Lofoten and he would have been living here with his family and his most trusted men and women were the closest people to him, whether they were family or not. Inside this house, we expect that 40, maybe 50 persons could have been living. Half of the house was a cow stable, so there would be horses and cows. So it's not quite as enormous.

It looks like a barn as well.

There is a barn as well. And the barn was also big. And, you know, the Viking chief of Laforet, that he was very rich, mighty and powerful in any way. And inside the barn, we've actually found gold plated harness belonging to a horse. Wow. We've found so many valuable things in the earth here with finding gold plated harness for a horse. I think it tells a lot about the Geveden and what sort of error. So we're standing now on the original longhouse, the foundations of the original house.

What period was this built? This was built? Well, it's a bit hard to say because the first house came around 500 after the birth of Christ. And then there was it was made bigger and longer and has been rebuilt and restructured a couple of times. But the house, as we know it today or as we see the reconstruction, it was probably around 900, so 900.

So the Vikings, what we call a Viking period of young people from this, these islands even high up in the Arctic. We're talking as far as England, Ireland and beyond.

Sure. I believe they were because there was enough so well on the verge of settling Iceland and places across the Atlantic. So probably our last Viking chief living in this house, he left for Iceland. There is an Icelandic saga saying there came a man from Lofoten, all of what's his name. And we know that Lofoten was the former name of this island and was later given the name to the different islands and to take on a journey to travel to Iceland and conquer new land.

You needed to have been rich and mighty. You needed to have a Viking ship and horses and money, so to say, the economic resources to resettle again. So chances are very, very good that our guy have went for Icelandic. So we're now inside. Really, I can only compare it to feels like a church doesn't it's vast in its echoey and it's a very dramatic space.

Yes, it's it's some sort of grandeur to it.

I would say it makes many, many people feel not small in that sense, but that there is something bigger than them somewhere.

I feel a great piece in here because I think it's wood, it's beautifully hand carved it. There's no plastic or metal anywhere. It just it's it's it's a stunning palatial building. And all of the furniture is wood. It was all handmade. And then there's obviously sheepskin reindeer skin that you guys have produced locally up on the walls, which give it a really cozy feel as well. You can imagine spending a winter in here.

Oh, it's it's amazing just coming in there any day of the year, especially during the winter when there is a fire going. There is the smell of smoke and thaa maybe the sounds of the craftsmen, people working with something, the smell of food.

And you can hear the weather is maybe terribly bad outside and you feel warm and cozy inside this building. It's it's a great place.

Well it's an amazing place and it's a great place for interpretation, presumably, because you've got well I've never been to a better Viking museum than this in terms of the buildings and things available. Visitors, tourists, schoolchildren must love this.

We get a lot of very good feedback. Yes, we do. People tell us every day how much they love the museum and how much they love the Viking history and how much they learn that it's a bit amazing to them because we often hear about the Vikings only as conquerors and and with fighting situations. But there is so much more to it and you get a glimpse of it when you enter the museum.

I've been working on the Vikings now for a year and various projects and I'm really struck by what extraordinary craftspeople they were and and whether it's the ships or this remarkable building here.

You think these guys were phenomenally good at working with wood metal and they had to be because that sparked some pretty that's some pretty tricky climate.

Yes, they had there they were excellent craftspeople and they had to make use of the resources they had, which was not plentiful on the islands, but it was not too far to cross the or to import the big three needed for the kind of work with the around here.

So how are these big pine? These are big trunks of pine trees. Would they be the central pillars?

Yes. This is what we see here are the central pillars and they are bearing the roof here.

And they are well, they're probably a good nine, nine, 10 metres high. Yeah. And they're thick and they've got beautiful carved decorations in them. And they would have been once mighty trees in the Norwegian northern forests.

The Vikings were also very skilled with textile work and with metalwork. You should see some of that or you have probably seen already some of them think that they are making rings, jewelry, short grips, whatever they could make or produce metal. It's so rich with ornaments and it's so detailed that it's hard to understand that we could have made it even today.

What I think I'm learning about the Vikings is the modern mind. We're obsessed with the idea that the water represents a barrier and we think the low fat is a long way from Britain. In fact, of course, that these people were at the centre of a trading network. They want to see they could travel extensively, they could trade. They were actually in the centre of the world.

They were they were due to their sailing abilities. And within just a few days, they could have reached from London to England to Great Britain to Central Europe to wherever there is water. They would have sail in just a few days.

So back then, this wouldn't feel isolated. This would feel no, it is the top of the world would have to say that. But it's a very rich part of the world when it came to resources. So it's easy to understand why people decided to live here. There was plenty of fish in the sea or the marine life that you could live off.

There would be game in the forests and lots of wealth, natural resources that would be sought after in other parts of the world and could make for a good living here.

Well, speaking of good living, I'm coming to a Viking feast here tonight. I'm looking forward to that. What can I expect you?

Well, you will expect, of course, beautiful Viking women and handsome Viking men the best. The food is being served. And, of course, the golden made the drink of the gods.

So that's what I thought.

Oh. Oh. So you'll be able to say something like, I'm standing at the stern now with the captain of the ship, you are dressed in the finest Viking clothing.

Yes, I'm dressed. Correct. So what are you what are you wearing? Leather trousers? Because this is this this is correct for seafarers. Yes. You have to have something who's stopping the wind. So I have two levels of cotton under and then I have leather on site and it's oil on it. So the leather is stopping the water. And today is about three knots of wind, this beautiful blue sky. The sun's out, so we don't need full protective clothing.

But have you worn that in tough conditions in big seas?

And what is what are you you need warm clothes and you need leather autosite. So for stopping the wind and the rain and and you have to move. You have to use your body in a ship like this. So then you keep warm. Okay, well, let's talk about the ship, because she's not only beauty, she's a long ship. What is she based on? She's a replica. But what she based on the original. She's based on the ship who's from nearby Oslo, W4, Oslo.

It's a ship whose was in use there around 900. And it's she's twenty three and a half metre long and five and a half metre wide. And we use our own eight ton with ballast, you know, and the mast is eight and a half metre issue. A ship for war or for trade. It's a combination ship. It's early or early waking ship. This ship, you can use that as a warship, but you can also use this as a trading ship.

She can have, as I said, a lot of ballast. So you can you can travel to the big markets in Europe with a ship like this. But if you need her for a war, you could use a thirty two man for all her and you can use the big sail 120 square metres. Who is giving a good speed? You can sail up to 50 knots without problem. That's fast. That's fast. Wow. And you notice you've got we got a little holes here along the edge of the hull for oars.

We're sailing at the moment. They would have tried to sail. Rowing would have been exhausted, wouldn't it? So the crew had tried to sail where possible. Yeah, it's hard to roll for many hours, but you had to change the ropes. So if you have a 65 versus you can change one hour or two, then you need to rest a little bit.

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So how many how many people would have been how many crew would have been aboard this one? You are sailing. You need around thirteen persons. You need eight persons to take up the sail and you need somebody else around in the ship to handle it. But if you're going on a long journey, it's better to be more people if you're going to take up and down the sail when the rest is sleeping and for rowing. So we don't know how many there was, but we believe our own 20-20 was on the journeys up to to the White Sea in the spring.

They were sailing up to the White Sea and he was trading with some people who was living there, the hunters who was hunting whale and seal and whale Ross. And they was buying all this skin from this marine animals. And they was making all of the fat. And then there was. Sailing south to Lofoten and catch up all the dried cod who was hanging around, you know, as I drive around the Lithuanians, I'm seeing hanging coat everywhere.

It's all drying in the sun. We have done this for for more than a thousand years. And after that, they were sailing through the big markets in Europe and also to to to Britain.

So then they load up with the dried cod from here and they go south. Then they was going south to the big markets in Europe to to England, maybe to to Ireland and to the markets in Denmark and Norway and North Germany.

How long would it take in a ship like this to get from here to, say, Scotland? Depends on the wind.

But if you're going in May or June, it's not east. So then you have the wind on the beam and you're green from behind, from behind you behind. And it's very good conditions for that. So you don't need to use for a long time, maybe a week, a week or so.

So this would although this feels like we're on the edge of the world now, in fact, this would have been very connected with the rest of the world. Yes, they had a very good connection with the rest of the world. We can see it at the archaeological proves very low for day that they had very good contact to England and to France. We have a drinking glass from France. We have a jewelleries. And many proved that we had very good contact with the rest of Europe.

Now, you guys are all looking amazing. You're dressed in your Viking gear and these you are the people of low fat and proud of their Viking heritage. It's something that people learn about in school, learn about in the family. Yes, they are very proud of it, but it have been under communicated in recent history before. But now it's coming more and more and the whole world want to be a part of it. Yeah, everyone's fascinated with the lords of the islands up here.

Would they have been going on the great Viking expeditions to to England, to Scotland, to Ireland, going as conquerors as well? Yes. The saga story about the Kings and the and the laws in the northern part of Norway tells us that they was everywhere. They were sailing the wreck from Lofoten to England to to King Canute and asked him for help to the battle of Stigler's started when they was taking the king Olla.

They were powerful men in the kingdom of Norway.

They was. And they had like a parliament. They was gathering one or two times each year here in Lofoten that it was decided how they were going to do things. And if they had problems, they was meeting there.

When you guys are out sailing the ship, is it about learning? Do you learn things all the time about how the Viking age mariners, how they would sail, how they'd survive in the high seas? I mean, it must be like living archaeology.

This is. It is. It is. If you stand on a museum, you see a boat like this, you can think a lot of. Dreams you can dream about how it was, but then you start to use it, then you see the problems and you have to learn how to do it, it's not so easy to handle a lady like this.

What I love is I'm a sailor back in England. I recognize many of your Old Norse words you're using, like make it fast or Bohlin. I can recognize them in Norwegian as a sailor from from England. So it's a very it for me it feels like the distances have been shortened because of the language is quite similar and it's still in our language.

The old people use this terminology in the original language. But, you know, it was nearly died out when we start to use it around for 20 years ago. So you've done an important job saving the oral history.

Yeah, and now we have a similar in line with what you use in Sweden and Denmark. And they also use it in England. If they have a boat like this on MultiCam, everybody's using the same little story.

Well, the nice thing is we've now got a little breeze coming in from our starboard side and it's the sails just about filling it. So it's a beautiful day here, isn't it? How many days? Like, it's actually hot. It's almost flat calm. The snow is on. The peaks of the sun is out. Is this normal for the sailing in the Arctic? Are not in April, but you can never know. It could blow like hell today.

You see her on top of my head. Sometimes it's like a devil outside.

But really what I love about these microchips is easy to make with the right skills. And what was available here at the time, they didn't need you didn't need stuff from outside now.

But here we had to go into the mainland to find wood for a ship like this.

What is the point you made on the science plank is pain, but it's OK. The ribs and the key ribs, the killer.

OK, so the backbone is OK and pine planks and the ropes.

Where do we get the ropes. The rope is help their hand.

Yeah. And horsetail to really and then sail the sails from lean.

OK, ok. And what about the colouring on the side. The collar on the scale is ochre, fresh ochre the yellow one and the red one is burned ochre. But that's not enough.

You need oil, you need salt in this paint and it's, you know, it's stopping the wind. So the wind is not going through this much rather. Well, I respect so much about the Vikings Mariners as they were phenomenal navigator's but also boatbuilders. Well, they had to know how to create their own vessels and repair them.

Yes. And it's not so easy to build a relationship like this. And so you have to have to be a good boatbuilder. You have to be a good sailor and you have to be a good navigator to do this. And you have to maybe do it for many generations to discover all the secrets about these boats. What I like about the navigation, we can see it today. It's clear skies above the sea, but you've got the clouds there above the mainland.

So those are actually useful navigational aids. Only if you see those puffy clouds, you know, that lands over the horizon, you don't even have to see the land itself. No. And and but he also was using the sun.

You know, they were experts for Seona on the sea stream. The seagrass is fresh or is it old, which sways the birds flying in the morning and in the afternoon. And he was looking at the stars and maybe they have a sun watch they was using to follow the shadow of the sun.

They they are, I think, the most remarkable maritime civilization ever puts them in the South Pacific. The Polynesians I mean, it's it's extraordinary. A thousand years ago, they were able to sail across the Atlantic and and make accurate landfalls and things.

They had to be very good navigators. You know, if you're sailing from Lofoten to Iceland for hunting seals and whales, start of their 800, it's not so easy to find Iceland, Iceland, it's not so big. So you you have to be a good navigator to find back again.

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