00:11:49.220For people who are looking for a religion of love, inner peace, warm heartedness, hope, comfort, and joy, what would you tell them regarding whether they should consider Alistair truth and how it fits or doesn't fit those things?
00:12:08.620Chris, go ahead and take a swing at that first.
00:12:10.880i was thinking that uh everything except the inner peace one just immediately strikes me as
00:12:19.380yeah that's also true right there it is absolutely a religion of love warm-heartedness hope comfort
00:12:26.580and joy inner peace you're the all's here you go sir you comment on that one i've heard i certainly
00:12:34.160am very peaceful internally since i've so first all of those things and i think that sometimes
00:12:41.440people are confused because they only conceive of this as a religion of the viking age and they
00:12:48.080picture rough people in a time of warfare and strife and as our founder has often said
00:12:56.560said, Ausatru is a hard times religion, but it's also a good times religion. It's a religion
00:13:03.980for all the situations our people find ourselves in. It is certainly one that embraces the natural
00:13:09.940struggles that occur throughout life. But so much of Ausatru is focused on joy and having
00:13:20.800having a lightheartedness and a joy and a spirit of adventure and embracing the situations we find
00:13:31.520ourselves in life. And I think that's very important. But Chris kind of threw it to me
00:13:36.640with inner peace. One of the beautiful things about Ausitru is that it is honest.
00:13:45.180it doesn't magically with the the stroke of a wand or what have you wipe away
00:13:57.120sin and struggle and make everything perfect but it does empower each of us to be the hero
00:14:06.980in our own lives and in our own story it strengthens us with an honest embracing of
00:14:13.840struggles of life and i think that that honesty is a more secure and a more lasting inner peace
00:14:25.120than lies and delusions that we all know better than it's one of the things if you
00:14:35.440if you pretend that everything is okay
00:14:37.680illusion is very easily dispelled by reality but if you recognize the struggle in life
00:14:46.560but you are buttressed by the support of your ancestors by mighty gods that inspire us and look
00:14:55.700out for us by desir that protect and look after you from beyond the grave and by the encouragement
00:15:03.220to go out and to struggle and embrace life and to achieve.
00:15:09.740It is a more difficult path, but it's one that's honest.
00:15:14.980And it's one that won't be dispelled by truth.
00:15:18.580It's one that fortifies you no matter what life throws at you
00:15:22.460because it's real and it's visceral and it's life-affirming.
00:15:29.100I think that's a beautiful thing about House of Truth.
00:15:31.520So absolutely, I think it's all about love.
00:15:35.300It's about love of your family, love of your gods, love of your folk, and a wholehearted embracing of those things.
00:16:06.100Laura in Sweden asks, do you have any suggestions for cultivating good conversation around the dinner table, especially as a family with young children?
00:16:18.920Chris, do you have any thoughts or advice on that?
00:16:22.440my daughter is 16 months old so she is pleasing conversation whatever the topic
00:16:31.120although it is mostly squeaks and chirps and the occasional howl
00:16:36.340i think being honest is an important thing i think recapping your day with each other
00:16:45.920asking each other for their for your thoughts i think that's an important one there
00:16:50.820i don't think this maybe it's just because i'm a chatty kathy but i feel like this one
00:16:57.320comes kind of easy to my wife and i so
00:17:32.660What I do think is beneficial is doing a meal blessing before eating every time.
00:17:40.040It's a simple way to build into your child a habit of being reverent before you eat.
00:17:51.920And when it comes about explaining why, why we bless the food, why we give thanks, why we hail the Aesir, why we hail the folk, why we hail the AFA,
00:18:07.420that leads to age appropriate conversation. I think another thing that is facilitated by our
00:18:16.960days of remembrance is acknowledging them and toasting them during meals, you know, on that day
00:18:25.120and then explaining who those people are and why they're special. And again, depends on the age
00:18:32.340level of your child some um some of the stories are more brutal than some of the others so
00:18:41.300conveying those in a way that's going to have your children embrace them and not be
00:18:46.740scared by them i think is important but i think conversation around the heroes is
00:18:54.100very easily accessible this isn't really a dinner time conversation per se though it can be but
00:19:06.340finding touchstones throughout life throughout the day to get those little habits in one of the
00:19:13.140things that is um accessible to us where i live there's a lot of thunder often every time it
00:19:21.700thunders we hail for her and uh aubrey will enthusiastically do that with us and she will
00:19:28.260also point out if we forget and we don't she becomes kind of the the enforcer of maintaining
00:19:35.140that tradition which is nice same thing with blessing meals she will notice if you're out
00:19:39.940somewhere it's not convenient and you don't she'll remember that um so those things have helped
00:19:47.700have helped me. And that's what I would suggest. I'd also suggest
00:19:51.240mealtime is a good time to talk about your ancestors and to tell their stories.
00:25:22.780Um, so, you know, I am clearly biased, but I encourage you to get off the fence and get on the team. We would love to have you join the Astro Folk Assembly. Um, but any of our go-throw, I would be happy to talk you through that or answer any questions you might have to the best of our ability and try to clear anything up that you may want.
00:25:44.000you're right that christianity is a socially easier option what's hard for
00:25:54.560um it's hard for people especially people of maturity is when you know when you know the
00:26:03.280truth you can't you're responsible for that knowledge you can't unknow it you can't pretend
00:26:11.020at something different once you know that christianity is not right then you're going
00:26:18.140to know that the longer you continue to stay in it once you know that also true is the right way to go
00:26:26.140then every moment you spend not doing that you feel a certain certain amount of regret
00:26:33.900about because once you know the truth you're morally responsible to act on the truth that you
00:26:41.420know so i would encourage you to have courage and act boldly when you know once you know that
00:26:55.740something's right and uh yeah like i said reach out any of our goals are up to including myself
00:27:02.140would be very happy to answer any questions you might have or help you, you know, work through
00:27:08.080those concerns. And yeah, I hope you decide to join the team. And either way, I really appreciate
00:27:14.400your frequent questions and the consumption of the program. And last question before we get into
00:27:22.460the meat of today's broadcast. In Ausitru, is there a point to life? It seems like it is a test
00:27:30.920to see if you are allowed into the training camp of valhalla where the most fit prepare for the
00:27:36.840battle of ragnarok chris would say you i think that that is a correct but extreme over simplification
00:27:52.600of the matter i think you know is there a point to life i don't think there has to be just
00:28:00.760one that you could summarize it down to but in a religious sense yes to attain honor glory and
00:28:08.280virtue and to be worthy of moving up in your station in the eyes of the gods i think that is
00:28:15.320very much one of the points of life um
00:28:20.680i think that that occurs but i think that's misunderstanding life is the point of life
00:28:36.360being successful at life one of the things that characterizes alsa true as opposed to some other
00:28:43.400faiths it's not about the next world or the next life house is about this world and this life
00:28:52.360it has implications into the future certainly but it's not about storing up treasures in heaven
00:28:58.920it's not about escaping the wheel of samsara it's about this it's about being excellent in the here
00:29:10.360and now it's about living your best life living heroically and being worthy of honor and praise
00:29:19.000and making a difference in the life that you're in hopefully by doing so you earn
00:29:26.360the respect of the icr and of your ancestors and that certainly affects the life after this but
00:29:36.040concern yourself with the here and now and living a good life and having a healthy family and the
00:29:42.280successful endeavors making your folk better building beautiful things living greatly
00:32:42.520each year on august the 18th um so i don't know what your uh what your schedule says but because
00:32:54.620you just decided to drop this at this moment i think it does require a little bit of who is this
00:33:01.360guy and we will certainly be getting to that in the program but i think chris may have planned
00:33:06.680that for a little bit later in the presentation i'm not sure but uh there's no time like the
00:33:11.300present to get into a little bit of who this person is and why we're talking about him. Also,
00:33:16.660Nick, do you know off top of the head what this particular piece of art is from?
00:33:25.580Your DMs to me? Okay, I did not create this original piece of art, though I did ask for
00:33:32.000the colorings to be made and the sun and red halos around the heads. This has just always been a
00:33:41.020really beautiful uh picture and expression of piety and devotion and uh in the meantime we'll
00:33:48.600figure where the actual piece came from but it is depicting uh eric at this moment of
00:33:55.660devotion to the all-father so king eric sigarsali uh sigarsali is translated as the victorious
00:34:05.560into English, but it actually means something like victory happy or victory blessed.
00:34:13.000This picture here is from a, I believe it's a book by the Swedish artist Jenny Nostrum,
00:34:22.380and it depicts King Eriker in a hof dedicated to the Allfather.
00:34:28.060This specific depiction here shows up in the story that we're going to get to,
00:34:32.180But this is King Eriker kneeling before the Allfather in his and Sweden's darkest hour, and it results in the victory blessing that he is so called for.
00:34:48.420He is the first of the Viking Age kings and is also, in a certain sense, the last of the Vandal Age kings.
00:34:56.860And he kind of straddles that line in a very interesting way that we will get into.
00:35:03.200Do you have anything you would like to throw in about him, sir, before I start waxing historical?
00:35:08.840No, continue, and I'll have more to say as we go.
00:35:11.900All right, so we're going to use King Eriker's life as the foundation with which to talk about Scandinavia on the eve of the Viking Age and the eve of the introduction of apostasy into Scandinavia.
00:35:33.060so we've talked about the timeline up to the vendal period let's do a timeline leading up to
00:35:40.320ediker and the early viking age all right 500 ad somewhere around this time clovis apostatizes and
00:35:47.580unleashes a cultural revolution upon the franks 300 years later in 800 pope leo the third crowns
00:35:54.780charlemagne as emperor of the romans 814 charlemagne dies and his sons immediately begin
00:36:01.260fighting. 843, the Treaty of Verdun splits the Frankish Empire three ways. Ludger gets Francia
00:36:10.240Media, a.k.a. Middle France, excuse me. Ludwigus II gets Francia Orientalis, a.k.a. Western Germany,
00:36:20.880and Karl II gets Francia Occidentalis, a.k.a. West France. So there's this empire stretching
00:36:28.300from France to Germany, it gets split up three ways with Charlemagne's three sons. 9-11, Ludwig
00:36:34.760III, or the fourth, depending on how you're counting them, aka Louis the Child, dies without
00:36:40.880heir, and the Carolingian dynasty ends in Francia Orientalis, aka Western Germany. The various
00:36:49.900warlords of western germany then elect conrad of franconia as emperor of the romans 918 conrad dies
00:37:00.300and gives emperorship of the romans to his nemesis heinrich de finckle aka henry the fowler a fowler
00:37:10.140falconer 936 uh henry the father dies and passes emperorship of the romans to his son otto this
00:37:19.020The same year, Gormr Gamli Hordhakamutson rules in Denmark as a devout Asatuar.
00:38:13.360Either way, Platan is a later epithet. He was Haraldr Gormsson, or Haraldr Komunger, in life.
00:38:22.460Sometime before 973, Otto I, the Holy Roman Empire, engages in hostilities against Denmark.
00:38:29.640He conquers it and takes hostage Haraldr's son, Svein. This is Svein IV.
00:38:36.260Otto gives Haraldr a dilemma. Either you take Christianity, or I take Denmark.
00:38:43.360Otto then has Haraldur's son, Svein, assigned to godparents to manage him.
00:38:48.380One of these managers was a monk named Popo, and various and contradictory tales of Popo's sorcery survive.
00:38:55.920973, Otto I dies. Otto II assumes command of the Holy Roman Empire.
00:39:02.120Haraldur rebels. Otto II fights back and ends up taking a large amount of Anglia, southern Denmark, and surprisingly large amounts of Jutland, northern Denmark.
00:39:11.880Haraldur had enlisted a large number of Norwegians to help fight off the Germans,
00:39:16.560many of whom had helped him try to fight off Otto I many years prior.
00:39:20.780We're going to get into a little digression here, but it pays off, I promise.
00:39:24.200Haraldur Blatan had become king of Norway with the help of a clever stratagin set up by Hakon Sigurdsson,
00:39:30.580another one of our heroes, taking the throne from Haraldur Grafelder Eriksson.
00:39:36.920But when Haraldur Blatan apostatized, Norway fell away from him.
00:39:41.100This Haraldr, that is Haraldr Grafelder, Harald Greycloak, his father was Eirikar Blodux, Harald's son, Erik Bloodaxe.
00:39:51.960So Harald Greycloak is the son of Erik Bloodaxe.
00:39:56.240Scandinavians thought that black was the color of wealth, which is in part why Lord Oden wears black, due to the great skill at dyeing necessary to make deep jet black dyed wool.
00:40:07.940So Harold Gray Cloak goes to the market one day because he needs a black cloak because he's going to a fancy, fancy occasion.
00:40:14.880And all of the black cloaks had already been sold.
00:40:20.220So he buys a gray one and then he sails off and attains great fame and power.
00:40:24.400And this starts a fashion trend where aristocrats start wearing gray cloaks to be like him instead of the black ones that they had been wearing.
00:40:32.480Yes, 99% of Scandinavian men at this time are named Haraldr, Eirikr, Olafer, or Hakon.
00:40:43.500And yes, it makes everything much more complicated than it needs to be.
00:40:47.180A fun little historical digression before we end the timeline here.
00:40:52.960When Otto II is making his push into Denmark, he assembles a large group of non-German mercenaries.
00:40:59.520One of them is a Norseman from Novgorod by the name of Olafur Tryggvasonr.0.83
00:46:12.160All right. So Denmark is getting conquered by Germany.0.83
00:46:15.260From this point on, there's a long-running struggle for Danish independence from Germany.
00:46:20.720Many years later, Saxo Grammaticus is on the pro-Danish independence side, and Adam of Bremen is on the pro-German imperial side.
00:46:30.680And they're both writing their histories at roughly the same time as an attempt at prosecuting their individual sides in this conflict.
00:46:39.900So now I'm going to give you a rundown of Scandinavian geopolitics outside of Denmark.
00:46:44.500And I want to make it clear. All of these people are just like one single people at the time. There's no ethno-cultural or even meaningful linguistic differences between Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, and Icelanders. They're just one group.
00:46:56.200okay so to the northeast of denmark is sweden which has two two major tribes the sphere and
00:47:03.500the geats a portion of the geats migrate which reduces their numbers eventually leading to this
00:47:08.300sphere becoming dominant sweden starts out as a kind of a colony of proto-denmark almost and its
00:47:14.420open frontiers lead to a population explosion sweden ends up coming into its own and eclipsing
00:47:19.660denmark in size and capital then we have norway which is west of sweden and north of denmark
00:47:26.120And it's, again, I guess you could call it proto-colonized by Swedes and geats, but the distinction isn't important here.
00:47:33.600And then way off in the distance, and I don't know why I didn't label it, but it's obvious where it is,
00:47:38.980the northwest is Iceland, which is a colony settled by Norwegians, making it a colony of a colony in a certain sense.
00:47:47.220Despite this Norwegian origin, Iceland actually maintains pretty close cultural ties with Sweden
00:47:52.720due to the movements of skald, that is, skalds, so we know quite a bit about medieval Sweden
00:47:59.180from Icelandic sources, even though there was very little political influence in Iceland from Sweden.
00:48:06.040For reference, Snorri Sturluson knew a lot about Swedish kings, but he didn't know how hundreds worked.
00:48:13.480A hundred was a traditional Germanic administrative unit of territory,
00:48:18.900So named because it was the area of territory in a given area that could supply 100 men for either fighting in the shield wall or rowing in the fleet.
00:48:29.940In the east, there's poles and bolts and all sorts of slobs.0.97
00:48:37.120Poles are slobs, but west slobs and east slobs.0.97
00:48:42.160These are rather peripheral polities in these stories, but they do show up very frequently.
00:48:46.900frequently so i want you to understand something here if you're at the southern tip of sweden you
00:48:54.740can get in a boat and you can sail directly south and hit germans you can sail slightly southeast
00:49:02.980and hit poles you can hit you can sail east and hit bolts you can sail northeast and hit fins and
00:49:10.980if you go into the right river you can sail through the territory occupied by the bolts
00:49:16.180and sail into the territory occupied by the East Slavs, a.k.a. the Rus.0.86
00:49:20.180The reason why the Poles and the Balts and the Rus show up in the sagas is because medieval Scandinavians are in contact with them.
00:49:33.180We in the modern West have a tendency of conceptualizing Scandinavia almost as if it's like where Iceland is and it has no connection to Eastern Europe.
00:49:45.180That is not true, right? And this will show up later.
00:49:53.040The Icelanders are the people who are hardy settlers and rugged individualists by the standards of Norway,
00:49:59.640which is composed of the people who are hardy settlers and rugged individualists by the standards of Sweden.
00:50:06.360The kind of libertarian nature of the Icelandic all thing arises because Iceland has extremely few people.
00:50:12.940This is a very well-attested aberration that lasted for about a century or two, which arose from that colony of a colony origin of Iceland.
00:50:22.260The default state of medieval Scandinavia was hierarchy, kingship, aristocracy, and complex political organization, and by 975, Scandinavia had been in a political tradition of that for some 1,500 years.
00:50:37.160So pivoting back to what we talked about earlier, Iceland does not have Jarlar, Jarls. It does not have Thrallar, Thralls. It barely has kinship networks.
00:50:50.280It is an archaic and atavistic society by the standards of the day because it was an untamed hinterland that was actively being colonized and did not have a lot of people.
00:51:04.320Complex political organization is the norm in medieval Scandinavia at this time amongst the Norse.
00:51:10.340and while konangir and yarlar don't really govern in the way that we think of the term today
00:51:16.580they do make laws they do settle legal disputes they fund and manage public works projects
00:51:23.100they manage the productive classes as a rule when they aren't managing their realm they're fighting
00:51:29.140each other for who gets to manage the realm iceland didn't work like that for an initial
00:51:33.800200 years or so, because there were too few people, and they were too poor to have complex
00:51:40.600political organization, despite wanting it. It's not worth getting into now, but
00:51:46.700Icelanders actually wanted organization from continental Scandinavia, and in the age of the
00:51:52.380Stirlungs, Iceland was finally getting enough people that a feud developed between the pro-Norwegian
00:51:57.700conquest side and the pro-local aristocracy side part of why snorri sterleson was controversial
00:52:04.260is because he actually flipped that die that dynamic on its head not important right now
00:52:10.100for reference okay so go on i like where you're going and what you're doing because you threw up
00:52:17.140the map and as of discussion you and i had earlier today when you can get to the east slavs and
00:52:25.620explain how they were ran by eastern vikings and we can talk about early russia please do so at
00:52:34.340your earliest convenience sure so we can go to that real quick here i just want to say the average
00:52:41.600long ship that was fitted for war a top of the line warship held about 50 men the battle of the
00:52:50.740Svolder, where Olafer Tryggvasoner met his fate, involved about 80 to 90 warships. So about 4,500
00:52:58.820men total, give or take, both sides, including rowers. That was a big battle at this time.
00:53:06.3805,000 men in a fight was a big battle at this time. Medieval Scandinavia does not have a lot
00:53:13.560of people that's important to understand um we can just skip ahead to the the roost stuff
00:53:20.760real quick here do you want to throw up the uh so if it's already in there for a later time we
00:53:28.440get to it when you get to it i know i threw you a curveball early this afternoon and i didn't know
00:53:33.560whether i was supposed to pitch to it or what we were doing with it is the reason i brought it up
00:53:38.120so uh hang on i'm getting my map up here on my end
00:53:45.420we can talk about it just to kind of preface like what's going on here with this do you want
00:53:53.480to throw out the eastern europe map nick the 11th one right so eastern so the the thing about the
00:54:04.220viking longship the medieval scandinavian boat is that it has an extremely shallow draft that is
00:54:11.640the displacement of water caused by the boat's hull right so these ships have a very small draft
00:54:19.740they're very wide they're not very thin they're not very deep and they do not have a keel a keel
00:54:26.700is a structure that goes down into the water so when the wind blows on the sail if the if there's
00:54:32.700no keel the boat just tips over if the wind blows on the sail um across the bow but if you have a
00:54:39.980keel then what happens is the wind pushes against the sail like that and then i'm demonstrating with
00:54:46.320my hands if you're listening the wind pushes against the sail and then the keel pushes against
00:54:51.080the water the opposite way which keeps the boat from tipping over if you don't have a keel your
00:54:56.600boat can go in an extremely shallow waterway like two feet deep right so any river that was
00:55:05.260wide enough for the boat to fit through and navigate comfortably the boat could go through
00:55:10.660so eastern europe is full of all of these rivers and this map is kind of confusing because it has
00:55:16.520rivers and modern territorial demarcations on it right but there's a ton of rivers through eastern
00:55:24.440europe and the vikings the norsemen can just sail up those rivers right eastern europe is this
00:55:31.580massive area of territory that was formerly inhabited by scythians and alans and avars
00:55:41.140and all sorts of other nomadic horsemen and in the wake of the huns and the collapse of the roman
00:55:46.900empire that territory suddenly opened up for the taking and so the east slavs and the balts just
00:55:54.100exploding population because they are an agricultural people that are settling these
00:56:00.820areas that used to be forests and pasture land held by nomadic horsemen and to be clear the east
00:56:08.680slavs do have horses right they do herd cattle but they grow crops and settle territory and grow
00:56:16.280grain in a way that the prior inhabitants didn't so they're slowly spreading through eastern europe0.96
00:56:23.180While Western Europe has all of its history going on. But there are other mobile peoples moving through this area as well. The Norse are one such example, moving through the riverways. There's also the Khazars, the Hungarians, a group of Bulgarians end up adopting nomadic lifestyles.
00:56:42.580There's a lot of people moving through these territories, preying on the East Slavs, because the East Slavs are growing in population and do not have firm, central political authority. Yet, one group of Norsemen realizes, huh, these guys don't have firm, central political authority.0.75
00:57:05.500What if we were the firm central political authority?
00:57:10.500This leads to the Viking conquest of Eastern Europe, where you get various Norse populations taking over and establishing themselves as overlords over these East Slavic peoples.
00:57:26.500Do you want to throw something in here, sir?
00:57:35.500so sorry when i mute myself for whatever reason i have trouble finding the unmute button
00:57:44.540um no other than to for the millionth time reiterate
00:57:49.460oftentimes we consume history in these
00:57:59.180small microcosms, like a small glimpse in one lifetime, in one location on the map. And we
00:58:08.740don't, many of us don't have the full, I mean, none of us have the full depth and breath, but
00:58:18.600many of us don't realize the continuity and connectivity. One of the things that Chris and
00:58:25.060have tried to illuminate for everyone in this series is
00:58:33.220scandinavia isn't some strange mystical land that nobody's heard of these people and these
00:58:39.940people haven't heard of anyone else and these bits of history are all connected um we've traced the
00:58:49.540at this point unbroken connectivity of the trough between the ice here and our folk from the
00:58:59.220receding ice into europe throughout europe up into scandinavia and all of the points in between and
00:59:07.460chris has made clear that even up to this point in the north and in the you know fringes of europe
00:59:15.780and in the east still things are mutually intelligible all the way into england things
00:59:22.420are mutually intelligible dialects begin to kind of come about but the idea of our gods has separated
00:59:33.700between northern europe and mediterranean europe to a degree but the understanding
00:59:44.020outside of the christian world still very much exists is very much present in all of the places
00:59:52.260that the norse travel and they are familiar with the existent nations of europe and many of the
01:00:01.060nations of asia and you know the the little bit that touches on the mediterranean world
01:00:07.700in north africa and it's important to realize
01:00:13.780our ancestors have the same brain space that we have they're not primitive shoulder pelt ooga booga
01:00:24.180people that don't know how things work they're technologically advanced they are socially
01:00:30.980and hygienically advanced they have advanced trading advanced seafaring advanced metallurgy
01:00:40.260there is connectivity in the world in a much greater way than i think is portrayed in most
01:00:45.860of the ways that so many of us have consumed history in our life and i think this is a really
01:00:51.940important series for those that are not familiar with that and you know hopefully a very interesting
01:00:57.780series for those who enjoy history like chris might be so just to throw in here so
01:01:07.460there is this massive waterway connection linking the baltic can you throw the the eastern europe
01:01:13.860map up again nick while we're kind of on this one so there's this massive waterway connecting the
01:01:19.460Baltic Sea, the water around Sweden, to the Black Sea, the water north of the Anatolian Peninsula.
01:01:28.960And you can get in a boat and sail from Sweden to Greece. You might have to get out of the boat,
01:01:34.820pick it up, move it across a riverway, or go down a waterfall, but you can theoretically sail from
01:01:42.020Sweden to Greece without going into, without leaving the Baltic Sea, without going into the
01:01:48.120atlantic proper and going around spain so these norsemen start moving through eastern europe0.97
01:01:55.140and the byzantine emperor says hey do you guys want a job you guys are really good at fighting
01:02:02.860how about you work for me that's where the varangians come from the the term varangian
01:02:10.580It ultimately comes from a Norse word, varingi, which kind of means like contract man, right?
01:02:17.940So around in the late 1800s, a man by the name of Hrurikr, a.k.a. Rurik,
01:02:28.880he ends up achieving great status in Navgarad as the Norse conqueror of this.
01:02:37.360a conqueror doesn't really uh do the term justice but he amasses a great deal of power in
01:02:44.480Novgorod he is one of these Varangians these Norsemen that are bumping around eastern Europe
01:02:50.280and so not only are the these Norsemen in contact with the Balts they're in contact with the Rus
01:02:56.620they're in contact with the Greeks they're in contact with the Anatolians right so in the
01:03:05.780In the mid-900s, a guy by the name of Ahmad ibn Fadlan ibn al-Abbas al-Baghdadi, we call him ibn Fadlan for ease in English, he goes on a trip sent by the Abbasid Caliphate and he ends up, he's going to a guy by the name of al-Muqtadir.
01:03:25.900He's the king of the Bulgabulgars, and along the way, he stops and meets up with, quote, the Rus', unquote.
01:03:37.520This is the, I guess you could call it almost mobile court of a Norse warlord who dies, and he observes and reports on their funeral, or the funeral they throw for this Norse warlord.
01:03:52.480But he is ruling over a Norse, Scandinavian, Finnic, Slavic, Hungarian, Turkic little court here because this area of Eastern Europe is extremely porous to anyone who wants to move through it, right?0.79
01:04:14.140So these Norsemen are pouring out of Scandinavia into Eastern Europe as the East Slums are just ballooning in populace as all of these steppe peoples are moving in. It's extremely complicated. We don't have a lot of written sources about this time, which makes the period kind of opaque, but even me just explaining this is an oversimplification that does not do a lot of these complexities justice, right?
01:04:41.340so do you want me to do you want to do want to talk any more about eastern europe before we
01:04:45.660go back to sweden sir if you will take us to greece at some point we can do that doesn't need to be
01:04:56.540now but whenever you would like to uh make sure we weave it in all right so back to sweden let's
01:05:03.420back to Sweden so Sweden is the red light red dark red area if you don't know where Sweden is
01:05:13.540there are two principal groups in Sweden the sphere and the geats
01:05:19.860so I want to ask what is a king there's three levels of Scandinavian society
01:05:27.720there are the carlor who are the middle class independent landowners
01:05:33.420They have numerous thralar on their land. Thralar are not slaves per se. They are not property. Rather, their labor is owed to a lord, their karl or jarl. So a thral owes labor to a karl, but he isn't the property of the karl, nor is he legally bound to the land itself.
01:05:53.220If a karl gets enough wealth and power, he becomes a jarl. There's no firm dividing line between a jarl and a karl. A jarl just has lots of wealth and power and esteem, and it's important to understand at this time that these three terms, thralls, karls, jarls, these become moral terms as well as economic and political ones, right?0.97
01:06:18.980And they had been understood as such for quite some time by the time that Scandinavians start writing things down.
01:06:26.700So in theory, there could be a Karl who with more wealth and power than some of the Jarls.
01:06:32.560In Rigsdula, the æðr Karls, as an example, the lineage of Karls, is not referring to a literal social class per se, but rather also to a moral and social nature.
01:06:45.300Æðr, meaning lineage, family, race, is often used by Asatruar in this elder period to mean body.
01:06:54.600The Æsir as a whole are Æðr, Odin's lineage.
01:06:59.720This isn't necessarily literal, it's just how Asatruar conceptualize and refer to social bodies and groups.
01:07:05.960Notably, the poet Halfreyr van der Skalb, Otharson, refers to Asaturar as an Astar, as a way to understand the body of the faithful in his culture and language.
01:07:21.040Now, it's worth noting that this system is hierarchical.
01:07:24.360Thrallar, Karlar, and Yarlar are all ranks.
01:07:29.700They are not three separate pathways or castes.
01:07:32.720It's overly reductive to say that they're classes, because that either brings in modern American ideas of class or modern British ideas of clause.
01:07:43.500But they are classes and not castes, right?0.76
01:07:49.820There is no way a Jarl and a Karl and a Thrall can all be equal.
01:07:54.980They are necessarily hierarchical, right?1.00
01:07:58.340There are not rich Thrallar and poor Jarwar.0.99
01:11:51.640This usually came down to threats of violence and offers of bribes,
01:11:56.640but occasionally they'd give him some task to complete,
01:11:59.640build this thing for us, go conquer this land, go beat up this guy, whatever.
01:12:06.640If those worked, the representatives would take him as king, and if the right legal procedures were done, the law speaker would deem him as king, and thus he would be king of that province.
01:12:25.480So it is possible for Svitiod to have a king and Scania to have a king, and they're not the same king, right?
01:12:33.880Now, notice that there are two procedures here. There is the representatives of the political communities, what would it be, Thakhandi, taking the man as the king, and then there's the law speaker who would dhema the man as the king.
01:12:49.220The king has to get everyone who matters to agree to him being king, but he also has to follow certain rules to make the procedure licit.
01:12:57.920He can't just force himself to be king yet.
01:13:02.980That ends up happening eventually, but the thing was a provincial-level law court for handling things like wereguild or punishments for theft and a kind of parliament for making new laws.
01:13:15.120The law codes were housed in the minds of the law speakers.
01:13:19.600There's a lot of cool stuff here if you're like a law nerd, because the structure of a written law code is way different from the structure of an oral law code.
01:13:31.960Like if you just look at them, you can be like, yeah, this is an oral law code that got written down versus, yeah, this is something that they made up from scratch on vellum, right?
01:13:41.180One key sign is that oral law codes really like patterns.
01:13:48.620Seven years, 700 shillings, these regular kind of repeating units, right?
01:13:55.740The thing was, in absence of the king's presence, the body that would engage in public works,
01:14:00.620usually by tasking or paying a jarl to make it happen.
01:14:04.140The, quote, auto thing of Iceland is so-called because Iceland had too few people to hold
01:14:10.140regional things with any frequency or meaningful power. The entirety of what is today Sweden would
01:14:16.060not attend a single thing, but the entirety of the Gittish territory and the entirety of the
01:14:20.780Svirish territory, which is Svitjod, would actually hold a large thing on occasion, notably for
01:14:27.340electing a king. All right, see that Westergothia, that light green on the left? Then there's
01:14:34.780Ostrogothia, that darker green on the right, that's the entirety of the Gittish territory.
01:14:41.100See Svitjod, that's the entirety of the Svirish territory. Notice how these three provinces are
01:14:47.000rather big compared to the other ones. See Helsingia, that's in Sweden today, but they
01:14:54.320didn't get a say in the Svirish althing. So I've thrown a lot of political governmental stuff
01:15:01.860at the audience, let's make this very American in comparison. And a very rough American comparison
01:15:09.300would be that the king is like the president, only there's no federal level executive or
01:15:15.520legislative branch. There's just the 50 states, but none of them have governors. Those states do
01:15:21.380have state legislatures composed of local elites and state judiciaries composed of lawmen, and all
01:15:27.240executive branch matters are handled by contractors paid by the legislature. In order to get elected
01:15:32.520president, one has to get the assent of each state's legislature and judiciary so you can be
01:15:37.960quote, king of Kentucky, unquote, without also being king of Texas. And there can very easily
01:15:43.500be multiple kings at once, even within a given realm, if they agree to a power sharing arrangement
01:15:48.820and the local political communities all say, yeah, we're cool with this at the thing. Now,
01:15:54.780Now, if you're already the king of one province, it's really easy to become the king of another province.1.00
01:16:01.080A konungur would typically spend his time doing a circuit of sorts through his provinces,0.97
01:16:05.860with the first one being to get them all to accept him as king,1.00
01:16:09.340and then thereafter he'd be maintaining his kingship with bribes and threats.
01:16:13.480This is also how it worked in Anglo-Saxon England.
01:16:16.500The king would do a circuit through his lands, administering to them,
01:16:21.120dealing with matters of justice, with matters of state, doing all sorts of rituals, handing out money, all sorts of king stuff, right?
01:16:31.240The king would also be the supreme religious leader in his land, which does not necessarily mean that he was a priest, as we might use the term today.
01:16:41.700Rather, it meant that he was the chief guarantor of the land's religiosity and the chief participant in its religiosity.
01:16:48.720It was the king's duty to facilitate the proper relationship between his people and the gods.
01:16:54.980That included building temples, building open-air religious precincts, hosting festivals, funding rituals, and so on.
01:17:02.340So as the king is going through his circuit, he's threatening rebellious nobles and he's bribing the locals
01:17:07.580and he's also hosting religious festivals and building projects,
01:17:10.920and both as a bribe and part of getting the locals on his side so they don't get defensive of the people he's threatening.
01:17:17.040all using his own money so if the king wants to build a temple he can either tax the locals
01:17:25.620or he has to pay for it himself it is for this reason that a christian king is disastrous in
01:17:34.280this environment as not only does this mean that an agent of a foreign power can force a foreign
01:17:38.460faith but also that that traitorous king is implicitly to be followed in matters of religion
01:17:44.440because again we we use the term priest today to refer to an individual with technical training and
01:17:51.160knowledge and that's not necessarily what the koninger is but as a jarl he would have religious
01:17:58.460knowledge and authority as part of his rank and station and so when he apostatizes oh well you're
01:18:07.580supposed to follow the king, and the king is asking people to follow him somewhere bad.
01:18:14.160When Christian kings came around, there was indeed pushback by the locals, but there was no singular
01:18:19.340organized ideological body, such as a united church, to defend the true faith. Some people
01:18:25.860today don't like that there is one singular church of the Aesir in Midgard. That's the AFA.
01:18:31.620It is worth remembering that in Sweden, circa 1000 AD, there was no one singular Church of the Iser in Midgard.
01:18:39.620It is also worth remembering that the last Ossetur Swedish king died in 1087.
01:18:57.960There is basically no civil service at this point.
01:19:00.660everyone is one of his boys. Someone who owes him loyalty, is getting paid by him, is a thrall of
01:19:08.160his, whatever. Sometimes he basically gave these courtiers a greater degree of power in an area
01:19:13.420they were already a Jarl in. And in the Scandinavian political tradition, this actually
01:19:17.280leads to Jarl becoming a government office given to one by the king many years after our story
01:19:24.320about Eriker takes place. Sometimes the king just gave a courtier a wad of cash and told them to go
01:19:29.720solve a problem. This could be some complex sociopolitical drama, but it could also be as
01:19:35.400simple as go build a road connecting these two villages, but sometimes he gave them men to build
01:19:40.260the road, or maybe to go hurt someone, or to collect taxes from a rebellious region.
01:19:46.560So the person of the king mattered greatly, as ultimately the office of Kunungur was
01:19:51.800interpersonal law speaker was a government office based on knowing a bunch of stuff but
01:19:59.060canunger wasn't and this extends outwards to culture the king would bring scalds into his
01:20:06.660court and have them compose poems they'd then go out into the world and declaim these poems which
01:20:12.060were quite fashionable so whatever is in the poems is now fashionable so if the poems are about thor
01:20:18.420then people hear these things these fashionable things about lord thawar if they're about jesus
01:20:25.160well now you know what people are going to hear in the king's court and if the king brings
01:20:31.180christian priests into his court then those priests not only start talking about jesus
01:20:35.480but they also start hobnobbing with other elites and offering the benefits of the catholic church
01:20:40.280to them do you want to throw in anything here before we get to eric himself sir
01:20:44.380uh no other than to point out that this is the beginning of the swedish monarchy
01:20:53.020um some of the decentralization talked about here evolves over time and strengthens by the
01:21:02.620time we get to the end of the conversion period and there's a couple of differences so this is
01:21:07.740an evolution this is a starting point of how monarchy and social structure work in the viking
01:21:13.660age but it's not necessarily the ending point of how that worked also keep in mind what chris said
01:21:21.020about needing to go and secure each of the quote unquote states in order to have your kingship of
01:21:31.260all of norway or sweden recognized it's going to come into play quite a bit when we talk about
01:21:38.940uh norway and when we talk about many of our heroes in that um end up losing their life in
01:21:48.780some of those tours of trying to have your kinship recognized so that'll come into play then and it's
01:21:56.540important to remember when we say elect and election in medieval scandinavia we don't mean
01:22:01.740between everyone puts a pottery shard into a big thing and then the slaves count it like they did
01:22:08.660in athens there are people of there are various tiers of hierarchy and each tier goes to the
01:22:15.260people below them and is like all right what do you guys need because i'm going to the thing
01:22:20.820and we might be able to get a bribe right so this election isn't democracy but it's not
01:22:29.220just this brute force tyranny of ooga booga me king you listen to me at least not yet right
01:22:36.240so getting to our protagonist eric is as i said the last of the vendal age kings and the first
01:22:44.920of the viking age kings when eric takes power the scandinavians have been building up manpower and
01:22:51.400wealth and technology they have been centralizing and scandinavian men have been pouring out of
01:22:56.560scandinavia for some time do you want to throw up the viking age expansion map nick
01:23:01.100so again here's just an example of what the pouring out of scandinavia looks like
01:23:12.200right these men get in their boats and then they say where can i go and what can i do so on this
01:23:20.640map, the green is area where Scandinavians were doing raiding, trade, all sorts of stuff in
01:23:29.460between, but they weren't necessarily building a village. You'll notice that there's a lot of,
01:23:35.580you know, red and orange outside of Scandinavia proper. There's some in Ireland, there's some in
01:23:41.980Scotland, there's some in England, and there's also all throughout Eastern Europe, not just along
01:23:48.760the coast, but also along those massive riverways moving through Eastern Europe, right? You'll also
01:23:56.600notice that the Norse tended not to go into the Eastern Mediterranean. They typically didn't bump
01:24:06.100elbows too closely with the Muslims. I brought this up on the last episode about slave trading.
01:24:11.840You'll sometimes hear people act as if the Norse kidnapped people from Paris, sailed them around Spain through the Strait of Hercules, passed Sicily, and dropped them off in Syria.
01:24:29.300The Norse sold slaves to Christians in the Khazar Khaganate who, through a chain of merchants, would get them into the Muslim world.
01:24:38.460they would also do so into the greek world do you want to talk about greece here sir
01:24:45.200the byzantine empire which was the big regional power in eastern europe at the time
01:24:51.820do you want to do you want to talk about eastern europe uh greece here sir uh no but i wanted you
01:24:58.640to just a little bit about their interaction with the court at constantinople and their service
01:25:04.980Yes. So the southeast world here is dominated by these two big powers, the Byzantine Empire, and at the time of Euriker's life, it's the Abbasid Caliphate, but it kind of changes over time.
01:25:25.040eventually becomes the ottomans right the byzantines need mercenaries and they need
01:25:33.860loyal people the byzantine empire is this complex polity that emerges i mean it just is the eastern0.83
01:25:42.180roman empire right but it's ruling over this vast multicultural swath of land it's very suspicious
01:25:50.240of the greek majority and so it gets very good at using mercenaries and inducting people into0.99
01:25:58.360its systems in a way that kind of encapsulates them right so
01:26:05.140the byzantine empire ends up i guess you could say buying a lot of mercenaries from this norse
01:26:16.000world because these norsemen are politically very unconnected to east to uh southeastern europe
01:26:24.400um they don't typically settle in this area they do a lot of raiding in the black sea but mostly
01:26:31.600because they're taking stuff and bringing it back to uh scandinavia right um the varangian guard in
01:26:42.720particular were valued as being the bodyguards of the byzantine emperor the basileos right
01:26:52.000and they are they were primarily recruited from the norsemen because the norsemen were
01:26:56.720very good at violence very loyal but also because they were politically very distant from the
01:27:02.960ongoings of the scale of the the byzantine court they didn't really have any stake in the matter
01:27:09.840they could just they were there to be hired they were there to make money and then well i mean
01:27:14.560these guys believe in honor and stuff like that so once they're hired they're not gonna
01:27:18.880they're gonna try their best not to screw up out of personal loyalty and honor and all that right
01:27:26.240um is there anything you want to throw in about it i think you just wanted to kind of just a little
01:27:30.560bit of their they're famed for their battle prowess in a way that is really different than the
01:27:42.400eastern armies are used to which is a cool factor they also have their strangers in a strange land
01:27:50.320and they're liables to be loyal to the guy that brought them there and paying them because they
01:27:54.960don't have the local connections the byzantine court is notoriously corrupt and treacherous
01:28:03.360and you don't know who to trust these foreign guys that you're paying well that don't have0.63
01:28:09.520institutional connections to all of the different local factionalism are a
01:28:15.520exotic idea to provide personal security and to be kind of a vanguard of the emperor himself
01:28:25.580because they're less likely to turn on him and there's a long tradition in rome of
01:28:30.960you know praetorian guards having the ability to turn on and dispose of emperors that
01:28:40.240they take issue with this seems to be a little bit more secure of a thing and it's also prestigious
01:28:46.740and interesting these are big you know bearded often blonde haired red haired white
01:28:55.780norsemen with axes and you know unique ways of doing things and again that had a had a
01:29:06.640exoticism and a prestige to add to an emperor's retina and part of that is because the greek
01:29:15.320the greek eastern christian sphere had gotten locked out of northern europe relatively early
01:29:24.100so the norsemen just weren't the greek orthodox patriarchs problem these people came in and they
01:29:32.060practiced whatever their religion was the Greeks just did not care because these people were
01:29:36.920getting paid and they were honorable men and then when their term was up they would go back to
01:29:43.380Scandinavia very wealthy and very esteemed for having served in the Varangian Guard right so
01:29:51.240these guys weren't just getting paid in terms of money they were also getting paid in terms of
01:29:55.400status back home which made which kind of sweetened the deal and almost made them more loyal
01:30:00.980because like who wants to go back home and tell everyone yeah i was a bad bad a bad bodyguard i
01:30:07.880failed my charge got poisoned by a eunuch right like you don't want me that guy so before we
01:30:17.020before we transition back because it seems like a good time for we have a question um from cliff
01:30:21.620that is relevant to this clash of cultures between um christian
01:30:27.660Germany into Denmark and then interacting with folks we're talking about here he wants to know
01:30:37.400so what exactly were the quote benefits of the Catholic Church and what were the benefits of
01:30:43.240also true and the historical slash archaeological gothar in terms of piety politics and wealth
01:30:50.460I think that's a really complex topic that you could probably do a long, rambly, historical lecture on, on its own. I think the most immediate one is that it means that the Germans won't invade your country and depose you.
01:31:08.580uh i'm going to talk about this more here but herald bluetooth is literally uh is literally
01:31:16.480given the choice of but auto tells him you will take christianity or i will take denmark
01:31:21.220so that's an immediate reason for playing ball with the new faith as it was called in terms of
01:31:29.220the jarls and the kings another thing is that it gives them access deeper access to the christian
01:31:37.520the the trade networks in christian europe which was very lucrative for merchants we'll get
01:31:42.560to that that shows up later in this when we get to bloat spain's story but um another aspect of it
01:31:50.720is that the catholic church at this time had started training ideological uh ideological
01:31:59.120agents and sending them abroad kind of to just act as the man in the field for
01:32:05.520for any king who would offer to be loyal.
01:32:10.520Part of the problem with kingship at this time is that there isn't an equivalent of the civil service or bureaucracy.
01:32:18.520The king has his personal retinues and power networks.
01:32:22.520He can't really rely on anyone to be a neutral bureaucrat, from what it seems.0.95
01:32:31.520This void is fulfilled by Christian clergymen in Northern Europe.
01:32:37.520And interestingly, it's also filled by Buddhist monks in Southeast Asia, ways away, completely unrelated to this story, but it does demonstrate a kind of recurring pattern of when the warrior aristocracy takes power, who counts up all of their cows, right?
01:32:59.740Who meets with all of the people and manages them while the warrior aristocrats are ruling, right? That requires the formation of a bureaucracy as was done in Rome, for example, or co-opting a bureaucracy.
01:33:20.420there's an interesting question of why this wasn't done with the local clergy in scandinavia
01:33:28.960i think in part it was a matter of the the power of the jarls themselves as opposed to the relatively
01:33:37.620low level power of the christian clergy um at this period at least christian clerics
01:33:45.480typically aren't wielding power that could challenge a jarl they're sort of just men on
01:33:50.420the ground and they have people who are meeting weekly and if the priest gets told what to do by
01:33:58.480the the jarl well he's going to slip that into the sermon do you want to throw anything in here sir
01:36:19.680There's two things that go on here in parallel.1.00
01:36:23.100Björn's rise to manhood and Ereker's actions in Denmark.
01:36:28.500So as I said earlier, Harald the Bluetooth had taken up Christianity when subjugated by Otto I.
01:36:35.220Otto, given the epithet of the Great, was a very important leader in the Holy Roman Empire's history.
01:36:41.140The Ottonian dynasty was actually started when Henry the Fowler rebelled against the last Carlin King, overthrew him, and instated his own dynasty.
01:36:49.640That's a bit of a simplification, but it works.
01:36:52.820Remember the episodes on Radbaud and the loyal Saxons?
01:47:45.460Adam of Bremen, in particular, is writing because he's trying to justify the control of Denmark, and thus Sweden and Norway, by the German Archbishop of Hamburg and Plement.
01:47:58.520Popo, a supposed German bishop, getting Errecker to apostatize, gives the German clergy authority over Sweden and Denmark.
01:48:08.520Because at this time, Errecker is king of Sweden and Denmark. You get the idea here.
01:48:13.520So, while in a state of sin, Errecker allowed, if not encouraged, and participated in Viking raids on Germany for about a decade,
01:48:23.520decade. Boiswaw of Polance, the Polish king that helped Erker invade Denmark, he also is supposed
01:48:33.160to have been a Christian at this time. So when we talk about people being Christians, that doesn't
01:48:40.760mean they can't get in a boat and go steal stuff from their fellow Christians, which is something1.00
01:48:46.080important to keep in mind here. Christianity does not solve the problem of inter-warlord violence
01:48:53.020and feuding at this time it does solve the problem of a warlord knowing how many people
01:49:00.280he's taxing having constant weekly access to them knowing how many cows he owns having these
01:49:07.880bureaucratic structures that they can use as a foundation that last independent of their personal
01:49:14.000power politics that's what the catholic church is offering these people at this time right
01:49:19.840so back home in sweden let's pivot where did eriker's kingship come from and what happens
01:49:28.120in sweden while he's away in norway initially eriker had shared kingship of sweden with his
01:49:33.240brother olafer björnsson but olafer dies of poisoning at a feast and so eriker becomes
01:49:39.660sole king as olafer's son stir björn is too young to take up his inheritance björn means uh the0.96
01:49:48.220brown one it means bear styr means like rowdy styrbjorn is um a jerk he's born he's he's born0.99
01:49:57.680he's born bjorn but from the age of 10 on or so he becomes this rowdy cantankerous jerk0.98
01:50:05.480and so people start calling him styrbjorn meaning rowdy bear or the rude bear0.95
01:50:10.980so while eric is in denmark he is initially also ruling in sweden and handling swedish business
01:50:19.200but as time goes by he becomes increasingly detached from swedish affairs
01:50:23.680stirbjorn grows into manhood and grows increasingly irritated with the lack of being made king
01:50:29.480just because his father was made king and this is something important that shows up
01:50:33.500there are people at this time that think they deserve to be king just because their father was
01:50:38.420That's not actually how the system gets you to be king, though, right?
01:50:43.400There is not a primogenetious inheritance going on here because the king is elected by the political communities of the province.
01:50:51.160And so if they don't want someone to be king, they can just elect someone else.
01:50:56.080And as long as the first guy doesn't pitch a fit about it, well, someone else is king.
01:51:01.520So while Erreker is in Denmark, he is initially also ruling in Sweden and handling Swedish business.
01:51:07.540but as time goes by, he becomes increasingly detached from Swedish affairs.
01:51:11.960Styrbjorn grows into manhood and grows increasingly irritated with the lack of being made king just because his father was.
01:51:17.340This culminates in him murdering one of Eirikr's retainers and being enraged and having to pay the wereguild for it.
01:51:24.740Because Eirikr is mostly in Denmark at this point, about six or so years after Olafur's death,
01:51:30.920the peasants elect a new king with his blessing.
01:51:37.540Remember, Styrbjörn does not have a right to be king, but he does have an inheritance that he is owed.
01:51:45.840Being a Jarl is because you have men and wealth and respect.0.96
01:51:50.180Being a Conungur means you have the ascent of the populace and the green light of the law speakers and legal system.0.97
01:51:57.740The Conungur was essentially a warlord that the people submitted to in return for him working for their benefit.0.96
01:52:04.440So Eriker sends Styrbjorn off with a large fleet of 60 ships and tells him that he has effectively exiled from Sweden for three years due to being a cantankerous rebel.0.97
01:52:15.820So what Eriker's doing here is he's giving Styrbjorn the inheritance, but he's also saying, now get out of here.
01:52:24.220So Styrbjorn goes off, murders the new king, and leaves for the Baltics.
01:52:29.420About this time, Eirker seems to be pulling out of his Danish conquests and returns to Sweden as its king.
01:52:37.160So Eirker exiles Styrbjorn and starts pulling out of his attempt at conquering Denmark and returns to governing Sweden.0.83
01:52:43.860So Styrbjorn goes off and ends up joining up with the Jomsvikinger.
01:52:49.040Do you want to talk about the Jomsvikinger, sir?
01:53:03.880i don't know how much to say about them now or if you're going to tell like
01:53:09.400stories about them later or whatever i think they occupy a particularly interesting
01:53:15.520i don't know an interesting place in history a lot of people like to look at them as a precursor to
01:53:27.600militant monastic orders in christendom i think similarity that they are a
01:53:36.080a cloistered group of people that are not in the company of women that have like a rule
01:53:48.780in the same sense that you would if you were Teutonic Knight or Hospitaller or Templar,
01:53:56.240have like an order rule of within okay so these vikings had a town called jamsburg it uh on the
01:54:08.320coast of the baltic sea and they were i guess on the prussian coast of the baltic sea and they were
01:54:19.520it's a fortified town it also served as a base from which they could go viking from
01:54:26.240they were they had rules if you entered the city you were part of their brotherhood you couldn't
01:54:35.280have like wives with you in the city it's debated you know you could do what you wanted outside of
01:54:42.260the city but you couldn't have them within the walls of the enclosure you also couldn't be away
01:54:47.660for a certain amount of time and there were rules they were largely a mercenary group but there was
01:54:53.740rules on engagement you couldn't retreat unless the odds were overwhelming i'm not sure what
01:55:00.140number to one but there was like a by their by the rules of their order you couldn't retreat
01:55:07.980unless there was a specific numerical advantage on the other guy's side in that way they were
01:55:15.660kind of a cool precursor to that they're a special example of that that stands out in this
01:55:22.540in this age they were organized in kind of a unique way and they won fame and reputation
01:55:28.540throughout the north world uh specifically in wales um around this time for a little bit and
01:55:35.340throughout the the baltic region um they're interesting and there's you know coolness to
01:55:43.420tell it sounds like they're around for this great amount of time they're really not they're around
01:55:47.660for less than a century than around for i mean i'm off top of my head i think they're around for like
01:55:55.42060 years or something but i'm not uh i'd have to confer with the sources on that uh also something
01:56:02.300i was considering doing when swan and i get uh an opportunity to move to a different lore source
01:56:09.500than we may go over at some point is their saga saga of the youngs viking and that's an interesting
01:56:17.660relatively short saga and again it's kind of a fun episode here it is in the east so it is
01:56:23.640certainly relevant to what we're talking about and it's also under the sway of the uh the the
01:56:32.740jerk bear here for a time a lot of the interest in the yom's vikingar seems to put seems to be
01:56:42.380focused on them being this brotherhood of pirates dedicated to lord ozen and the reality of their
01:56:50.240place in scandinavia is unclear but the point is that they would fight on the side of whoever paid
01:56:54.560them adhering to a warrior code and uncertainty about their origins is probably due to having
01:57:01.420them having multiple senses of multiple centers of power or there being multiple groups of yom
01:57:06.500For example, the Gesta Denorum says that Styrbjorn founded them, but other sources say that he just joined them.
01:57:14.800What probably happened is that Styrbjorn and his men joined and then formed their own fleet with its own base of operations.
01:57:22.860Notice here that these people, despite being literal pirates, are civilized and sophisticated and have complex legal instruments of contracts and binding legal agreement.
01:57:35.240Notice that the legal system is managed by law speakers who are not religious functionaries.
01:57:41.080That is the role taken by Godar and certain public functions, the Yarlar and the Cronier.
01:57:45.960By comparison, in Christendom, the law is managed by religious functionaries.0.92
01:57:52.360This isn't a benefit or a malefit, per se, with comparing Christianity and Asatru,
01:57:59.240but it is worth pointing out that there are law speakers who apostatize to christianity and just
01:58:06.840continue being law speakers because the rule isn't really religious in nature right which is just
01:58:15.880something kind of important to keep in mind here all right so sturdjorn is with the joms vikingar
01:58:23.240he spends a few years raiding the baltics eventually joins the joms vikingar uh gains
01:58:29.960leadership of them and then one day you want to bring up the omen image nick
01:58:40.040a fingalkin crawls out of the sea a half man half beast thing this image is actually of the
01:58:50.120kynatar meaning the five horn the mythical sea beast that spawned merovich the ancestor of clovis
01:58:57.800apparently a fingalkin is supposed to be an aquatic centaur of some kind but i couldn't
01:59:04.280find a picture that wasn't just insane looking so whatever the heck it looks like this magical
01:59:11.240sea beast crawls up on shore and it like lodges itself in the trench around the jomsviki the
01:59:18.280the jomsburg fort the job they did the joms vikings um fortress right it wallows in their
01:59:28.280in their moat and it tells stirbjorn this poem hildur stender hverian murgen hildur sundier
01:59:37.160which basically means the Valkyries fly above Denmark it's ripe for the picking
01:59:58.320the winner is undecided fight smarter not harder so Sturbjorn and his pirates sail off to Denmark
02:00:36.480And in return for the peace, Styrbjorn gets a hundred ships from Haraldur, which is a big number of ships.
02:00:46.020Haraldur's aide in three battles and Haraldur's daughter, Thyrre.
02:00:51.820Then he sails back to Jomsburg and gathers up every pirate in the Baltic Sea.
02:00:57.280so stirbjorn of course takes all of his amassed forces and turns around and breaks the truce
02:01:05.980with heralder and then forces heralder to aid him in a massive pirate invasion of sweden this
02:01:12.760results in stirbjorn leading this massive naval force of a thousand boats that's the number the
02:01:19.860sagas give us here a peace treaty like this would involve an oath so stirbjorn is at this point
02:01:26.840officially an oath-breaker, in addition to abusing the commoners of Sweden and Denmark and Germany
02:01:32.660and the Baltic coast. So when Eriker hears about this enormous pirate fleet heading his way,
02:01:39.580he gets worried. He goes to Thorgnyr, the law speaker, and this is the second of the three
02:01:46.360men named Thorgnyr that are law speakers of Sweden, and Eriker asks him what to do.
02:01:53.200And Thorgrnir, who is, of course, almost blind, tells him to take all of the cattle and horses in Sweden and to tie spikes and chains and scythes to them and have the slaves herd them out into Störbjörn's pirate invasion force.
02:02:09.760So Eirikr does so, and the day is won with this massive animal stampede, right?
02:02:18.060And then the next day, the pirate army marches inland again, and Eirikr meets them in battle, and they fight to a draw.
02:02:25.320So both Styrbjorn and Eirikr turn to the gods for aid.
02:03:08.700And Eirikr, who had strayed from the true path and abandoned the gods, returns to them.0.98
02:03:13.980And he goes to the Hof of the Allfather and prays and offers sacrifice.0.51
02:03:18.540And in addition to these traditional acts, he gives himself to Odin's service and asks for ten more years to live and in which to do the Allfather's will.
02:03:28.820And so a man in a large traveler's hat comes into camp that night and gives to Eirgr a rod and tells him to cast it over the enemy and to say, Odin over you all.
02:03:47.620And the next day, the forces sally out for battle.
02:03:50.540And Eirikr does as he is told, and when he tosses the rod, it turns into a spear and sails through the air.
02:03:58.280And as it flies, blindness strikes the troops of Styrbjörm, and the mountains in the valley that they're in begin to rumble.
02:04:07.940And a terrible landslide crashes down into the pirates.
02:04:12.200and the pirates are completely defeated as Eirker's force descends upon them and Störbjörn
02:04:19.220dies with them. And so this being the third battle, Haraldr and his Danes retreat, falling
02:04:25.080back to Denmark. Haraldr goes on to be murdered by his own son, Sven de Fjörkbjörk, shortly after
02:04:32.360this, which starts a civil war in Denmark. This battle was around 982 to 985. Eirker would indeed
02:04:40.720have another 10 years of life, and during that time actually comes to blows with Haraldur's son,
02:04:45.840Svein the Forkbeard. Sometime around 992 to 995, Erker would die in bed and Svein would go on to
02:04:53.280regain sole control of Denmark, and then immediately set out, engaging in rampant piracy in England.
02:05:00.880As an aside, Erker is the first king to patronize Vikings, but Svein the Forkbeard is actually the
02:05:07.040the first king to engage in raiding while personally being a Kunungur, at least to engage
02:05:12.460in the raiding of England while being a king. According to Adam of Bremen and local tradition,
02:05:19.480Eirgur was indeed interred in a mound at old Uppsala near the great temple. All right,
02:05:26.400You want to throw up the Uppsala map, Nick?
02:05:32.480So, the current city of Uppsala was originally the coastal harbor village of what is now called Gamla Uppsala.
02:05:43.280That is old Uppsala, the original city.
02:05:45.960Gamla Uppsala was originally a long, long time ago, built close to a river, which is the blue line on the map here.
02:06:21.520which had blown up in size, as Gamla Uppsala was basically a giant open-air Asatru religious
02:06:26.860center in addition to a small town. And in absence of the religious center's continued usage, the
02:06:32.020town had no special superiority to the harbor village. So do you want to throw up the ancient
02:06:38.260Athens map, Nick? This is not Uppsala, but this shows you a little better what this kind of
02:06:45.160arrangement in the pre-modern world looked like. There's the town that everyone lives in,
02:06:49.520the road they take to get to the harbor because it's really easy to raid the harbor by boat
02:06:56.560so they live in the town far away from the harbor where it's more defensible
02:07:01.320there's three mounds at old upsala whoever was known to be oh not that one yet
02:07:09.500whoever was known to be in those three mounds was lost to time and eventually swedish folklore
02:07:16.080held that the gods Odin, Thaur, and Freyr slumbered within them. Like they weren't dead,
02:07:22.940the gods were just taking a nap in the mountains, to eventually return when they awoke.
02:07:29.600Swedish academics in the later 1700s decided that this was peasant superstition, akin to the comedic
02:07:36.140and absurd notion that Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Norwegian all descended from one shared
02:07:41.660Icelandic language. These academics instead came to the conclusion that the mounds were natural
02:07:46.920phenomena. Yes, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and Icelandic being all related was something that
02:07:52.680had to be proved. It was a big deal in linguistics. Anyways, King Carl XV had them dug up the mounds,
02:08:02.500had them dug up, because this snootery enraged him, and as he saw it, it offended the Swedish
02:08:08.220national pride the idea that these were mere hills two of the three mounds were
02:08:14.100dug up now for after the amount of Nick the eastern mound contains a woman and a
02:08:19.320young man the western mound contains a man both are full of lavish goods and
02:08:24.620date to around the 600s so this gives you an indication of how big these
02:08:28.600mounds are those are people on the map right that's a fence for keeping cattle
02:08:35.100in front of them. These are big mounds, right? You want to throw the Gamla Uppsala site image up, Nick?
02:08:45.800What's interesting is that there was a huge, miles-long processional walkway that used to be
02:08:51.440there, somewhat around the mounds. It's the red line on this map. These mounds were a center for
02:08:57.580the Swedish thing and for religious ceremonies, and were right next to the temple. So the three
02:09:02.620mounds plus the temple plus walkway plus other mounds are actually part of what used to be a
02:09:08.320massive open-air religious complex think of this less as saint peter's basilica and more like the
02:09:14.020vatican city and this complex evolved over time the the walkway is actually a long series of poles
02:09:21.120kind of girding a path and it's not entirely clear where the path went or started or what it was
02:09:28.440really there for, because the archaeological expedition ran out of money, so they didn't
02:09:32.540dig the entire thing up, right? Where was I on this place? So this area, this complex
02:09:44.520evolved over time. The poles themselves were gone by the time of the temple being built,1.00
02:09:48.380but the pathway was probably still there, and they were put in place in the 500s, but again,
02:09:53.120the walkway would still be in use so uh throw the throw the poles image up real quick nick nick so
02:09:59.340this is what it would look like as you were kind of approaching the gamla upsala religious site
02:10:04.360you would see this sort of thing uh throw the throw the gamla upsala map back up though sorry
02:10:10.600for yanking y'all around so all right just a few things on this we have the temple a church gets
02:10:17.480built over top of it later then there's the thing mound then there's the three mounds the middle one
02:10:23.440is untouched but the other two got dug up right these mounds are from the 500s to 600s there's a
02:10:30.860professional a processional walkway then there are these little barrows down here these are actually
02:10:38.020barrow clusters sharing mounds they're not just one guy's mound further south still a ways away
02:10:46.020it too big too far away to fit on the map there are there's a graveyard of much smaller mounds
02:10:54.260so uh hundreds of them the consistent tradition in sweden backed up by adam bremen's statements
02:11:02.980indicate that eriker was probably interred in one of these smaller graves either in the barrow
02:11:09.540complex or in the mound graveyard. The thinking goes like this. Some people are kind of baffled
02:11:16.560by this mound cult thing. So let me explain. Whoever the Swedes of the day thought or knew
02:11:24.880were in those three mounds, they must surely have been great Swedish kings who to this day
02:11:30.180watched over the Swedes. It would be honorable and glorious to be buried next to them. And if
02:11:36.640think like that long enough you get a huge number of burials in this common area do you want to add
02:11:43.840in anything sir before i move on to the uh the ackee incident um no other than it's really cool
02:11:52.880it's a neat place uh i got to go there on a trip um afa trip with some swedish members and some
02:12:01.600others who joined us uh mandy and i got to go there and um see this mount see where the temple
02:12:11.200was um thought to have been um i didn't realize but in the little church there is uh alexander
02:12:19.680celsius the celsius guy is a intern there so my fun fact that we noticed when we were there it's
02:12:28.800but it's a really neat place it was nice to do that and also in the town
02:12:34.640at random we got word that a unrelated two afa members from colorado
02:12:43.840also happened to be there one of them was in the hospital at the time and we had to go
02:12:52.000meet up with them on the other side of the world at uh old upsala at the hospital to
02:12:58.800I spent some time with him and spread a little bit of good cheer and visit him in the hospital
02:13:07.060there, which is really kind of a special and, I don't know, significant occurrence, I thought.
02:13:14.000But yeah, it's a very special place to be able to get a chance to see it.
02:13:19.000It's just kind of neat to get a sense of things.
02:13:23.000So also important to note, one of the other things that Chris and I are trying to do with this history series is to dispel the myth that our ancestors were these ooga-booga folks that sometimes history has a tendency to suggest that they were.
02:13:48.140not only did they have kingship and nobility and institutions and things they also had
02:13:56.940they had hoffs they had hoffs they had again as this kingship develops um there's local things
02:14:04.940but there became a thing of all swedes that was held at uh gamma lopspa um that's was during uh
02:14:12.940a decent thing in february's at that time of the year that was a big part of that and that was kind
02:14:20.460of a specific thing to the swedish uh royalty and they had things around this hof at opsola
02:14:29.260people would come from all around so it wasn't just a local thing it was an institutionalized
02:14:34.300hof where they were presiding go far there were regular uh there's regular load conducted and
02:14:40.620And there was established and organized, set up religion at Hoffs with Gothar, with corresponding Hofftor, which was the Hofftoll that people would contribute to support these Hoffs and their Gothar, which was an established thing in Scandinavia and in Ausatru, England.
02:15:03.700There was a lot more development in institutionality than pop culture would have you believe in this day and age.
02:15:11.660And it's something that Chris and I'd like to emphasize with these episodes.
02:15:15.700And just in Ereker's story alone, we have like pirates who use tort law.
02:15:23.680We have complex legal arrangements balancing the needs of various groups within a political community.
02:15:31.340we have an a massive open-air religious and political center that unites men not just in the
02:15:42.280the present day of its use but also literally through time the reason the mounds matter is
02:15:48.520that the dead are interred in there and are present when the thing is going on like i mean
02:15:54.500that in pardon the pun like they hold the thing at the mount all of those dead people who are
02:16:00.840interred at that site are taking place in the mount or taking place in the thing they are taking
02:16:06.440place in the legal and political arrangements of their day the very conception of the political
02:16:14.220in medieval scandinavia at this time includes the dead and has implications for the yet to be born
02:16:20.900and that was something that had to be beaten out of these people by force in sweden for in most
02:16:27.300european countries actually it was illegal punishable by death to sleep in a graveyard
02:16:31.440because they didn't the clergy didn't want you sleeping on a mound in order to confer with the
02:16:37.280ancestors in your dreams like this mound stuff is kind of just thrown in at the end because
02:16:44.220we're talking about what happens to him when he dies it's extremely important to understanding
02:16:50.480these people's political and religious life and how those two things intertwine in this medieval
02:16:57.900Ossetru period right do you want to say anything more sir can we go on carry on all right so a fun
02:17:08.820little thing that the thing about Eriker is that he has like seven different things going on in his
02:17:14.780life and I tried really hard to make as much of a continuous stream without jumping all around
02:17:21.760right so at some point in his life probably in the second half of this 20 or so year tale we're
02:17:29.500telling Eirker married Queen Sigridður and had a daughter and a son the son was Olafur Skaldknunger
02:17:37.240whose epithet means treasure king Sigridður much like Hakon Sigridður will show up in show up later
02:17:44.760in later episodes, of course. Don't worry, but
02:18:14.640following along she has a day of remembrance and is honored as one of our heroes you are learning
02:18:19.920why but i just wanted to make note of that i've also posted links in the chat room to each of
02:18:24.720these people's uh page on our website to learn a little bit more about them or to i don't know
02:18:32.080track when to when to celebrate their days of remembrance continue her epithet in english0.99
02:18:38.960she's called Sigrid the Hottie. That's an odd translation. I'm not entirely sure why the word0.99
02:18:44.800Hottie is used there because her Norse epithet is Stauradha, which means something like hard rule.
02:18:54.240She was a very firm and unyielding woman and they had a daughter and this daughter was coveted by
02:19:02.480a man named Aki. Eriker sought fit instead to marry his daughter to a Slavic king in the east.
02:19:10.400So again, Swedish king marrying his daughter to a Slavic king in the east. These people are0.93
02:19:17.280connected. They are not... I wonder what's the law out across the Baltic Sea. No, they know.
02:19:23.680They know what's out across the Baltic Sea. They know who's out across the Baltic Sea and they're
02:19:27.360in contact with them so he marries this daughter he goes he sends this daughter out east to marry0.84
02:19:34.960the slavic king aki resented this and assembled a company and traveled abroad he and his men snuck0.95
02:19:41.680into the halls of the slavic king and killed him and took eric's daughter and while she was in aki's0.88
02:19:46.960keep aki impregnated her and they yielded their union yielded a son named oymundur take note the
02:19:54.160The Swedes are in close contact with various Slavic polities in Eastern Europe.
02:19:59.400And so Aki journeyed to Sweden and made good with eight of the chieftains of the land, or more specifically the eight hofvingar, meaning heads.
02:20:09.260These are the leaders of the political communities that elect Eirker as the king of whatever province this is taking place in.
02:20:19.960They themselves don't have a large amount of power compared to the king as individuals, but they do have the backing of many of the sectors of Swedish society as a group.
02:20:32.440And Eirikr did not want to spill the blood of the commoners or to cause strife in his country, so he spared Aki and the Eight Hoflingar and instead allowed Aki and his daughter to wed in return for some sort of compensation.
02:20:44.400And so Aki reached out to Hakon Sigurdsson and arranged for Eirikr to marry Hakon's daughter, Audr.
02:20:55.440So what's actually happening here is that the Hofdinger have essentially put a condition on Eirikr's kingship by trying to control his family and his lineage.0.69
02:21:05.620If he pitches a fit, their political communities no longer recognize him as king.0.84
02:21:10.280So they forced Aki into Eriker's court and into his family in order to have a man on the inside.
02:21:18.120If Eriker objects, they back Aki to be king instead of him.1.00
02:21:23.000And Eriker can't just get rid of these Hofthingar for this, because they are acting in their capacity as Hofthingar.0.99
02:21:29.880If he just bumps them off as the king, then he has committed an offense against the people that they represent,0.98
02:21:34.960who are the fishermen, the merchants, the wealthy landowners, the jarls, or wherever, and so on.
02:21:41.140He has to be able to cite a personal offense, which he will then be able to pay Wehrgild for,
02:21:50.160So what the Hofdinger have done to smooth this over is given Erger a good connection
02:21:55.200with an important foreign jarl in Norway, Hakon Sigurdsson.
02:21:59.000In return, the Hofdinger get greater control over Eriker's kingship, and Eriker gets an alliance with a Norwegian leader. So this is a kind of back-and-forth negotiation of political power that the king is just always doing at all times with everyone.
02:22:20.320this is another one of those uh what kind of benefits did christianity have for the king
02:22:26.920the king's relationship with the church is just static so the king just just the just
02:22:33.580yep he's just a christian the christian church makes him king
02:22:36.760let the christian church figure it out if people don't like him that's not his problem to deal with
02:22:41.900but hakon and erker got to talking and the jarl and the king got to be more than allies
02:22:50.840they became friends so hakon seems to have whispered words of woe into erker's ear
02:22:57.120and so on the day of the wedding there was a great multitude at upsala and there was a big
02:23:01.760party and there were many men patting aki on the back for his successful literal princess napping
02:25:47.620He didn't inherit kingship, he was made king after his father died through election, but semantics.
02:25:52.600Olaf or Skaltkonungur had become king after Eirker,
02:25:54.780And afterwards, after this attack on the tax collectors, Oymunder gets given a boat and men by his second cousin and good friend, Ingigardr, who was the daughter of Aulafur Skalkulung, who Oymunder is related to.
02:26:11.160And Oymunder would take that boat and his men and spin it off into a fantastical career as a Viking, sailing through the rivers of Eastern Europe, doing battle with the Khazars and ultimately engaging in piracy along the coast of Georgia.
02:26:24.780So, we have a Swedish king who tries to marry his daughter to a Slavic king, and then we have a Swedish bastard who sails through Eastern Europe doing battle with the Khazars and doing piracy against Georgia.0.93
02:26:44.500These people are not isolated, ignorant rubes at the edge of the world.0.95
02:26:50.260They are deeply connected to basically anywhere they can sail to.0.97
02:26:54.780and that doesn't have a strong enough navy
02:27:20.200It's not just savagery and it's not...
02:27:25.420just emotional vengeance it's you know a reasoned legally supported
02:27:33.340you know this is a proper way to do things let's plan things out let's consider
02:27:39.020the legal ramifications of stuff we do um and not that i would fault it if it if it was there's
02:27:47.980you know certain things that are inherent human rights like vengeance in some of these things
02:27:54.940but it points out that these were considered monarchs these weren't just you know these
02:28:02.860weren't just warlords there was institutions there was tradition and there were obligations to uphold
02:28:11.900traditions and and few within the community there and this just kind of points it out um
02:28:18.620Not that it was done, but how it was done and the reasoning behind the certain elements of it.
02:28:27.720But again, as you mentioned, Eureker had a particularly interesting life and a particularly interesting reign.
02:28:37.780So remember what I said there about that Eureker as a king versus Eureker as a man thing?
02:28:46.760In 1957, a very influential book was published by a man named Ernst Kantorowicz called The King's Two Bodies, subtitled A Study in Medieval Political Theology, basically talking about the idea of the king as the king and the king as a man, right?
02:29:09.760This is something that very much comes up in English political history, too, with the English Civil War and stuff, right?
02:29:21.120What we are seeing here in Eutiker's life is the results of certain Germanic political norms that we're looking at them in an Ossetra context.
02:29:32.780but they continue on into medieval christian germanic kingship and have very similar knock-on
02:29:42.380effects there as they do here this kind of is it an offense against the king or an offense against
02:29:49.520the man sort of affair is extremely important as i said in england but it also shows up in france
02:29:56.820in spain in germany right these people are not brutish savages they are very
02:30:07.120sophisticated and are at times almost sensitive right so i'd like to finish this up by just
02:30:15.920elaborating on uh what we can learn from him and then going on to the future of sweden after editor
02:30:23.360So, what his story tells us about our relationship with the gods.
02:30:30.460Eriker was a Swedish king who sought to conquer Denmark.
02:30:33.500To attain such a victory, he abandoned his gods and ancestors, and thus he failed.
02:30:38.780He did not conquer Denmark and return home.
02:30:41.480But because he did not abandon his folk, he kept his kingdom in Sweden and was able to return to his people.
02:30:46.460And in his hour of need, he returned to the gods and the ancestors.
02:30:49.520and he offered prayers and sacrifices to them in the proper fashion.
02:30:53.840But he also had spurned them and turned away from them,
02:30:56.900and so he humbled himself and submitted his life to the will of the All-Father as recompensation.
02:31:01.480And his prayers were heard and his offerings were accepted and his wrongs were righted.
02:31:06.080Eiriker had strayed from the path and returned to it, as we all can.
02:31:10.420Eiriker had committed a wrong and recompensated the aggrieved, as we all can.
02:31:16.500There are few failures that can irreparably cut you off from your gods, your ancestors, and your folk.
02:31:22.900There are few sins that you cannot pay Skildur for.
02:31:39.820He spurned virtue and became a wolf among men, and was rebuked by the Isir for it.
02:31:44.040He was told by Lord Thor himself what his crime was and yet made no attempt to rectify it, and so he died in failure.
02:31:53.040To not actively attack your own kind and to make good in what you have done are two very basic and very fundamental aspects of proper living.
02:32:02.240Hierarchy is not about rights and privileges. It is about duties and obligations.
02:32:07.760Each step up the hierarchy, you take up more duties and you take up more obligations.
02:32:12.800But each step up of the hierarchy, your prior duties and obligations become all the more important.
02:32:18.820To not actively attack your own kind and to make good on what you have done
02:32:22.520are two very basic and very fundamental aspects of proper living.
02:32:30.280The road that the gods want us to walk on is long and winding.
02:32:34.400But if we stray, then we can come back to it.
02:32:36.960But if we do stray, then we need to make up for our failures.
02:32:39.700The one who returns to the road will be rewarded, and the one who makes up for their mistakes will be made whole.
02:32:45.760But if you stray from the road and do not return, or if you sin against others and make no attempt to set things straight, you will find no friendship with the gods or the folk for it.
02:37:51.360King Blotswain was a leader at the temple at Uppsala, in the very old, very traditional Swedish cult there, and when I was looking into him, I didn't dig this far deep to do too much more research on this man,
02:38:13.680But there is some evidence to suggest that Blotsvein's son was actually a Gothi who served at the temple at Uppsala.
02:38:22.960Research further into there is still needed because it's really deep reading manuscripts that have not been digitized kind of deep stuff.
02:38:31.380And I just didn't have time to go that far on a rabbit trail of a rabbit trail of a rabbit trail, right?
02:38:38.000But Blotsvein restored the kingship of Sweden to that of an Asatru one.
02:38:46.780And Ingi was enraged that the people of Sweden preferred Blotsvein and his Asatru.
02:38:51.800And so in the dead of night, he took an army to Blotsvein's hall and set it on fire, murdering those within.
02:38:56.860He then ripped through Gamla Uppsala and destroyed the temple there.
02:39:00.380It would be many, many years before the site would be re-inhabited.
02:39:03.020So what we have going on here is a multi-front conflict between four powers, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Germany. There's an attempt by the German monarchy to maintain control over Scandinavia by controlling its Christian clergy.
02:39:18.020Denmark is the entry point for this.0.62
02:39:20.220So opposition to this can be done by trying to agitate for a Scandinavian archbishopric or by being Ossetrae.
02:39:27.900But the Swedish and Norwegian monarchies are trying to amass power for themselves and attempting to do so by taking land and subjects from each other, but also from the Danish monarchy.
02:39:37.700And this is one of the, you know, the supposed benefits of Christianity here is that it allows the king to centralize power in himself without having to appeal to anyone except the church, right?
02:39:56.400He doesn't actually have to benefit the people that he rules over.
02:40:01.580And, of course, everyone is raiding England at this time.
02:40:05.560And it doesn't show up much in Eriker's story, but remember, another Svein, Svein the Forkbeard, he spends much of his time raiding England.0.78
02:40:21.000The people of Scandinavia, meanwhile, are having Christianity forced upon them and are resisting it locally.0.51
02:40:27.140The kings, however, are increasingly taking power for themselves and altering the old social contract.0.79
02:40:32.640Christianity introduces a quandary.0.74
02:40:34.480what if the king is king by virtue solely of his threats and not because of his benefits this is
02:40:41.400kind of the introduction of feudalism into scandinavia and this is why i pointed out like
02:40:46.660a thrall is someone whose labor is owned not whose person whose body is owned nor is a thrall
02:40:55.760someone who is physically attached to a land like a serf so thralldom is actually this third thing
02:41:02.100adjacent to slavery and serfdom right and christianity allows the introduction of that
02:41:11.160serfdom and honestly slavery too into medieval scandinavia do you have anything to throw in here
02:43:15.000And I think it's kind of an interesting juxtaposition that most people would assume cut the other way.0.94
02:43:21.980And it's worth noting here with that increase in punitive barbarism that comes with Christianity, part of that is because of that Christian ratcheting.0.92
02:43:35.880Oh, you're king? What do you want?1.00
02:43:38.200Okay, cool. We'll help you do it for more Christianity.0.94
02:43:43.000What do you want? More power? Crank of the Ratchet, right?
02:43:47.860When Blotsmein takes power as king in Sweden, he is doing so at the, he is taking power in a political tradition that has lasted 1,500 years,
02:44:00.380and is very concerned with limiting feuds, with limiting conflict, with preventing people from entering into these very bloody, long-term, petty little wars, right?
02:44:16.120Even with the election of the king, which we saw with Eric, remember, again, this isn't democratic in any way we would approach it today,
02:44:23.740But it is something very similar in a number of ways to the representative republicanism that the American founding fathers were thinking of, or at least it's trying to solve similar problems.
02:44:36.100How do we take a lot of people, gather up their interests, and convey them to elites who will, on the one hand, lead them, but also benefit them, right?
02:44:48.560this complex balancing act of political forces is something that just gets kind of smashed with
02:44:57.060the coming of christianity which allows for a lot of the bad habits in this society to come to the
02:45:04.360forefront if it allows for pardon the pun but it baptizes behaving badly in a lot of ways
02:45:12.920and this this this this shows up when we'll talk about Olaf Trigvasoner but like
02:45:17.720we have in this story of Eric a man who actually did not apostatize as far as we know
02:45:26.400it's Sturbjörn he was a bad man by Asatruz standards right he wasn't a good guy
02:45:36.640he wasn't a good guy right so even in this narrative of this supernatural judgment of
02:45:48.300this miracle we see an Asatru moral judgment levied against an Asatru man against Sturbiel
02:45:56.420he is a bad person for abusing the peasantry for breaking frith for breaking oaths for breaking
02:46:04.060truces. This is a complex society with its own internal ethical system. It's not just
02:46:14.700ooga-booga barbarism, right? Do you want to start any of the questions? I'll say I'm
02:46:23.560sir all right then so question time we've got a few
02:46:33.400ah steve sent this question in to vns at runestone.org remember you can always send your
02:46:41.160questions there whenever they strike you and we'll answer them at the next available opportunity
02:46:47.160steve did that and uh he asks would it be wrong to give tobacco as an offering
02:46:52.760to relatives who died due to smoking let's say one wished to quit while the other had no plans to ever
02:46:59.400quit chris you have thoughts on the tobacco offering they're not my ancestors so you're
02:47:12.280gonna know them a little better than me in that regard my gut instinct is that it would be rude
02:47:18.360to offer the tobacco to the ancestor who died of it but the ancestor who never saw fit to quit i
02:47:25.960don't see why not so i think a lot of this comes into whatever your view of tobacco is um
02:47:36.520if your grandfather who died of tobacco of lung cancer
02:47:44.400related to their consistent smoking if they died a persistent and happy smoker i don't think that
02:47:54.160you know that was clearly something they chose had a value in their life that you wanted to
02:47:57.700offer to them, and I don't think that would be bad at all, with so much, with gifts in
02:48:08.960this life, we use the commonly used phrase, it's a thought that counts, with gifts that
02:48:18.420are sent beyond the veil all the much more more so um you know if i give you something that's lame
02:48:28.560but i had a really nice thought behind it cool you can appreciate my intention but you have a
02:48:33.280lame gift beyond the veil it's all about the thought it's not like your ancestor is grabbing
02:48:39.560the cigarette and smoking it in a physical way it is a token of the thought behind it so you know if
02:48:50.120you smoke together or if your fond memories are of you know i'll say this um okay wow this is
02:48:56.840kind of one for one um my grandfather died of lung cancer and he was a heavy smoker now he also was
02:49:05.400in the chemical corps in the army and you know that may have had a lot to do with it i don't know but
02:49:14.600one of the hallmarks of my memory connected to him is that smell of cigarette smoke and i think a lot
02:49:23.800of people my age i was born in 1981 have those kind of memories about their grandparents right
02:49:32.040now it takes me back every time i walk through a casino where people can spill smoke in public
02:49:40.600the smell immediately takes me back to my grandfather and i going around town to different
02:49:47.560places with his old-timer friends and sitting in the garage at a place he used to have his
02:49:55.320yeah it really takes me back just that smell and the faint smell of that smoke really takes me
02:50:04.680two time with my grandfather because he kind of had that persistent
02:50:08.640smell of cigarette smoke um so again it depends on what it means to you if it yeah if you do it0.98
02:50:17.300to be a jerk as like a rude gesture then sure that's completely inappropriate but if you do it0.91
02:50:25.320because they it's something that they loved in their life if you do it because it's something0.97
02:50:31.240that you shared or it's something that the memory of it brings you closer to them i don't think
02:50:37.320that's a bad thing at all again that it's the thought that counts and it depends if they're um
02:50:45.960older like if you knew them or not if they're ancestors you heard stories about maybe the only
02:50:53.560picture you have of them is them with a pipe or something that's one thing if you knew them then
02:50:59.960i mean you're going to be the one to say how would they take it in life you know if they were there
02:51:05.000with you and you handed them a cigarette would it be a nice thing or would it be something rude
02:51:10.120um and i think that i know it overly simplifies it but it does give you a
02:51:15.800clue as to to what it would be like they're still that person beyond bail i think i think there might
02:51:23.480There might be somewhat of a cultural matter here, too. Where I'm from here in Michigan, tobacco, I mean, I know there are people who grow it, but culturally tobacco is that stuff that they put in cigarettes that gives you cancer.
02:51:40.080but there are parts of the american south where it's entirely normal to grow tobacco and then
02:51:47.820you know smoke it without adulterants added as they would in a factory produced cigarette and
02:51:54.580all that and you know it's just a normal cultural thing that has a bit higher of a
02:52:00.700cultural cachet than it does where i live and i can honestly see in some parts of the world
02:52:07.460being the case that like yes they died of lung cancer but like everyone dies eventually if they
02:52:12.980died of lung cancer at 99 years old high quality hand-grown and produced and processed tobacco
02:52:21.300might to some people have a much different connotation than like a pack of marble or reds
02:52:28.900right so much of it is also generational um
02:52:57.740I remember very much growing up in the restaurant,
02:53:01.180you had this tiny, maybe six inch little plastic thing
02:53:06.180thing on the back of the seat and that separated the smoking section from the not smoking section
02:53:11.240so to a lot of people it's very normal and it's not a strange or kind of a subculture thing whereas
02:53:17.880you know if you're asking me this question and you're in your 20s or you're a teenager
02:53:22.400depending on where you are it may be very foreign to you i mean maybe the only thing that you're
02:53:27.820really aware of is somebody who used to pick um so that's again and generation before me you know
02:53:36.620most people smoke certainly most men so it kind of that factors in as well and it factors in both
02:53:44.300ways and keep that in mind when you're making offerings and again the intent matters there's not
02:53:53.580really a you have your own cultural understanding of a thing within your lifetime but the ancestor
02:54:04.220you're honoring would have had a different cultural understanding of that thing so think
02:54:09.500are you offering them something from your perspective or something they would appreciate
02:54:15.100through their perspective and again both things matter that it flows through time
02:54:23.580Both ways, you know, honoring and again, I can say right now, if I found myself beyond the veil and my great, great grandchildren wanted to offer me something that was old timey that they think back in my day I liked.
02:54:45.860I would appreciate the thought in that.
02:54:48.320If they had some newfangled thing that they really liked
03:03:32.000My friend, Patter, who is not an Ausitruer, would like to know the Ausitruer perspective on gambling.
03:03:43.100He is currently taking a break from it.
03:03:44.840Chris do you have things to to offer on that I don't think we have a firm prohibition on it
03:03:57.000or anything I would say that you know the all-father encourages us to consume what is
03:04:04.900good and to put aside what is bad if gambling if he's putting it aside because gambling is a problem
03:04:11.000then you know he should continue to put it aside but i don't think we need to
03:04:16.200undergo purification rights if we throw 20 in a poker pot right no i think that you know
03:04:26.120if anything else true is positively disposed to towards gambling um
03:04:31.480um certainly Tacitus wrote about the Germans at the time that they were eager and enthusiastic0.90
03:04:41.740gamblers that would gamble away their freedom and gamble away all of the things because they
03:04:47.620felt like it was you know a healthy way of testing their luck and testing you know their amenia
03:04:54.700I wouldn't go that far to certainly not announce a true virtue, but it's also not a vice.
03:05:02.700What is a vice is addiction in whatever form the addiction comes.
03:05:08.720And that is something, and again, I don't feel like I have an addictive personality.
03:05:16.400I've been blessed in a way that I don't know that from the same way that maybe someone who is addicted to drugs,
03:05:23.500addicted to alcohol addicted to gambling might experience that but i know people who have been
03:05:29.740if you have something like gambling that is
03:05:35.900stealing your agency from you then it's obviously not a healthy thing and your ability to master
03:05:42.540that and to overcome it and if that means to stay away from it and to not gamble that's certainly
03:05:47.980noble and something to be um admired and embraced so you know i don't it's not something you've got
03:05:55.340to do but you know elsewhere we certainly don't have any kind of hard stance against gambling but
03:06:00.380we do have a heavy stance on personal response a bit when embracing personal responsibility
03:06:05.580and on exercising agency in your life and the choices that you make
03:06:10.620so do y'all think there would be this much infighting betrayal uh and breaking of troth
03:06:30.780if christianity never encompassed northern europe and the arian folk let's say you chris
03:06:36.580I think there'd be less of it. I don't think it would be, I think there would still be struggles and conflicts and problems in the world. But I do think that if people returned to their, if Aryan peoples returned to their proper religion and spirituality and worldview, that they would be much better served in many ways, namely in terms of frith amongst the folk.0.98
03:07:03.940yeah i unfortunately an inherent vice to our people that is something we should strive to work0.99
03:07:12.740against is our tendency to resist unity and resist getting along with one another and
03:07:25.380resist staying loyal long term that is something our people have always fought against
03:07:33.940we see in moments of history when our people have stood strong uh with one another side by side
03:07:40.420amazing accomplishments occur and we see so often the tragedy of people betraying one another
03:07:47.220kin betraying kin um small small groups fracturing great and beautiful things and we see that
03:07:56.660all of the time we see it constantly today i think that not just an absence of christianity
03:08:06.420but a development and a maturing of our folk under house true would hopefully have
03:08:16.260corrected some of that or moved it in a positive direction i think christianity inherently
03:08:22.660encourages disloyalty to anything but their their god um so i think that you know it was certainly
03:08:36.980inflamed by the uh the imposition of christianity but it was a tendency that was always very
03:08:44.500unhealthy but very prevalent amongst our people and something that we all need to be vigilant
03:09:08.720So that is ultimately up to our gods and our ancestors.
03:09:18.820There are instances of people in the lore that make it to a vow hall that don't die in battle.
03:09:27.740The All-Father can welcome our folk as he chooses into his hall, as can any of the gods, and that is the idea that our people ascend.
03:09:35.960And that's a special case for heroes and people who have a very significant reputation and who the gods have chosen to bring them to something closer with the Yisir.
03:10:17.460We believe there's the idea that, you know, we believe in an eternal life after this.
03:10:24.140So there's more to do and more glory to achieve and chances for ascension after one passes.
03:10:29.820But as far as from here, that that you go to your ancestors and your ancestors welcome you is the most common situation.
03:10:39.200If one is deemed unwanted and unworthy by the gods and by their ancestors, then there's worst case scenarios of winding up on Naustron and being dissolved into component parts to be recycled for purposes better than your continued existence.
03:11:00.620but again i think that's a very extreme bad scenario the average person goes to the halls
03:11:06.540of their ancestors but the celebrated heroes have opportunities to ascend and to be be made more
03:11:14.940that idea of ascension is what we talk about in each of these heroes that we mentioned in tonight's
03:11:20.140episode we believe they have ascended to a closer relationship with the icr after death and there's
03:11:26.860a number of forms that can take and you know i think we'll have a more complete idea of that
03:11:31.820when we find ourselves on the other side of the veil but um there's also positions of ascension
03:11:40.140amongst our own um ancestors like the dsir who will be honoring you know this weekend and at the
03:11:48.300de-subload where you know your female ancestors especially your your honored female ancestors
03:11:56.860look on after those their loved ones from beyond the veil they look on and they care for us in
03:12:02.700death much as they looked on and cared for us in life and that's a really special and a beautiful
03:12:07.500thing so i think that's the the future that are that we have to look forward to in the past beyond
03:13:05.520I appreciate you reaching out and saying so.
03:13:12.420One of the, I would say the biggest, I think the first step to atonement on those kind of things is acknowledging the fault and taking ownership of the poor choice and wanting to make it better.
03:13:33.720And that's sometimes a step that is very, very difficult.
03:14:23.800as with all things when you were interacting with the ice here I think
03:14:29.140that the default position is, you know, piety and honesty. You're not going to fool the
03:14:39.960All-Father. You're not going to impress him with formula or bravado. I think that being
03:14:49.120very honest. And something that I always think is a nice gesture, if you are able to and committed
03:15:02.400to doing it, is to make up for it in some way. Is there a way that you can contribute to something
03:15:12.600that he finds valuable is there a way you can participate in his worship that he
03:15:19.200you know that would add value did your leaving take something away that you can
03:15:26.960return or account for is there something you can do to honor him
03:15:31.420um we have a hof dedicated to odin is there you know is it worth traveling to odin's hof to
03:15:44.040personally uh make an offering at his altar in his hof i think those gestures do count for
03:15:52.220something and do add to what you're trying to to do but those are just some ideas again i think
03:15:57.940the genuineness of your presenting yourself to him and taking responsibility and apologizing
03:16:05.620and then committing to his worship in the future i think goes a long way and anything on top of
03:16:12.660that i think depends on what you were actually committed to following through on chris do you
03:16:17.300have anything to add to that no um i don't think that genuine repentance would
03:16:27.940impress the all father in the sense of he's never, you know, wow, that's so amazing.
03:16:33.180I've never seen anyone do that before, but I think that would be the,
03:16:36.020the thing that would be important to do. You know, not, it's not about ritual formula as
03:16:45.080much as a genuine commitment to doing better and to making good on what was wrong.
03:16:50.420absolutely so um a couple of follow-ups so how bad is hellhame really
03:17:02.240um i think none of us truly know the extent until we're there i think we have glimpses
03:17:12.280And I think we have bits of understanding on it.
03:17:18.540I don't think there's reason to believe it is horrible at all.
03:17:26.680I don't think that our ancestors, you know, embraced death as, you know, something to look forward to or a great thing.
03:17:35.900And it's natural and it's healthy and it's natural order for us to want to live and to embrace life and to live enthusiastically.
03:17:46.560And I think the idea of death is certainly an unpleasant one, but I don't think, I think a lot of that is about the unknown and the scariness of that separation from the life that we've built and the people that we love that are here in it.
03:18:00.800We do know that our ancestors hear our prayers and receive our offerings.
03:18:15.320They often appear to those who are dying or who have near-death experiences to help welcome them into the embrace of their family on the other side.
03:18:25.660uh in our lore when balder is in hellheim um he is treated as a guest and entertained
03:18:38.260appropriately and provided with you know the things worthy of his station um i don't think
03:18:45.180there's reason to view that as as a horrible thing and i also we we read in our lore the
03:18:54.460hope of of gimli or the uh the shining place of of eternal life uh for those who are found worthy
03:19:02.700of that i think there's um beautiful things beyond and that condition of being in hellheim
03:19:11.100i don't think is is a torturous or horrible one certainly we hear about that in naustrand or um
03:19:18.780you know being gnawed at by uh the the serpent nidhogger and uh dissolved by venom but that's0.54
03:19:29.180again for people who are truly irredeemable um do you have anything to add on that chris
03:19:37.820no i don't think that halheim so his next question here is um just to read it and kind of go from
03:19:47.980there also what do you mean by halls of my ancestors is there a specific realm name of that
03:19:53.720there's asgard the upper world midgard our world and then there's hell which is the underworld
03:20:03.780and then i i don't know if you want to say below that like it's a sub realm or like it's a
03:20:09.960pit, or like a cave, like a cave tunnel that goes further down, is Niflhell, I believe it is.
03:20:23.920And hell, the realm, contains the halls of the ancestors, which is a term we use because hell,
03:20:32.420in part because hell is uh loaded with connotations today the bad place is niffle hell
03:20:41.000the halls of the ancestors i think the most were told about them as far as unpleasantness is that
03:20:46.700they're rather cold presumably rather dark correct sir yes but i think so much of that is imagery that
03:20:56.240is colored by the idea of the grave and the grave mound.
03:21:05.740But that concept is often, you know, you ask where it is,
03:21:09.060and I think some of those realms of existence,
03:21:12.260very imprecise when you start trying to map them somewhere.
03:21:19.120The idea that the ancestors live on in the mound,
03:21:23.120that they live on in Helheim, and again,
03:21:25.340that they pass through that to Ghibli,
03:22:52.420uh we do have somebody in the chat who is in the hospital and needs to talk to agothi please
03:22:59.060do reach out i hope that you saw that looks like you did you do have the right address there
03:23:05.380but somebody will get back to you very quickly if you do that uh i hope you'll yeah stop your
03:23:11.300messaging and i'm good um yeah so a couple more things uh matt i had another question
03:23:20.580do you think ragnarok has happened or do you think it is something that will come in the future
03:23:25.940or is it like a cycle as in i don't know something that maybe transcends time
03:23:30.900slash can't be explained um yes that's
03:23:39.780yes so when i talk about that sometimes there's an idea called mythic time
03:23:47.540I think that Ragnarok has happened, is happening, and will happen.
03:23:56.240I think the events in the high mythos tell us eternal truths that aren't locked to time and a straightforward rendering of time as we know it.
03:24:10.940I think that our gods exist as, you know, like when we, when we read the lore, they exist as
03:24:27.420children, as in their prime and as elders simultaneously, because the myths teach us
03:24:36.220the totality of that God's existence. And it's hard to explain. It's the last part of your
03:24:43.960question. But yes, I do think it is a cyclical and beyond time kind of concept.
03:24:53.860The other question here, if a member was kicked out, I think, could they later return? Please
03:25:01.240feel free to email me if you'd like to get into the specifics of who and why because all of that
03:25:08.040would really matter um there are some things that make you ineligible to return ever
03:25:20.680and there are other things a great many other things that we would love to have people
03:25:26.120fix those things in their life and come back we'd like all of our people to be successful and come
03:25:31.080home to the icr there's a small usually the idea is that that person's
03:25:41.400return to the afa would be detrimental to the safety of our members or the safety of the afa
03:25:48.680as a whole um there's you know there is a few things that you can't come back from
03:25:55.080Um, so the details matter, but as a general rule, everyone who's left the AFA or, you
03:26:04.900know, most of the people who've been removed from the AFA, we would love to see them fix