The Golden One - July 18, 2019


Swedish History - Viking Mentality and the Viking World


Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

125.53022

Word count

947

Sentence count

52

Harmful content

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In the first episode of the Swedish History Project, I talk about the quest for glory and Viking mentality. I stand by a runestone and explain the meaning behind it and how it relates to the Viking age. I also discuss the geography of Scandinavia at the time of the Viking Age and how the Vikings expanded their empire.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Greetings and welcome to the first installment of the Swedish History Project.
00:00:30.360 And to begin with I thought it would be a good idea to talk a bit about Viking mentality
00:00:36.120 because this is something that will reappear even after the Viking Age has ended
00:00:41.900 and that is the quest for glory.
00:00:45.020 And I stand here beside a glorious runestone and I will talk a bit about the purpose of a runestone.
00:00:51.840 And to explain both the purpose of a runestone and the Viking mentality is with a quote from Havamal
00:01:00.400 which goes as follows.
00:01:03.420 Kettle die and kinsmen die and one day you will also die.
00:01:08.340 But there is one thing I know which never dies.
00:01:11.800 The fame of a dead man's deeds.
00:01:13.860 And that is exactly what a runestone is.
00:01:18.260 It is a commemoration raised by someone's sons, someone's relatives, someone's friends
00:01:26.180 to commemorate a heroic and glorious deed.
00:01:29.000 So the Viking mentality was to a large extent about gaining that fame, gaining that glory
00:01:38.820 in the eyes of one's peers.
00:01:41.300 So it was important to live a life that could be held up as a model to others that could
00:01:47.720 inspire the next generation to greatness.
00:01:50.460 And we also have to talk a bit about what glory is.
00:01:54.600 Glory can be said to be respect earned among the men of your tribe or among the men of other
00:02:02.100 tribes.
00:02:02.960 It is about doing something daring, something courageous, something beyond the ordinary.
00:02:10.480 That is one interpretation of the metaphysical value of glory.
00:02:15.180 The Vikings were primarily out of two things, gold and glory.
00:02:18.980 The gold part is quite easy to understand.
00:02:22.080 Raiding and trading was the lifeblood of the Vikings.
00:02:27.000 But also the glory aspect.
00:02:29.300 And that can explain the adventures they partook in both west and eastwards.
00:02:35.260 So that is basically what a runestone is.
00:02:38.320 It's about someone who has lived a glorious life, a glorious enough life so that it will
00:02:45.060 be told to others even after he is dead.
00:02:48.500 So that is the fame of a dead man's deeds.
00:02:51.620 You have runestones to commemorate it.
00:02:54.200 Now, if we're talking a bit about the Viking expansions, we have to look upon the geography
00:03:00.980 of Scandinavia.
00:03:03.260 Back during the Viking age, most of Scandinavia was forest.
00:03:07.800 So you couldn't really get all too easily to other parts via land.
00:03:12.580 But going to other places with ships was much easier.
00:03:17.700 So if we look upon the connections of that time, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland were much
00:03:23.760 more connected via the coasts.
00:03:26.500 So if you look upon which Vikings went where, primarily Vikings from Western Sweden, Denmark
00:03:33.760 and Norway went west, whereas the Vikings from the eastern coast of Sweden went east, down
00:03:40.480 to Constantinople, also known as Miklagård.
00:03:44.060 Now we will go to another runestone, which is erected in a memory of someone who went west
00:03:52.300 with the Danish king to take Dana Gjeld, a tribute in England.
00:03:57.900 Now, of course, the Vikings who went east didn't only raid and trade or join the Veringian
00:04:03.240 guard to fight for the Byzantine emperor.
00:04:05.460 Some of them established kingdoms.
00:04:07.140 The most notable example is the name Russia, which comes from Roslagen, which is the area
00:04:13.280 I am in at the moment.
00:04:15.300 So eastern coast of Sweden in Uppland, Roslagen.
00:04:19.600 And from there you derive the name of the Rus, which in turn became Russia.
00:04:24.640 Although the Viking ruling class of Novgorod and the Russian kingdoms soon became assimilated
00:04:30.500 by the larger Slavic populations.
00:04:32.300 So behind me stands one of two runestones raised in the memory of a man called Ulfrik, who went
00:04:43.000 to England to bring back two Dana Gjelds, which is the tribute the English paid the Vikings 0.85
00:04:49.900 to get off their land, basically.
00:04:53.160 Now, of course, as we will discuss later on in another episode, Knut the Great, Canut the
00:05:00.200 Great, the Danish king created a North Sea empire and his influence was felt even here
00:05:06.900 in Sweden.
00:05:08.180 And again, if we're talking about the geography of Scandinavia, if you wonder why a runestone
00:05:15.580 is placed here, quite far from both Denmark and England, but in terms of actual time of
00:05:22.820 transportation, it was quite near considering the sea roads were so effectively used by the Vikings.
00:05:30.180 So when we're gauging communications and distances, it needs to be viewed from the point of ships.
00:05:38.020 And then also, if we're talking about Denmark, which would later become, along with Russia,
00:05:43.440 Sweden's greatest enemy.
00:05:45.240 Back in the day, there wasn't really much of a difference between Norwegians, Danes and Swedes.
00:05:50.640 And for those who are wondering, I can't understand Danish, I can speak Norwegian or rather I can
00:05:57.740 speak Swedish to Norwegians and they can speak back Norwegian to me and I can understand.
00:06:02.580 Back in the Viking age, we could understand each other perfectly because then the, as I said 1.00
00:06:08.340 again, the connections were via the coasts rather than the actual land.
00:06:13.800 So the cultural exchange, we were much more similar back then.
00:06:17.940 So there wasn't really Denmark and Sweden as you would see later on in history.
00:06:23.180 So that can explain why Swedish or rather Vikings located in today's Sweden went with Danish kings
00:06:30.280 and also Danes and Norwegians went with Swedish ships onto the lands in the east.
00:06:37.560 So basically, to conclude this first episode of Rune, Stones and Glory, Vikings were very 0.76
00:06:45.040 much indeed occupied with the quest for glory, the quest for fame and riches and conquest.
00:06:53.480 So thank you very much for watching.
00:06:56.060 Next episode, we will go to Uppsala, City of the Gods, to talk a bit more about the religion
00:07:01.820 of Scandinavia.
00:07:02.660 Thank you very much for watching.