HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2024-10-11T15:41:02.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: "Vikings didn't wear horned helmets," plus 7 more Viking myths busted
items: Ivar the Boneless, Ragnvald of Ed and 6 more Vikings you should know about
items: From the raid on Lindisfarne to Harald Hardrada's defeat: 8 Viking dates you need to know
items: Vikings on screen
items: ‘Vikings’ creator Michael Hirst on the real history behind the hit drama
items: Viking women: raiders, traders and settlers
items: Edmund Ironside: Anglo-Saxon warrior king
items: A virtuous Viking: the medieval legend of Havelok the Dane
items: Anglo-Saxon saints and British slave-owners
items: The Anglo-Saxon who (almost) united Britain

"Vikings didn't wear horned helmets," plus 7 more Viking myths busted
type: item
date: 2021-11-15T19:30:01.000Z
creator: Dr Janina Ramirez
subject: Period
subject: Viking
subject: Viking life and culture
description: Bearded, violent beyond reason and singularly successful at suppressing everyone around them. This, says Janina Ramirez, is the popular – yet questionable – image of Vikings. But how violent were they really, and did they actually wear horned helmets? You may be surprised to learn that many beliefs about the Vikings have little grounding in historical fact...
encoded: What were the Vikings really like? Popular TV and film portrayals of Vikings would have us believe that they are fierce, battle-hardened people who wore horned helmets and ruthlessly conquered any land they came across. Discover the truth behind eight common myths about the Vikings, as historian Janina Ramirez separates fact from fiction... Myth 1: Vikings wore horned helmets Let’s get this out of the way straight off. There is no evidence that the Vikings wore horned helmets, and nothing like this has ever been discovered in any archaeological dig. They certainly wore helmets but they would have been simple skullcaps, designed to protect the head from impact. Having a pair of horns on your head in battle would not have been helpful if warriors were striking at you with clubs, swords or axes. Ivar the Boneless, Ragnvald of Ed and 6 more Vikings you should know about The helmet plaques from Sutton Hoo and Vendel suggest that god-like warriors donned helmets with protruding ‘horns’ (although these are actually hook-beaked birds), but the Viking raiders and traders did not. The modern idea of Vikings in horned helmets originated in the 19th century, but it was Richard Wagner’s The Ring Cycle [a cycle of four operas by the German composer based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas] that seared it into the modern imagination. Costume designer Carl Emil Doepler (1824–1905) created horned helmets in the 1870s for the Viking characters, and so the myth was born. Numerous cartoonists, filmmakers and artists have continued this fantasy right up to the present day. Listen | Acclaimed screenwriter and producer Michael Hirst talks about his work on Vikings and the secrets of making great history drama Myth 2: They were a defined group – ‘the Vikings’ The term ‘Viking’ comes from Old Icelandic ‘Viking-r, a creek-dweller’. The Viken was the primary mercantile region of Norway, so it is possible that this apparently homogenous group of people got their name from the extensive…

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Ivar the Boneless, Ragnvald of Ed and 6 more Vikings you should know about
type: item
date: 2020-04-28T04:00:15.000Z
subject: Period
subject: Viking
subject: Historical people
subject: TV interest
subject: Viking life and culture
description: From famed warriors to ruthless female settlers, Gareth Williams from the British Museum rounds up eight top Vikings...
encoded: Ivar the Boneless Ivar (or Ivarr) spans the gap between history and legend. He was a famous warrior and one of the leaders of the ‘Great Heathen Army’ that landed in East Anglia in 865, and that went on to conquer the kingdoms of Northumbria and East Anglia. Ivarr also went on to lead a raid on Dumbarton on the Clyde, and in Ireland. Later saga tradition makes Ivarr one of the sons of Ragnar Hairy-breeches (or Lothbrok). According to this account, Ivarr and his brothers invaded Northumbria to take a bloody revenge on its king, Ælle, for the killing of their father. Although the Great Army continued to campaign in England, Ivarr is not mentioned in English sources after 870 and probably spent the remainder of his career around the Irish Sea. His death is recorded in Irish annals in 873. He was remembered as the founding father of the royal dynasty of the Viking kingdom of Dublin, and his descendants at various points also ruled in other parts of Ireland, Northumbria and the Isle of Man. Vikings Season 6 is streaming now on Amazon Prime: catch up on what’s happened so far, plus 8 historical questions from the finale answered The reason for Ivarr’s curious nickname is unknown. One suggestion is simply that he was particularly flexible, giving the illusion of bonelessness, while others have preferred to see it as a metaphor for impotence. Another interpretation is that Ivarr suffered from ‘brittle bone disease’, which seems less plausible given his reputation as a warrior. However, the nickname beinlausi could also be translated as ‘legless’, which might indicate lameness, the loss of a leg in battle, or simple drunkenness. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/G15N5M-fbd0020.jpg" width="1573" height="2400" alt="Illuminated manuscript from the ‘Life of Edmund’, unknown artist, c1130, depicting AD 865 when Ivarr Ragnarsson (nicknamed ‘the Boneless’) with his brothers invaded Northumbria. (Photo Researchers/Alamy Stock Photo)" title=…

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From the raid on Lindisfarne to Harald Hardrada's defeat: 8 Viking dates you need to know
type: item
date: 2019-11-20T09:50:24.000Z
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Norman
subject: Period
subject: Viking
subject: TV interest
subject: Viking Britain
subject: Viking life and culture
subject: Viking warfare
description: The Viking era is thought to have lasted from the ninth century to 1066, when the Norwegian king Harald Hardrada was defeated at the battle of Stamford Bridge. But what are some other key moments in the history of the Vikings? From the infamous Lindisfarne raid in 793 to the year the Vikings arrived in North America, we bring you eight dates from Viking history you need to know…
encoded: The raid on Lindisfarne On 8 June 793, the terrified inhabitants of the small Northumbrian island of Lindisfarne found themselves under attack. Norse longboats landed on the holy island with the intention of plundering its monastery's riches. Treasures were stolen, religious relics destroyed and monks murdered, in a brutal and shocking start to the Viking age and centuries of Viking activity in Britain. Anglo-Saxon monasteries made rich pickings for Viking raiders. The British Isles’ religious communities could offer little resistance to the plundering of their treasures. Furthermore, as pagans, the Viking attackers had no religious qualms about desecrating sacred sites. Global Vikings: how the impact of the raiders and traders went far beyond Britain Lindisfarne was not the first time Scandinavians had visited on the British Isles. While they had largely come to trade peacefully, there had been sporadic violence. In 789 three ships of Norsemen had landed on the coast of the kingdom of Wessex and murdered one of the king’s officials. Yet the merciless raid on Lindisfarne’s monastery was different – it was an unprecedented brutal strike right at the heart of Anglo-Saxon Christianity. The shocking event spread fear and panic across Christian Europe. The scholar Alcuin argued that God, as vengeance on the immoral people of the kingdom of Northumbria, had sent the raiders. The attack was not easily forgotten. In the ninth century, Lindisfarne’s Anglo-Saxon residents memorialised the violence by carving the scenes of bloodshed onto a stone grave marker. The stone, now kept in Lindisfarne’s museum, is known as the ‘Viking Domesday Stone’. Just as Christian communities had feared, Lindisfarne heralded the beginning of further death and destruction, as Viking raids on Britain escalated over the following years. 865 – The Great Heathen Army lands in England The formation of the Great Heathen Army in 865 marked a turning point in the Vikings’ relationship with Britain. Up unt…

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Vikings on screen
type: item
date: 2018-03-08T19:04:23.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Viking
subject: The Last Kingdom
subject: Viking life and culture
description: Acclaimed screenwriter and producer Michael Hirst talks about his work on Vikings and the secrets of making great history drama
encoded: We speak to the acclaimed screenwriter and producer Michael Hirst about his work on the smash hit series Vikings and the secrets of creating blockbuster history dramas.

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‘Vikings’ creator Michael Hirst on the real history behind the hit drama
type: item
date: 2018-03-06T14:52:41.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Viking
subject: TV interest
subject: Viking life and culture
description: As the latest series of hit drama Vikings continues on History UK – accompanied by new documentary The Real Vikings which investigates the real history which inspired the show – we talked to Vikings' creator and producer, Michael Hirst…
encoded: Given the popularity of the history drama Vikings – now filming its sixth season – it might seem strange that when screenwriter and producer Michael Hirst first came to the topic, he was cautioned by some that he couldn’t possibly write a successful show about the Scandinavian warriors. “They were the ‘other’,” he explains, “because they were the people who came and broke into your house at night and raped and pillaged.” “Many years ago,” Hirst continues, “I was writing a film script about Alfred the Great, who fought against the Vikings. I was fascinated to discover that a lot of what I thought I knew about the Vikings was wrong. I knew nothing about their attitude towards women, which was much more progressive than most other societies.” Hirst found Viking society surprisingly democratic, “and their engineering and boat-building skills were phenomenal,” he says. “We were all brought up on clichés about the Vikings that they are brutal, mindless savages. They were certainly brutal when they needed to be, but they weren’t savages.” Vikings Season 6 arrives on Amazon Prime on 30 December: catch up on what’s happened so far Inspired by the sagas It’s important to Hirst, who’s also behind the Oscar-winning film Elizabeth (1998) and historical television drama The Tudors (–2010), that the show’s characters and stories are grounded in real history. One of the initial sources for Hirst and his historical advisor, Justin Pollard, were the Norse sagas, a collection of tales largely written in the 13th century, telling the histories and semi-mythical voyages of Viking heroes from around 930 to 1030. When Hirst came across the figure of Ragnar Lothbrok in the historical record, he knew that he’d found his protagonist. According to Norse legend, poetry and sagas, Ragnar Lothbrok was a fearsome raider and warrior who was famously recorded as the leader of the Viking Siege of Paris in 845 (an event which the show explores in season three). “There’s still some controversy about w…

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Viking women: raiders, traders and settlers
type: item
date: 2016-05-24T13:39:50.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Viking
subject: HistoryExtra Academy
subject: HistoryExtra Academy Vikings Course
subject: Viking life and culture
description: The popular perception of Vikings is that of aggressive, pillaging, bloodthirsty male warriors. But, as historian Judith Jesch explains, the Viking Age was not just a masculine affair...
encoded: In the long history of Scandinavia, the period that saw the greatest transformation was the Viking Age (AD 750–1100). This great movement of peoples from Denmark, Norway and Sweden, heading both east and west, and the social, religious, political and cultural changes that resulted from it, affected the lives and roles of women as well as the male warriors and traders whom we more usually associate with ‘Viking’ activities. Scandinavian society was hierarchical, with slaves at the bottom, a large class of the free in the middle, and a top level of wealthy local and regional leaders, some of whom eventually sowed the seeds of the medieval Scandinavian monarchies. The slaves and the free lived a predominantly rural and agricultural life, while the upper levels of the hierarchy derived their wealth from the control and export of natural resources. The desire to increase such wealth was a major motivating factor of the Viking Age expansion. One way to acquire wealth was to raid the richer countries to the south and west. The Scandinavians burst on the scene in the eighth century as feared warriors attacking parts of the British Isles and the European continent. Such raiding parties were mainly composed of men, but there is contemporary evidence from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that some warbands were accompanied by women and, inevitably, children, particularly if they had been away from Scandinavia for some time. The sources do not reveal whether these women had come from Scandinavia with the men or joined them along the way, but both are likely. Despite popular misconceptions, however, there is no convincing evidence that Viking women participated directly in fighting and raiding – indeed, the Chronicle describes women and children being put in a place of safety. The Viking mind, a product of a militarised culture, could certainly imagine women warriors, as evidenced by their art and mythology, but this was not an option for real women. Settlement In parts of Britain and …

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Edmund Ironside: Anglo-Saxon warrior king
type: item
date: 2016-04-27T10:06:25.000Z
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Period
subject: Viking
subject: The Last Kingdom
description: One thousand years after he became king, Sarah Foot recounts the life of King Edmund II, a bold leader who took the fight to the Vikings in one of the most blood-soaked periods in English history...
encoded: Few Anglo-Saxon leaders who went to war with the Vikings in the early years of the 11th century emerged with their reputations enhanced. King Edmund II, who ruled the English for seven tempestuous months in 1016, was one of those who did. Such was Edmund’s reputed martial prowess that chroniclers were still celebrating his exploits more than a century after his death. Writing in the 12th century, the Anglo-Norman poet Geoffrey Gaimar described Edmund as “bold as a leopard”. Another 12th-century chronicler lauded Edmund’s leadership skills. And so impressed were Edmund’s immediate successors by his valour on the battlefield that they gave him the epithet by which he has been best remembered ever since – ‘Ironside’. Yet, when Edmund was born in the late 10th century he was an unlikely candidate to earn himself an enduring reputation as a mighty warrior-king. In fact, he was an unlikely candidate to become a king at all. That’s because Edmund was born the third son of English king Æthelred (‘the Unready’) and his first wife, Ælfgifu. And so, while his two older siblings were being groomed for power, Edmund was free to lead what it seems was a rather colourful life – one that saw him clash with his father on a number of occasions. We’re told that King Æthelred intervened to prevent Edmund from appropriating an estate from the church at Sherborne in Dorset, even going as far as making the prince pay £20 for the privilege of having the use of the land for his lifetime. Worse still, when Edmund married the widow of one of his friends, he did so “against the king’s will”, as a near-contemporary chronicler put it. Threat to security These family disagreements were played out against a backdrop of the most violent and protracted warfare seen in early medieval England, as Danish armies, led first by King Swein and then his son Cnut, sought to conquer the realm. Not since the days of Alfred the Great had England’s peace and security been so threatened. But unlike Alfred, King Æ…

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A virtuous Viking: the medieval legend of Havelok the Dane
type: item
date: 2015-07-24T04:00:00.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Viking
subject: Viking life and culture
description: Many regions of England are fascinated by their Viking heritage, and that was as true in the medieval period as it is today. Here, Dr Eleanor Parker from the University of Oxford explores one particularly popular Viking legend…
encoded: Everyone knows the stereotypical image of a Viking: a daring, rapacious warrior who rejoices in fighting and killing, sailing the seas and pillaging monasteries with a certain ruthless glamour. Later medieval writers were familiar with this stereotype too, and many delighted in exaggerated, bloodthirsty tales of Vikings murdering nuns, impaling babies on spears, and carving eagles on the backs of their enemies. But that’s only one aspect of the legend of the Vikings, and some medieval texts tell very different stories about what the Vikings did in England. Medieval writers interested in England’s history – especially in the north and east of England – knew that Scandinavians had not just raided and plundered in the region, but also settled there. There are various legends exploring how and why this settlement came about, and the most famous involves Lincolnshire's very own Viking hero, Havelok the Dane. Stories about Havelok, a Danish prince who came to rule part or all of England, are first recorded in the 12th century, but may well be much older. The best-known version of the story is a Middle English romance, written probably at the end of the 13th century, known simply as Havelok. It’s a lively, fast-moving poem, frequently funny but with an underlying concern for important questions about what makes a good ruler and a just society. It's cheerfully violent but always scrupulously fair: kindness is rewarded, cruelty punished, and the rightful king restored to his proper place. The poem tells the twin stories of Havelok and his wife, the English princess Goldeboru. Set in a distant past, which is recognisably Anglo-Saxon England, the poem begins with the deaths of the fathers of Havelok and Goldeboru, kings of Denmark and England respectively. The young orphaned heirs are both deprived of their inheritance by wicked usurpers: the English villain has Goldeboru imprisoned, while the Danish villain murders Havelok’s little sisters and arranges for Havelok to be drown…

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Anglo-Saxon saints and British slave-owners
type: item
date: 2015-07-16T09:01:57.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Viking
description: Janina Ramirez introduces some remarkable medieval religious figures, while David Olusoga talks about his new BBC TV series on Britons’ connections to slavery
encoded: Oxford historian Janina Ramirez picks out some of the most remarkable saints from the early medieval period. Meanwhile, historian and broadcaster David Olusoga talks to us about his new BBC Two series Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners. Plus, this episode includes an audio version of an article from our August 2015 magazine.

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The Anglo-Saxon who (almost) united Britain
type: item
date: 2014-09-22T08:28:17.000Z
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Membership
subject: Norman
subject: Period
subject: Viking
subject: The Last Kingdom
description: In AD 675, the Northumbrian ruler Ecgfrith was so powerful that he effectively made himself 'high-king' of Britain. Nick Higham introduces a true heavyweight of early English history
encoded: This article was first published in the September 2014 issue of BBC History Magazine On Saturday 20 May AD 685, St Cuthbert was with Iurmenburh, Northumbria’s queen, at Carlisle, when he had a vision of Iurmenburh’s husband, Ecgfrith, dying at the hands of the Picts. A few days later, “they heard that it was announced far and wide that a wretched and lamentable battle had taken place at the very day and hour it was revealed to him”. Ecgfrith was dead, and the flower of his army had fallen. For Northumbria, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom that spanned much of what is now northern England and south-east Scotland, it was a fateful day. Bede, the English monk and author, later quoted from Virgil’s Aeneid: “The hope and valour of the realm of the English began ‘to ebb and flow away’.” The Picts recovered lands previously taken from them and the Scots and northern Britons threw off English overlordship. The Northumbrians’ dream of exercising power across all of Britain was finally extinguished. In the sixth and seventh centuries, Britain was a world of small kingships. Minor rulers found it necessary to look to more powerful kings for protection. The resulting regional kingships could be volatile and short-term but – thanks to a combination of dynastic alliances, Christian missions, raids and wars, sometimes pursued over considerable distances – a pattern of larger kingdoms slowly emerged, absorbing smaller neighbours. Occasionally, in the seventh century, the most successful rulers established a Britain-wide, ‘over-’ or ‘high-kingship’ – by which every local or regional king in the whole island recognised the superiority of just one man. It was this supreme power that Ecgfrith lost his life trying to attain in 685. Imperial rule Of course, the idea of an overall authority across Britain (attempted, if not realised) stems ultimately from the ancient Romans, whose emperors were later understood locally as high-kings ruling over British kings. This notion of a high-kingship was dev…

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