HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-12-15T16:18:46.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: The Bayeux Tapestry is beautiful, but what was its purpose? New research might have the answer
items: Has history’s most famous comet been misnamed for centuries? “The answer is clear,” say historians
items: In 1525, an army of revolting peasants seemed unstoppable – but a brutal end was on the horizon
items: Forget the longships: this is the overlooked story of how the Vikings dominated eastern Europe
items: Why does Putin think Ukraine should be Russian? It’s all to do with the Vikings
items: Could you survive on the Vikings’ furthest frontier? Here’s the dark reality of Norse life on the edge
items: Edward the Confessor: life of the week
items: Emma of Normandy: not just a two-time queen consort of England
items: Europe's last pagans
items: A thousand years ago, the Vikings had a shock encounter with Native Americans that ended in disaster

The Bayeux Tapestry is beautiful, but what was its purpose? New research might have the answer
type: item
date: 2025-12-15T16:12:18.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Early medieval
subject: Medieval
subject: Norman
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: A new theory proposes that the Bayeux Tapestry was designed to deliver moral messages to medieval monks over dinner
encoded: The Bayeux Tapestry is one of the most astonishing artefacts to survive from medieval Europe. It tells the story of the end of Anglo-Saxon rule at the hands of Duke William of Normandy, whose victory in 1066 ushered in the Norman Conquest – one of the most significant turning points in British history. But beyond recounting the rise of Norman supremacy, what was the Bayeux Tapestry really for? Was it only an extraordinary work of propaganda, designed as a display of righteous power? Or was it intended to have a more specific and purposeful role? The answer to that latter question is: yes, according to historian Professor Benjamin Pohl of the University of Bristol. He argues that the Bayeux Tapestry was created to be a moral aid viewed by medieval monks while they silently ate their meals in a communal refectory. What was the Bayeux Tapestry for? Professor Pohl explains his argument in a new article 'Chewing over the Norman Conquest: the Bayeux Tapestry as monastic mealtime reading', in which he makes the case that the embroidery was designed specifically to be hung in the monastic dining hall of St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, where it would have accompanied spoken readings and prompted moral reflection. Following the rule of St Benedict, which governed monastic life across much of medieval Europe, medieval monks were expected to maintain complete silence while eating, aside from the voice of the reader delivering the day’s text. These readings delivered moral instruction to the diners, in a setting where any visual imagery would have reinforced spoken words and offered a focus for contemplation. A tapestry made for monks The Bayeux Tapestry famously depicts the events leading up to the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 through a series of cartoon-style embroidered scenes, accompanied by short Latin captions. Most scholars agree that the embroidery was probably made in, or near, Canterbury in the 11th century. That conclusion rests on similarities in its style an…

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Has history’s most famous comet been misnamed for centuries? “The answer is clear,” say historians
type: item
date: 2025-12-06T10:45:53.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Early medieval
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: David Musgrove reports on new research that casts light on the appearance of the comet in the 11th century, and its depiction in the Bayeux Tapestry
encoded: Halley’s Comet was last seen from Earth in 1986 and is expected to return in 2061. It’s widely taken for granted that the Stuart astronomer Edmond Halley was the first to recognise its roughly 76-year cycle, an insight he formalised in 1705 and which ultimately gave the comet his name. However, new research by professors Michael Lewis of the British Museum and Simon Portegies Zwart of Leiden University says that attribution might be wrong. Their work suggests that credit may instead belong to an English medieval monk named Elmer. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/12/GettyImages-514079858-a25607f-e1764931346339.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Halley’s Comet streaks across the sky in this 1986 photograph taken from the Ford Observatory, marking its most recent visit to the inner solar system. Once feared as a portent of upheaval, the comet is now a predictable visitor whose returns chart centuries of astronomical discovery." title="Halley's Comet, 1986" /> Elmer the flying monk Elmer, also known as Aethelmaer, lived in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, and is best remembered for leaping off Malmesbury Abbey attached to some homemade wings, attempting human flight, at some point between 1000-1010. In the words of chronicler William of Malmesbury, Elmer “had by some contrivance fastened to his hands and feet in order that he might fly as Daedalus, and collecting the air, on the summit of a tower, had flown for a distance of a furlong”. As well as recording Elmer’s early exploits in aviation, William also noted that – perhaps unsurprisingly – the flight did not end well. The monk ended up crashing to the ground, breaking his legs and becoming lame as a consequence. Despite this disability, he lived a long life and was still around (albeit elderly) during the Norman Conquest in 1066. Notwithstanding his very rough landing in 1005, Elmer’s legacy as the flying monk was secured, and even now, Malmesbury boasts a Flying Monk Brewery. Arguabl…

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In 1525, an army of revolting peasants seemed unstoppable – but a brutal end was on the horizon
type: item
date: 2025-10-23T10:29:58.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Early medieval
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Tudor
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Set alight by Reformation hopes and long-standing grievances, the German Peasants’ War looked like it might successfully upend the established order. Instead, it ended in catastrophe
encoded: In the spring of 1525, the German countryside erupted. Across the patchwork of states that made up the Holy Roman Empire, tens of thousands rose in arms, sacked castles and looted monasteries. For a few months the rebels looked unstoppable. Then, as summer wore on, their movement collapsed. “It was a disaster,” says historian Lyndal Roper, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast: “a traumatic event that happens in the very middle of the Reformation.” The German Peasants’ War of 1524-1525 was the largest popular uprising in western Europe before the French Revolution. It spread at pace from the Black Forest through Swabia, Franconia, Saxony and Thuringia. What began as demands for redress turned into a continent-wide crisis that took thousands of lives. Europe in 1525 The Holy Roman Empire wasn’t a single kingdom but a mosaic of principalities, bishoprics and free cities owing loose allegiance to an emperor. Peasants shouldered rents, labour services and tithes to multiple overlords. In the 1510s prices rose sharply while wages lagged, and harvests failed in some years. Local lords tightened control over forests, rivers and game, fencing off resources that peasants had long used for food and fuel. At the same time, the Reformation was remaking Europe’s moral language. Martin Luther’s call to place scripture above church authority gave ordinary people a new set of ideas about rights and conscience. “One of the theological ideas behind it,” Roper explains, “is the really important idea that God created the world. He created the fish in the water, the birds in the air, the beasts in the forest, the wood, the water – all these resources were created by God, and therefore they should be free for mankind. “And therefore, the lords can’t go around saying: these are our ponds, these are our rivers, and you can’t fish in them, you can’t hunt animals in the forest, you aren’t allowed to hunt deer.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/Getty…

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Forget the longships: this is the overlooked story of how the Vikings dominated eastern Europe
type: item
date: 2025-09-30T15:29:58.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Early medieval
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Viking
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: How did the Norse adventurers of the Viking Age impose themselves upon eastern Europe? Not with longships and raids, says one historian, but through canny adaptation
encoded: The Norse peoples of the Viking Age held much of western Europe tightly in their grip thanks to their imperious command of the sea. Their prowess as seafarers let them strike their targets at speed and then slip away just as swiftly, in repeated cycles of relentless raids from the fertile shores of the British Isles to the harsher coasts of Iceland that brought wealth and power. Viking longships carved with fearsome, dragon-headed prows crashed through imposing waves, delivering warriors to burn monasteries and terrorise prosperous lands. These vessels were key to their hit-and-run strategy, and to its eventual evolution into something more settled as the Norse forged enduring strongholds on hostile ground. But for the Vikings who ventured east toward the Slavic and Baltic regions, the story unfolded very differently. Conquests there weren’t defined by ocean raids, but by a remarkable capacity for canny adaptation. In the territories of today’s Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, the Norse traded the open sea for winding rivers, turning inland waterways into vital thoroughfares of commerce, conflict and state-building. “The rivers are absolutely critical,” explains historian Martyn Whittock, author of Vikings in the East, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. “We need to envisage them as the motorways of the early medieval world, which allow people access deep into the heart of the European continent, particularly the east.” When did the Vikings first head east? Archaeological finds from the mid-eighth century (including Scandinavian-style burials in places like Staraya Ladoga, near modern St Petersburg) show that the Norse were already present on the Baltic-Russian frontier before the famous raids on Britain had even begun. These early Norse pioneers were traders as well as warriors. They followed the Neva and Volkhov rivers into the interior, establishing bases like Ladoga and Novgorod. From there, they probed deeper, carrying boats and their cargo overland between river…

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Why does Putin think Ukraine should be Russian? It’s all to do with the Vikings
type: item
date: 2025-09-19T11:46:21.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Early medieval
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Viking
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s narrative of a shared Russian–Ukrainian origin in the Viking-founded Kievan Rus is having dramatic implications in eastern Europe today. Here’s why the real history might be more complicated than the Russian president says
encoded: When Vladimir Putin states that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people”, he’s invoking a very specific vision of history. In essays and speeches, the Russian president has unfurled more than a thousand years of history to argue that modern Ukrainians and Russians share a single origin. “Putin’s claim is that because of a shared origin the Ukrainians and the Russians are one people, and that any division of them into two sovereign states is an artificial modern construct,” explains Martyn Whittock, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. Whittock is an author and historian whose recent book, Vikings in the East: From Vladimir the Great to Vladimir Putin – The Origins of a Contested Legacy in Russia and Ukraine, dissects that shared story and its connections to the medieval world of the Viking Age. Read more | Russia-Ukraine crisis: 9 milestone moments in history that explain today’s invasion At the centre of this origin story are the Rus (a particular group of Norse traders and warriors who settled in Eastern Europe and gave their name to both Russia and Belarus), and the towering 10th-century ruler Vladimir the Great, whose conversion to Christianity reshaped the destiny of the region. The Rus: the Vikings who headed east The Vikings are mostly remembered as violent raiders of the lands that lie south or west of Scandinavia: Britain, France, Ireland and Iceland. Yet from the 9th century, another branch of Norse seafarers set out east, rather than west. They navigated the great rivers of Eastern Europe – the Dnieper, the Don, the Volga – using their ships to link the Baltic to the Black Sea and the rich markets of Byzantium. These Norsemen became known as the Rus. “The Norse who came to this Slavic region are described as the Rus, and that’s a name that will run and run. It still exists in the name of Belarus and of course, Russia,” explains Whittock. The Rus were traders and warriors, dealing in furs, honey, wax and enslaved people. They established fortified towns a…

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Could you survive on the Vikings’ furthest frontier? Here’s the dark reality of Norse life on the edge
type: item
date: 2025-08-28T16:29:52.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Early medieval
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Viking
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Historian Eleanor Barraclough reveals the brutal challenges faced by Norse settlers in Greenland – a Viking world of fragile farms and endless winters
encoded: It’s true that the Vikings were formidable raiders, warriors and explorers – storming monasteries on the coasts of Britain, sailing rivers into the depths of eastern Europe and even journeying as far as North America – all while violently snatching territories and treasure as they went. But it’s also true that this only encapsulates a small aspect of the broader Norse world. The Vikings – those raiders and warriors – were one facet of a culturally and geographically expansive people who set out from the heart of Scandinavia to find wealth and land. That objective took them from Northern Europe to the fringes of the Abbasid Caliphate in the Middle East, to the depths of what would become Russia, and – far across the Atlantic – to Greenland: the ultimate destination of the fearsome Norse chieftain and father of Leif Erikson, Erik the Red. It was late in the 10th century, just before the turn of the milenium, that Erik the Red was exiled from Iceland for his violence. Seeking a new home, he led his followers west to one of the most unforgiving environments in the Norse world: Greenland. A harsh new Norse home For the Norse, Greenland was the furthest edge of the habitable world. Life there was not measured in the frequency of plunder or military glory, but in whether communities could last through freezing winters, scarce resources and constant uncertainty. Speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast, historian Eleanor Barraclough explained how the Norse arrived there in the first place, and what daily life was really like on this harsh frontier. “After being outlawed from Iceland, Erik the Red goes west and he explores the west coast of Greenland,” explains Barraclough. “Erik spends those three years as an outlaw going up and down all the fjords on this west coast, and he names it Greenland because people are more likely to want to settle there if it’s got a good name.” Greenland’s name may have been clever marketing, but the reality was anything but green. The island’s east…

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Edward the Confessor: life of the week
type: item
date: 2025-08-26T07:00:55.000Z
creator: Emily Briffett
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Early medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Life of the week (podcast series)
description: Tom Licence introduces the medieval monarch whose death led to England's Norman takeover – but whose life also left a significant mark on history
encoded: Edward the Confessor, England’s penultimate Anglo-Saxon king, has long been remembered as a saintly, pious monarch – but some sources would have us believe he was also a weak ruler whose indecision paved the way for the Norman Conquest. Is that fair on Edward? And if not, how should we understand him? As new BBC Drama King and Conqueror hits the screens, Emily Briffett speaks to historian Tom Licence to explore the life of this medieval monarch – from his early years in exile and ambitions for the crown, to the subsequent political challenges he faced that ultimately shaped the fate of England.

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Emma of Normandy: not just a two-time queen consort of England
type: item
date: 2025-08-24T20:02:16.000Z
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Early medieval
subject: Period
subject: Viking
subject: Historical people
subject: Trends-Entertainment
subject: Viking Britain
description: Emma of Normandy was queen consort to two of England’s best known pre-Conquest kings, Æthelred the Unready and Cnut the Great. But she was also a savvy political player who came into her own as queen mother, writes Dr Cat Jarman
encoded: Emma of Normandy is best-known as being queen consort to two kings – Æthelred the Unready and Cnut the Great – and the mother of two more, Harthacnut and Edward the Confessor. She was the daughter of Richard I (the Fearless) of Normandy and the Danish-descended Gunnor. She is also a pivotal character in King and Conqueror, the BBC's Norman Conquest drama, which paints Emma as a dominating force over her son King Edward – which leads to a very ahistorical demise – and in Netflix's Vikings: Valhalla, where she is portrayed as a politically-savvy queen wielding quiet power in the English court, often working to subvert the machinations of the ever-grasping Earl Godwin. Who was Emma of Normandy? Emma was one of nine children and most likely born in the AD 980s. A daughter of the Norman dukes, she was the great-granddaughter of the Viking warrior Rollo, the founder of Normandy who hailed from either Norway or Denmark. This made her of Scandinavian ancestry on both sides of the family. She was also the great-aunt of William the Conqueror. In the words of Godfrey, prior of Winchester’s cathedral monastery, writing in the 11th century: “She had kings as sons and kings as husbands; she shone forth in the glory of her progeny of kings; she excelled in virtue even the ranks of her glorious ancestors.” Emma of Normandy's first marriage: Æthelred the Unready In 1002, probably aged in her late teens or early 20s, Emma was sent to England to marry King Æthelred, as his second wife. The marriage was clearly a strategic one, aiming to strengthen an alliance between England and Normandy in light of harrowing attacks on both English and Norman shores by Scandinavian raiders. Æthelred had apparently accused Emma’s brother, Duke Richard II, of harbouring the Vikings and enabling their attacks, and the marriage was designed to ensure his allegiance. Read more | Aethelflaed: who was the warrior queen who crushed the Vikings? Their union was an unusual one, as although several English prin…

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Europe's last pagans
type: item
date: 2025-08-20T07:00:17.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Early medieval
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Francis Young shares the surprisingly long story of the non-Christian parts of Europe
encoded: Christianity came to dominate Europe in the Middle Ages. However, some parts of Europe remained pagan until very recently. So how did non-Christian peoples survive, and prosper, in parts of Europe for centuries after most of the continent had adopted the Church? Francis Young, folklorist and historian of religion and belief, explains all to David Musgrove. Francis Young is the author of Silence of the Gods: The Untold History of Europe's Last Pagan Peoples (Cambridge University Press, 2025). Buy it now from Amazon

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A thousand years ago, the Vikings had a shock encounter with Native Americans that ended in disaster
type: item
date: 2025-07-29T12:22:07.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Early medieval
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Viking
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: When Old Norse explorers reached North America, they made history. But their brief, violent encounter with its indigenous peoples shows how cultural collisions could end in chaos. Historian and Viking expert Eleanor Barraclough explains the story
encoded: When Leif Erikson and his fellow Norse explorers first sighted the forested shores of what is now northeastern Canada, they became the first Europeans known to set foot in North America. This was near the turn of the first millennium in AD 1000, centuries before North America was ‘discovered’ by Christopher Columbus. But what followed was neither a tale of conquest nor colonisation. This was to be a short, tense and ultimately doomed instance of trans-Atlantic cultural contact. “According to the Norse sagas, the expeditions from Greenland to North America meet the indigenous people who live in these parts,” explains historian and Old Norse expert Eleanor Barraclough, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast. This unprecedented encounter brought together peoples separated by thousands of miles and shaped by different environments, technologies and belief systems. And it began, as many tales of Norse adventure do, with violence and exile. Exiles in search of new lands The story of the journey by the Norse settlers of Greenland, to the shores of what is now Canada, begins with Erik the Red. The father of Leif Erikson, Erik was a man whose temper and penchant for murder had seen him outlawed from both Norway and, later in his life, Iceland, where he had been a prominent figure. Read more | The secrets of the Viking Great Army Banished, Erik sailed west from Iceland in search of new lands. With a small fleet of ships and his followers in tow, he landed on Greenland, creating official Norse settlements on it around AD 985. Barraclough explains that for a volatile but powerful – and ambitious – character like Erik the Red, the allure of Greenland was partly in the promise of the unknown. “I think, Erik, on a personal level, must have been very charismatic. Dangerous and murderous, but charismatic,” she says. “To [explore across the Atlantic] requires a Wild West mentality – and so someone like Erik would be the perfect person to settle somewhere like Greenland, because it's go…

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