The Vikings

Ned Kelly, the leader of the infamous Kelly gang, has been described as Australia's only truly national hero. During a short but intense crime spree at the end of the 1870s, he led a gang of notorious outlaws who rampaged through the Australian bush, robbing banks and stealing ho ...  Show more

It was once one of the great unsolved problems of the early modern world: the calculation of exactly how far east or west a given point was on the surface of the Earth. Longitude was a challenge that sat at the intersection of science, navigation, empire and time itself. For cent ...  Show more

Vikings have long been depicted as that stereotype of the hairy, nameless warrior, leaping ashore from his longboat, ready to terrorise a hapless local population in a northern European country. But there were also seers, artisans, travellers, and writers, too whose stories ca ...

We know the Vikings best as brutal, seafaring, pagan raiders – and that’s an important part of their lives and histories. But it’s only one aspect: what about their love lives, experiences of travels, and attitudes to religion? Speaking with James Osborne, Eleanor Barraclough unp ...  Show more

Support this podcast on Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/historyofvikingDuring the Middle Ages, seafaring Scandinavian marauders wrought havoc in lands both near and far—from Iceland to Finland, and Córdoba to Constantinople. These were warriors who belonged to an altogether viol ...  Show more

793 - 1035 - Glorious literature tells us that the Vikings were savage raiders who sailed the seas and plundered from others.  This episode investigates what we do know about the Vikings and their history and whether those preconceptions are completely fair.