51. Vikings: Slavs to Slaves

For weeks, William the Conqueror has been stuck on the Normandy coast, waiting. Then the wind changes. The Normans land in England, and the stage is set for the most famous battle in English history. The Bayeux Tapestry made these events immortal, but what really happened at Hast ...  Show more

Who was William the Conqueror? Who was Harold Godwinson? Who was Harald Hardrada? And how did these three rivals change the course of English history forever? In Episode 2 of this series, Anita Anand and William Dalrymple are joined by Marc Morris, author of The Norman Conquest a ...  Show more

Who was Loki having sex with? What is a horse penis cult? And were the Vikings as brutal as we think they were?Betwixt the Sheets today, Kate is joined by Dr Cat Jarman, one of the hosts of our sister podcast Gone Medieval. From the recollections of Ibn Fadlan to Icelandic sagas ...  Show more

Warning! This one isn’t for the faint-hearted... A naked, torch-carrying man, who would walk backwards around a funeral pyre, with his fingers covering his anus. The armed woman who worked a loom made from human body parts. 6-legged reindeers. Slaves buried alive with their owner ...  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 ...

In this episode of Gone Medieval, presenter Dr. Cat Jarman swaps seats and becomes the guest of Dr. Kate Lister’s brilliant podcast from History Hit, Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society. In it, she delves into the topics that they d ...