#495 – Vikings, Ragnar, Berserkers, Valhalla & the Warriors of the Viking Age

26:45Lex Fridman:And then we should also say that the Vikings, many of them, pragmatic people, so a lot of them would eventually then convert to Christianity. So you integrate yourself into the system. That's right. In some sense, religion creates this backbone of a society that stabilizes it, and then you create a bunch of rules about behavior, how you're supposed to behave. One of the rules is you don't mess with the church buildings and the religious institutions, and therefore they become great storage places for gold. That's right. And then the Vikings here just test the system. Yeah. I mean, it's the fortune of geography for them and the fortune of their way of life to be able to raid and become extremely rich.

27:29Lex Fridman:And therefore, it both spreads the terror across England and the message across Scandinavia that there's a lot of riches to be had. And so the raids, that's why there's an explosion of raids. That's right. And I think it's not a coincidence that it happens when it does. I mean, you have both. So there's two main theories about why the Viking Age starts. The first, Will Durant puts it, I think, the best. He says the fertility of the Viking women outstripped the fertility of the Viking land. It's basically overpopulation. And then they're searching for food. And then the second is there's this technological breakthrough with the keel and maybe pressure put on Charlemagne's consolidation and a little worries like that.

28:13I don't see why both can't be true. But I do also think Europe, like Charlemagne, puts together this vast empire that, you know, fairly approximates the Western Roman Empire. If you squint, it looks like the Western Roman Empire. He's calling himself the new Roman emperor. This will eventually mutate into the Holy Roman Empire. But it's very much this idea that it's back. The Roman Empire is back. He's crowned on Christmas Day in the year 800, and the empire is back. Unfortunately, it was sprawling. It hadn't been thought through. The communication was terrible. You just couldn't do it. And so it was wealthy and weak, and that kind of attracts predators.

29:04By the time the Vikings crash into it, you also have the added bonus for them of really feckless rulers.

29:11Lex Fridman:And we should say, going to perplexity here, that Charlemagne, also known as Charles the Great, is the Frankish king who became emperor in 800 and ruled much of the Western and Central Europe in the late 8th and early 9th centuries. And there's a theory that the Viking Age was also a reaction to the South expanding North, as you're talking about. You tell the story of Charlemagne weeping because he foresaw the evil. his descendants would suffer. Did the Franks accidentally wake the sleeping giant by crushing the Saxons and removing the buffer zone between them and the Vikings? I'm sure that had something to do with it.

29:53But yeah, as power was consolidated throughout specifically Central Europe, it did put a little pressure on the areas of Denmark. And those are the areas that first kind of erupt down toward Norway and Denmark contribute most of the early Vikings that hit the Franks. And the Frankish Empire is the most wealthy state in Europe. It's poured money into religious houses for the reasons you outlined, and all sitting there, easy pickings for people who just developed the keel.

30:29Lex Fridman:And so they, the word of the raids, sent terrorists through England and through Europe. how much of the raids were reconnaissance and how much was it just raids and how much it was preparing for greater scale that's a good that's a really good question i think i think a lot of the early raids are probing raids let's see what's there definitely when they're when ragnar Lothbrook, for example, sacks Paris in 845. That definitely results in waves of Viking attacks throughout the 860s, trying to copy that. And he actually is the template, which everyone wants to follow. And so that provokes large-scale invasions.

31:20And they hit England. They kind of switch off. When France is pretty much exhausted, they switch over to England. Then when England is pretty much conquered, they switch back to France. So I think a lot of these are just probing raids at first, but they're proof of concept. And then they come in force. For example, there was one king in England. His name was Ethered the Unready, which is a pretty fun, funny pun on his name. But he paid in one year 7.5 million silver pennies to the Vikings to get them to go away, which is a bit like someone's mugging you. So you pay them more money so they go away.

31:56Lex Fridman:It's not going to work. It's not going to work, but it will bring more muggers. So he paid the equivalent of 50 adult elephants, 48 ,000 pounds of silver to get the muggers to go away. And it's unsurprising that throughout the course of his reign, he paid something like 20 tons of gold and silver, which he had to tax his people for. Yeah, the Vikings are not the kind of people that that would make go away. Nope. Yeah, they would just come back in force. Yeah, they trust silver to do the work of swords. You mentioned Ragnar Lothbrok. Who was Ragnar Lothbrok? Did he actually exist? Some people believe he's a composite from several real 9th century Viking leaders versus an actual singular human.

32:50Yeah, I'm a romantic. I would like to believe he existed. I think probably he's a compilation of a lot of different. There probably is a seed of truth there. There probably was someone named Ragnar. The last name is a little suspicious. Lothbrook means hairy breeches. He supposedly had magic pants that would prevent him from being poisoned by dragons or snakes. Maybe a clue. We're dealing with myth here. But he is really the template for Vikings. You want to figure out what the Vikings wanted, who's their success story. It's Ragnar Lothbrok. He's born Norway, Denmark, countries argue over that, maybe Sweden.

33:34Some sagas say he's in Uppsala. Anyway, he is penniless. And when he is in his late teens or early 20s, he decides to invade, sail up the Seine. There is a well-known city on the Seine. And he raids it. Supposedly he takes the hinge of one of the gates from Paris to prove that he's been there. The Frankish king, I love the Frankish kings because their citizens give them names based on how much they hate them. So you have Charles the Great, right? Charles the Great Charlemagne. He's followed by Louis the Pious. That's probably the best one. And Louis the Pious is followed by Charles the Fat. who's followed by Charles the Bald who's followed by Charles the Simple or Stupid.

34:26Lex Fridman:Nice. So you can trust the names to give you the TLDR of how good of a ruler there were. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Exactly. So Charles the Great widely acknowledges sort of one of the great leaders of the Frankish Empire. Yeah. A.K.A. Charlemagne. Yeah. So what else do we know about him? So there's, going to perplexity, Ragnar is portrayed as a Scandinavian warlord, often called a Danish or Swedish king, like you mentioned, active in the 9th century during the height of the Viking raids. And then descriptions of the raids and the exploits. Medieval traditions link Ragnar to famous raids in the Frankish realms, especially the attack on Paris in 845, where he reputedly sails up the sun and extorts a huge ransom from King Charles the Bald.

35:23Lex Fridman:He's also associated with repeated attacks on Anglo-Saxon England, embodying the archetypal Viking chieftain, charismatic, brutal, and focused on wealth fame and honor in battle. So those are the ideals of the Vikings. Charisma, brutality, and focusing on wealth, fame and honor, especially honor in battle. Then also, what does he do with it? Right? What does he do with it? So he gets about 7 ,000 pounds of silver from Charles the Bald, which essentially destroys Charles the Bald's kingship. But he goes back home to Denmark, and the Danish king doesn't want him around because he's too powerful.

36:06He's too rich. He's a ring giver. You know, think Beowulf here, right? He's got this large personal army, which wants to join him for, you know, they'll follow him, and he is a threat. And so he kind of is encouraged to go elsewhere. He ends up raiding England for something like 15 years. And then there's probably the most famous bit of the story is he's shipwrecked, and King Aella of Northumberland captures him and decides to kill him by throwing him into a pit with vipers. They throw him in this, and the snakes are biting him, but he's got his hairy breeches on, so it's not working. So he's singing a hymn to Odin, and he gets pulled out, and he's asked why he's not dying, and he explains rather foolishly that he has these hairy breeches.

36:52So they take the pants off and throw them back. And his last words are, when the boar bleats, the piglets come. But what she means, I have sons. He had 12 of them. And they will avenge me. And they do. They lead the great heathen army to invade and eventually conquer England. Ayala, fun fact, not so fun for him, is the supposedly was captured by the son of Ragnar. His name is Ivar the Boneless, which is somewhat terrifying of a name. And he's the first person that a blood eagle was performed on.

37:29Lex Fridman:What's the blood eagle? It's when they remove the lungs. While you're still alive, they cut you open and remove the lungs and put the lungs on your back. And then when you try to breathe, they flutter like wings. So it's called like an eagle. It's called the blood eagle. That is horrible. It's disgusting, yes. And this is what Aella deserves, according to Bjorn Ironside and Ivar the Boneless, the sons of Ragnar. This is what they get. This is the piglets coming to Aella Gore. you know. One last thing about Ragnar is his wife is also an important part. He had something like 12 sons. The accounts differ and probably three marriages, but his most famous wife was named Aslaug and she fell in love with him.

38:18He was on a ship. He was passing through. So kind of a glamorous sea king, right? He's living the dream and she sees him and she wants to be married to him. And he says no, because he wants a clever wife. And so he says, if you can accomplish these three things, you can marry me. So tomorrow, I'll be here tonight. And then tomorrow, I want you to come to my ship. I want you to have no clothes on, but not be naked. I want you to have not eaten a meal, but not have fasted. And I want you to come without a companion, but not alone. and so she shows up with a dog. She doesn't have a companion, but she's not alone.

39:03She's taken a bite out of an onion, so she's eaten. She hasn't fasted, but she hasn't had a meal. And then she has very long hair, and so she's using the hair to cover herself. So she has no clothes.

39:14Lex Fridman:Oh, she shows up naked, but she's... But clothed. Right. Wow. So this is kind of the cleverness that would be expected of a Viking woman. So they're well-matched. They're like the ideal couple, And then they have 12 kids, 12 sons, not just 12 kids, 12 sons. And many of them end up... Many of them end up almost as famous as their father. Ivor the Boneless. Yeah. Bjorn Ironside, and many others. These sons later appear as leaders of major Viking forces in England, particularly the so-called Great Heathen Army that invades in 865. And they are historical. They are, I mean, there's no, these were the names of Vikings who attacked and conquered England.

39:56They end up attacking Islamic Spain. They go all over Europe.

40:00Lex Fridman:Well, for them, it sounds like glory in battle is really important. That's right. Yeah. So it's just part of the culture. It's part of the honor culture. Men die, but names live forever. As a small aside, since Ragnar is the star of the Vikings TV series, I don't know if you've gotten a chance to watch any of it. is there any accuracy to it? I think it's well done. My one quibble, Ragnar's brother is Rolo in the show, right? Yeah. They weren't brothers. In fact, by some accounts, they were born 80 years apart. But as a storytelling device, I applaud that. Yeah, they basically take all the main Vikings and put them all together.

40:50Lex Fridman:I get it. I get it. It's confusing. Honestly, in writing a book about it, the hardest part was coming up with an organizational scheme. Like, what's the overarching thing that links them together? Well, there's certainly an overarching thing, but we don't have information about it. This is, the problem is we get to see just slivers of information from the raids. There might be just this rich history that we know nothing about. Like, where did this warrior culture come from? Like, what was the evolution of these ideas of honor in battle? I mean, maybe it's being overly romantic, but you can imagine the ideals of battle from the Roman Republic in the early imperial period coming up north to Scandinavia.

41:43Lex Fridman:And we just know very little traces about that. Yeah, even the name Scandinavia is from a Roman author. I mean, they thought it was an island. They thought Scandinavia was an island with one tribe, the Scandia tribe. But, you know, close enough. And what was this great heathen army that invaded England in 865? What can we say about that? But, well, there's this famous scene in the Viking Siege of Paris in 845, which is really the Europeans' introduction, or Europe as a whole, to a Viking army, not just a raid, and then what it could do. And the king, the emperor, Charles, said, you know, let's find out what they want and how much do I have to pay to get them to leave?

42:33And so his ambassador went to a Viking and said, who is your king? and the Viking looked at him, didn't understand, and he said, we have no king, we are all kings. So they were very decentralized, tough. They only valued leaders who could prove that they had won, could give out the rings.

42:53Lex Fridman:So flat organization, very meritocratic. Yes. If you're good at what you do, you demonstrate that skill in battle, that means you get to have maybe a leadership position. That's right. And the moment you're no longer effective, you don't get to have this leadership position. We're all kings. That's gangster. Throughout history, the Mongols, Genghis Khan was famous for this, meritocracy. That's right. Yeah. That's one of the components of an extremely effective military force is meritocracy. It is prized. Same is true for who gets to rule. How do you determine the succession? If you're just giving it to your oldest son, that's going to be a problem.

43:36Yeah. Yeah, I could not agree more. There are some problems with meritocracy and civil war because it tends to—the only way you can find out, like Alexander the Great, right? Who does your empire belong to? To the strongest. What kind of guarantees the civil war? At least with giving it to your older son, you know who's going to be—there's an element of stability there, although you may end up with a Caligula. More likely than not. you're going to end up with a Caligula, I would say, human nature being what it is.

44:08Lex Fridman:Yeah, it always converges to the asshole and the asshole holds power. The crazy asshole. So yeah, Great Heathen Army 865. So the Great Heathen Army, they were war bands that each followed this guy and this guy. And I'm going to sit you down in this room. I'm going to tell you my plan. You're going to listen. You're going to push back. I'm going to push back and we'll just have this kind of creative discussion and come up with a plan we all agree on. So it used to be relatively small Viking groups that are doing raids. And then the Great Heathen Army is this large coalition of Viking groups without a real leader that was able to somehow stabilize enough to have something like governance.

44:51Yeah.

44:51Lex Fridman:Basically, there seems to be a very rapid evolution of a Viking in every part of the world they touch. you go explore, raid, conquer, establish state, and trade routes. And always maintaining a grand ambition, but no longer doing the violence, and always being sufficiently programmatic and flexible where you can accept conversion to Christianity, for example, if it's useful. and then accept the culture, accept the language. So that's why they integrate. And the thing that we think of as Viking kind of dissipates and disappears pretty quickly. Yeah, and I think the best example of this is France, right?

45:40So the Vikings, we'll talk about this more probably with Rolo, but the Vikings settle in France in the North Man's Duchy, which is shortened to Normandy. And they, within a generation, I mean, Rolo, whose real name is Rolf, Eric, he names his son William. That's not a Viking name. And within a generation, the language is gone. The Viking names are gone. The worship of Odin is, as far as we can tell, gone. And the Normans are building churches and marrying into the local aristocracy. And they're essentially, their Vikingness is gone, except for one thing. their incredible vitality. The Normans essentially conquer kingdoms at both ends of Europe, Sicily and England, and found two of the foremost powerful states in medieval Europe.

46:35Lex Fridman:Yeah, so the ambition is there. Is there. The vitality is there. The methods have changed. Yeah, and they change rapidly, which is fascinating. So you have a book, you have a podcast series on the Normans. So let's talk about Rolo. Who was Rolo? the famous Viking war leader who became the first ruler of Normandy in northern France. Well, first I should say, as someone of Norwegian descent, I'm going to fall down on the Norwegian side of the argument here, because Norway and Denmark almost came to blows over which was the birthplace of Rolo. But the consensus seems to be Norway, not just biased.

47:16so he was the only thing we the only glimpse we get of Rolo as a young man is he was very tall so he's called Hrolf Walker Hrolf Granger because he was so tall he couldn't ride the little Viking ponies so he had to walk everywhere but kind of poor probably raised on stories of Ragnar and the other Viking lords and he goes he may have participated in some of the earlier like the 860 raids that the Vikings did on Paris or the Seine, you know, and then he eventually ends up plundering what will become the Norman coast. And in the year 911, he makes a treaty, the Treaty of St. Clair's wrapped with the Frankish king, Charles the Simple, which is not stupid.

48:10It's more like straightforward. There's no guile in how he talks. And Charles makes a really interesting deal with Rollo, which is, why don't you settle here, integrate into the local aristocracy and defend the French coast against the Vikings? Which, I don't know, it's like putting a burglar in charge of your security or something. I don't know. But it works. It works. Um, and Rolo, by the time he makes that deal, he's probably in his mid fifties to mid sixties. It's, it's unclear when he was born, but the point is he's lived the Viking life. Um, he's, he's got something like 20 or 30. If you add up all the sagas, they say he gave him this many coins or whatever.

49:00He has probably 20 or 30 tons of silver that he has acquired and then probably given out to whatever. So, so yeah, so he's done the full.

49:08Lex Fridman:the raid, and then the conquering. And then the king says, can you settle here? Can I give you legitimacy? So he does the diplomacy of a treaty. Yeah. Then he does the good state craft and state building and then becomes, I mean, European. Yeah. In one life, you go through the full journey. Yeah, yeah. And then his son, William Longsword, succeeded him and... Gets assassinated, but he does enlarge Normandy. So basically every ruler after Rolo enlarges Normandy until it essentially becomes more powerful than the king by far. There's a wonderful scene when Rolo signs the treaty. He becomes a liege lord of the French king.

49:55And there's this great scene because Rolo has to bend down and kiss the foot of the king. So Rolo is probably, you know, he's a Norwegian Viking. He's probably, I don't know, six foot. Charles, this little Frank, he's probably 5 '10". He's like, Rollo's towering over him. And both armies are watching. There's a bunch of people who have come in from the countryside. They've heard something's going on. And this important part of this feudal ceremony, you have to kiss your Lord's foot to, you know, be in a subservient role. And Rollo says, I'm not going to do that. So he turns to one of his guards and says, you kissed the foot.

50:33And the guard's probably taller than he is. So he bends down and he picks the king's foot up to his mouth, which Charles goes falling on the back. I mean, I can't think of a better example of the relationship between the Norman Dukes and the French kings. I mean, it's perfect. It's perfect. Oh, God, I love the Vikings.

50:51Lex Fridman:Yeah. So as you've covered, and maybe you could speak to that a bit more, for a long time to come, Normans have influence on Europe and beyond. Yeah, it's hard to overstate Normandy's impact on Europe in the Middle Ages. Of course, they'll go on to conquer England as well. But Rollo, when he signs the treaty, it's an ambiguous treaty. He's given a title which is rather ambiguous. He's not a duke, and it's not clear. He's not an earl. He's not a duke. He's just subservient to the king. Which means Normandy is not a duchy. It's not a principality. It's kind of this ambiguous, no one really knows what it is.

51:38And so Rollo being a good Viking and his descendants being good Vikings, despite becoming French, they just call themselves Duke. and they essentially seize whatever power they want. There's one Norman Duke. I think he's the grandson of Rolo. He's kidnapped by the French king when he's 14. He escapes the captivity and kidnaps the king. As a 14-year-old, I mean, these guys are crazy.

52:09Lex Fridman:How far geographically and in time does the influence of the Normans and Normandy go? So what should we understand about the impact of Normans in history? I'm a Romantic, so when I read history, I usually end up rooting for the losers. I want Harold Godwinson to beat William the Conqueror. I want Hector to beat Achilles. It never works, no matter how many times I read it. But I was always interested in the Normans because of the Norman conquest of England. And I have a twin brother, and he asked me, we were taking a walk, and he asked me, how did Europe, because I was reading about the Dark Ages at the time, the early Middle Ages, how did Europe, this kind of backwards place, become the dominant force in the world?

53:01And I started thinking about that, and my answer really is the Normans. The Normans, that's the great change between Europe as a backwards, inward-looking place and Europe as a kind of confident, outward-looking place. And that change happens under the Normans. I mean, the Normans, it's not a coincidence that they lead the charge in the First Crusade. they create the state of england if you look at england before the vikings arrive there are seven it's the heptarchy there are seven kingdoms in england and the vikings destroyed all but one only wessex is preserved and they've conquered about half of wessex and there's a young king what's he going to do but that king is alfred the great and he conquers the rest and And then his grandson, Aethelstan, is the first man called King of England, King of all angles.

53:57And then they do the same thing almost wherever they go. They help create modern France by ripping apart Charlemagne's empire, which was unwieldy. It looked good on paper, but it was unwieldy. It was replaced by this leaner, meaner, compact thing. They figure out how to deal with the Vikings by essentially building fortified bridges, changes to their army. and so forth. The Vikings, I like to call it creative destruction. By destroying the things they destroyed, they cleared the ground for something stronger to grow.

54:31Lex Fridman:That's brilliant. The creative destruction engine that created Europe was the Normans and the Vikings. And then you also have another book that talks about the Byzantine Empire. So you have the creative destruction that resulted in Europe, that Europe led to this Western quote unquote civilization that we think of now. And the thing that protected Europe for centuries was the existence of the Byzantine Empire, the East Roman Empire, because of all the threats that came towards Europe. this strong, stable empire that is the Byzantine Empire protected the forces from everything that came from the east.

55:20Lex Fridman:They were a buffer. They were a buffer giving Europe this kind of vital time to develop the way it needed to develop. It's interesting to think that the world as we see now was a result of a sequence of quite lucky geographical and leadership decisions in history. I mean, it really does pivot on a few points of geography and a few special leaders that conquer. Yeah. Had Constantine chosen his site a little less wisely, the world's going to be very different. Yeah, so Constantine is the guy who moved the capital of the empire from Rome to Constantinople, thereby giving a lot more focus to the east, thereby protecting Europe from the gigantic threats that loomed in the east.

56:16That's right. And the Islamic invasions of the 7th century, they couldn't get past that choke point of Constantinople. They had to take the long way across Africa. And by the time they get to Spain and conquer Spain and into the Battle of Tours, Charles Martel is able to stop them and they're massively overextended. I think it's a very different story if they can come in through the Black Sea.

56:40Lex Fridman:And all the times the East Roman Empire almost died from all the invasions, all of those invaders would have just conquered the entirety of Europe. Yeah, I mean, I don't think they would have meant much resistance. Yeah. So, rewinding back, what was the religion, the religious beliefs, the gods that the Vikings believed that we've mentioned a little bit of, Thor and Odin? How did they see this world? and the universe. So the Viking gods are, I mean, they've been sanitized, but they're quite terrifying. But their basic conception of the universe is an eternal struggle between chaos and order, which chaos will eventually win.

57:27So I think the best view of cosmology is of concentric circles. With Utgard is the outer realm, and that's where the chaos is. And that's where the frost giants are, all the monsters that seek to destroy. The gods represent order and stability, and the monsters represent chaos, and it's an eternal war between the two of them. So there are different categories of gods depending on which circle you come from. The gods don't all like each other. They're not. Sometimes they engage in wars. Some of the most famous gods, the Norse gods, you know, Loki or Freyja, come from outside the Aesir, the main gods.

58:10So it was kind of a fluid thing. It was more a way to understand the world. I think so, yeah. The thunder is Thor fighting the ice giants, and that's what that is.

58:23Lex Fridman:Going to perplexity. Vikings followed a polytheistic ritual-heavy religion centered on a pantheon of gods and spirits with no single holy book or unified church. and practices varied a lot by region and family. And so the major gods was Odin and Thor and Freyja. Odin, his domain was war, kingship, wisdom, death. Thor was protection, thunder, fertility. Freyja was love, magic, battle dead. Typical worshippers for Odin were chieftains and elite warriors and poets. typical uh worshippers for thor were farmers and quote ordinary people and typical worshippers of freya were women magic petitioners and lovers yeah yeah i mean i've heard it i think you can break it down saying like odin was the elite he's kind of more aristocratic right he he's got a poetry you need to read etc only the elite would know how to do that a farmer wouldn't really care about that.

59:26When Thor is a more earthy God, you know, you want the waves to be less, you know, pray to Thor. I find Odin, I think, most disturbing. He's the God of madness and the God of poetry, which I guess those are related. But in battle, I mean, the berserkers, probably the most famous type of Viking warriors, were considered to be Odin's chosen warriors. They would show no pain and they'd just run at the enemy and attack with their nails and their teeth, even if they could have their arms hacked off, they would still keep going. And they would attack other Vikings. They were berserk. That's where we get the word from.

1:00:04Lex Fridman:I wouldn't understand the mindset that leads to that. I mean, it wasn't religious in nature. There's not this kind of ideology. It's just the way of life and then the prized honor and intensity in battle. Yeah, I mean, one of Odin's names is the Raven Feeder. I mean, by creating corpses, which ravens feed on, you're doing the work of Odin. And, you know, the Viking view of the afterlife was unique. There weren't really punishments, not really, for doing bad things, unless you did something really bad. Then you ended up as basically an evil spirit. haunting your grave. But if you were brave, then you got taken to the house of the dead, which is Valhalla, and you were resurrected.

1:00:59Every day you would fight, and whatever wounds you got would be magically healed that night. And the next morning you'd get up and do it again. So you're essentially practicing for Ragnarok, the final battle, which you would lose. So I'm not sure. It seems it's rather pessimistic.

1:01:16Lex Fridman:The battle is what, I mean, it sounds like losing is not a thing. The battle itself is what matters. So Valhalla is a place where you fight a battle every day. Every day. Unlimited food. There's like a boar or whatever. There's unlimited wine. Yep. And you can die as much as you want. As much as you want. You'll be born again. And this is the idea of the highest. I guess if there's such a thing as heaven in this kind of construction of the universe, this is heaven. This is the highest form. This is the highest place you can go to is Valhalla. It's fight every day, eat as much as you want, drink as much as you want, die, and are reborn the next day.

1:02:01Lex Fridman:And it's forever. Preparing yourself for the final battle of Ragnarok. Ragnarok. So this is where, this is the end of the world. this is the cataclysm. That's right. Odin's going to die. Thor will die. He'll get killed by one of Loki's children, the Midgard Serpent. Odin will be devoured by a wolf. The sun and moon, which are being chased by monsters, by giants, will be caught and swallowed by the giants plunging the world into eternal darkness. Essentially, all the gods will die and the gods Darkness and chaos will then ensue. And then at the very end, this is mostly from a guy named Snorri Sturluson, who was living right at the end of the Viking Age and writing this.

1:02:49And he was, I believe, a Christian. So I think we're fusing things here. So then there would be a new earth and a new heaven and a new God who's all powerful.

1:02:59Lex Fridman:Yeah, if you think of religion as a kind of technology, a social technology that stabilizes or helps guide the evolution of a society, it's interesting to see what the Vikings came up with. And you ever think from a history, the grand view of history, how effective these different technologies of religion have been? Yeah, I mean, I think that's certainly, I'm thinking of the Viking rituals. Hospitality is very important in a northern climate where, you know, food is scarce, winters are long and harsh. And if you don't share what your hearth with, you know, someone knocking on your door, then someone else might not share it with you.

1:03:45You could be facing death. So in this case, hospitality becomes a core belief. belief. And, you know, the idea was that Odin would travel incognito, knocking on people's doors, and he would remember if you let him in or not. And if you were hospitable, he would bless you. And if you were unhospitable, he would murder you. And, you know, I think these rituals are obviously intended for... How do we survive this winter?

1:04:12Lex Fridman:How do we effectively spread the message that hospitality is a pretty good thing and is carrot and the stick of religion? If you do a good thing, you'll be rewarded. If you do a bad thing, you'll be punished. And then different religions play in different ways of communicating that. Yeah. I mean, I think also religion gives you a worldview, right? It gives you a morality. and these are core parts of society. And the beautiful thing about religion is it interplays with human nature and it guides humans. But then, of course, human nature and humans project themselves onto the religion. Sometimes they use that religion.

1:04:59It's to accomplish goals in a pragmatic sense,

1:05:04Lex Fridman:in a political sense, in a geopolitical sense, in a military sense, in a social sense. And so there's that dance of how religion invigorates and guides the peoples, and then how the peoples use the religion to guide the direction of the world. And that's certainly the history of Christianity has a big role to play in the history of Europe, the history of the Byzantine Empire, and that part of the world. and it was an incredibly effective religion. Once Constantine converted, it spread extremely quickly, relatively speaking, across a couple of centuries. Just to linger on the Viking views of the world and the afterlife, so we mentioned Valhalla.

1:05:52Lex Fridman:There's the Norns, which are the three spirits that represent the past, the present, and the necessity. They spin the fates of all men and gods at the roots of Yggdrasil. Yeah, Yggdrasil. So there's a notion of determinism and fate to the Viking life. And there's Valhalla, there's Hel, Niflheim. Yeah. This was the destination for the vast majority of people. So if you don't make it to Valhalla, this is where you go. Unless you're a real bad person, then there's some punishment for the truly wicked. And we should point out that Hel, spelled with one L, was a daughter of Loki. and was not the same as the...

1:06:35Lex Fridman:Hell with the two elves. Hell with the two elves. Very different. It's more like a purgatory type of situation. It's like the house of the dead, the house of the underworld. A colorless twilight, not necessarily a place of punishment, but simply the inevitable end for most, unless you end up in Valhalla, which means you were a great warrior dying in battle. It reminds me of the Greek view of the afterlife, right? Where you essentially get amnesia and forget who you are unless someone makes a sacrifice and says your name and only then you'll remember it. So your destiny is ultimately to just become gray and fade away.

1:07:11So you might as well be brave. You might as well run at that spear.

1:07:16Lex Fridman:So that was the engine of the warrior culture that was core to their society. I think probably. I had to ask about Vikings as explorers. They were truly one of the greatest explorers in history. What can you say to what is it in their spirit that motivated them? I mean, they sailed, they reached North America 500 years before Columbus. They sailed, obviously, to England, Spain, Italy, Russia, North Africa, the Middle East, Paris. And I'm just showing here a map of the ocean routes and the river systems that they connected to and sailed. What do you think drove them to explore the unknown? This boggles my mind.

1:08:03This map here just messes with me because they didn't have a compass. I mean, can you imagine shoving off from some fjord in Norway west? That's your only west. And there was a Viking named Nadad. He's actually the first Norseman to reach Iceland, though it was a total accident. But here's the mind-blowing part. he decides to land and explore and he gets off and he sees two humans they're monks from ireland they got there in a canoe now look at ireland look at iceland that's even more impressive they got in a canoe a skin boat and they just went north because they were trying to get away from the world they found iceland and in a very excellent move on their part they ran away as soon as the Vikings arrived, which is pretty smart.

1:08:54Lex Fridman:I don't know if you know, there's this video of the deranged penguin with a Warner Herzog documentary where Warner Herzog is like overdubbing, explaining the thinking of the penguin. But the penguin leaves the tribe and he just goes out into the mountains. I have to show you this video. This is my favorite video of all time. And there's this low-key documentary where they're talking about penguins. And then there's one penguin that leaves the tribe and just goes towards the mountains. And as Werner Herzog says, towards certain death. It always reminds me of this kind of Viking spirit or the monk spirit.

1:09:41Lex Fridman:there's something one human or a small group of humans just decide to go just go and not look back are there sea monsters out there maybe maybe is there any land are we going to fall off the edge of the earth maybe and just as one of herzog says you know there's certain death now he doesn't romanticize it he says the penguin is just deranged and crazy but look the penguin did look back briefly. He did think about this. There's multiple ways, but you just highlighted two ways to explore. One is because you're this hardcore dude that just is looking to raid and just goes and goes and just you have the resilience and the will to keep going.

1:10:30Lex Fridman:And then there's the monks that just want to leave. Escape, yeah. Versus go toward, they want to leave far away so they can be closer to God, they can be closer to themselves. And away from sin, yeah. You know, there's this poem by Tennyson Ulysses, my favorite poem. I think it captures the Viking spirit. The last line of it is to strive to seek to find and not to yield. I think that's very much like the Viking. You know, my purpose holds to sail beyond the bass of all the western stars until I die. We may die, but I'm going to do this. I'm not going to yield. That spirit is one of my favorite aspects of human beings.

1:11:09I think that's why the Vikings remain so popular today. You know, we name our satellites, our football teams, our cruise ships. There's this romantic hook of a people who did not yield.

1:11:25Lex Fridman:Yeah, they embody the part, the flame that burns in all of us that we admire most about human beings. Is that like unyielding focus on going out there, of taking the leap into the unknown, into the scary, and never stopping. That's right. It's not too late to seek a newer world. I have to ask you about, speaking of a newer world, America. Yes. And Leif Erickson. But first, a quick bathroom break, if it's okay. Quick 30-second thank you to our sponsors. Check them out in the description. It really is the best way to support this podcast. Go to lexfriedman.com slash sponsors. We got Lairdyn for measuring AI adoption in your business, BetterHelp for mental health, Element for electrolytes, Fin for customer service AI agents, Shopify for selling stuff online, and perplexity for curiosity-driven knowledge exploration.

1:12:26Lex Fridman:Choose wisely, my friends. And now, back to my conversation with Lars Brownworth. All right, we're back. Let's talk about this incredible fact of the Vikings that Leif Erikson, who was a Viking explorer, was the first European to reach North America around the year 1000, five centuries before Columbus reached North America. tell the story of his journey what do we know about him so let's begin with his dad his dad's name is eric the red who was forced to flee norway when he was probably 10 years old because his dad had killed some people it's kind of hilarious in the in the saga it says for a few killings okay i guess that's the thing um so he went to iceland and he got a farm in Iceland, which was already starting to become overpopulated.

1:13:22They had cut down all the trees. There were some climate problems of deforestation and farms just blowing away. So the population was essentially beginning to crash in Iceland. And he got into a fight with his neighbor and ended up killing his neighbor. And so he was exiled from Iceland. He was exiled from the place his father had been exiled from.

1:13:46Lex Fridman:So it runs in the family, this whole outlaw thing. What also ran in the family apparently was this streak, this courageous streak. And he had heard that there had been people. So the Norwegian Vikings, they were aiming for England and they hit the Hebrides, which are these kind of treeless islands above Scotland. And they found they were good for refueling, pick up water or whatever, and then on your way to Scotland to raid. And then a Viking had missed the Hebrides and discovered Iceland. And then another Viking had aimed for Iceland, missed, and hit Greenland. And a little fun fact about Greenland, it is both north, south, east, and west of Iceland.

1:14:29So it's any direction, you're going to hit Greenland. So Greenland is hard to miss. It's hard to miss, which is not to take away anything from the extraordinary danger, the certain death of going further west. But there was this, by this time, there was this idea that, you know, enough people had become famous by sailing west into the unknown and discovering things that I think there was a general idea of there's more out there to the west. And so he had talked to someone who had seen Greenland and reported that there was this good land further west. And so he hired the ship's crew of that Viking.

1:15:05So it's kind of the deck was loaded. And he went to Greenland, where he was able to settle two different colonies. One was called the Western Settlement in the West, and one was called the Eastern Settlement in essentially the extreme south. And that was essentially the edges of where Viking technology could be. a cool factoid is that the Vikings practiced husbandry, raised animals. And obviously, this is not an option in Greenland, although they couldn't have known it at the time, but they brought plants with them. And then they were able to trade with the native Inuit for walrus blubber and things like that.

1:15:42And they made a go of it. But what's obvious, This, you know, anyone who's seen Greenland, there's there are no trees. It's almost impossible to survive by practicing husbandry. It is impossible to survive, as it turns out, just practicing husbandry. And by this point, I think this extraordinary Viking pragmatism is beginning to be played out because one of the reasons the Greenland experiment fails ultimately in 300 years is they fail. adapt. Clearly they should focus more on fishing, on other sources, than just raising pigs and cows.

1:16:27Lex Fridman:So we hit the limit of the Viking adaptability, which they have demonstrated throughout the world. Yeah. Interesting. So Eric the Red, he makes his name by exploring. And he does, in fact, once he discovers Greenland, And he calls it green. He says there's so many salmon in the rivers, in the fjords, that you can just scoop them out with your hands. You don't even have to fish. Well, is this real? It's a lie. That's not true at all. So he's doing propaganda. He's doing propaganda. Is this story true that he called it green just so he can attract? It is. The greatest real estate scam in history.

1:17:03Yeah.

1:17:05Lex Fridman:Yeah. Okay. Genius. Yeah. I mean, it's stuck to this day. Yeah. It's the most misnamed place in the world. Yeah. But in the Europe of the time, even in Iceland, like the dream was to have land. I mean, land equaled wealth in Europe. And here he says there's enough land for the taking, like anyone who wants, which is true. It's the largest island on Earth. I mean, it's unusable, but it should be called Iceland, Glacierland or something. But it worked. He took 500 men with him from Iceland. It's got to be a significant chunk of the population, but there's enough people kind of land hungry. There's no more room in Iceland.

1:17:43It's too restrictive. We're going to go further west. So he takes 25 ships and then 14 make it, which is pretty good. and then those 14 ships with their 300 or so people start the Western colony and then word gets back to Norway. But Norway's 2 ,000 miles away, 2 ,000 plus miles away. So it's, you know, contact. They're having to get resupplied. In the first winter, all their cattle die. It's not a great start for people who practice husbandry. So they've got to get resupplied from Norway. But, you know, the chances of making it to Norian back are actually not that great if you're sailing without a compass.

1:18:31You're just kind of hoping. But they do it. They do it. And the colonies survive until the 1400s, where they just go silent.

1:18:40Lex Fridman:So let's talk about Eric, the Red's son, Leif Erikson. How does the journey continue west? So Eric is getting a little older. The Greenland settlements are becoming filled up. Eric is happy where he is. He's been kicked out of enough places. He's made his home here, and this is where he wants to be. But his son, they're running out of resources. There's no wood. There's limited food, et cetera, et cetera. And so his son proposes going west because he's heard stories that there are other lands. So another Viking had gotten lost, aimed for Greenland and missed, and had seen something. He said he saw clouds and mountains and there's land there.

1:19:21And then he had turned around and Leif, again, did the same thing. He hired the man's crew. He asked his dad to come. His dad wouldn't. And he went with his half-sister, Freitas, who was a whole other story by herself, and a bunch of other colonists. And they went and they landed in a place, he called it Vinland because he found things that he could ferment. So, of course, the Vikings, they made wine or wine-like alcohol. So Leif Erikson, he's landed, he doesn't know this, but he's landed on a new continent with essentially inexhaustible stores of food and timber and everything he needs. It's the perfect place.

1:20:03Unfortunately for him, it's also inhabited by some natives, probably the Algonquin tribe. He calls them the Skralings, which is just Norse for screechers, because he can't understand their language. They just yell at them and attack immediately. They stay there for three years and then give up and go back home. And then really don't tell anyone about it. They just keep it in their northern sagas. Why do you think they left? Why do you think they didn't stick around longer? I think there are a number of things working against them. Of course, I would like to believe there's an alternate history where the Vikings successfully make it down, you know, maybe down to Maryland or something.

1:20:45And there's an alternate history of the U.S. and Canada here. But I think there's a number of things working against them. The first is they stubbornly refused to give up husbandries. They're trying to make this work. L 'Anseau Meadows, I think, is where they were in Newfoundland. It doesn't work. The climate's too cold. The grasses aren't appropriate. It's just not going to work. And they do not adapt, number one. Number two, they're 2 ,000 plus miles away from Norway and getting resupplied. And although they are extremely good sailors and explorers and traders, I think this is a little too far.

1:21:22And then thirdly is the native resistance. It's just too incessant. They are outnumbered, you know, millions to one. And the Algonquin do not want them there. It's clear, and they're not going to stop attacking. It's so fascinating because they really didn't understand the full scale of the land they've encountered, right? That's right. That's right. I mean, had they known, had he known what he had found.

1:21:50Lex Fridman:That there's more south. Maybe their intuition was like, there's not, it's just all northern land. It's void of resources. We can't do the whole husbandry thing. But you would think they could go down the coast. I mean, if they could have gotten enough people from Norway, you know, or Iceland or whatever, you know, a sizable enough colony and build some kind of defenses to fight off the incessant attacks, then I think that's a different story. Because there's certainly the resources are all there. Or just keep staying in the water, keep going down the coast. Yeah. Not necessarily camp out until you get further south.

1:22:29Lex Fridman:It is fascinating to think about that alternate history where they would have discovered America and settled there. This is 500 years before Columbus. First of all, they could have done a lot of the stuff we think about the European nations doing, including brutality towards the natives. But there could have been a coexistence also. and some of the diseases that come with them could have done the damage that they did 500 years later, but now it would have stabilized the populations to where in the Europeans, the full, the Spanish, and so on would come, the natives would be more ready. So Europe would then encounter a sizable population of the Viking descendants and the natives to where the two could hold on to the land and bring a different kind of civilization there.

1:23:28Lex Fridman:Because ultimately, Europe with the European ways of the Western civilization expanded out into North America. But there could be this whole Scandinavian vibe that would have taken over. Just a hair's breadth. My favorite museum in New York is called the Cloisters. It's part of the Met. And in the Cloisters, there's an ivory cross. And the ivory cross has been richly carved with Christian scenes. It was carved in England, but it's made of walrus ivory. And they got it from the New World. and Viking traders. It represents the great arc of the northern trade. So it's walrus ivory from the New World via Norway to England to New York.

1:24:21It's a great symbol of that trade.

1:24:24Lex Fridman:This whole just period of thousands of years of exploration that we no longer can do, so it's kind of geographic exploration of the world, is fascinating. It takes true courage. It takes true wonder. The kind of exploration we could do now is more in the scientific realm, in the realm of ideas, and then maybe in terms of geography out into space and exploring the universe. Yeah, I think the closest analog is probably Mars, right? I mean, what would it take for you to be like, all right, I'm going to leave and I'm going to go to Mars? You're never coming back. There's nothing there as far as you know.

1:25:03You know, all the accoutrements of civilization are not there. that's the kind of courage you would have taken

1:25:08Lex Fridman:yeah but there's on top of that with Greenland, with Iceland, with Vinland there's just so much uncertainty like literally what's beyond this hill so with Mars everything is mapped so it's really you understand the full harshness of the situation that's more akin to I'm running an ultramarathon I understand the challenge I think more akin would be like traveling out into like the Oort cloud, like beyond the solar system. What's scarier, the known or the unknown? I think that deeply the human nature pulls us towards the unknown. That's true. Yeah. All right. Speaking of which, going to the east.

1:25:55Lex Fridman:So like we mentioned, the Vikings really went all over. And one of the directions they went that ended up touching the Byzantine Empire in Constantinople as they went east. What can you say about the 8th century journey east in the river networks that the Vikings did, the Swedish Vikings, the Varangians, as they began to explore the river systems of Russia? So this was the most surprising part for me when I was first thinking about writing the book and discovering where the Vikings went. In a million years, it would have never occurred to me that the Vikings went east. But a good way to think of this is the Vikings launch themselves in whatever direction their country is facing.

1:26:42So Sweden goes to the east, Denmark goes down toward Germany, and Norway goes England and the New World. So there's a Viking named Rurik who goes east and manages to set up an encampment on this lake called Staria Ladoga, which is a launch

1:27:02Lex Fridman:proud to both the Volga River, the Nippur River. Yeah, and these are major river systems in the east that take you all the way down to the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Because the Vikings, you know, such seaborne people, they can sail up rivers. This allows them access to the caliphates in the east and to the Byzantine Empire, where they, being Vikings, immediately decide to attack the city. The Byzantines essentially set the Sea of Mamara outside of Constantinople on fire and burn up all the Viking ships. So then the Vikings decide, okay, we can't take Constantinople, so we might as well join them if we can't beat them.

1:27:45And they end up as probably the most famous guard in Byzantine history, the Varangian guard. Varangian means the men of the oath, of the men who swore in an oath. This is kind of an analog of the Praetorian Guard in ancient Rome. They were famously loyal to the throne, but not necessarily to the person sitting on the throne. They're major power players. The last of the great Byzantine emperors, Basil the Bulgar Slayer, forms them in the late 900s. and they're there with the history all the way up until the end of it. In fact, many of our famous Vikings, Harald Herdrada, serve in the Ranking Guard.

1:28:30If you go to Constantinople today, inside the Church of the Hagia Sophia, on the second floor there's a marble balcony, and on the railings you can find Norse runes that are carved in by Ranking Guards who were bored during a particularly long sermon in a language they didn't understand, but they had to stand there.

1:28:48Lex Fridman:So that's a fascinating thing, which is the Vrangian Guard guarding the emperor of the East Roman Empire is made up initially for quite a bit of time of Vikings. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, speaking of pragmatic, they just integrate into everything. Yeah. Now, eventually, the Vrangian Guard became less and less Viking over time. Yeah. But this whole, you fast forwarded the story, we should mention that Stare Ladoga in 753 AD is when it was established, opening the connection to the two rivers. And they began trading on the rivers and establishing more stable states along the rivers, including the Kievan Rus in 862-882.

1:29:39Lex Fridman:where the Varangians, so it's the Swedish Vikings, they took Novgorod, they took Kiev, and they established the Kievan Rus there. And that is what led to the connection to the Byzantine Empire where they started to, again, the Vikings went from being Vikings and go through this process of trading and then establishing a state. Now they're doing treaties of different kinds, and they're also waging or trying to wage war and going all the way to Constantinople and having a deep admiration for Constantinople enough to then begin to dream of sacking Constantinople. Yeah, I mean, once they're alerted to the wealth that's there, you know, Vikings being Vikings, they show up.

1:30:30Lex Fridman:Can you speak to the Greek fire? So this was 941 and 944 when they tried. And then Greek fire was this technology developed by the Romans. We don't really know what it was, Greek fire. It was a form of napalm, obviously. We have the ingredients, what made it up, naphtha and oil and things like that. But it was this very flammable material that would ignite on contact. So the Byzantines would fill it into clay pots and then throw the clay pots. As soon as it's exposed to oxygen, it would start burning. They also had siphons. They would carry it like flamethrowers on their back and they would just spray it at enemies.

1:31:13And the real devious thing about it is that if you launch this clay pot at a ship and the material, you know, pooled across the wood and then dripped off into the water, being oil, it would float on top of the water and continue to burn. so that if you were a sailor and you jumped off the ship because it's on fire and jumped into this oil patch that's on fire, you'd be coated with it and you'd burn underneath the water. It was a horrible way to go. So this was a state secret, closely guarded secret, so closely guarded, it remains a mystery to this day of what exactly it was. Which is incredible, right?

1:31:50Yeah. But in the 944 attack on Constantinople, Stantinople. I mean, the Vikings are coming on their ships. They brought these ships from Sweden. I mean, that's crazy. They're in the Black Sea. They've sailed and they kind of swarm at the Byzantines. The Byzantines launch a bunch of decrepit old ships toward them that have Greek fire on them and that turns the tide. But the Byzantine emperor so appreciates the strength of these horrifying Vikings, that he forms a bodyguard of them.

1:32:23Lex Fridman:And hence we get, just a few years later, again, tried to sack Constantinople and then join them. Join them, yeah. The Vrangian guards in 1988 with Basil II and Vladimir. They make Vrangian guard into an institution, and then the word of mouth spreads that this is a real career path for the Viking, is to join the guard. Yeah, that's right. because not only do you get paid very, you get compensated very well, obviously, for defending the emperor, particularly if you do a good job, but you also have opportunities because the emperor sends you, let's go attack, you know, this tribe, and you get to keep whatever you take.

1:33:01So there's tremendous amounts of war profiteering you can accomplish. And the other great river system, the Volga, that brings you to the great enemy of the Byzantines, the Abbasid Caliphate, and they had a lot of trading links with the north. So you get things like fur and amber, lots of slaves from the Islamic world going up. You even have in a Swedish coin hoard, there's a Buddha that's been found. I mean, it's Sweden. Yeah.

1:33:39Lex Fridman:So these networks of trade, I mean, so how incredible are they with geography, right? You can transform your understanding of land from the geography of the land to the geography of the river networks. Because the way they raid and then invade and then conquer England is through the rivers. It's an incredibly different way of seeing the world. Yeah. And if you look at the kingdoms the Vikings created, and I'm thinking particularly of like Eric Bloodaxe in, you know, in York, he's controlling parts of Ireland, parts of Scotland, Wales, England. Like there's no, that doesn't make sense unless you're a Viking.

1:34:23You know, that also added tremendously to the terror that the Vikings brought because, I mean, you should probably be a little careful with absolute statements here, but I can't think of a major European city that's not on a river. which meant now with the Vikings, because they could travel up, you know, rivers, that's shallow rivers, and then carry their boats whenever they would. Everything was on the table now, even hundreds of miles inland is on the table.

1:34:53Lex Fridman:And an incredible speed, much faster than the land armies. It's terrifying. It's terrifying. So you're living in a constant state of fear. Constant state of fear. We've talked about this transition in several different contexts, but you've written about this. It's really interesting. Is the Vikings, like Ragnar, going from this mode of sea kings with no territory to the mode of land kings? Do you have somebody like Harold Bluetooth, 10th century Viking, king of Denmark? You go from being these grand explorers that are free to being state builders. Was this always inevitable for all of these Vikings?

1:35:37Lex Fridman:Can we speak to the different translations, maybe in England? I think in one way, it's inevitable. There are so many examples of destroyers who just wreck civilizations. The builders are much more rare, you know, so I think it's one of the reasons I think Augustus is a much more interesting person than Julius Caesar's. Augustus was a builder, and I like to see that. I like to see not just can you pull down, but can you build up? You know, just to take Ireland, for example, Dublin, Limerick, almost every major city in Ireland was founded by the Vikings. So I don't think it's just a given that it would have happened.

1:36:20I think there's something about the Vikings, and it's probably tied to their pragmatism. They're like this pragmatic streak of we're going to use whatever. Oh, this system of king works. This taxation system's pretty good. Let's keep it. You know, this doesn't work. Let's ditch it.

1:36:38Lex Fridman:Yeah, I mean, they went from destroyer to builder very naturally and very quickly. Yeah. There's a natural process from conquering to building. But it does take talent, and it does take a certain something. Can we talk about one of the great Vikings, Knut the Great? I love Knut. I love Knut. I think he never, he doesn't get his due. He's one of those unsung heroes, I think, of the Viking world. He had a reputation. He was called the Emperor of the North. He had this massive, you know, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark. I mean, he's just tying it all together. He was an extremely effective English king.

1:37:23I believe he introduced the penny, sadly, discontinued. Oh, wait, really? Yeah, discontinued. They discontinued. They're no longer making... The penny is discontinued. 2025 is the last penny. Oh, no. Everything's going to go up by five.

1:37:40Lex Fridman:So, going to perplexity. Knut the Great was an early 11th century Danish ruler who became king of England, Denmark, and Norway, creating what historians call the North Sea Empire. He's often regarded as one of the most effective kings in Anglo-Saxon English history for stabilizing the realm after decades of Viking warfare. Again, an example of a destroyer becoming state builder. Yeah. He was extremely strong. He was effective. You know, England went from being the whipping boy of the Vikings to controlling the Vikings. And ended up on a pilgrimage to Rome. Went to Rome? Yeah. Although a Viking war leader, Knut ruled as a Christian king, patronizing churches and monasteries and going on pilgrimage to Rome in 1027, where he attended the Holy Roman Emperor's coronation.

1:38:40Yes, he was recognized by his contemporaries as something special, right? You don't get invited to those coronations if you're a nobody. But the most famous story of Canute that I know, my favorite story, is, you know, being in positions of power, being famous, a lot of people sucking up to you, a lot of people telling you whatever they think you want to hear. And so people are telling him all the time how wonderful he is. And he takes his whole court down to the seashore and orders his courtiers to carry him on his throne into the water. and then he commands the seas to stop, the waves to stop and to retreat.

1:39:20And they don't, obviously. And everyone thinks he's little. But his point is that you're all saying how great I am. I have no control. I mean, this is an act of humility to kind of embarrass. I have no control over anything. Stop telling me I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread.

1:39:34Lex Fridman:I like the leaders, and there's a few of them in history that rise to the very top and they're still able to maintain humility. Marcus Aurelius in the Roman Empire is an example of that. Reading meditations is also just an insight into the mind of a man who is to himself, because meditations is not supposed to be work that's published. It's just a diary. Right. To himself is deeply humbled. And one of the most powerful humans in history is still humble. The two most famous Stoics. One was an emperor and one was a slave. So in the other part of the world, you've written a book and you did a legendary podcast series on the Byzantine Empire, the East Roman Empire, a.k.a.

1:40:27Lex Fridman:the Roman Empire. Well, let me actually just as a tangent of a tangent ask you about the podcast. So you've created what is widely considered to be the first history podcast. This is before Dan Carlin, before all the amazing podcasts we all know and love. So the podcast series, of course, is the 12 Byzantine rulers, the history of the Byzantine Empire. What motivated you to explore this medium of podcasting? What in the early, especially in 2005, something like this. It was 05, yeah. And people should go listen to it because it's still, I mean, it's like we're talking about like ancient times or something because it is not a long time ago, but it's still an incredibly good podcast.

1:41:12Lex Fridman:It's a great podcast series. Thank you. At the time, there's a series that I would get at the library called The Great Courses. I don't know if you're familiar. Yes. There was one particular professor. His name is Bob Breyer, and he's an Egyptologist, lives on Long Island where I'm from. And he, it was a massive thing. It was like 24 hours of lectures about the entire history of Egypt. And it was fascinating because he's such a good storyteller. And I was reading, as a kid, I could never figure out if I liked the medieval period better or the Roman period better. It was constantly going back and forth.

1:41:54and I stumbled across a book which referred to the medieval Roman Empire and it was a bit like discovering your favorite TV show had 12 extra seasons you didn't know about and they were just as good. So it really was a labor of love. I would not shut up about the Byzantine Empire. So my older brother, we would go on walks together and I would be like, and then Justinian, you know. And he stopped me and said, I have no idea what you're talking about. I have no idea. Like, I need a framework. Give me a framework for this. So I went home and I recorded myself giving a framework, which turned out to be episode one.

1:42:35But I think I said it, I did it in a British accent, a really bad British accent. I was just messing around. And I gave him the, luckily I did it in my regular voice as well as this goofy accent. And I gave it to him. And then I forgot about it. and that summer I was on a dig in Petra excavating the Temple of the Winged Lions which was like a dream come true for me and I get this email from my brother and he said oh I just submitted it as a podcast so he had to tell me what that was but I was going for to the extent that I put thought into it I was going for kind of a longer form lecture great course series on the Byzantines.

1:43:25And then a bunch of people started emailing me saying, when's episode two coming out? Oh, okay. So I guess there has to be an episode two. And then the thing kind of snowballed from there. I had no idea what I was doing.

1:43:35Lex Fridman:Your brother, by the way, is super tech savvy. He is. It wouldn't have happened without Anders. So Anders, thank you. But like looking back now, what do you think? What do you think about that medium? Why do you think it connected so much to people? because you've also written several amazing books. One of them is on the Byzantine Empire. Just looking back in a retrospective kind of way, because that from there blew up an entire industry of incredible other history podcasts and podcasts in general. Yeah, that's a great question. I've been trying to think for the past 20 years, It's like, why? It's such a niche field, right?

1:44:22Why would people be interested in it? I think, number one, it's a great story. And people are people. And we haven't changed much, which is one of the reasons why it's accessible. Because these are people you could meet today. but I think podcasting in general because there's such a low bar to get in or there was at the time I mean there was nobody else so just by virtue of being first you know it attracted attention whatever its merits being first was the strongest one

1:44:58Lex Fridman:we should say you also did another series on the Normans who no longer had the benefit of being first and was still nevertheless very good so I appreciate that thank you But I think podcasting, in a way, democratizes learning. It unlocked the potential of all these armchair historians. I'm one of them who's like, hey, this is really cool. I'm passionate about this. Anything that allows you to tap into your passion, I think is going to be great. And the Byzantine Empire is an interesting one. I don't understand maybe, and then you articulated this well, but it doesn't get the love that it maybe deserves in history.

1:45:45Lex Fridman:I think the framing of the book you wrote on the topic is the reason we have Western civilization, as we know, or European-based Western civilization. In a sense, because you have, let's see, maybe you can articulate the different ways they connected the thread, But one of them is they preserved the knowledge. When Europe was going through a dark period, they protected Europe in all those ways. And then eventually they jumpstart the Renaissance because Constantinople is going to fall. It's inevitable. It's surrounded by hostile powers. And so they start migrating to Italy. Just at the moment, Italy is receptive to its Greco-Roman past.

1:46:32Greek had died out in the West, actually as early as the time of Justinian, in the 500s, 560s. They needed, if you wanted to travel between the Eastern and Western parts of the empire, you needed guidebooks with helpful Latin or Greek phrases. So Latin had died out in the East and Greek had died out in the West by the 14th century. So you needed Byzantine teachers to be able to read Plato and Aristotle.

1:47:01Lex Fridman:The book also emphasizes, as we've mentioned, a kind of great man view of history. So celebrating people like Constantine and Justinian. Or Justinian, who would be your number one top emperor in the history of the East Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire? That's a good question. I mean, romantically, it's got to be Justinian. He dreams big. He dreams big. He doesn't always get there, but he dreams big. He dreamed and tried to reconquer the Western Roman Empire. I mean, he was a lot of wars of conquest. Yeah. And built the...

1:48:08smell it you can feel it like it's there there's actually a really nice video on youtube of you

1:48:15Lex Fridman:going from i think 50 to 60 years ago i don't know that seems like that it does seem like that yeah we actually were kicked out i went what would you do well you know as you know they're very strict uh as to guides they want to promote the local economy so you have to have a a local guide you can't go in there and look like you're being a tour guide if without a license It's 15 different organizations. So we went there early. The hour it opened, and we had the entire cathedral to ourselves. And so we went around, and my brother's holding this camera, and I'm goofily pointing things out. And one of the guards noticed us, and we had to remove ourselves from the building.

1:49:01Lex Fridman:And so one of the things, I mean, Justinian was a critical person in this, too. he overhauled the Roman law. The legal system, the law, first of all, the Roman Empire in general, the East Roman Empire propagated it. They believed in the law. They held on to the law. That's right. And that's many of the legal ideas we take for granted is grounded in everything developing the Roman Empire and stabilizing the Roman Empire. So they carried that flag forward. Yeah. I mean, outside of Great Britain, all European legal systems are based on, ultimately based on the Code of Justinian. And then weirdly, because of the French connections, the state of Louisiana.

1:49:44Actually, if you want to be a lawyer, you have to pass a different bar in Louisiana than everywhere else in the U.S.

1:49:52Lex Fridman:Why do you think the Western Roman Empire and then the Eastern Roman Empire collapsed? Just looking at the grand picture of the history of the Roman Empire, it's 2 ,200 years starting from the kingdom to the republic, to the imperial period, to the East Roman Empire period. Why do societies rise and fall? That's a really interesting question, and there are probably as many answers as there are different kingdoms. But just the Roman Empire, my take on it is that the collapse really starts at the end of the reign of Basil II. So the year is 1025. Basil is the last monarch of the Macedonian dynasty, which had seen the empire become the most powerful state in the Mediterranean, much more powerful and advanced than its Muslim or Christian neighbors.

1:50:49He had expanded the empire essentially as large as it was going to be after Justinian. It was wealthy. It was glittering. It was educated. I mean, courtiers had to memorize the works of Plato by heart. The emperor, one of his favorite activities was to go and he would begin a quote and you would have to finish it. But you didn't know where he would begin or what he was thinking that day. This is kind of what amused him. So incredibly literate. I mean, inside Constantinople itself, the literacy rate was close to 100, which is crazy. But when he died, the court, which had been this magnificent court, this bureaucracy which had been running the empire, and which is vital to the workings of the empire, they convinced themselves that they could run the empire.

1:51:36they didn't actually need the emperor. And so they specifically selected weak rulers. And then that led directly to the disastrous Battle of Manzikert in 1071, where the Turks enter the story and defeat, destroy the Roman army under Romanus Diogenes, who's attempting to break free of the bureaucratic constraints. And then Anatolia gets flooded by these nomadic warriors, and the Byzantine gets pushed out of them. So once they've lost the heartland, they've lost their source of troops. They've lost their source of taxation. They've lost their source of food. At this point, it's impossible to recover.

1:52:17And the crusades are an attempt, the first crusade anyway, is an attempt by the Eastern Emperor Alexius to recover Asia Minor, more than Jerusalem. He wants to recover Asia Minor. And it obviously doesn't work out. So I think at that point, it's on a trajectory that can only end in collapse. And I think you can see that same kind of thing in the Viking world that we talked about, this stultifying, bureaucratic inflexibility.

1:52:48Lex Fridman:Combined with growing threats from all directions. Growing threats from all directions. Maybe your own success is beginning to be a problem and you can't adapt as quickly. You're not as lean and mean anymore. There's too many traditions, too much, the weight of history breaks you. You sort of mentioned Macedonian period, the dynasty where the East Roman Empire flourished once again, but they've gone through so many periods like that. That's true. I don't know what the reason is, but you can really trace the Roman spirit, the Roman state, the core of whatever that is through that 2200-year period.

1:53:32Lex Fridman:There's a real connection, a thread that connects to all of it. And so there's lessons. That's why we do need to study the Byzantine Empire for lessons of what makes society last. Yeah. Eventually everything collapses, but that one lasted longer. That one lasted a long time. It's easy to last when you're hidden away somewhere, but they were in the middle of everything. Everybody wanted what they had. Yeah, they were getting hit on all sides. There was, in their entire 2200 year history, there was not a single year they were at peace on all frontiers. And it wasn't always because they're looking for trouble.

1:54:07Lex Fridman:No. A lot of it was defensive. Yep. Including with those pesky Normans. Yeah. Yeah. On the topic of great men in history. So where do you land on this great debate? how important are individual humans versus systems? So what do you think turns the ties of history? Can individuals, rulers or individual warriors or individual humans have the power to change the course of history? Yeah, that's the question, isn't it? The short answer is I subscribe to the great man or great woman theory. I think there's moments, I can't imagine the Protestant Reformation. I don't think you can just swap out Martin Luther and have a Protestant Reformation.

1:54:56I don't think you can swap out Augustus and have the Roman Empire. I mean, I don't think you can swap out and so on and so forth. I think ultimately these impersonal forces are insufficient for explaining because we are people. We are humans. We are, you know, everything is kind of a relational thing. and but at the same time you know the moment needs the man but the man also needs the moment

1:55:27Lex Fridman:some of it is timing some of it is the the the environment the system around it but yeah i just seen so many incredible humans that uh persevere through things that would break basically everybody and they the power of the belief they have we're talking offline about napoleon here's a guy who was a student of all the great military generals of the past extremely competent in being able to micromanage every aspect of military affairs of a nation but also extremely confident in his vision of the world and ability to conquer anyone. And you have the same thing with Genghis Khan. This boy that came from nothing, that everything was taken away,

1:56:25Lex Fridman:united all of Mongolia and then conquered most of the known world to them. including eventually China. And it's like, well, can you possibly have the great Mongol Empire without Genghis Khan? No. Yeah. And the same, we as Americans ask ourselves that question about the founders. I mean, George Washington, not to romanticize it, but to give away power symbolically is a really powerful statement. Like we mentioned with Augustus, there's when somebody's given power and in some sense absolute power what they do with that power can reverberate through generations and that's in the hands of an individual yeah yeah that's exactly right it's well put you know cincinnatus in ancient rome same thing what lessons from this is a big ridiculous question what lessons from all the things we've talked about the exploration of the Vikings what lessons to learn from Vikings lessons to learn from the Viking age by the way I should mention one thing it's a very practical lesson that we didn't talk about that you taught me is the Vikings were like groomed themselves oh yeah they were like clean This is so very surprising to me.

1:57:58Lex Fridman:That they like washed themselves and then both the men and the women really took care of themselves. You don't often think about that. There was this whole, like the Vikings, everyone has this very clear picture of what a Viking looked like. And also has no idea what a Viking looked like somehow at the same time. Like almost everything about them is wrong that we think of. Almost everything about them is wrong. They didn't wear horned helmets. their hair probably was blonde disproportionately but that was more because they used lye to dye it because it would kill the lice and then they would take baths on a more regular basis I mean this depended on where you were so in England for example they were mocked as being soft which always blows my mind like really you're going to mock the Vikings for being soft because they took too many baths but then in the Muslim East one Muslim traveler writes that they were God's filthiest creatures because of their habits of kind of disgusting shared bathing all that aspect of it yeah so it's not that they didn't bathe they bathed a little too much and together they bathed but they also like would They brush their teeth using recycled water, then spit into a cup and pass it to the next guy.

1:59:17It's not awesome. I read that, this could be propaganda, but I read that in England there was worry that the Vikings were a bit too attractive to the women of England because of how much

1:59:33Lex Fridman:the Vikings took care of themselves in terms of grooming. Yeah. In the Dane law, like you get invaded by these people. Yeah. Kicking your rear end militarily. Yeah. Now they're stealing your women just to insult you as well. Yeah. You know. Yeah. They're, they wash themselves daily. Yeah. They've got, got good teeth. Whether they need it or not. I know. What are you guys getting out of everything? Yeah. What are you doing? Anyway. So, yeah. So one of the lessons I think we need to draw is a shower daily. Shower daily. Yeah. There you go. That's right. That's the lesson. That's the takeaway. That's the big, profound takeaway.

2:00:11Lex Fridman:Is there something bigger about the exploration, about the leaps into the unknown? Yeah, I think a couple of years ago, there were all these debates about statues. Should we pull these statues down? This person did a bad thing. Let's pull these statues. And I always thought they were kind of silly. I mean, I understand the point. But when you have a statue of Christopher Columbus, for example, you're not glorifying every single thing the man ever did. and all the bad stuff that comes from this or that, you're honoring something about him, like the spirit it takes to cross an ocean, not knowing what's on the other side.

2:00:48And that spirit of exploration. I think with the Vikings, it's the same. There's this way you approach the world, this fearless, pragmatic approach. I think as an American too, it's the ultimate rag stretch. It's the myth we tell ourself. You know, the man who starts with nothing and ends up as a sea king, well-respected and sung about by poets. I mean, that's it right there. You know, this is—and when you're a society and you stop doing this, you run into trouble as well.

2:01:23Lex Fridman:What about the Byzantine Empire? What lessons do you draw from them? This is a much—that's a much bigger one. Thousand-year history. Thousand-year history. And it's also what I think is so cool about the Byzantines is that in the ways that they are like us and the way that they are unlike us, in some ways, they're very analogous to the United States. the kind of the polygot nature of their inhabitants, you know, their roots, the Greco-Roman Judeo-Christian roots. And yet, it was a place of incredible alien things as well. Men sitting on top of pillars, you know, a king, an incredibly hierarchical system which abhorred democracy.

2:02:11so i think it's a way it's a way we it's a route we could have taken and it's the way they handled things immigration inflation war peace diplomacy i think there are there are lessons there for us yeah i think from the vikings the lessons are a

2:02:31Lex Fridman:bit more poetic yeah the lessons from the byzantine empire is like quite literal like how to run a government, how to run the law. Yeah, how to build a stable society. And honestly, like, you can count on the fingers of one hand states that have lasted a thousand years, right? Byzantium and Venice, I think. And Venice was an offshoot of the Byzantines. Like, for a government to last a thousand years is a rare thing. Like, we should be taking a look at this. Like, how? And how much of that is due to Augustus? Can we give him any credit for this? He built the system. Yeah, but there was a lot, like you mentioned, a lot of people along the way, from Constantine to Justinian, the Basils.

2:03:16Lex Fridman:There's so many emperors along the way that revolutionized and then re-stabilized the empire after it was almost falling apart. Oh, yeah. You know what else, too, though? Like, what happens to a human when you give that human essentially absolute power? because the Byzantine emperor stood halfway. I mean, he was more autocratic than anything other than, I don't know, the Pope that we have in the modern world. What happens when you give someone that level of power? Like, I love Justinian, but I wouldn't have liked to know him. You know, I wouldn't like to be one of his subjects. I love Basil I, but man was a bloodthirsty tyrant.

2:03:59Like, I think it shows you what happened. It was that Lord Acton, absolute power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Like that's quite clear throughout Byzantine history. So it's a long, a long list.

2:04:13Lex Fridman:And as technologies become more powerful, absolute power becomes potentially more destructive. Yeah, it's more absolute. It's more absolute. And it's, I mean, this is the project for the 21st century. the 20th and the 21st century is post-industrial revolution post the computer technological revolution post nuclear weapons discovery how do we construct societies that last like the byzantine empire did a thousand years is this like a new challenge for us yes there's going to be history books written about us because like nuclear weapons you know 80 years ago it's a greek fire that you can apply to the entirety of human civilization and so that there's going to be good history books and i hope there's going to be these stories about the american empire about the rest that sound similar to byzantine empire um versus the viking age It only lasted three centuries.

2:05:27I mean, I suppose the good news is it can be done, right? Or it has been done.

2:05:31Lex Fridman:It has been done. What gives you hope about the future? Having looked at the deep history of us, what gives you hope? During grad school, I was reading Frederick Douglass's autobiography. And he said, I could sit with Plato and Cicero and they would not flinch. You know, by which he meant that the great conversation was for everyone, no matter what your skin color, no matter what your level of income, and even no matter your intelligence. You know, and I think that's actually what, that's why history comes alive for me is because these are not alien people. You had asked how similar are ancient people to us psychologically, you know, what their goals were for life.

2:06:19And I think the short answer is they were identical to us, which is why we can understand them. It's why you should read things. It's why you should read the meditations, because this is not just some dry whatever talking to himself in a culture that you cannot understand and can never recreate. It's a human talking about being human, you know. And I think human nature has not changed, and I don't think human nature will change. so we are flawed and broken and we're that's that's the human condition we're going to be flawed and broken so i don't think i actually think that's the great that's the great question of history if you want to understand history you have to know about human nature what is our human nature if you think it's a blank slate and we can kind of educate ourselves to a utopia or you know like the marxist said then okay hasn't really worked out but okay if you believe we're basically bad there's a whole set of things that come with that if you believe we're basically good there's a whole set of right so you won't learn the appropriate lesson if you misdiagnose

2:07:28Lex Fridman:human nature yeah i think the diagnosis that you're kind of hinting at is is seemingly the most accurate one was just we're flawed. A mix of good, a mix of evil, capacity for both. That's right. That's right. I mean, I have to teach my kids to be kind. I don't have to teach my kids to be unkind. I mean, one of those is natural and one is not. I think my kids can become kind, you know. The capacity. The capacity. Humans have the capacity for much great things, but not perfection. has to come outside of us. Well, what is it? That line of all of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars?

2:08:15Yeah.

2:08:15Lex Fridman:And so you got to teach as many of us to look up at the stars and dream. Because once you allow yourself to dream of a better world, you try. Like the Vikings did. Go out there. Try not to murder your neighbor, But if you do, all of us have, of course. If you do, there's Greenland. There's Greenland. There's Greenland. Thank you for everything you've done for the world. Thank you for the podcast you put out there. Thank you for your incredible books. And thank you for the conversation today. Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity. Thanks a lot. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Lars Brownworth.

2:08:53Lex Fridman:To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description where you can also find links to contact me, ask questions, get feedback, and so on. And now let me leave you with some words from the Valsanga Saga, a 13th century Icelandic prose epic that tells the story of the Valsanga clan, a legendary Norse dynasty of heroes and dragon slayers. Fear not death, for the hour of your doom is set, and none may escape it. And another powerful quote from this saga is, better to fight and fall than to live without hope. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.