552. The Last Viking: The Saga of Harald Hardrada (Part 1)

0:10Olaf and Harald crashed into the enemy line like a storm ripping into a forest. Men were falling on every side, shards and splinters and splatters of blood flying into their faces. But soon the Norwegians were pressing back, using their numbers to hem Olaf's men in, squeezing them, crushing them together. More missiles rained down, spears, arrows and throwing axes. The ground was slippery with blood. For a moment Harold lost his footing, but then a hand was dragging him back up. And Ulf the Icelander flashed him a grim smile. Olaf raised his voice again, rallying his men for another charge, the sea serpent waving proudly overhead.

0:57Yet in the corner of his eye, Harold could see the terrifying figure of Thorir the Hound. His teeth bared with savage laughter, his black spear dripping with blood, cutting through the crowd towards his brother. And it was now, as the battle hung in the balance, that the heavens proclaimed their verdict. So that unbelievably manly and buccaneering prose is from Adventures in Time, Fury of the Vikings, Dominic's excellent book on the Vikings. and it describes one of the many thrilling scenes from the life of Harold Hardrada, who will go on to become one of the stars of the great drama of 1066. But Dominic, this is not a description of a battle fought in 1066, but in 1030.

1:52And it's the Battle of Stiklestad in Norway, one of the most celebrated events in the history of Norway and particularly of Norwegian Christianity. But we will come on to that in due course. So, Dominic, Harold Hardrada, two episodes on the Thunderbolt of the North, as Adam of Brayman called him, the last Viking, the greatest warrior of his day. Take him away. Yeah, so Tom, we've done a lot of great characters and the rest is history, but I think Harold Hardrada has a claim to be the most exciting. Certainly his life is the most dramatic and unexpected. so you and I when we studied 1066 at school yeah Howard Hardrada is really an exciting supporting character isn't he he's one of the three contenders in the great game of thrones arrives suddenly in the middle of 1066 he crosses the North Sea he leads an army into York and then he faces Harold Godwinson in this sort of thrilling showdown at Stamford Bridge but his story before that is so colourful that I think, I would be interested to know what you think, I think it's surely a contender for the most exciting life in medieval history.

3:02Well, as written several, I mean, a couple of centuries later, so definitely ornamented, but the basic outline of it, I agree, is astonishing. And we did an episode before on the Vikings going eastwards. And we talked about the strangeness of, it's kind of like two different periods of history rubbing up against one another, the Viking Age and the Roman Age, because you have Harold walking around Constantinople. And we've been doing this series on focus very much on England and the North Sea and Northern France. But there are all kinds of links to the Mediterranean, to the Byzantine Empire, to the Holy Land that we will be exploring over the course of these episodes looking at Harold Hardrada's life.

3:46Exactly. So to give people just a little preview, he fights that first battle when he's a teenager. He flees Norway into exile. He ends up as a mercenary for the Grand Prince of Kievan Rus. He crosses the Black Sea to Constantinople. He joins the Varangian Guard. He fights everywhere from Sicily to Armenia. He becomes engulfed, quite literally, in the snake pit of Constantinople politics. One might say the dragon pit. Exactly. And then he returns to claim the throne of Norway. So it's a very kind of Aragorn trajectory. The guy who disappears into exile as a sort of mercenary or a ranger from the north and then returns to reclaim his throne.

4:27Although he's a bit more kind of brutal, isn't he? Yes. Aragorn. A bit more wading through the blood of other people, I think it's fair to say. But I think there are two important dimensions of it sort of more seriously. So one is, as you've said, it is a brilliant reminder of the interconnectedness of this world. so 11th century Europe. So these trading networks, cultural networks, political and so on, that link the fjords of Norway to the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Middle East and so on, these are not completely different spheres of action. People move between them. Right, and the great silver hordes that you get in Viking Scandinavia, they're not just coming from England, they're also coming from Byzantium and from the Caliphate.

5:08These much richer parts of the world, quite frankly. and then the other thing is um you described him as people do as the last viking and you know we'll discuss that in more detail later on and his life undoubtedly is a window into the last sort of embers of the viking age so a changing scandinavia we've hinted at this in the last series we did about the roads 1066 so the way in which villages are becoming towns warlords are becoming kings pagans are becoming christians and the viking age is passing into history and his life seems to be the perfect punctuation point i would say now the other point we shouldn't perhaps labor too much you've alluded to it the best sources for his life are these sagas like heimskringler great saga sometimes written by snorri stirless and the great kind of saga writer written in iceland centuries later what are we talking sort of 12th 13th century sagas so they're written long after the event and as we will see there are a lot of fictional and fantastical elements which some scrupulous historians would cut you know they would do their best to eliminate from the podcast we've done the opposite well i've certainly done the opposite i think it's best to play those up because tom as we always say it's important to see the world as they saw it isn't it i suppose what i would say we would see the world as snorri stirlesson right and medieval iceland would see it whether that maps on exactly to how harold sees it and we will explore that but the good news for everybody is this is a podcast and not a phd so if you're hoping for giant serpents you'll get them berserkers covered in birds screaming you know at the top of their voices this is the podcast for you but let's start in history with what we know of the historical harold sigurdsson so he's born in the uplands of norway probably in 1015 his father is a kind of local king what they call a petty king a kind of regional big man and his father had the brilliant name sigurd seer sigurd the sow and he had this nickname the sow because he preferred farming to fighting and sometimes people think well obviously this is derogatory they imagine him as a kind of you know a lazy man who doesn't you know doesn't go out and smite you know his neighbors or whatever but actually in the sagas the portrait of sigurd is quite generous and i quote he was a careful householder who kept his people closely to their work and often went about himself to inspect his crops and meadows, the cattle and the smithies.

7:34I mean, I imagine him as a kind of a slow moving, but you wouldn't want to annoy Ox. Yeah, I think that's fair. Much loved by his vassals or whatever, I would imagine. Respected. They would put kind of daisy chains around his horns, but do not provoke his wrath. That kind of thing. And he is married to this woman called Orster. She's the widow of another kind of provincial bigwig in the westfold of Norway and she's had a son with this guy called Olaf the Stout. Now when Harold is born, so Olaf his half-brother is about 20, he's going to play a massive part in Harold's life because Harold is going to hugely look up to him.

8:14So Olaf, we know more about Olaf at this point than we do Harold. Olaf has been involved in war from a very young Age. Supposedly, according to the sagas, he first went into battle when he was 12 and he fought in Finland and Estonia. He was part of that Scandinavian horde who descended on England in the years of Aethelred the Unready. So he served with this bloke, Thorkell the Tall, who we talked about last time. And he actually ended up, was one of the people who ended up as a mercenary fighting for Aethelred the Unready. Yeah. He's the guy who supposedly pulls down London Bridge exactly thereby inspiring the nursery rhyme now he's also spent time in Normandy a place we talked a lot about last time a crucial sort of node in the network across the sort of North Sea and the Channel he'd been baptised a Christian in Rouen and he later becomes a great champion or he's seen as a great champion of Christianity in Norway but whether he's very pious I think is dubious I think for him Christianity is about power and about status and about generally smiting his enemies and making himself king.

9:18So Snorri says that his eyes are hard as serpents. Right. Jesus wouldn't like that, Tom, would he? It's more adventures in time, it has to be said. It is. His skulls, his poets, said that he was the ember breaker of battle. He gave gold to his loyal men and carrion to the ravens. That's what I like. I like that in a king. And actually, in all the poems that were composed about him when he was alive, there's no mention of being kind or turning the other cheek. There's an awful lot of mention of smashing people's heads in with hammers and stuff. So anyway, thanks to this head smashing, Olaf has actually stamped his authority on the different kind of strongmen of Norway.

9:56And around the time of Harold's birth, so 1015, he's recognised as the king of Norway. So another brilliant example of the way in which the Viking Age is passing into history and being replaced by a kind of more ordered, more structured kind of world. We talked in the previous series about Olaf Tryggforsen, this kind of sinister reader of bird bones. I mean, he establishes a Christian monarchy. He does it by committing spectacular atrocities in the name of Christ. And I think Harold Sigurdsson is... Cut from similar cloth. Very much in that kind of line of descent. So Harold, at this point, he's still only a little boy.

10:35Our first anecdote about him as a boy is in 1018 or so. his father has died so Sigurd has died and Olaf comes to visit his mother so this sort of early 20s guy who's become king his half-brother he comes to visit their hall in a place called Ringorike and the story is that Harold is there with his older brothers Guthorm and Halfdan and they're very shy of their relative the king and they can't meet his eye they have the hearts of girls they do but Harold who is three years old sits on Olaf's lap and tugs his moustache The mark of a king. Yeah. Olaf says, brother, you will be a fighter one day.

11:13And then the next day, Olaf is walking with his mother. They're having a chat in the sort of the fields and they come across the boys playing by the stream. And the other boys are playing as farmers. But Harold Hardrada, the future Harold Hardrada, is sort of playing with long, 10 long ships. And Olaf says to him, the day may come, brother, when you command real ships. And then he says to them, and I'm sure this definitely happened, Tom. He says, what would you like? What would you like most in life? And Guthorm says, I would like a lot of fields. And Halfdan says, I would like cows. And Harold, age three, says, house cows.

11:50So many, they would eat all Halfdan's cows at a single feast. And Olaf says to Orster, his mother, he says, well, well, mother, you are bringing up a king. So this is all very impressive, and I'm sure that this all happened. but actually all the sources agree and there's no reason to doubt them that harold is an exceptionally formidable character so snorri sterleson in king harold's saga says harold was a handsome man of noble appearance his hair and beard yellow he had a short beard and long moustaches peculiarly the one eyebrow was somewhat higher than the other so he's kind of roger moore like in that respect you know he can raise an eyebrow at a merry quip yeah he's brutal but suave suave exactly his height was five l's he was stern and severe to his enemies and cruelly punished all opposition or misdeed so five l's um as historians point out that would make him seven and a half feet tall and the sources do say he's very very tall but he's probably not seven and a half feet i mean the one thing that people know is that stamford bridge at the battle of stamford bridge he says of harold godwinson what a small man but also harold then turns it doesn't he and makes a famous joke about his height which we will come to yes exactly course he's definitely a huge man i don't there's any doubt about that and he's good looking because one of the other names that he gets as well as hardrada is fair hair yes so he's blonde haired he's incredibly impressive and the portrait we get of him generally i think in the sagas captures that last of the vikings feel there's definitely a sort of he's huge he's ruthless he loves gold he likes fighting and the sagas always have him there's a brilliant book called laughing till i die by tom shippy the great kind of expert on kind of norse and anglo-saxon literature has written a lot about tolkien and tom shippy says one of the defining things about harald hardrada in the sagas is he's always making quips and composing poems in the face of danger and stuff the vikings took that That's very much a Viking sensibility, that there's a fatalism coupled with a sort of, I laugh in the face of death, which I don't doubt, because you can tell that from the way he behaves.

14:01I don't doubt that that's true to his character to some degree. Well, I mean, I guess the sagas preserve poetic traditions that definitely go back to the Viking age. And if this is part of the context in which Vikings are growing up, then they're going to model themselves on what they're reading in the epics. Exactly. It's a kind of a virtuous circle. As he sits around the hearth, Tom, listening to the bards or the skulls kind of telling their stories about Ragnar Lothbrok or whatever. He wants to live up to it. He wants to model himself on that. Exactly. The fact that they have become Christian, that they have become kings, that they can now command the vast resources almost of a kind of an emergent state doesn't make them less of Vikings.

14:41Because if you think of Canute or Svein Fortbeard, Canute's dad, they're Vikings on a terrifying scale. Exactly. And there's that intersection point, isn't there, where Viking brutality and the resources available to a Christian king intersect. And it's very bad news for their neighbours. Yeah. So they're not really going on these piddling little raids anymore. What they're doing is launching proper invasions and seizing kingdoms and piling up gold on the skins of oxes. That's what they're doing. So he next appears in the sagas in the spring of 1030 when he's 15 years old. and a lot has changed since the days when he was you know tugging people's beards so his brother Olaf Olaf the Stout this guy who'd united Norway has had a massive falling out with Canute the king of Denmark and England who we talked about in the last series now we know that Canute and Olaf did know each other their paths had undoubtedly crossed in England back in the days of Svein Fortbeard and so on and some Scandinavian historians think that what had basically happened is that Olaf had probably promised to be kind of Cnut's vassal and had reneged on the deal which is a big theme of kind of Danish and Norwegian history well because they'd fought each other on opposite sides in England exactly so in 1028 so two years before 1030 Cnut had sailed from England with 50 warships and had actually been welcomed by the Norwegians with open arms so it's pretty clear that in the north in particular of Norway the local magnates actually didn't like Olaf and wanted him out.

16:10And Cnut, we're told, when the sagas had bribed them with enormous quantities of gold and silver, every man who came to him and wished to be his friend had his hands filled with coins. So Olaf, Harold's brother, has fled. He flees over the mountains to Sweden with a handful of his closest friends and his son Magnus, who will come up again on Thursday. And from Sweden, he took a ship across the Baltic and he vanished into the forests of what is now Russia. Now we'll come back later in this episode to this side of things but basically for 200 years this has been the kind of wild east of the Viking world.

16:47They've got all this network of forts and towns and so on they're going all the way down the rivers into Ukraine towards the Black Sea in Constantinople which is obviously the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire and Olaf has taken shelter probably in Kiev with the Grand Prince Yaroslav of Kiev who's basically of Scandinavian descent. And who will be a key figure in the story we're going to tell. So Olaf has been gone for two years. And then in the spring of 1030, a dramatic twist, one of many in the story. Word reaches Norway that Olaf is on his way back. He's got about 200 warriors who are kind of Slav mercenaries and Norwegian exiles.

17:29I mean, the phrase Slav mercenaries is never something you want to hear if you're a peaceful villager, is it? It's a phrase that you definitely want to be using on a podcast. When you're talking about Slav mercenaries, you're living the dream. So he goes back and he arrives in Sweden. And the Swedish king, who's called Onond Jakob, he gives him some more men. And then he recruits some more troops in Sweden, some more Norwegian exiles and so on. And so Olaf has this force of about 2 ,500 men. And then Harold, his younger brother, turns up. So Harold at this point is about 15 or 16 years old. please brother may I fight with you I think his voice broke when he was about eight oh maybe when he was three playing with his viking ships I imagine he's pretty formidable massively hairy I think it's more he's got a mane of blonde hair so he tosses in the wind I hope one day brother to have a moustache like yours and he will well he will well hold on hold on actually I can't believe I didn't read this out Snorri Sturluson says at this point he was very stout and manly as though full-grown.

18:35As though full-grown, Dominic. Yeah, but very stout and manly. What, so he's fat? No, because stout in these days. So Olaf the Stout is not that he's fat. It's actually that he's sort of sturdy, like me. So, right. Harald has raised a couple of hundred men from the uplands of central Norway. He's crossed the mountain spine of Scandinavia and he's gone down to Sweden to meet his brother. So they all assemble and then they decide they'll set off back to Norway and they're hoping to get more recruits as they go and they crossed the spine again through the passes into the Norwegian uplands. Now, there are some accounts, because this is the age of Christianization, that say that Olaf forced recruits to be baptized and he made them paint white crosses on their shields.

19:20We must depend on God. Only with his power and mercy shall we gain victory, and I cannot have pagan men in my army. But actually, most of the historians' accounts that I've read of this say this is probably nonsense, that actually this is a back projection by later Christian chroniclers and that actually almost certainly it's a mixture of all kinds of random people in this army at this point. I would be less sceptical about it because he has seen London, he's seen Kiev, he's seen Christian kings and the power that they command. And I think that everything about would-be Viking kings in this period suggests that they want a part of it.

20:00Oh, they do. I'm not saying that he doesn't shout about Christ and have a cross. What I'm saying is his very ragtag army, I don't think it has the quality of a crusade. No, it doesn't have a quality of the crusade, but the possibility that he makes them put white crosses on their shields or whatever. I mean, it's certainly possible. Yeah. Anyway, they come down into the height of summer, 1030. And they come down into the most fertile bit of Norway, which is called the Trondelag. It's around the city that we now know as Trondheim, which at the time was called Nidaros. and they're going through this valley and at the end of the valley is the village of sticklestad sticklers farm and this is the setting for this great battle probably the most famous battle in norwegian history i don't know how many norwegian listeners we have but they'll be very excited by this and as they advance down this valley they see at the end a huge army waiting for them so this army their enemies these are a canute loyalists and b basically local farmers and local peasants who hate olaf and they are horrified that all these slav mercenaries have turned up and they're about to pillage their lands and sort of you know attack their families and stuff do we know if um harold's brothers who are the farmers oh my words you know do you think they've turned out?

21:16I think they've disappeared from the story completely. Guthorm and Halfdan. I don't think they've turned out. No, no, no. Because they wouldn't welcome Slavic mercenaries descending on there. They wouldn't, but that's actually too busy tending their crops, Tom. They've got no time for this kind of nonsense. Now, in the sagas, there are some absolutely splendid people involved in the enemy army. So the head of it, the head of this kind of loyalist army, is a local strongman called Kalf Arneson, who's a sort of Cnut loyalist. Then there's a bloke called Thorstein the Shipwright, and he has a grudge against Olaf because Olaf confiscated a ship from him as punishment for murdering somebody.

21:51Snorri Sturluson says that Thorstein, the shipwright, was, quote, very ardent and a skilled killer of men. That's nice. Which is nice. But by far the most terrifying person who you mentioned in that wonderful reading at the beginning of the show is this guy who's called Thorir the Hound. And Thorir the Hound, I'm sure he existed. He's a warlord from the northern coast of Norway. So he's been in touch with the Sami people and he's wreathed in mystery and magic. He's a sorcerer as well as a hound. Well, this is the kind of figure that Neil Price talks about. Yeah. In his great book, The Viking Way.

22:29And he came and talked about Viking sorcery. And his great thesis is that so much of Viking culture is influenced by shamanistic traditions from the far north. That's a very fashionable view, though, isn't it, Tom? I like it. Yeah, I really, really like it. This bloke bears it out. he's wearing a Sami cloak of 12 reindeer skins with, and I quote, so much magic that no weapon could pierce them. And if people doubt that, we will have evidence for it later on in this story. He's got good medicine. He's also got a magic spear. He's got a magic spear and he said, I would use this magic spear to kill Olaf.

23:06Now they outnumber Olaf's men four to one, and they are absolutely pumped. They are gagging for battle. Kalf Arneson, he raises his banner and he addresses his men and he says, he who does not fight bravely today shall be held a worthless coward. Spare none, for they will not spare you. Now Olaf, who's massively outnumbered, he raises his banner. You mention it in the reading, the sea serpent. He unsheathes his sword, which is called knight ear, striker. And he gives his own speech. Of course he does. And he says, they may have more men, but it is fate that decides victory, not numbers. I swear that I will not flee from this fight.

23:44I will triumph or I will die. And all his men assemble. It's got his great lieutenant standing at his side, who obviously is called Bjorn the Bear. He's there. Doesn't Bjorn mean bear. Yeah. Yeah, it's just a tautology. But I mean, you know, it's there to... Don't forget the Slav mercenaries there. They might not know that, Tom. Yeah, fair enough. So it needs to be explained. It's also got a kind of Lancelot character who's called Roggenwald Brusseson, who's the son of the Earl of Orkney. You're a big fan of Orkney. aren't you? Yeah, well, because the elves of Orkney carry on being Vikings, you know, deep into the Middle Ages.

24:17So he's there, Roggenwald, and everyone should remember him because he'll be important in this story. But Harold, what about Harold? Olaf says, I do not think my brother Harold should be in the battle for he is still a child. Certainly I should be in the battle for I am not too weak to handle a sword and if necessary, you can tie my hand to the hilt. That's what he says. He's stout and manly. He did not speak like that. So anyway, this is the first time that he comes out with one of his poems in the face of death. He says, my arm is winged where I shall stand. I will hold good with heart and hand.

24:51My mother's eye shall joy to see a battered bloodstained shield from me. That's great. There's no doubt, I think, in any listener's mind that this absolutely happened. So at about one o 'clock, according to the sagas, these two lines advance on each other. Thor the Hound is shouting. Olaf is shouting. The tension mounts. It's very Bernard Cornwell. And then the two lines crashed together. And short of trying to work out from the sagas, which, as we said, written much later with masses of kind of fictionalisation and back projection, Olaf's men are almost certainly more skilled, more experienced than all these farmers and peasants.

25:29So when the sagas say they made initial headway, that's very plausible. But over time, the sheer weight of numbers, four to one, tells against them. So in King Harold's saga, which is part of a big cycle called Heimskringler, says, the peasant army pushed on from all quarters. Those in front hewed down with their swords, those behind thrust with their spears, and those in the rear shot arrows, cast spears, and threw stones, hand axes, or sharp stakes. Soon many men began to fall. So in other words, Olaf is very embattled. And Harold. And then, remember you said, Tom, the heavens proclaimed their verdict.

26:07As is oddly so often the way in decisive battles in history, guess what happens? There is a total eclipse. So we're told the saga say the sky and sun became red and then as black as night. And to read from a thrilling version of this story for younger readers, blood-curdling roars rose from the peasant army. The gods had spoken. The king must die. Now they surged forward, emboldened, triumphant, closing in on their former master, their faces twisted with demonic rage. They also definitely happened. So a very prosaic version of what happens next is basically the peasant army is weathered the initial surge.

26:48Olaf is outnumbered. His men are cut down. The standard bearer is cut down, drops the sea serpent banner. The morale breaks. People start running. And at some point, Olaf himself is slaughtered among the piles of bodies. But the sagas tell a very exciting story. so basically all boils down to this duel between Olaf and Thorir the hound he lands this fantastic blow on Thorir he slashes at him but Thorir is wearing that Sami reindeer skin coat it was as dust flew from this coat and Olaf's sword just glances off it and then Thorstein the shipwright hacks at Olaf's leg with his axe Olaf falls over a boulder which apparently you can still see on the field called Olaf's stone.

27:35And you were driving very near the site. You opted not to go and look at it. I just don't like stones. I find them very dull. I find them disappointing. And also I had a brilliant image in my mind of this battle. Yeah, you didn't want to be disappointed. I didn't want to be disappointed by some prosaic stone. Anyway, Thorier the Hound, remember he's got a magic spear. He plunges it up through Olaf's male shirt into his chest. And then Kalf Arneson hits him in the neck. And it's all over. for Olaf that's alright because do you know who had appeared to Olaf while he was in Novgorod in a dream it was Olaf Trigfersen oh no way another Olaf so it was Olaf Trigfersen who'd been Olaf the Stout's godfather right he appeared to him and he said look don't worry it's a glorious thing to die in battle and then he vanished yeah a Viking would know that though they wouldn't need to be told yeah but it would be a reassurance wouldn't it if your godfather tells you it would be a reassurance you're right that's true that's true oh that's nice anyway he probably dies with a smile on his lips.

28:32I like to say that. A grim smile. Now, almost everybody else we're told in the sagas is killed too, but not Harold. Harold has somehow been wounded and put out of action. So he's kind of lying among the piles of bodies. And this guy, the Earl of Orkney's son, Roggenwald Brusseson, he helps him up and he drags him off the battlefield into the woods. Now, Thorre the Hound is leading a kind of mopping up party to kill all the survivors, but they manage to evade him and they reach a woodsman's hut. And there, the woodsman, a kindly forester, he takes them in and he says, listen, I will look after young Harold until he's well enough to travel.

29:13So I think it's probably fair to say at this point this probably didn't happen. This feels a little bit fairy. This feels a bit fairy tale to me, Tom. I don't know. I mean, just to say also, there must have been enough survivors of the battle the next day to go and find Olaf's body and spirit away. and they bury it in a sandy bank upriver from Trondheim. And this is very important for the Christianisation of Norway because his death in that battle will come to be seen as a martyrdom and his relics will become a great object of pilgrimage. Well, spoiler alert, he becomes a saint. Yeah, he's a patron saint of Norway.

29:47We've had a few implausible saints on the podcast. He's definitely one of them. He's got a church in London. Yeah. So, Roggenvald goes off and he leaves Harold with this woodsman and days or weeks we don't know go by. Harold's wounds heal And eventually the woodsman's son says I will guide you through the forests And over the mountains to Sweden We're told that they stayed off the roads They made their way through the woods And Harold wore a hooded cloak To hide his face So he's very much kind of the ranger of the north I like to think he travels under the name Stroider Yeah, Trotter Yeah, Trotter, Tolkien's original name And he devises one of his lovely poems During the journey now from wood to wood i slink rated little who knows but i may win better fame later i mean it's not really as poems go it's probably not the best but anyway yeah he's really tired yeah he's just lost his brother it's also a teenager he's also a teenager come on don't be hard yeah i'm being too hard on him i feel ashamed of myself now anyway they go through all this wild country he goes down into sweden the baltic sea lies beyond he meets up with roggenfeld and that winter they hunker down brooding on their defeat and then says the saga the spring came and harold and roggenvald hired a ship and that summer they sailed east to the lands of the russ goodness what a cliffhanger so go east young man and that is what we will be doing after the break

31:21Hello, I'm William Durimple. And I'm Anita Arnond. And we are the hosts of Empire, also from Goalhanger. And we're here to tell you about our recent mini-series that we've just done on The Troubles. In it, we try to get to the very heart of the violent conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted from the 1960s all the way up to 1998. It's something that we both lived through and remember from our childhoods, but younger listeners may not know anything about it. And it's a time when there was division along religious and political lines. Neighbours turned against each other, residential city streets became battlegrounds, thousands were killed, and the IRA bombed London.

32:02It seemed as if an end was out of reach. But in 1998, a peace process finally brought those 30 years of violence to an end. But the memory of the Troubles is still present, not only within Northern Irish communities who experienced it, but in international relations and political approaches to peace. And new audiences are starting to understand this national trauma through films like Belfast and kneecap and TV shows like Derry Girls. In fact, our guest on the miniseries is Patrick Radden Keefe. Now, he's the author of the nonfiction book that inspired the hit TV drama, Say Nothing. It's one of my favourite books.

32:43It's, I think, the kind of ink-old blood for our generation, extraordinary work of non-fiction. To hear the full series, just search Empire wherever you get your podcasts.

32:58Hello, welcome back to The Rest is History. We're in the midst, literally, of a saga. The 16-year-old Harold Hardrada is on the run. His brother, Olaf the Stout, has been killed. He's being hunted. He and his friend Rognavold have taken ship from the Swedish coast into the freezing waters of the Baltic. They have their rangers' hoods over their heads. Dominic, where are they going? So, for the last 200-odd years, the Vikings have been going east as much as they've been going west. They've been sailing across the Baltic and the Gulf of Finland to what's now Russia, Estonia and Latvia. We did a couple of episodes about this in the early days.