Vikings episode 2: Neil Oliver heads out from the Scandinavian homelands to Russia, Turkey and Ireland to trace the beginnings of a vast trading empire that handled Chinese silks as adeptly as Pictish slaves. Neil discovers a world of ‘starry-eyed maidens‘ and Buddhist statues that are a world away from our British experience of axe-wielding warriors, although it …
The Last Battle of the Vikings: Nowhere in the British Isles was the Viking connection longer-lasting or deeper than in Scotland. Hundreds of years after their first hit-and-run raids, the Norsemen still dominated huge swathes of the country. But storm clouds were gathering. In 1263 the Norwegian king Haakon IV assembled a fleet of 120 long-ships to counter …
The Normans episode 3 – Normans of the South: Professor Robert Bartlett explores the impact of the Normans on southern Europe and the Middle East. The Normans spread south in the 11th century, winning control of southern Italy and the island of Sicily. There they created their most prosperous kingdom, where Christianity and Islam co-existed in relative harmony and mutual …
The Normans episode 2 – Conquest: In the second of this three-part series, Professor Robert Bartlett explores the impact of the Norman conquest of Britain and Ireland. Bartlett shows how William the Conqueror imposed a new aristocracy, savagely cut down opposition and built scores of castles and cathedrals to intimidate and control. He also commissioned the Domesday Book, the greatest …
The Normans episode 1 – Men from the North: In the first episode of a three-part series, Professor Robert Bartlett explores how the Normans developed from a band of marauding Vikings into the formidable warriors who conquered England in 1066. He tells how the Normans established their new province of Normandy -‘land of the northmen’ – in northern France. …
Vikings episode 3: Neil Oliver explores how the Viking Age finally ended, tracing the Norse voyages of discovery, the first Danish kings, and the Christian conversions that opened the door to European high society. He also uncovers the truth about England’s King Canute – he was not an arrogant leader who thought he could hold back the waves, …
Vikings episode 1: In the first programme, Neil begins by discovering the mysterious world of the Vikings’ prehistoric ancestors. Neil Oliver heads for Scandinavia to reveal the truth behind the legend of the Vikings. The remains of weapons-filled war boats, long-haired Bronze Age farmers and a Swedish site of a royal palace and gruesome pagan rituals conjure up …
Viking Women: The Vikings changed Europe forever, yet half of them have almost completely disappeared from collective memory: the women. Quite unjustly so, as they played an important role in the world of the Vikings and performed extraordinary deeds. Viking Women part 1: Sigrun’s Wrath and the Discovery of Iceland Viking women commanded ships and settled colonies. …
Lost Viking Army – Great Heathen Army: Forty years ago, hundreds of skeletons were unearthed in a mass grave in an English village. Bio-archaeologist Cat Jarman believes these bones are the last remains of the “Great Heathen Army,” a legendary Viking fighting force that invaded England in the ninth century and has long been lost to history. Armed …
Europe’s Last Warrior Kings: the year is 1066. The place is England. King Edward the Confessor has just died and with no true heir to succeed him, three power-hungry warlords set their eyes on the crown. In the coming months, the country will endure three invasions that will end a chapter in Viking history and change the shape of England …
Civilisation episode 1 – The Skin of Our Teeth: Sir Kenneth Clark begins his classic 1969 series on the history of civilisation with the re-establishment of civilisation in Western Europe, in the tenth century after the fall of Rome to barbarism. He travels from Byzantine Ravenna to the Celtic Hebrides examining aqueducts, cathedrals, the lives of the Vikings and of …
In Andrew Marr’s History of the World part 4, Andrew Marr reaches the Middle Ages. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Europe was little more than a muddy backwater. Vikings explored and pillaged from Northern Europe to North America. But they also laid the foundations of powerful new trading states – including Russia. This was also the Golden Age …