You are Bjorn, born in Iceland in 967. Your neighbour is Erik the Red, a man who keeps getting exiled, and he has just found some land with a great name.
What was it really like to be born a Viking? Sail with Erik's 25 ships to Greenland, join Olaf Tryggvason's fleet against England, get paid to leave at Maldon in 991, and row west with Leif Erikson to a new continent nearly 500 years before Columbus.

CHAPTERS
0:00 Welcome to Greenland
0:29 Winter, 984: why is the cow in the house?
1:29 Viking isn't a people, it's a trip
2:52 The crossing: 25 ships, 14 arrive
3:53 Five years later: no trees, no silver, no green
4:39 Off to England, 991
5:01 Maldon: a tribute of spears
6:02 The share-out: eight oxen a pound
6:48 Andover, 994: the king becomes Olaf's godfather
7:39 Home: the great raider and his chicken
8:18 Norway, 999: a very persuasive king
8:54 Vinland: Leif finds grapes
9:56 A new god, 1001
10:30 The locals: furs for cheese
11:29 Nobody believes Grandpa

THE REAL HISTORY
Erik the Red was outlawed from Iceland in the early 980s after a feud that, as the sagas tell it, began with some lent bench-posts. He spent his exile exploring the land to the west and, according to Íslendingabók, named it Greenland because "people would be enticed to travel there if the land had a good name". About 985, twenty-five ships set out with settlers; only fourteen arrived. In 991 a fleet of ninety-three ships, probably led by Olaf Tryggvason, raided England. At Maldon in Essex, as the Old English poem tells it, ealdorman Byrhtnoth answered the offer to leave for silver with "a tribute of spears", then let the Vikings cross the causeway for a fair fight, and was killed. That same year the English paid 10,000 pounds, on Archbishop Sigeric's advice; the payments grew to 16,000 pounds in 994 and 82,500 in 1018. In 994 King Æthelred stood sponsor at Olaf's confirmation, and Olaf kept his promise never to come back as an enemy. As king of Norway he pushed Christianity hard, and around the year 1000 Leif Erikson sailed west and named Helluland, Markland and Vinland. In 1960 Norse buildings were found at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, and in 2021 a solar storm's mark in the tree rings dated their woodcutting to the year 1021.

The dialogue is played for laughs, but the history behind it is real. Bjorn and his family are invented; Erik, Leif, Olaf, Byrhtnoth, Sigeric, Æthelred, Karlsefni and Gudrid are real people, and their deeds, the numbers and the dates come from the sources below. Where the sources disagree (who led the 991 fleet, Leif's mission from King Olaf), the video says so.

SOURCES
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 991-1018 (Avalon Project, Yale): https://avalon.law.yale.edu/medieval/ang10.asp
The Battle of Maldon, translated by Kevin Killings (University of Oxford): https://english.nsms.ox.ac.uk/oecoursepack/maldon/translations/killingsfull.htm
Danegeld (Britannica): https://www.britannica.com/topic/Danegeld
Laws of King Athelstan: an ox at thirty pence (Avalon Project, Yale): https://avalon.law.yale.edu/medieval/saxlaw.asp
The Orkesta runestone, U 344: "Ulf has taken three payments in England" (Runkartan): https://runkartan.se/english/rune-stone-orkestastenen-eller-yttergardestenen-u344-l2015-443-orkesta-29-2-in-vallentuna-stockholm.html
The Saga of Erik the Red, translated by J. Sephton (Project Gutenberg): https://www.gutenberg.org/files/17946/17946-h/17946-h.htm
Íslendingabók, the Book of the Icelanders: https://wevikings.com/library/islendingabok-eng/
Erik the Red (Britannica): https://www.britannica.com/biography/Erik-the-Red
Leif Erikson (Britannica): https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leif-Erikson
L'Anse aux Meadows (Parks Canada): https://parks.canada.ca/lhn-nhs/nl/meadows/culture
Kuitems et al., Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021, Nature (2021): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8770119
The Halfdan runes in Hagia Sophia (University of Notre Dame): https://sites.nd.edu/manuscript-studies/?p=6200
The Viking Age: the people (National Museum of Denmark): https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-viking-age/the-people
Roberta Frank, The Invention of the Viking Horned Helmet: https://ingebretsens-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/51267328-frank-invention-of-horned-helmet.pdf

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