Episode Details

When you think of the Vikings – if you ever do – where do you think your information comes from? If we tend to think of them all as marauders, it’s probably because the sources of information have generally been outsiders. Since the Vikings had no written records of their own (the Icelandic Sagas were hundreds of years later), it’s only with the advent of modern archaeological techniques using DNA, isotopes and other microdata that we can begin to get a fuller picture. One of the foremost historians of the Vikings to have benefited from recent archaeology is Neil Price. In his new book The Sea-King and the Sorceress: Life and Death in the Viking Age, Neil looks at twenty-five grave sites to present an utterly riveting account of the Viking world, including vikings (pirates, with a small v), traders, slaves, men, women and children from all strata of society from Greenland to the Volga.

Interviewed by John de Falbe 

Edited by Magnus Rena