Main content

Vikings

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough talks to scholars with new insights on the Viking period, and catches up with the Netflix series Valhalla and its links with a Victorian Viking craze.

June 793 when Scandinavian raiders attacked the monastery of Lindisfarne in Northumbria, used to be the date given for the beginning of the Viking age but research by Neil Price shows that it began centuries before. He traces the impact of an economy geared to maritime war and the central role of slavery in Viking life and trade. Judith Jesch is Professor of Viking Studies at the University of Nottingham and Dr Kevan Manwaring is an author and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the Arts University Bournemouth. New Generation Thinker Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough presents.

The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings by Neil Price is out in paperback in April
Vikings Valhalla is available now on Netflix
New Generation Thinker Eleanor Barraclough researches this history and has written Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas. You can find her presenting the Radio 3 Sunday feature on runes, and the supernatural north /programmes/b006tnwp

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Image: A reconstruction of the Viking life at Murton Park Dark Age Village (part of Yorkshire Museum of Farming).

Words and Music - Radio 3's weekly curation of prose, poems and music choices also looks at Vikings. You can hear it on Sunday at 5.30pm and then on 大象传媒 Sounds
/programmes/b006x35f

Available now

44 minutes

Last on

Thu 17 Mar 2022 22:00

Broadcast

  • Thu 17 Mar 2022 22:00

Featured in...

The Arts & Ideas Podcast

The Arts & Ideas Podcast

You can download all the past episodes of Radio 3's Free Thinking

Discussions and talks from the Free Thinking Festival 2019

Discussions and talks from the Free Thinking Festival 2019

Angry politics, what we can鈥檛 say, being diplomatic, weeping, emotion in music, film & TV

Click to listen to discussions, talks and music as the Free Thinking Festival 2019 Gets Emotional

Click to listen to discussions, talks and music as the Free Thinking Festival 2019 Gets Emotional

Angry politics, what we can鈥檛 say, being diplomatic, weeping, emotion in music, film & TV

CLICK to LISTEN & SEE programmes from the Free Thinking Festival 2018: The One & the Many

CLICK to LISTEN & SEE programmes from the Free Thinking Festival 2018: The One & the Many

We examine the fast-changing relationship between the individual & the crowd

CLICK to LISTEN & SEE all programmes, images, clips & features from 2017's festival

Free Thinking Festival 2017: The Speed of Life