transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:03] It's 868 AD. We're in the vast open wastes of the North Atlantic. It is rough, unforgiving, deadly. Unlike the North Sea, these waters stretch on forever, an unrelenting gray seascape. One of undulating peaks and troughs of dark, hidden valleys, of verboding crags, flecked with foam. The boat rides the swell, rising and plunging, waves crashing over the prow. The only thing between life and death is a few inches of Norwegian oak. This ship is more chunky than the usual kind, not the light swift dragon boats used for summer raiding and river hopping. It's a cargo vessel, a canar, wider, heavier, sturdier. It can accommodate over 60 people, men, women and children. Not raiders here, but craftsmen, tradespeople, farmers, builders, hunters, settlers. And they have all taken a giant leap of faith to establish a colony in a land on which none of them has ever set foot and whose location is only vaguely known. To boldly go, as one might put it, where no man or woman has gone before. The passengers huddle under the spare sails strung across the deck as an awning. In pens at the stern are cattle. Their unease increases the tension. And at the helm is the man to whom the travelers have pledged their trust, an artisan of the fjords, a boat builder, a man called Floki Vilgethassen, someone, it is whispered, who is a kinsman of the great Ragnar Lothbrok. Though there are few men in the Viking realms who don't boast of a connection. According to the accounts of seafarers, the land they seek is a large island, and the best soil, it is said, the most farmable, lies way round to the west, warmed by what we know today as the Gulf Stream. Floki blinks into the spray. His furs and leathers are drenched, his hand on the steerboard numbed by the cold. Three days out from the Faroe Islands, and they should by now have sighted it. Supplies are limited, time is running out. With traditional methods of navigation failing, Floki resorts to his own. In a wooden cage sit his three black ravens, the bird of Odin. Ravens have a homing instinct. Unable to locate a place to roost, they will instinctively fly back to the coop. Floki will release them in succession until one doesn't return. Over the coming hours, in relay, the ravens take to the sky. The first, disorientated, heads straight off to the southeast, back towards the Faroes, never to be seen again. The second, after disappearing out of sight, eventually comes flapping home. But the third soars off, determined. It is hell-bent on flying north. This is it. As the boat steers in the bird's direction, it coincides with a glimpse through a bank of fog, the silhouette of a rugged coastline. The island. Vikings are famously wary of fog, believing it to be cursed. But Floki plows his ship right through, and his crew will follow the shoreline round, dropping anchor eventually in the far northwest. A settlement is established at a place named Ovattensfjerdæ, but life will prove unbearably harsh. The magic of summer's near 24-hour daylight, so bright you can pick the lice from your clothes at midnight, will be offset by a winter so dark, so cold, so brutal, that none of the colony's cattle survive. Come the spring thaw, the outpost is disbanded. Hravena Floki, or Raven Floki, as he is now known, will return to Norway. His testimony will be presented to the royal court. The island is worthless, he declares, nothing but a bitter frozen waste. It is, as he puts it, an ice land. I'm Iain Glen, and from the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Vikings, part five. In this series, we've covered many aspects of the Viking Age. We have watched how piracy and pillaging have evolved into settlement and trade. We've witnessed hit-and-run skirmishes escalate to military campaigns waged by great heathen armies. We've seen warlord territories morph into political entities, fledgling kingdoms. As Danes have settled in Anglo-Saxon England, so Norwegians have interacted with Scotland and Ireland. We have followed Northmen into Frankia, and seen Swedish Vikings edge down mighty rivers into the heart of Russia. Until now, as impressive as their seamanship is, there has been something characteristic about Viking navigation. It is all about shore-hugging, edging along coasts or inland waterways, never putting out into the open sea for more than a day or two. The North Sea, not that it can't cut up rough, is essentially a shallow basin, a contained body of water. So too is the Baltic. Cast off from Scandinavia, west or east, and you will soon hit land. No, for Viking navigators, there remains one final frontier, a wide gray yonder, the North Atlantic. William Fitzhugh is the Director of the Arctic Studies Center and curator of the Department of Natural History at the Smithsonian National Museum.

Speaker 2:
[07:21] The story of the expansion across the North Atlantic was a totally different ballgame. It was done by people who were farmers, who were looking for ways to keep their families going, to discover new resources. The Viking times was not just a time of carnage and pillaging and so forth, but a very real story about people and their families and their lives. Not just a rather lurid, biased impression, mostly described by people who are at the wrong end of the Viking sword. I mean, as these guys crossed the North Atlantic, they were not really Vikings at all.

Speaker 1:
[07:56] As Norse sailors make passage around what we call today the North of Scotland, they have come across two sets of islands. Both are settled relatively quickly. Orkney, ten miles off the mainland, and Shetland, fifty miles to Orkney's northeast, are grouped together in Viking terms as the Northern Isles. They will become part of the Kingdom of Norway in 875. With rich pasture and sheltered anchorage, they are perfect spots to settle. The climate, if you remember, is in the throes of the medieval warm period, several degrees more equable than today. In both locations, Norse invaders quickly supply the local Pictish population. They have been part of a community known as the Cat, or Catty, people. Their name lives on today in mainland Caithness. The conveyance of settlers necessitates an upgrade in ship technology.

Speaker 2:
[09:02] Initially, it was the coastal travel, but after the raids began and so forth, they realized they had to carry a lot of other material. You know, you had to bring your cows, your families, and all your chattels and everything. The open long boats that were the raiding kind of boats were not suitable at all for that kind of life, and that became the canars that then were the vehicles for the expansion.

Speaker 1:
[09:28] These twin archipelagos, comprising between them over 200 islets and skerries, also serve another practical function. They are way stations, pit stops, a place to replenish en route to a final destination. Settlement of the Hebrides, maybe, the Isle of Man, Ireland, or a new set of islands that have since come into focus. 50 years on from the settlement of the Northern Isles, North Seaman will put ashore on fresh terrain, 200 miles to Shetlands Northwest, the Faroe Islands. Though more rocky and barren here, there's still sufficient pasture to sustain a colony. Their name literally means sheep islands. It's a good place, too, to build up supplies of a handy, non-perishable foodstuff, salted cod. And so, the Faroes are similarly brought into the Viking orbit.

Speaker 2:
[10:32] There was a tremendous lore that was developing, so it really was an opening of a new era.

Speaker 1:
[10:40] Like many of the Atlantic discoveries, it is by accident that the Faroes are found, a typical case of sailors being blown off course. Not that these islands can claim to have been discovered as such. Their existence was recorded by an Irish monk, Dick Wheelis, writing in the mid-800s. Indeed, the first Norse landings confirmed that there had been prior settlement by Celtic monks, hermits known as Papa. They had sought sanctuary here, pursuing a monastic existence far from civilization. The experience of the Papa will add a twist to Nordic adventuring. The Faroes are about to assume a role in a brand-new phase of Viking expansion. Not for the purpose of trade, nor for conquest, the Faroes are to become the staging post in an exodus. A means for the likes of Floki to escape, just as those monks had done, from the strictures of everyday politics and society. A stepping stone for people, dissenters, pilgrims, in search of a new life, a new world. The last port of call before a voyage into the unknown.

Speaker 2:
[11:58] That's the beauty of the North Atlantic, because it has these bridging islands. The Norse also had an idea that wherever they traveled toward the west, they would find more land. This just became a kind of like a basic doctrine.

Speaker 1:
[12:17] Scandinavia is changing. There is a growing sense of interconnectedness with other European nations. As trading has taken off, so the importance of the ports and the market centers has increased. In a nod to continental tradition, warlords have begun to style themselves as kings, if only to gain them credibility when dealing with foreign courts. As rulers of these ports and their hinterlands, territories are refashioned and expanded as petty kingdoms and fiefdoms, and Viking rulers are also playing their part in a seismic cultural shift, a conversion to Christianity. These societal changes are having repercussions at the lower end of the social order. Humble farmers, fishermen and tradesmen, whose loyalties have only ever been local, find themselves being re-designated as subjects. They are obliged now to pay tribute, fealty and taxes to their increasingly distant royal and now Christian overlords. They must attend the spanking new churches that these nouveau monarchs insist on throwing up. For many, the old pagan traditions can still be practiced on the sly or simply adorned with a bit of biblical window dressing. Even the legend of Floki carries echoes of Noah and the flood. As the Saxons found before them, the Scandinavians are able to fuse their beliefs with these new ideas. The spring fertility rituals of the pagan gods conveniently align with Christian Holy Week, making for a hybrid festival that the Norse call Ostarra, Easter. The winter solstice feast, Yule, with its burning logs and winter greenery, continues untrammeled, simply spliced onto Christmas. Dr. Pragya Vohra.

Speaker 3:
[14:25] And this kind of syncretism between the old religion and the new religion is seen in multiple places. And it's clearly part of that sort of transitional period when people are learning to perform their new religion, but it's being taught to them through the lens of their old stories and their old gods and myths.

Speaker 1:
[14:54] In a land of epic storytellers, the sedate nativity has some way yet to compete with the bombastic yarns of the Norse sagas. Tales of giants and monsters and the mighty deities come to smash them. As one sailor put it, on land I worship Christ, but at sea I always invoke Thor. It is the star of one such legend, one classic folk story, will push things to tipping point. It's the year 860. We're in Norway, in a dwelling on what is today's Oslo Fjord. In the long hall, in the dead of night, a local chieftain lies on his deathbed. His name is Halfdan the Black. As is usual, when a leader is about to expire, his faithful gather at the bedside. There was much to pick over the spoils of his estate as to pay last respects. In the shadows, behind Halfdan's wife and sobbing attendants, stand the Earls, the Yarls, each posturing for a place in the line of succession. Halfdan has only one son, you see, Harold, and Harold is but ten years old. It is a situation ripe for exploitation, for a Yarl to be appointed as his regent, the power behind the throne. Or perhaps for Halfdan to bypass his son altogether and place the kingdom in safer, more mature hands. It is wishful thinking. With what little strength he has, Halfdan clutches his boy to his bosom. It is he, he confirms, with his dying breath, who is his anointed successor and don't let anybody say otherwise. The Jarls eye each other. The life expectancy of a child king, as everyone knows, is incredibly short. Ten-year-old Harold is more likely to die by assassination of some mysterious accident than he is of natural causes. Harold, though, is a bright lad. He has enough wits about him to play the Jarls off against each other, to keep a firm grip on the crown as he navigates his way into young adulthood. In true fairy-tale fashion, Princess Gidea has certain conditions about their match. She refuses to take Harold's hand in marriage until he fulfills her request that he becomes King of all Norway. Harold in return vows to honor her wish. What's more, as a symbol of his devotion, he pledges never to cut his hair or wash it until he is made good on his promise. And thus, the legend of Harold Fairhair, or Finehair, as he is sometimes called, comes to pass. With love in his heart, his flaxen mane flowing, if a tad greasy, King Harold Fairhair will become the overlord of a united Norwegian kingdom. It's a nice story, Thoroughly Disney, testament to the skills of Harold's PR people. In reality, Fairhair's clan can rival the most murderous royal houses in history, in terms of bloodletting and internecine slaughter. Gieda, it turns out, will be just one of seven or more damsels Harold takes his wife during his lengthy reign, making for at least 20 sons, some say 200, or vying to rip his realm asunder, the most notorious of whom, in typical, unsubtle fashion, is dubbed Eric Bloodaxe. But it is true that after crushing his rivals at the Battle of Hafezfjerd, King Harold Fairhair secures rule of a proto-Norwegian state. This will form an important part of modern Norway's creation myth. Later, in the 19th century, Harold will be toted as a symbol of resistance during Norway's struggle for independence from its union with Sweden. In the fields and fjords for men like Floki, the unfolding chaos and violence is destabilizing to a traditional way of life. And there's that Christian god again, the one that Harold insists on imposing a status symbol, sign of his own elevation.

Speaker 2:
[20:05] Europe was being transformed by Christianity and kings assuming control. Those systems were spreading north into southern Scandinavia, Denmark first and then into Norway and very late actually in Sweden. Sweden stayed rather pagan for a long time, but with coming with Christianity all sorts of different things began to play out. And as the kings began taking authority and, you know, turning a lot of these independent farmers into vassals and so forth, the unrest was palpable.

Speaker 1:
[20:39] For some hardy souls, enough is enough. The only solution is to strike out, to get away from the death and the religious repression. And with all the good land now taken in the northern isles and pharaohs, it means seeking land anew. Professor Davide Zori.

Speaker 4:
[20:59] The saga sources tell us about Scandinavians settling Iceland partially as a response to the state formation that's going on in Norway as Harold Fairhair is uniting that country and taking away free farmer rights. As Iceland is discovered, this information about a vast unsettled landscape with wide open pastureage and forests that stretch from the sea to the mountains is spreading across the Viking world.

Speaker 1:
[21:33] Floki is by no means the first to voyage to Iceland. A Greek explorer, Pythias, putting out from Massalia, Montnay-Barseilles, had sailed its waters as long ago as 325 BC. Pythias had been mesmerized by the phenomenon of the midnight sun. And then there are those monks again, those Papa. According to a later chronicler, Ari the Wise, a monastic retreat, long since abandoned, was established on Iceland as early as 770, a whole century before the Viking arrivals.

Speaker 4:
[22:14] The textual sources mention Papar, but the texts say that the monks, the Irish monks, quickly left. There's an island called Pap-A, from the name that the Norse used for the monks, but people have not been able to find anything that is convincing archaeological evidence of their presence. I mean, we have to admit they have a kind of self-limiting population strategy. They are a group of single men living in isolation. So they were never going to be permanent settlers.

Speaker 1:
[22:46] In the mid-ninth century, a Norwegian called Nuddothor had overshot the Faroes and detailed a snowy landscape rising on the horizon.

Speaker 4:
[23:03] The first one is discovered in the way that most of the islands are discovered. Someone's blown off course. In fact, we can think of the island hopping of the Vikings as having kind of three phases as they move across the North Atlantic. That is, there's a phase of discovery, usually accidental. Then there is a phase of exploration. And then the third phase is this permanent settlement.

Speaker 1:
[23:28] And Nadathur's claims are influential on a Swedish mariner who goes on to circumnavigate Iceland, confirming it to be an island.

Speaker 4:
[23:39] His name is Garðr Svavarsson. He's got a pretty high opinion of himself, so he calls the island Garðr's Island, but doesn't settle permanently. The third attempted exploration, that's by a character named Ravenfloki.

Speaker 1:
[24:02] And as we know from our opening scene, Raven Floakey's attempt to set up shop is short-lived.

Speaker 4:
[24:09] He arrives in Iceland with several followers and animals to try out this permanent settlement. And he sets in to Brodfjord, Bredefjord in Western Iceland. The summer is pretty good, so he's not so worried. But when winter sets in, the animals start to starve. And this is part of the story of dealing with Icelanders. It might look okay in the beginning, but then it gets rough. Icelanders have this expression, it's called Glukaveðr, window weather. So when you're sitting in your house and you look out the window, it looks pretty nice. And then you go outside and you realize how miserable it is.

Speaker 1:
[24:52] Even with its existence established, for Scandinavian navigators, out in the open sea with no coastline to follow, locating Iceland is still a shot in the dark.

Speaker 2:
[25:04] When they left Bregan to head toward Iceland, you took a certain wind and when you got close to Iceland, you began to be aware of birds which would come down from the north. So they were masters at looking at the signs, following the waves, the winds, the birds, the animals. They did not have any navigational instruments, which we think is kind of surprising. They had a staff that they would hold against the gungle and they could measure the angle of the sun at midday, which gave them a latitude line. And so they were then able to follow this latitude line. And mostly that's what they did. They were sailing westward or eastward. And then they were interrupted by storms, of course, and many, many stories about those who were created.

Speaker 1:
[25:50] Like Floki, some prefer their own methods. A Norwegian seaman called Ingolfur Arnelsson puts out from Ireland in a ship laden with Celtic slaves. On sighting Iceland in the distance, he simply throws two pieces of timber overboard. The twin pillars of his high chieftain's seat. Wherever they pitch up, he says, he is going to make landfall. The current carries the wood to a western cove, where the steam from hot gases rises in the background. Arnelsson calls it Smoky Bay, in Old Norse, Reykjavik. And it is here, in 874, just six years after Floki's aborted mission, during the first flush of Harald Fairhair's rule, that Arnelsson will establish Iceland's first permanent settlement. In truth, his quest is less to do with dissension than refuge. He is an outlaw, wanted for murder back in Norway. It is clearly in the blood. On landing, there is soon conflict with some of the Celtic slaves who rise up to kill members of Arnelsson's party, including his own brother. The slaves will flee to the offshore Westman Islands as they are known today, Westman meaning Celt. Arnelsson will track them down and exact his bloody revenge. But in the New Wild West, anything goes. Arnelsson has fired the starting gun, and the word Viking, with its piratical associations, will soon fade when it comes to Scandinavian forays into the North Atlantic. Instead, Arnelsson will be the first of what will become known as the Land Nams Men, the Land Grabbers. Iceland is an El Dorado, a place for pioneers, opportunists and renegades. The Land Rush, the Land Nam, is on. Flocke, it turns out, has been way too dismissive of this ice land. The sub-Arctic Iceland of the late 9th century turns out to be temperate, with a pleasant summer climate. And unlike today, it's rich in vegetation. Between the bogs and wetlands, its land mass is covered by up to 40% with forest, with bountiful pasture to boot. And no mosquitoes. The volcanoes and lava flows do land a certain end-of-days feel, evoking visions of Ragnarok, the Viking Armageddon. But Iceland's hot springs and geothermal heat can ease the torment of winter. It has one deficiency. The sulfurous soil does not support the growing of cereal crops. The colony is dependent on imported grain. But as the sea routes become well-established, Iceland can be well-supplied. The 600-mile route from Norway via Shetland and the Faroes can be sailed in 7 to 10 days. Sea-faroes can be guided now by an established nautical landmark, the 7,000-foot dome of the Vatnérkug glacier. Plus, Iceland can generate alternative wealth in the shape of walrus ivory, the skins of polar bears who drift down on the ice floes, and it has cod and salmon like you wouldn't believe, as well as plentiful seabirds for the eating, particularly puffin. Compared to the Norse people still in Norway, this is a new area of economic activity.

Speaker 2:
[29:59] What is a little surprising when you think about the Norse economy is that there doesn't seem to be much of an attempt to utilize seals, which are very plentiful in that area, provide skins and blubber and food and so forth. And it just seems like, you know, the Norse had this preoccupation, the big economy on land and sheep and goats and cattle and horses and so forth.

Speaker 1:
[30:24] Within 50 years, Iceland's population swells from just a few hundred to around 60,000, around 3,000 to 4,000 families, including a substantial contingent of Celtic stock, just like those that Arnalsson brought with them, slaves or thralls.

Speaker 4:
[30:43] Modern DNA research has, to an extent, confirmed the stories that we have from the sagas is in that a mixed population of Scandinavians and peoples from the British Isles were part of the settler population to Iceland. On the Y chromosome side, so with the males, about 75 to 80% of the Y chromosome haplogroups in Iceland are comparable to Scandinavians. That leaves 20% circa as non-Scandinavian, probably from the British Isles. On the mitochondrial DNA side, so the mitochondria transfers from the mother to the daughter, a surprise here is that only about 40% of the mitochondrial DNA haplogroups are comparable to Scandinavian haplogroups. So you have more than 50% of the women coming from the British Isles. All genetic indications are that this is a mixed population with more Celtic females than we at first believed.

Speaker 1:
[31:40] It accounts for an untypically Norse showing in the modern Icelandic population of dark eyes and hair.

Speaker 2:
[31:48] One of the big surprises was that the rats in Iceland are all British rats from the DNA that came in the British ships.

Speaker 1:
[32:02] Iceland's location, its isolation from the Norse mainstream, puts it in a unique position for today's historians, making for almost a time capsule of Viking life. For archeologists, layers of ash from volcanoes over the centuries, such as the one whose plume drifted over Europe in 871, have provided useful markers in terms of dating different phases of Norse settlement, as well as preserving all manner of artifacts. In Iceland, tales of trolls and elves live on. Even the Icelandic language has developed in a relative vacuum, more akin to Old Norse than modern Norwegian, Danish or Swedish.

Speaker 3:
[32:47] So one of the more recent areas of academic research has been the question of mutual intelligibility between Old Norse and Old English, and particularly the Icelandic sagas claim that the language in England at the time was the same as they spoke in Iceland. One saga in particular, the saga of Gunnlaug Serpent Tongue, tells us that the language changed when William the Bastard took the throne, and then the English started speaking French.

Speaker 1:
[33:23] The Old Norse patronymic naming system remains in place in Iceland to this day. A son of a man named Magnus, for example, will assume the surname Magnusson, the daughter taking Magnus Dottir. And then there is Iceland's literary tradition, harking back to its writers and traveling poets or sculls. Their prowess as raconteurs made them famous throughout the Norse realms and a central addition to every royal court. Due to its Celtic connections and later willingness to embrace literacy, Iceland has become an important repository of record for early Viking history. Either through its sagas, its poetic edda, or especially its land náma bok, the Book of Settlements, the most comprehensive recorded work on the early arrivals in Iceland. Dr. Eleanor Barraclough.

Speaker 5:
[34:24] The Old North Icelandic sagas are a really interesting but tricky source. They're tricky because although they have long oral tales that stretch back into the Viking age itself, they are written down in manuscripts from around the 13th century onwards. We're talking of lag of several hundred years. It's also true that these sagas are storytelling narratives. They're there to educate, but they're also there to entertain. Many of them are being told around the winter fires on those barmsteads during those long, dark Icelandic winters. And so things crop up in them that we really wouldn't expect to see in a historical source. And they really do inhabit that hazy borderline between what we would think of as fact and what we would think of as fiction. Just when you think you have a handle on what's going on, suddenly a dragon pops up and you're just not quite sure where you are with that.

Speaker 1:
[35:28] What the sources do agree upon is that for the early pioneers, life in Iceland is hard, rudimentary. Houses are built from cut earth with sod roofs over timber frames. Animals, through the winter, to avoid the fate that befell Floki's cattle, must be brought in doors at night time, sharing the same cramped accommodation. The diet is limited, with few vegetables and almost no fruit, just what you can gather by way of berries. With farmsteads miles from each other and no village life for which to speak, it is a struggle for survival in isolation, humans against nature. And as ever, it is the women who are the backbone of the communities. In a new land with no official coinage, they find themselves inadvertently the creators of wealth.

Speaker 5:
[36:25] We often find evidence for women on the archaeological remains of textile rooms on the farmsteads where the women would have woven the wool from the goats, from the sheep, that they would have turned into cloth, that becomes an actual form of currency in medievalism. You take away the women, you take away their weaving, you take away their incredibly intricate, important, technologically advanced cloth. Well, then you take away the sails of the Viking ships, you take away their clothes, you know, you end up with some naked men sitting in a rowing boat.

Speaker 2:
[36:59] That was very different from the European pattern of the male dominance society. So there was this rather interesting evolution of the big, powerful men, but also the big, powerful women, you know, who were maintaining the settlements, keeping the economy going while people were either Viking expeditions or discovering new lands.

Speaker 1:
[37:23] It is in Iceland, as recorded in the Land Namibog, that we meet one of the most remarkable people of the Norse Age of Discovery, one of its famous misfits, Ord the Deep-Minded. Ord is the widow of Olaf the White. In the late 9th century, Olaf had co-ruled Dublin with Ivar the Boneless, one of the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok. As the story goes, in the late 800s, on the run in northern Scotland, her family in danger, Ord decides to strike out for Iceland's brave new world.

Speaker 4:
[38:03] She was a very powerful woman in her own right and ends up leading an expedition. She builds a knorr secretly in the woods, so nobody will know what she's up to. And she gets her supporters and animals and everyone else, including her grandson, and they moved to Iceland as a unit. So she's the leader of this group of settlers.

Speaker 1:
[38:25] On acquiring land in the western region of Talasistla, she proceeds to divide it up equally between her party, freeing her slaves into the bargain. Ord, the Norse world's first female chieftain, will, on her death, be accorded a full Viking ship burial, the first known woman to be honoured in that way. But it is her act of land distribution that sets something of a pattern for Iceland settlers. There is no concept of a unified nation yet. Iceland is still a collective of homesteaders, notionally Norwegian subjects. But to its people, this is no longer a land governed by decadent old world rule and monarchical hierarchies. It is egalitarian, proto-republican. Iceland comes to represent not just a land of opportunity, but a land of the free, and one that must be governed by a common law. It's the present day. We're in Reykjavik, in a modest stone, two-story 19th century building. The unassuming structure is the seat of the Icelandic government. The old thing. Icelandic for general meeting. In today's session, it's business as usual. A debate over a wailing moratorium, a report on school exam results, a discussion of forthcoming elections. If it all seems fairly unremarkable, it's because Iceland gets on with life without much of a fuss, pursuing its own independent line. It is a tradition of collective problem-solving that goes back 1,100 years. Founded in 930, the old thing holds a unique distinction. It is the oldest democratic parliament in the world. The site of the old thing has moved since it was founded. It began 30 miles away in the spectacular valley of Þingvetlir, or assembly fields, right on the continental divide, where the tectonic plate of Europe meets that of North America. Here, the great logberg, or lore rock, looms high over the Axe River, so-called because sessions commenced with an axe being tossed into the water. At this geological crossroads, a democratic medieval polity is being born. For two weeks every June, freemen from all over Iceland will descend to discuss issues over farming, land, sheep grazing, and give an airing to disputes and squabbles. It is presided over by a law speaker, a log shawmarch, who rings the bell, and sits alongside his council, to pass judgment according to principles governing property and ownership. They are known as the Grey Goose laws, so called because of the quill that was used to pen them. Iceland's territory is divided up into four quarters, or farthings, each with its own regional assembly, or thing. Within each quarter are local representatives known as goddar, a word derived from pagan priest or godman, who can act as deputies for the local farmsteaders. There is even a system of hreipur, an embryonic social services, a means of welfare for the hard hit. Professor Stefan Brink.

Speaker 6:
[42:18] Iceland was a unique political construction, a realm with no king. The major thing assembly was the Althingi at Thingvetlir, where men assembled once a year at midsummer. So it was a beautiful kind of picture organization of a hierarchy with the Althingi at the top, and then we had the quarters with the thing and the gold with the Althingi.

Speaker 2:
[42:48] This was a remarkable contribution to the history of Western civilization. They established the first parliament ever in Europe and it lasted for a thousand years.

Speaker 1:
[42:59] And if it all sounds too good to be true, way too utopian certainly for the early medieval world, then it probably is. Because Iceland is about to have all those old world problems rebound upon it. Floki does return to Iceland a few years later, by the way. He sails back and settles in the islands north, on the Skjafjörðfjörðfjord. But even by then, he will have noticed that Iceland is beginning to change, its opportunities becoming increasingly limited. The once abundant, farmable land is now a scarce resource. New arrivals are left to scramble in the rocks for any ground vaguely worthy of tender.

Speaker 2:
[43:50] And the remarkable thing is that once Iceland was discovered around 870, it filled up immediately. Within 100 years, there were no new lands, no lands available for new settlers.

Speaker 1:
[44:05] The old thing is fast becoming an arbiter for old turf wars. Disputes over land that bedeviled coastal Norway are now being replayed on this rocky refuge in the North Atlantic. Iceland is a victim of its own success. And there are those Norwegian royals again, covetous of Iceland's riches, eager to enfold this heathen outpost into the bosom of Christendom.

Speaker 2:
[44:31] An entirely different system of government evolved there in a remarkable way because of the independence of the people who arrived there and were fighting desperately to keep the kings from asserting control over their lives and ultimately not too successful in the end.

Speaker 1:
[44:48] In 1262, rule will revert to the Norwegian crown. The old thing's full legislative power won't be restored until 1904. In the early days, Iceland had been resistant to Christianity, not to say that there weren't devotees among its immigrant population. Odd that Deep-Minded was herself said to be a convert, though the extent of her faith has possibly been exaggerated in retrospect, as Norse history was refashioned, viewed through a Christian lens. It was not until the 980s that the new religion began to make serious inroads. Till then, Icelanders had traditionally given missionaries short shrift. They had viewed the monks and their ways as somehow soft, unmanly, incompatible with Norse warrior ethos.

Speaker 3:
[45:50] Iceland sees conversion attempts by missionaries, most of which the saga records tell us were rebuffed, sometimes quite brutally culminating in the murders of these evangelizing missionaries.

Speaker 1:
[46:08] It will take 70 years from the All Things Inception for the speaker to pronounce Iceland an officially Christian nation. Significantly, this happens in the year 1000, prompted in part by a millennial fatalism, a sense that the world is about to end. This mood is boosted by the vast changes in Iceland's ecology that are taking place, the depletion of natural resources, the old gods not providing as they used to. When Ingolfur Arnalsson had founded Reykjavik, Iceland's only native land mammal was the Arctic Fox. Now, the introduction of cattle, sheep, goats, horses and deer is rapidly destroying the grassland. The reliance on dairy farming has taken its toll. Workable land, initially three-quarters of the island, is fast on track to becoming just the fifth that remains today. At sea, meanwhile, local warriors where they are prized tusks have been hunted to extinction. The cod and salmon are being overfished. Most significantly, the forests, once so plentiful, are chopped down to such an extent that Iceland's soil becomes eroded. It is fast on the road to becoming barren, devoid of trees altogether, just as it exists today. The main source of timber now driftwood. It only increases the tensions as neighbor begins to turn upon neighbor. In 982, a tall, auburn haired Norwegian will emerge from the far northwestern settlement of Hon Strandish. He had been brought to Iceland as a child by his father, who like Ingolfur Arnaldsson before him had been exiled from Norway for manslaughter. Age 32, along with his wife and four children, the man relocates to a farm in Herkedalur, further south, a valley full of steaming thermal pools and spectacular spurting gases. Just like his father, he is soon heading for trouble. When the man's thralls cause a landslide, damaging a neighbor's property, a dispute breaks out. It involves the neighbor, the delightfully named Eof the Foul, killing the offending thralls and the man taking brutal retaliation. Moving again, he is soon in dispute with an old friend. An argument breaks out over the ownership of a cow and some wooden boards that are to be used in construction of a new longhouse. Foregoing the niceties of the Grey Goose laws, the man settles matters in the only way he knows how. Killing his old pal and his sons. This time he is hauled before the Breda Fjord thing.

Speaker 6:
[49:26] The Graugas, the Grey Goose, has rules that regulate the Icelandic society. For example, how to deal with feuds. If you kill someone, the law states that you should publicly acknowledge shortly after the act was done. This was considered a Vig manslaughter, and that was solved by arbitration and settlement, and a compensation was to be paid. A concealed killing, or one which was not publicly announced, was considered a Mord, murder. And that was a shameful act that brought disgrace to the perpetrator and especially to his family. He lost his property, and was outlawed for three years from Iceland.

Speaker 1:
[50:21] Condemned and unable to return to Norway either, it will force this man on to the high seas. According to the Landnamerbock, his name is Eric Torvaldsen, though he is better known to all as Eric the Red. We will come to his adventures in a future episode. For it is Eric the Red who is about to write a brand new chapter in the Viking Age of Discovery. In the next episode. Bjorn Ironside leads a Viking fleet into the Mediterranean, intent on sacking Rome. Eastern Vikings, meanwhile, mount an audacious attack on Constantinople. The Byzantine emperor establishes a Varangian guard made up of elite Norse warriors. From Spain to Persia, the legend of the Vikings is spreading. That's next time. You can listen to the next two episodes of Real Vikings right now, without waiting and without ads, by joining Noiser Plus. Click the banner at the top of the feed, or head to noiser.com/subscriptions to find out more.