Following the bloody St Brice’s Day Massacre, of the 13th of November 1002, which saw King Æthelred brutally exterminating the Danes from England, the Vikings were hungry for revenge. None more so than the terrifying Scandinavian King, Sweyn Forkbeard. Having capitalised on his famous father, Harold Bluetooth’s unification of Norway and Denmark, through his aggressive christianisation of the formerly pagan peoples there, Sweyn had built up a formidable force. It was this power that Æthelred had unwisely taunted, underestimating the might of the Danes. He would pay the price only a few short months later when Sweyn’s terrible fleet landed at Wilton Abbey in Wessex - one of the greatest symbols of the House of Alfred the Great - to bleed England dry, and destroy her King. Time and time again, from this date onwards, Sweyn’s Danish raids would devastate England, even going so far as to lock the Archbishop of Canterbury in a cage…by 1013 Æthelred’s reign was essentially over, his family having fled to Normandy, and England under Danish rule. But then, the death of Sweyn Forkbeard would change everything, setting in motion another titanic war of succession, this time pitting the Scandinavian Cnut against Æthelred’s son Edmund Ironside. Who would triumph in this climactic clash of would-be kings? Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss the revenge of the vikings and the rise of Cnut, as 1066 and the Battle of Hastings loom into view... EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restishistory Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
How does Olaf Tryggvason's story reflect the cultural shift in Scandinavia?
Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Strange tales were told of Olaf Tryggvason's return to Norway. One day it was claimed the new king was in a fit mood to be entertained.
At his side, there suddenly appeared an old man, cloaked and white-haired, with only a single eye. Entering into conversation with the stranger, Tryggvason found that there was nothing the old man did not seem to know, nor any question to which he could not give an answer.
All evening the two of them talked, and even though the king was eventually persuaded to retire to bed by a twitchy English bishop who had grown suspicious of the one-eyed stranger, Trigvason could still not bear to end the conversation, but continued it even as he lay on his furs late into the night. At last the old man left him, and the king fell asleep.
But his dreams were strange and feverish, and waking up abruptly he cried out for the stranger again. Even though his servants searched high and low, however, the old man could not be found, and Tryggvason, brought to his senses by daylight, shuddered at his close escape.
When it was reported to him that two sides of beef, a gift from the stranger, had been used in a stew, he ordered the entire cooking pot flung out. A godly and responsible act, for clearly it was out of the question for him, as a follower of Christ, to feast on meat supplied by Odin.
Well, that riveting passage, finely wrought prose, that was produced by none other than our very own Hollywood's own Tom Holland in his book Millennium. It's about the end of the world and the forging of Christendom. Is that the subtitle of the book, Tom? Yeah, that kind of stuff. Exactly.
I thought a nice compliment to the reading from your own book on this subject with which we ended the previous episode. So a nice segue.
They're a perfect match. We ended last time. With a reading from Fury of the Vikings, listeners may remember that Danish refugees, in the wake of a terrible massacre in the towns and villages of England, have fled across the North Sea to Scandinavia to bring the news to the Danish king, and revenge is coming. So today, in this mighty series about the events of 1066, we turn from England...
to Scandinavia, to the Northlands. We look north to the world of the Vikings, which is now beginning to change. And that opening reading about Olaf Tryggvason rejecting Odin's beef is a reminder of the throes of cultural and social change that are transforming Scandinavia. So, Tom, you talked last time about this guy, Olaf Tryggvason.
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