Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
The Oseberg
391 Plays1 year ago
Viking ship from the 9th century has it all — elaborate wood carvings, a magic wand, cannabis seeds, horses, dogs, sleighs, carts, and — possibly — the remains of Queen Asa!’
If you are a fan of Killer Shipwrecks be sure to check out Killer Biographies: https://www.killerbiographies.com
Recommended
Transcript
Terry's Turpentine Special Offer
00:00:03
Speaker
brainstorm. Today's episode is brought to you by Terry's turpentine offering natural solvents of unnatural quality. For this month only, Terry's is offering two for one deals on selected home products. Tuesdays are twice as nice at Terry's.
Season 3 Wrap-up & Biographies Discussion
00:00:45
Speaker
episode 12 drinkers away on the final episode of season. Congratulations on the new platform by the way, season three though. So this is number 36 overall number 12 this year because we do 12 and if we proceed with our big plan of, uh, some, um, biographies, uh, for the next season, then we'll, we'll be on hiatus for a season from the shipwrecks. Correct.
00:01:09
Speaker
But I think this has been a jam packed season in terms of the ships that we presented a variety, great variety. And maybe it'll give the Odyssey Marine Exploration Company a little bit of time to sort of turn it around. And I did feel that I felt bad after last episode in which we did have to uncover some perhaps not flattering details related to the Odyssey Shipwreck Company, of which you are a significant. Yeah.
Odyssey Marine's New Focus
00:01:39
Speaker
Yeah. I, um, I'm hoping they'll turn it around. I noticed I went and looked at their website or doing their financial disclosures or whatever. I noticed they don't even mention the shipwrecks nowadays. They're all about the undersea underwater minerals and that kind of stuff. So that's what we've been by Odyssey. Like I would never have invested in them if that was the business like, you know, or if you have an advice. Yeah.
00:02:06
Speaker
You know, like someone said, like, hey, hold on. Wait, what'd you just say you're going to invest in? Let's slow you. You know, if we had started this podcast much earlier, that would have scratched my shipwreck itch. You know, the podcast had I been graded more firmly. Yeah, but because we weren't doing the podcast, I still had the shipwreck Jones. And I think I was reading some of these stories in the news and I was always out of sea marine. I was like, you know,
00:02:35
Speaker
That sounds like the company that's right on top of it, but I didn't. Yeah, it sounds like you've rationalized it, justified it or whatever. But my point is it does show that it's in your DNA to care about shipwrecks, whether you could profit off them through some third party company, vehicle investment, whatever. The fact that you're still here talking about shipwrecks tells me that it's a subject of interest to you. Absolutely.
00:02:59
Speaker
Episode 12, let's just run through a couple of quick facts about the number 12. You got any? I do not. 12 months in the year. 12 angry men, right? There's 12 angry men. They say in our system of government that we have 12 angry men.
00:03:16
Speaker
We have a lot more than that. I think Christ had 12 angry disciples. In most cities in which we root for our football team, the number 12 is symbolic of the fans, right? Like the 12th man. Oh, good point. Thank you. Good point. 12 is the number of donuts that you get if you're doing it correctly. I thought you could like a baker's dozen. Don't you get the extra donut? No? Good point.
00:03:41
Speaker
I don't know, but still a feat. And my point is that I really look back and say, well, solid season, a variety of good ships all around. Anyway, let's get right into it. Episode 12. This is the final episode of the season. You will be presenting a ship. Super excited to hear about it.
Viking Ships & Historical Impact
00:04:00
Speaker
Let's get going.
00:04:00
Speaker
Okay, so as I said last time, I love the Vikings, so I really wanted to get back to the Vikings. Yes, you mentioned the Vikings last episode. Now there's some wrinkles to this one. The two Viking ships I did in the first season were outstanding. More interesting, but they had been underwater for a long time. There was a lot of
00:04:21
Speaker
In one case, the ship itself had totally deteriorated and disappeared, and there were just like the grindstones that were left. Once upon a time, you did a presentation about a ship called the Delman Horse. Do you remember that one? And you said, this is going to set the record for shallow depth recovery. I think that one was in what?
00:04:43
Speaker
It seemed like, you know, I want to say 20 feet, but it was 11 feet. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was very. Today I'm going to break that record. What? Yeah. Little wrinkle here. And I know. Talk about your season finale. You're not only giving the final ship, you're breaking records on the final episode. It's a little bit gimmicky and I know you're going to challenge whether it fits into the mission statement of this show. Um, do you still have your challenges or did you already use your coaches challenge?
00:05:13
Speaker
I may have used one earlier when you were... Okay, so then that means you have no timeouts left and no challenges left, so I'm just going to proceed. And the reason I did this is one of the things that was frustrating to me about the two ships I presented in the first season is, as I said, they had fallen apart so much that you didn't... You got to see some of the artifacts that had been on those ships, but you didn't get to see exactly what
00:05:39
Speaker
classic golden era Viking age ships looked like. Okay. Very true. Still compelling stories. And when I talk about the golden age of Vikings, we're talking like 800s, 900s, 10, 100s, 1100s, 800s. These guys were bad
00:06:01
Speaker
They're in Scandinavia. They're based sort of what is today Sweden, Norway, Denmark, that kind of thing. But they are getting all over the world. They're getting as far east as Asia. They're getting down into the Mediterranean. They're really... Wow. The Mediterranean? Wait, the Vikings and the Mediterranean? Absolutely.
00:06:26
Speaker
No, here's my concern with the skin. Scandinavian skin and the Mediterranean, don't they? They're going to get burned. You're going to want to put, I don't know what they were using back then, maybe like some whale blubber or something, just smear it on there. And you know what else they did? They got to North America a hell of a lot earlier than Columbus. Are you aware of that? No, I am not aware of that.
00:06:50
Speaker
Yeah, there's a settlement in Nova Scotia that testing has since shown came from it was a Viking settlement. And they it seems like they only stayed there 10 or 20 years. So it wasn't a long term settlement. But like, yeah, they were in North America for in their Viking ship. Yeah, I mean, you know, because they were already going to Iceland to Greenland.
00:07:15
Speaker
Eventually, they get all the way over and over. Total badasses and a place where the Vikings really wreaked havoc was like England, France, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, all that. They were really just they did what they wanted in those places and they would show up. They would, you know, they were using their ships to get there, but then
00:07:39
Speaker
They'd get onto land for the warfare and the raids and the pillaging and all that stuff. Very scary. Very scary. The cross the ocean. Yes, they did. And that's been proven by now. Like I said, it wasn't a long standing settlement. They didn't stay there for a long time. But you know, I think I mentioned last week when you brought up the subject of Vikings.
00:08:00
Speaker
My point last week was I very much as a child enjoyed the comic strip Hagar, who was a Viking. Yeah, but not a scary one. He was not. He was hilarious though, right? He was Norwegian. My favorite thing, and we've also referenced Hamlet, his son Hamlet, who used to say like, hey, is it okay that I tell people we're Norwegian? And Hagar used to say like, well, it might sound like we're bragging.
00:08:25
Speaker
You know, very proud of being Norwegian. So anyways, but I love the fact that he had such poor hygiene. Like I was very much a Hagar fan. He was sort of this barbarian, but like he's cute. Yeah. And sort of like, uh, I think the word is phlegmatic kind of like, um, you know, just doesn't get not excitable. You know what I mean? Like very kind of chill with the blonde, you know, brains. That was a great, I don't remember her name, but the comic strip was really great.
00:08:55
Speaker
Nova Scotia, I said Nova Scotia, New Finland, New Finland. So they got to the place where new fees now live. Anyway, so here's the point. They got there around the year 1000. So that's a good 500 years before Columbus, Johnny come lately shows up. Yeah, exactly. Gets all the credit.
00:09:13
Speaker
Yeah. Now you might ask, well, how are they doing this? This the, you know, they're, they're getting all over the world. Tell me a little bit about their ships. The Viking ship fascinates me. You've always been interested in that. And that's why I picked the ship that we're going to talk about today. They're really long. They're fairly thin and they have a very shallow draft. The boat doesn't sit too deep in the water and they have, um,
00:09:41
Speaker
a very like, I was going to say aerodynamic hull, but it's almost like hydrodynamic. It's like, it swells out in the middle, but then when you get to the front and the back of the ship, it really, it really narrows out almost to a point. And then they also had the elaborate carvings that like, do you remember with the Vassa where you were talking
00:10:01
Speaker
Now, they put all this effort into the carvings. Now, in the case of the Vasa, part of what frustrates me about the Vasa is that, okay, cool. You had the carvings and yes, it turns out that there was a rich, rich Viking history of woodwork and carvings and all that stuff. But when did you guys forget? But when did you guys forget how to build boats?
00:10:24
Speaker
In the 800s and 900s, you're building these amazing boats that, you know, early on, they're mostly propelled by oarsmen. You know, they've got up to like 30, uh, like places, you know, or holes along the hole and 30 guys. It's like crew. It's like, you know, the best of the crew. But then they start to mix a little bit with the Europeans and they see what Europeans are doing with sales and they
00:10:51
Speaker
move into a hybrid thing where you get the sales and the oars, not opposed to technology, by the way, these, but the reason I mentioned all this about, uh, how incredible their ships are and my frustration with the two that I launched.
00:11:06
Speaker
Yeah. The, the two that I talked about the first season is like, okay, well, we never got to see the ship. They had really fallen apart. Here's the other cool thing about the Vikings. And this is where you may call bullshit, but the ship I'm doing today is the Oseberg ship.
The Oseberg Ship: A Viking Marvel
00:11:21
Speaker
Okay. Oseberg don't know. The Oseberg ship is, is probably the most famous surviving example of a Viking ship.
00:11:29
Speaker
And it was built in sort of like the late eight hundred twenties. That's a long time ago. Yeah. It's about 70 feet long, 16 feet wide.
00:11:44
Speaker
And if this one was built, you know, there are different types of Viking ships. Some were built so that, yeah, we can get over to Iceland or we can get to Greenland or, you know, hell, if we're feeling open water ships. Those guys. So certain of the Viking ships like. Yeah.
00:12:02
Speaker
you know, the guys that want to try to get all the way to Newfoundland, then this is the ship for them. The Oseberg ship that I'm focusing on today was used more for also a common need of the Vikings, which is really getting around the coast of Norway, what's today Norway and the coast of what's today Sweden.
00:12:25
Speaker
and going up rivers and going up fjords. So these ones wouldn't have done as well in the high seas. And that's what the Oseberg ship is. Now, you may say, well, great. Why haven't we heard about this? And where did they find it? And quickly, how big do you say? How long?
00:12:46
Speaker
70, 70 feet long. But so this was not a ship that was going across the Atlantic. It was going. This is this is like a is like a coast hopper built mostly out of oak. And it has that thing that you've probably seen in images of Viking ships where it's like the both the prow and the stern have like a
00:13:06
Speaker
they rise up and there's like a curly Q at the top of the snake. Yeah. Yeah. You know, a beast loves that. They took that time for detail. They loved the carvings of the mythological creatures, the things that you can't really tell exactly what it is. Like, is it a cat? Is it a dragon? Is it a serpent? What the hell is this thing? It looks cool.
00:13:30
Speaker
Now, the other thing about the Vikings, though, is they had very elaborate. I'm talking about like the pre Christian Vikings before Christianity kind of infiltrates the Viking area way before our time.
00:13:45
Speaker
They had way before our time, they had very elaborate beliefs about the afterlife and what comes of us in the afterlife and what you would need. I got to say, the more I read about Vikings, the more I wonder like God, as I said last time, some of these guys are just psychotic. I mean, some of the warfare with the so-called berserkers who dress up
00:14:10
Speaker
in animal skin. I've never heard that. And they're just like the most hardcore of the hardcore fighters. Did you say the berserkers? The berserkers. And that term berserkers, I think, comes from the word for bear skin. So they would wear animal skins. Yes. And anything. That seems more empirical.
00:14:31
Speaker
Yeah. And anything goes, you know, decapitation, having sex with anybody you run across. I'm not condoning any of that. I stopped at animal skins. Like I'm not even in favor of animal skins. You know, I'm an animal lover, you know, feed animals, don't eat them. I'm fine with that. But my, my point is, wow, like some barbaric behavior and some, and the more you read about it, the other thing about Viking times is like, there's a million little tiny kingdoms within, you know, what's today Norway and Sweden.
00:15:01
Speaker
And when you read about the royal families, talk about barbaric behavior. It's like, you know, this one got married but didn't like her husband, so she had him killed and then, you know, also killed his child from a previous, you know, all that like just or, you know, this one married into this royal family, but did she really marry into it? It seems like more she was just abducted and raped and then brought back.
00:15:28
Speaker
And then she became as well, you know, just very intense, very. It seems like, you know, back then, lots of things were way more intense. But like when I read about ancient Rome, I guess it's true, ancient Rome, ancient Greece there, you know, I think Nero killed his wife or killed his mom or something. I guess you're right. You know, maybe humans. We talked about Henry VIII. I mean, you know, yeah, good things happen.
00:15:54
Speaker
But definitely a different time than you wonder, like, well, we haven't evolved so much as a human species in which we can't relate to the person that was living back then and making those decisions. And that's what's a little scary. Yeah, yeah. These Vikings, I think, could show up in my nightmares after reading about them.
00:16:14
Speaker
This they tapped into some deep anxieties for me. These guys were super hardcore. And also, you know, as you've noticed in the past, I like to stop and discuss the name of a ship or the name of a pirate. And is this a good name or is this a bad name? Yes.
00:16:31
Speaker
The Vikings? Well, they didn't fuck around when it came to the nicknames that their leaders, warriors, kings had. So, you know, there was a famous king named Eric Blood Axe. Right. That's appropriate. He was also known as Brother Slayer. That seems like what happened to his brother. It's a little too on the nose, right? Like, let's use a little creativity next time.
00:16:55
Speaker
brothers. Is that like, um, metaphorical or cause I thought you had two brothers cause I thought you had said your brother had gone on vacation. I didn't know that. Okay. The other one I love is King Harold Bluetooth. Are you aware of this whole thing? No, never heard that. I think that's a technology, right? The technology is named after that Viking King. You gotta be kidding me.
00:17:21
Speaker
Because what he was known for, well, first of all, he had like a dead, he had like a black or blue tooth. What he was known for wireless technology was sort of uniting and managing his rights and perpetuity. Like I said, there used to be a bunch of mini little fiefdoms and kingdoms. And this guy was powerful enough and strategic enough that he kind of conquered and united all of the different kingdoms in Denmark. So he's known for
00:17:51
Speaker
uniting and bringing under one tent, all these different jurisdictions. I'm a bigger fan of Bluetooth because I think that early people who were working on that technology were connecting to that idea of uniting different areas, uniting different technologies.
00:18:10
Speaker
having something that would work, whether it's with Apple or PC, with this kind of headphone or that kind of headphone. And in fact, that little, that little symbol that you see whenever you're looking on your computer, Bluetooth, and it's got, that's a rune. That's, that was his sign. The runes is how those guys recorded history, right? Yeah. Another name I love, King Ethelred the unready.
00:18:35
Speaker
very unsubtle the unready yeah and it doesn't sound like he probably lasted all that long now revisionist history because there's always revisionist historians that does remind me of hager the terrible you know the comic strip
00:18:50
Speaker
Because, you know one of the characters, his friend Lucky Eddie? No. He was notoriously unlucky. Yeah. But he's named Lucky, and they never reveal his real name until some much later episode in which his name is Fortunas Eduardo.
00:19:07
Speaker
Now, revisionist historians tell us that King Ethelred the Unready, it's not like he was just unprepared himself. It was that he was poorly advised. He didn't get the information from his advisors to prepare him for whatever the big emergency was. Okay, blah, blah, blah.
00:19:26
Speaker
Anyway, my point is this is where you're going to challenge me. You're going to say, dude, shipwreck. This is a burial ship. OK, this is this is a ship that's found under Earth. OK, this is a ship that once had served in the fjords and the rivers and along the coast. But then at a certain point in its time, but then when it gets to be eight
00:19:48
Speaker
34 it's brought ashore. It's brought a kilometer inland or down in southern Norway, and it's going to be the burial vessel for two women. What the ship the Osseberg. Yeah, you're saying is now a burial ship of two women.
00:20:07
Speaker
Yes. So the Vikings, the reason I mentioned their elaborate beliefs about the afterlife and stuff is that they had that thing like, OK, we're going to bury our fancy people or our important people with the trappings that, you know, the things that are going to help them in the afterlife. So a ship will help them get to the afterlife inside the ship. We're going to put things like tools or livestock or their slaves if they had slaves. We'll put them in the ship.
00:20:36
Speaker
Yeah. And if the and if the slaves had not conveniently died by the point that it was time to do the burial, then they just killed them and put them in the ship. Now, the two. So this was a working ship, working ship, working ship, but not the type they take to Newfoundland. This is the one that they're using on the fjords. OK.
00:20:56
Speaker
But what's great about this ship, it's first discovered. So what the Vikings would do when they bury these ships is they, you know, the important people, they, you know, they lay them down in the ship. They put other things in the ship, treasure, tools, whatever.
00:21:11
Speaker
Because the Vikings, you were saying even last time, they typically will light a pyre. Yeah. Sometimes they do the funeral pyre, but they are also very much known for the burial mounds because what they do is once they bury, once they bury the ship, they start to load it down over time with rocks on top of it or more earth on top of it. So that as the years go by, there are these huge mounds that can be, you know,
00:21:38
Speaker
30 feet high, 50 feet high and a hundred feet long, just out in fields. And then that mound in essence serves also as a shrine. So it's like, okay, well that is where king whoever, you know, left this world and we can come and gather there. And so his status indicated by the size of the mound.
00:22:00
Speaker
Sure. I tell you what though, it definitely makes the archaeology simpler because it's like, okay, I'm looking at a big field and there's a huge mound in the center. Not like you put leaves over it and then no one's going to notice. This is like a gigantic mound in the middle of nowhere. The other thing I love about the Vikings is it seems like all over the United Kingdom there
00:22:23
Speaker
I don't know why they did this, but they would occasionally either for safekeeping or because they had to leave a spot quickly, they would bury a hoard of treasure, you know, coins, weapons, whatever. And nowadays, these jamokes with their metal detectors find these things. Incredible detectorists in England are still finding Viking hordes.
00:22:46
Speaker
Okay. Anyway, the Oseberg ship, so it's first discovered in the year 19, early 20th century, it's found. The first time archeologists start to dig around, figure out, oh, wait a minute. Not only does there appear to be a Viking ship here, this one compared to other ones, it's been under a burial mound
00:23:11
Speaker
So it has been broken into pieces and stuff, but like all the pieces are in really good shape. So that's crazy. Over time, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to put it back together. Like it actually is a fairly straightforward process of putting the pieces back together.
00:23:32
Speaker
They do that and to this day, well, not to this day, the museum is temporarily closed in Oslo, but this is considered like the Viking ship to see. In terms of deterioration or how the ship can survive under water versus buried in the earth, I wonder is that...
00:23:56
Speaker
There we go. Well, I believe we have a new ad that was submitted from our good friends at Harmony. Great. You spoke to them, or I think that came in through Lizzie this week. Lizzie handles the Harmony stuff, which I feel like, look, dude, I'm a lawyer. I should talk to them, like lawyer to lawyer, but Lizzie... No, are you really talking about this? And I feel like this is a conflict
00:24:19
Speaker
Well, also, I mean, would you ever hire a lawyer who is dumb enough to invest in the Odyssey Marine Exploration Company? I think investment advising and legal advice are two different things. I'm not judging you on your abilities as a lawyer, certainly questioning your abilities as an investor or someone who can make good judgment on sound investment.
00:24:42
Speaker
My point is I was like, Oh, you know, Lizzie, let's, I can jump on that call. We can, let's call them together. And she was, I mean, honestly, she was a little bit like proprietary or like territorial. She's like, no, no, no, no. This is my relationship. I got this policy, right? Brainstorm doesn't allow you in particular to weigh in on these types of things. Bottom line. Anyway, she dealt with them this week. So they give us the new script. We got a new ad. Let's run it. Have you been arrested for boating while drunk?
00:25:11
Speaker
Or perhaps you're in the middle of a messy divorce and you're worried about losing your boat. If either of these scenarios apply to you, call the law offices of Harmony and Hanrahan. Harmony and Hanrahan will get you back on the water.
00:25:27
Speaker
Oh, I'll show Bill. That's another Lizzie special. She was the one who realized we needed something to remind us, hey, it's time to pay the bills. We do. My question is around the ability for the ship to maintain integrity in the ground versus in the water. So what are you saying? Well, what I'm saying is, and sometimes even when it's been in the ground, it really deteriorates.
00:25:54
Speaker
100% sure why, you know, it may have had to do with the composition of the soil or that something specific to this ship, but the Osoberg ship, really the wood, at least when they were digging it up back in 1904 for the very first time was in amazing shape. Like the people that were digging it up were like, holy crap, look at these carvings. Wow. And the car, they, you know, as we always say, go check out the images when we're done because it's insane.
00:26:23
Speaker
now, but it's not 1904. Yeah. So that's when they really, they, when they first realized that we've got a huge ship here and they start to bring it up. Now the Norwegians being a careful industrious and academic people, you know, they've been studying it, working on it, reconstructing it, just
00:26:46
Speaker
sort of caretaking this amazing ship for the last 120 years. So they, you know, have continued to do tests on, you know, the wood and where the wood came from. And there were two women who had been buried on this ship and it's a little bit mysterious. Yes. Two women, no men. I think it's super interesting that they're doing all of the tests and that's appropriate. But realistically in terms of like where the wood came from or where do you think it came from?
00:27:16
Speaker
like do we need to spend that much time on that like in terms of diverting resources like oh it came from three blocks away and that well behind that car well but it became yeah but it became a clue for who the women were because the word came from the you know
00:27:33
Speaker
Yeah, because, you know, these women were important enough people to merit this level of burial. One of the women is like 70, 80 years old, older woman. Wait a second. You're talking about the year 800 something? Yeah. And you're telling me that there's some woman that lived to be in her 80s? Yeah. I thought life expectancy is like 12. That seems like that's sort of like, oh, there's a guy living today who's 300.
00:28:02
Speaker
No wonder they made her queen. It's like, she's magic. She lived to 80. I'll give you half a ship. Everybody dies at 29, except this one lady. Which, you know, we say lady, but she did suffer from a syndrome called Morganyi syndrome. I don't know if you've heard of it.
00:28:25
Speaker
Is she a giant? What is that? Well, it's a hormonal imbalance or something that did lead to a very masculine appearance, possibly a little bit of a beard. What? Yeah, but she was a woman. She did work in a circus for a number of years. She was known as the bearded lady. She did have various ailments, very bad arthritis by the end. She also had cancer. She had a bad...
00:28:52
Speaker
had a bad knee, probably had a severe limp. Yes. Okay. Um, no, seriously. Doesn't that seem abnormal to live to be that old in the 800th?
00:29:07
Speaker
Well, part of how they know that these are important women is they could also just from their bones, they could evaluate what their diet had been, what they'd been eating. And whereas a lot of the just regular folk were eating a lot of fish, these guys were getting their hands on a varied diet, including lots of red meat. Hello.
00:29:30
Speaker
I love that steak rare. I'm good. And once they had the steak rare, they also apparently had the use of metal toothpicks. They could tell from their teeth that they had used metal toothpicks. Again, a sign of status or distinction or wealth.
00:29:46
Speaker
the fact that they had decent dental hygiene, I guess, is of some importance. Second lady is in her 50s. A younger lady compared to the 80s. Yeah, it doesn't have a beard. And this one, you would think by now they would have solved it one way or the other. There's some confusion about like, okay, is the older lady the queen?
00:30:08
Speaker
Interesting. Or is the younger lady the queen? And because there was sort of a thought like, okay, one of them is a queen and the other one's like a handmaiden or like her trusty servant or her- What about your mother? Could it have been her mother? I don't think so. I think maybe they would have been able to figure that out.
00:30:28
Speaker
They're dressed in very nice clothes, nicer clothes than regular people get. So the working hypothesis is one is a queen, the other one's a handmaiden. At first they thought, okay, the 50-year-old looks like she has a badly broken collarbone. So for years they said, this one was a human sacrifice.
00:30:51
Speaker
This one was a human sacrifice at the time of the burial, you know, they killed the handmaiden to go into the afterlife with her to serve her in the afterlife. Okay, either she played rugby at university or she was a human. Well, I think you would want the one who had Morgana syndrome to be playing the rugby.
00:31:11
Speaker
Um, the, uh, the, the one who was had the broken collarbone. However, subsequent testing showed that the collarbone had started to heal. There were signs of healing. So it looks like I'll be back.
00:31:27
Speaker
I'll play next weekend. Yeah. She was like day to day upper body injury. Um, she, uh, so they, they backed off from the whole human sacrifice. Um, it's a pretty bold assertion theory, but now that I'm just talking through it, it does seem weird. Like, well, what they both happened to die at the exact same time, or did you keep one of them on ice?
00:31:50
Speaker
You know, until the other one was, yeah. So now it seems like something with the collarbone and the fact that she was in her fifties and probably healthy ish. Yeah. Ish compared to the 80 year old, like, you know what, let's get a two for you're probably not going to live more than another.
00:32:05
Speaker
40 years tops. One is in, I don't know if it's the older or the younger one, is in what's described as a very fine red woolen dress with a lozenge twill pattern and a fine white linen veil.
00:32:25
Speaker
Okay. In a gauze weave. Sounds appropriate. The other one is also in a fancy dress, but it's the color blue. And then along with them, I mean a total haul, like they've got these, and you got to see it, don't believe it, but they have these wooden sleds and sleighs that had been used in like royal processions or ritual processions
00:32:50
Speaker
and the carving is absurd. Like somebody who did it today, you'd say that guy's a genius, you know? These are preserved on the boat. And these are preserved beautifully. They found these on the ship. Yes. They also found a cart, you know, with wheels, also elaborately wood carved. They found roughly 15 horses, six dogs,
00:33:14
Speaker
Oh, my God. An oxen or an ox. Right. And oh, this was major. Yeah. I mean, this was probably a ceremony and an event that lasted for days that brought hundreds of people there, that there was a massive gathering. There was they also found a a wand, almost looks like a magician's wand that is associated with like ritual, religious
00:33:40
Speaker
And the presence of this, and also cannabis seeds. What kind of ship is this? Yeah. And so with the weed and with the wand, some people started saying, wait, were these royalty or were they actually like high priestesses or witches, basically? Were they shamans? Are we making a mountain out of a molehill? And I'm not trying to reference the fact that these were, you know, land barrier.
00:34:09
Speaker
But my point is, really? Are we ascribing too much significance to that? Yeah, I think we are. And I think the more solid theory is one of them was a queen. And in fact, they think they may know which queen she was. Really? There was a queen Asa.
00:34:26
Speaker
OK, who was from the Yingling dynasty. Sounds exotic. Yeah. Yeah. And she just based on her remains, she's from the same area where the ship is constructed and she's from the same area where that queen was known to have been. This queen is an example of what I was talking about with the the barbaric
00:34:50
Speaker
uh, sort of interpersonal relations. Her first husband was somebody who, um, kidnapped her and raped her and forced her to bear a child. Right. Um, within a year off Rocky and we grew to like each other.
00:35:05
Speaker
Yeah, that didn't happen. A year into the marriage when he was in a drunken stupor, she had a servant kill him. Which is the other way to avoid legal fees, right? Yeah, so there was like no official paperwork, there was no lawyers, you know, it was more just like I killed him. Did someone ask me a runestone? I'm gonna just put a quick document together and can you guys leave the room? Get this guy out of there.
00:35:29
Speaker
She moved back to her home area where the Yingling dynasty was. She, incidentally, Queen Asa was the daughter of King Harold Redbeard. Totally appropriate. Again, spot on. Not a lot of irony. Love the name. Her son was known as Halfton the Black. Sounds appropriate as well. And then her grandson is Harold Fairhair.
00:35:57
Speaker
I mean, they stick these nicknames on all these people. And it's usually just something about their appearance. So it's like, King Bluetooth, or, you know, Harold red beer, and they're all named Harold or half Harold or Harold Harold sin or, you know, and, you know, the other thing is they were
00:36:14
Speaker
really, these Vikings in England, Scotland, Ireland, France, you know, they're there for hundreds of years and interbreeding, you know what I mean? Like having kids. So there's a lot of Viking stock in those places.
00:36:29
Speaker
Yeah, they were all over the place. And it's really I don't I don't think it's really until the middle of the 11th century that England sort of gets its England back and kind of kicks the Vikings out and then they're back to like, you know, English kings. And I'm probably making all sorts of basic errors in English history. OK, now this ship, the Oseberg ship is just stunning.
00:36:55
Speaker
They bring it, they bring it out of the ground and what do they do with it? Like they restore it and how is it preserved? They take it to Oslo. And like I said, the wood is in good shape. It's just broken into a lot of pieces, but they said it's not complicated to put them back together. It's almost like a puzzle where it's like, Oh yeah, this one does seem to fit in here. And it is that nice clinker built style of ship where on the hull, it's like overlapping board.
00:37:23
Speaker
So cool. Like, that's that's a great way to build the ship. Now, one thing that's complicated, the reason the museum in Oslo, which is called appropriately enough, the Viking Ship Museum, again, in keeping with the fact that they name things in the most obvious way, not criticizing Redbeard. Why do you call them? Oh, yeah. Or Brother Slayer.
00:37:45
Speaker
Yeah, not leading a lot to the imagination, but fair enough. You know, it's a bummer that he just slaughtered his brother. On the other hand, it does give us an easy name to call him from brother slayer, your brother slayer. I feel like Native Americans, Indians do a little bit of that, like, you know, killed a moose chief. Okay, I get it. He takes a bath.
00:38:06
Speaker
Now, one thing about an anomaly with this ship is that whatever the coating was like the sort of like varnish or or I don't know what you would call it, but whatever the coating was sort of kept the wood intact. But what they've discovered through the years is that just underneath that, the wood is falling apart. And so they're very worried. It's from the eight hundreds.
00:38:30
Speaker
Like a, what do you expect from this wood? I get it. It's oak. It's a great forest, but it's Jesus. It's from the experts. We're saying like, um, it still looks great. And, um, you know, we're glad that you're the, you, the museum, you're letting people come through here every day. And it's amazing. It's, you know, one of the most famous things in Norway is, is this ship and everybody likes to come see it. But what we're trying to tell you is that underneath that thin, like outer layer, the wood is literally like turning into dust.
00:38:59
Speaker
And so they, for years they've been saying, we need to close this museum down and do something with the ship, whether it's like take it apart and retreat the wood or whatever, because otherwise it's at the point where it's about to collapse.
00:39:13
Speaker
Oh no. So what do they do? They've closed the museum and now they're working on it to try to figure out, okay, how do we do this day? Exactly. So you can't, if you go to Oslo now, basically it shut down in 2021 and they're hoping to reopen in 2025 with the ship fortified and fully on display again.
Preservation Challenges of the Oseberg Ship
00:39:32
Speaker
Incredible. An incredible ship.
00:39:33
Speaker
And do they have the other items, artifacts on display, like all the stuff related to what they found on the ship? Yes. Yes. I mean, even like the skeletons, you know, they, they do that thing that you see on the national or the natural history museum where they, they kind of mount the skeletons. So you get a rough idea of what the shape of it was.
00:39:52
Speaker
do think that I saw in one place that all the animals had been decapitated, which, again, of a piece with what these Vikings were about. Like they were just like really a violent culture. It seems entirely unnecessary. Like if you're sacrificing animals, like why are you cutting off their hands? Yeah, I mean, they just, you know, and some of the religious ceremonies involved
00:40:17
Speaker
guys having sex with, you know, various women, like going from one sort of structure to another and having sex with the, you know, it just like... Hence their reputation as barbarians. Yeah. They're very, they exhibit barbaric behavior. And not all of them. I mean, you know, they also were talented and other, you know, they also knew how to grow things. Beards, they grow beards, long beards, red beards. Even the women were growing beards.
00:40:44
Speaker
The, um, the, but they were also, you know, trade, they were also trading. So, you know, the, um, and some of the ships would have a slightly different design if they were going to be mainly, you know, their purpose was going to be like a cargo ship. Like the one I did the first season that had all those grindstones.
00:41:02
Speaker
Like that wasn't a warship. That one was a cargo ship. Right. But this one had the unique carving on the front that you described, which is this one is cool. I mean, that's incredible. Like the fact that they have that level of craftsmanship, we're talking like, what are they using? Like what tools, you know, it's a, it's pretty impressive. I want to say like an ads. I don't know if they're taking out ads for like trade. So there's something called like an ad. I guess it sounds familiar, like an ADZ. What is that?
00:41:30
Speaker
Well, that sounds like something like my old shop teacher. Hey, you ever use a yard? No. Can you hand me that? I was so bad in shop. I still have the box I made in shop and it's an inordinate amount of honey that I had to use to get various sides. I was in summer camp and I.
00:41:47
Speaker
I could tell right off the bat, I'm not going to be able to build any of the options they're giving us. Do you want to build this or this or this? I picked the simplest thing, which was like, oh, you can just do a belt. The belt's already made and all you do is you use the punches. I was like, oh, this is perfect. I'm going to make a belt for my older brother, Ken. He was a big fan of the band, the Allman Brothers.
00:42:15
Speaker
I always got confused whether it was almond or almond. I couldn't find that day the capital letter L. I just said, well, the capital letter I looks like a lowercase letter L. Anyway, a month later, I presented this belt to my brother that says the Amen Brothers.
00:42:39
Speaker
Exactly. A-I-I-M-A-N. And then, like a good brother, he wore it for years, his Amen Brothers belt. Okay. Okay. My point is, the elaborate carvings on this ship, a lot of them display what's called the gripping beast style of carving.
00:42:57
Speaker
also known as the Oseberg style. And it's just these sort of designs where the beast is intermingled with other things like geometric patterns or mythological characters. The Vikings had a rich mythology. I think there was a deity Odin. Yes, Odin. 12 sons. Hey, episode 12. Didn't Odin have 12 sons? I don't know. I think didn't Jacob have 12 sons? Somebody had 12 sons.
00:43:26
Speaker
So, but the gripping beast style, you've got these, these like mythological looking beasts and they've got, you know, their limbs are sort of stretched out and encircling different things. And then they're gripping on either to geometric patterns or to heroic figures. So that's the gripping beast.
00:43:45
Speaker
And you have to figure that there were very few people that could do that level of design. It's not like everyone had that talent. So someone must have been designated to do that design. Do you think that guy was like a prima donna? Like they had this sweet talk him, but it does help explain to me something I thought was very weird when you were describing that ship from a few hundred years later, the Vasa, well more than a few, like 800 years later, where it was like,
00:44:12
Speaker
Why are they spending all this time on the carvings? But now I'm realizing like, oh, there's a very long, rich history in these beautiful carvings. The problem is by the time the Vassas built, they've forgotten how to build ships, you know? That's the problem. They had no real design sensibility. Whereas the Vikings, man, they built. Incredible.
00:44:34
Speaker
incredible ships. And the thing that I like about them is, you know, when you and I talked about not only the Vasa, but the, the Delman Horst and the Mary Rose and the, you know, it's like these big gun boats are going to be like the modern war boats, but they, um,
00:44:51
Speaker
are not stable. You know what I mean? Like they're a little bit of a breeze can tip them over or the gun parts or, you know, and they're just because of the gun decks and because the amount of can't, they're not stable. Viking ones are the exact opposite. I mean, these things are like,
00:45:07
Speaker
They're really a marvel of design. Trust the Atlantic, I have no idea. And like I said, when you look at the images, note how thin and sort of sharp they get at the top and then at the stern, and then how they really swell out in the middle, but it's all with a shallow, shallow draft.
00:45:27
Speaker
So it's a very odd little thing. And it was bad news. So if you were on the coast of France or Germany or England, you saw something that shape showing up. It's like that's where the burning and the pillaging ensues.
00:45:45
Speaker
Yeah, scary, but incredible, like that they had that level of craftsmanship back then with the tools available, building these ships that could cross the Atlantic. Yeah, I mean, and the other thing is you can see why they were proud of their ships and that one of the ways that you would exalt somebody who died, a member of royalty who had died or an important person who had died,
00:46:11
Speaker
So yeah, bury them in one of these incredible ships. What could be more sort of significant and respectful is like, this is what we're known for. This is our expertise. You are getting the best of the best. You can take it into a turnip. Yeah. Some people have said, well, it does seem weird, you know, to bury a lot of really valuable, beautiful stuff, like
00:46:35
Speaker
I get that they want to use it in the afterlife, but it's like, wouldn't your kids or your grandkids like to have that? And one theory, perhaps Bobby could use those tools. One theory is that it was a way to keep Bobby and his siblings from killing each other.
00:46:55
Speaker
after the funeral, right? Yeah. Because like, if there is a vast estate to fight over, you know, then people are going to rip each other to shreds. Like I said, you know, these guys were hardcore, you know, it's like, and I know we're deep in the show for me to bring it back to professional ice hockey, but it reminds me, like the Vikings were like the enforcer, you know, on a team, you got like the fighter, like the guy's just insane.
00:47:21
Speaker
Yeah, sortly. Yeah. Or Bob Probert or. Yeah. Yeah. Just scary dude. Scary person who's not only big and scary looking, but also seems to delight in the mayhem. They're like, they're kind of smiling and laughing while they're punching somebody's teeth out anyway. So the Vikings, they're that guy. Right. Super scary. At least the warrior, the people in the warrior class.
00:47:48
Speaker
And I'm sure, you know, there were all kinds of all types, you know, there had to be some people who are, you know, back home tending the farm or raising the kids or whatever. I'm just talking about, you know, they really, they're really intense ones that would go out and conquer foreign settlements. You know, there was also some of these people that are the Vikings when they're going all the way to Iceland or all the way to Greenland or all the way to Nova Scotia or rather Newfoundland, the
00:48:14
Speaker
It's not just like, oh, these are our best navigators. Often it's people who've been kicked out of the home. You know what I mean? Like this guy is unmanageable. Like he won't even, like he would kill everybody in prison if we put him in prison. Like let's send him to Iceland. Perfect Viking material. Right. Keep him on that long ship and keep him a long way away from me. You know, you're strong, you're violent. You, you have a lot of things that are going to make you successful in this world. Why don't you go?
00:48:43
Speaker
Try and see if you can be successful in new Finland right if you survive the crossing good luck i think you're gonna do well good thing is the or rather the interesting thing is not only was there that settlement that has was later found again sort of buried in new Finland long houses and things like that.
00:49:04
Speaker
But, you know, there were items that were found further south from there, which appeared to come from Vikings. And it was unclear, and it's unclear to this day, were those just traded to people like indigenous people or, you know, others, and then like,
00:49:22
Speaker
made their way down south or did the Vikings actually at some point go south of Newfoundland and sort of along the Atlantic coast? I had never really fallen for the popular craze for like Viking stories and Viking TV and Viking movies and I didn't watch Game of Thrones. But I have to say that
00:49:45
Speaker
backing into the area just by, with our interest in shipwrecks and sort of like, you know, learning a little bit about the Vikings through their ships. Um, it's, it was an amazing 400 years they had, like I said, eight hundreds, nine hundreds, 10 hundreds, 11 hundreds. They were on a roll and they were doing what, you know, all countries do once they get like really successful and build strength, which is like, okay, let's go, let's expand.
00:50:11
Speaker
It's what China's doing now. It's what America did a little before or England did. And they had the technology, right? They had the ships. They had the ability to get there. And they were great woodworkers and they were great fishermen. They were very comfortable on the water because they're having to travel on rivers and fjords and sea... They're great watermen and hardy souls. That's cold ass water up there.
00:50:39
Speaker
Uh, channel their energies into destruction and plundering. But you know, you say that, you say that, but then look at it when you'll look at the pictures of the Osa Osa Berg ship and you're like, these carvings are, uh, what else can I tell you about the Osa Berg? That's it. So you can't, you can't go see it today. Museums closed. If you and I are going to go, we'll have to wait until 2025 time flies. You know, we'll get there.
00:51:06
Speaker
Uh, incredible and, and sort of symbolic maybe in terms of the last ship of the season being one that was buried in the ground versus underwater. I thought you were going to say like, wait, dude, that's not a shipwreck, but yeah, I believe it's a great. Okay. Yeah.
00:51:23
Speaker
I do. Fantastic. I do. I don't think we discern between it being buried in water versus land because they both are time capsules. You're able to unearth something from the 800s and it tells us the story of the Vikings. That's incredible. Fun word for you, the burial mound, these huge mounds that are found around Scandinavia. The word for that is
00:51:47
Speaker
Tumulus. That's what that mound is called either a Barrow or a Tumulus. And if you've got a couple of them, they're Tumuli. Tumuli. Okay. Well, in my mind, a fantastic way to end season three of Killer Shiprooks with a classic Viking style
Season Reflection & Future Biography Plans
00:52:04
Speaker
ship. Everyone in their mind can conjure up an image of a Viking ship.
00:52:08
Speaker
Yeah, fantastic. And also, you know, the other thing is, like, we've talked about some different ships, types of ship this season, Spanish Galleon, the melee ship, the interesting variety, the gun ship, the destroyer escort. And it seems to me like these Viking ships, it's not that they are
00:52:30
Speaker
waging war on the high seas. It's more just they're using them to get from point A to point B. And then when they get to point B, then we'll jump on land and then that's when we'll raise hell. Right. And incredible because when you consider like what technology was available and the fact that they had to somehow create these boats that we're going to cross an ocean. Yeah. With oars men. I mean, imagine the, uh, the, the fricking guns on these guys who are oaring their way across the all the way to fricking Newfoundland.
00:53:00
Speaker
That's insane. I do think of the Scandinavians as some of the strongest dudes. Remember those old, what did they used to have on TV? In the 70s, they would have strongest man contests and lifting huge logs and stuff like that. They all look like Scandinavians. Right. Very hard.
00:53:20
Speaker
Well, fantastic. So doctor, so, you know, congrats on another great season. And I think we both want to express gratitude to all the good folks at brainstorm, you know, first, first season on the platform. And I thought it went very well. Great production.
00:53:36
Speaker
They swooped in and they saved us. We, we thought maybe, uh, we were done. And, um, because we had a bit of a legal battle of our own. Didn't end the way we wanted to with the former partner. No, but brainstorm, uh, gave us a platform, enabled us to go on, gave us the opportunity to do season three. And now it sounds like they're extending, um, a new opportunity to us, which is, um, to, to branch out and do the show on biographies. So.
00:54:06
Speaker
We're finalizing the details of what that season will look like. But I think it's super interesting. I'm very excited about it. And I think it's exciting for Brainstorm to expand, to branch out. Absolutely. Unbelievable season. Very proud of all the ships we presented this season. So we will, for the final time in season three, we will play our outro music and we will see everybody potentially in a brand new series on Brainstorm.
00:54:36
Speaker
are related to biographies. Fantastic and a pleasure.