Brute Norse Podcast

When not one, but two 8th century mass graves emerged on the beaches of Salme in Saaremaa, Estonia, it marked a new chapter in scholarly inquiry into the Viking Era. Thoughtfully propped up in two military rowing vessels, sitting side by side, and stacked on top of each other, respectively, these 40 or so Scandinavian raiders received graves as shallow as they were ritualistic. The finds brought renewed interest in the historical origins of viking piracy. A culture that came of age with the professionalization of the Germanic warband in the Roman Iron Age, which led to the emergence of a self-insistent aristocratic class, who built their identity around war, feasting, and huge halls. But their primitive adolescence goes even further back, to a dim past of steppe raiding-economies, and eerie coming of age rituals. And yet, one may discern the glimmer of an influence not quite of this world, of a new religion with the promise of a shimmering afterlife in the presence of the Lord. In this episode, Brute Norse a