Lars Brownworth on Lex Fridman: How longships outran armies

1. 0:00 – 1:17

   Episode highlight

   1. LBLars Brownworth0:00

      The Viking longships could average 70 to 120 miles a day. They could hit a place, raid it, drag off whoever they wanted, and get away before you could get your army there. Uh, it's just absolutely terrifying.

   2. LFLex Fridman0:13

      What do you think it felt like for Alcuin and the monks to see the Viking ships on the horizon?

   3. LBLars Brownworth0:21

      Honestly, I think it's the end of the world, and I don't think they were wrong to think that. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says the night before Lindisfarne, the monks saw sheets of lightning in the sky in the shape of dragons, and this obviously meant to foreshadow the dragon ships coming up. But if you were brave, then you got taken to the house of the dead, which was Valhalla. Every day you would fight, and whatever wounds you got would be magically healed that night, and the next morning you'd get up and do it again. So you're essentially practicing for Ragnarok-

   4. LFLex Fridman0:53

      Mm-hmm

   5. LBLars Brownworth0:53

      ... the, uh, the final battle. You know, there's this poem by Tennyson, uh, "Ulysses," my favorite poem. Uh, I think it captures the Viking spirit. The, the, the last line of it is to strive to seek to find and not to yield. I think that's very much like the Viking. You know, "My purpose holds to sail beyond the bass of all the Western stars until I die." We may die, but I'm gonna do this, and I'm not gonna yield.

2. 1:17 – 2:37

   Introduction

   1. LFLex Fridman1:17

      The following is a conversation with Lars Brownworth, a historian and author of many excellent history books, including "The Sea Wolves: A History of the Vikings," and "The Normans: From Raiders to Kings." He's also the host of two history podcast series, the first called "12 Byzantine Rulers: The History of the Byzantine Empire," is one of the first, if not the first ever history podcast, launched over 20 years ago in June 2005. His second series, "Norman Centuries," explores the remarkable rise of the Normans from Viking raiders to the rulers of kingdoms stretching from England to Sicily. In this conversation, we focus primarily on the Vikings, the seafaring Norse warriors and explorers who, over a period of just 300 years, reshaped the medieval world and the trajectory of Western civilization as we know it. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, where you can also find links to contact me, ask questions, give feedback, and so on. And now, dear friends, here's Lars Brownworth.

3. 2:37 – 12:30

   The start of the Viking Age

   1. LFLex Fridman2:37

      Your writing and podcasts take us from the Vikings to the Normans to Crusades to, uh, the collapse of the East Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire. There's a thread, I think, that connects the Vikings through all of it, so let's start at the beginning. Let's start with the, with the Vikings. So the age of the Vikings was, uh, intense and violent, as you write about, often dated from 793 AD to 1066 AD. It lasted less than three centuries. So, uh, the start is often dated to June 8th, 793. What happened on June 8th, 793?

   2. LBLars Brownworth3:23

      In June of 793, a group of Vikings, probably originating from Norway, arrived at the holy island of Lindisfarne, which was a monastic community, and they essentially slaughtered everyone, uh, burned a couple of buildings, and grabbed everything that had any value, uh, and left. And that was the first Viking raid that came in force. And I, I do think Lindisfarne is a good, a good beginning date because the terror that it brought really signified what was to come for the next two to three centuries.

   3. LFLex Fridman3:55

      So the word of it has spread. Like there's a, there's a bunch of accounts, like the monk Alcuin wrote about this event in a letter to King Aethelred of, uh, Northumbria, quote, "It is nearly 350 years that we and our fathers have inhabited this most lovely land, and never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race, nor was it thought that such an inroad from the sea could be made." What made this, uh, race so psychologically devastating to this monk and to many of the monks on the island and then to all of Britain?

   4. LBLars Brownworth4:36

      That's a great quote. Um, Alcuin was not just a, a regular scholar. He was Charlemagne's favorite scholar, uh, and he's largely responsible, as much as one person can be, for the Carolingian Renaissance that had done so much to elevate the early medieval world. Uh, in fact, the spaces we have, the punctuation we have, spaces between words are likely a result of Alcuin's work. He was an extremely literate man, and you can, you can hear the terror creeping into that.

   5. LFLex Fridman5:05

      Mm-hmm.

   6. LBLars Brownworth5:06

      Um, and part of that has to do with monastic communities, the church, uh, and the, what they thought a monastic community was. So the church was viewed as a sacred place. Everyone in Europe, everyone in quotes, is nominally Christian, and the church is an area of safety. It's a literal ark from the troubles of the world that you can flee to. I believe there are even rules in England, for example, that if you had killed someone, you could flee to a church, uh, and the civil authorities were not allowed to enter for up to 40 days, so you could have sanctuary there. And to violate this would have been the worst possible offense you could have given, which is why, you know, Thomas à Becket's murder is so, so horrible in England. And the monks had dedicated themselves to a life of studying the Bible, to copying scriptures, to, uh, to prayer, to removing themselves literally from the temptations of the world. And so they would seek monasteries that were remote, and the most remote locations you could find were islands in the North Atlantic because it's just so difficult to get there.Um, so the ocean was considered a place of safety, not sailing on the ocean, but these, these islands were, were literal havens of peace and security and closeness to God. Uh, and so the fact that the Vikings hit this place of all places you could hit was the worst, the most terrifying kind of offense, uh, against medieval sensibilities.

   7. LFLex Fridman6:33

      So there's a kind of line that you understand you don't cross, like everybody agrees.

   8. LBLars Brownworth6:38

      That's right.

   9. LFLex Fridman6:38

      There's a kind of thing that there's a social contract that most societies, most civilizations sign. There's a line that we don't cross. Let the scholars do their scholarly work. That's one line. The other line is more kind of from a military perspective, from a, a mobility perspective, you just assume the sea is not a place from which a threat could come.

   10. LBLars Brownworth7:00

       Yeah, exactly right.

   11. LFLex Fridman7:00

       Especially the north.

   12. LBLars Brownworth7:02

       Yeah.

   13. LFLex Fridman7:02

       Sort of your conception of the world is shattered by, one, the brutality that can come, two, that the sea can bring a threat, and three, that you don't give a damn about any of the lines that we as a society, as a Christian society have established.

   14. LBLars Brownworth7:20

       That's exactly right. I mean, even Alcuin, I think he writes a little later on that the dead were left as dung in the streets. So he's describing dead monks as literal dung in the streets, and who would do this to men of God? Um, inhuman monsters.

   15. LFLex Fridman7:34

       So who were they, uh, the Vikings coming from the north? How did they think, uh, of the violence that they were doing?

   16. LBLars Brownworth7:42

       Now that's a very good question because-- and it, it brings up a central problem of, of looking at the Vikings, which is the story is almost always told from somebody else's perspective, um, largely from the pens of those they're attacking. So they're not gonna come across well. Um, they're often portrayed as demonic and, and inhuman. The Vikings themselves, though, as much as we can piece together, um, from archeology, from the stories they wrote later, um, but that was another problem. Their written alphabet, the runes, it was mostly used for spells, name your sword, things like that, curse someone, but it wasn't really useful for writing long poetry or literature. Um, so the only Norse literature we have comes at the end of the age when they had adopted the Lat- the Latin alphabet. So it's, you can almost never see the Vikings in their own words as they saw themselves. Um, but we can piece certain things together. Most importantly, Viking was not their day job. Um, they were, they were mostly merchants and farmers, mostly farmers, uh, who lived in little bays called viks in Old Norse, which is probably where we get the word viking, Viking from. Um, one other note about how hard it is to, to tease apart what's happening here is the, the English and the Frankish and the Irish writers all call them Danes no matter where they came from. They didn't stop to ask, "Now, excuse me, are you from Norway or are you from..." So they're all called Danes or pagans, heathen or Northmen. Um, so this is not very helpful in figuring out where they came from.

   17. LFLex Fridman9:21

       Mm-hmm.

   18. LBLars Brownworth9:21

       Um, the language was interchangeable. You know, Old Norse was spoken in all three of those Scandinavian countries. But living in the north so far up near the Arctic Circle is, that's at the very limit of where technology of the time could allow humans to survive, and that kind of, that kind of harsh climate bred, I think, very hard people. Mercy was not a quality they seemed to favor, value. Um, there's a very famous story of a Swedish Viking putting a sword in the crib of his newborn son and saying, "May you have nothing in this life but what you can gain with this." I mean, I can't imagine, [chuckles] I can't imagine doing that, um, you know, to any of my children, you know, putting a gun in the crib or-

   19. LFLex Fridman10:05

       Mm-hmm.

   20. LBLars Brownworth10:06

       ... you know, I'd be carted away. Um, but the, I think that kind of underscores the kind of violent life that was-- you could expect as a Viking. I mean, strength was valued more than anything else.

   21. LFLex Fridman10:17

       So an understanding of the world is harsh, and that strength is the way you, you must face that world. So when you have those people, especially the ones that self-select to get on a boat to face the ocean with all the uncertainty, that results in the kind of brutality that we got to see.

   22. LBLars Brownworth10:35

       I think so. I mean, the way they would build their ships, they were clinker-built, so they were overlaid, like planks overlaying. So they were undecked as well, and so they'd have tents. So can you imagine crossing the Atlantic, the northern Atlantic, you know, with these huge waves splashing over, um, with an inch of oak between you and the ocean? I mean, the, the amount of bravery that must have taken to, to undergo is astounding. Plus, they didn't have a compass. They, they navigated by where's the sun, where are the stars, what are-- are there birds in the sky? Do I see different color of water? Do I see leaves floating? I mean, it's terrible. For traveling two thousand miles, it's, uh, that's not great. So there's kind of an intrepidness to them, uh, that I think is part of the reason why they're so fascinating to us in our sanitized, more or less sanitized world, that this, this incredible courage to, to do this, and some horror at what they did on the other end when they arrived. But, you know, we'll talk a little bit more about their religion, but they, they do not view the Christian God in particularly flattering terms. I mean, to them, He's a weak God who won't protect His adherents, and they can just come in and plunder as they-- I mean, they'll-- One Viking famously says, "On land, I'm a Christian. When I'm on the sea, I worship Thor." It was very much the kind of pragmatic take that the Vikings had.

   23. LFLex Fridman12:01

       Yeah, there are gods, and they have many, but Odin and Thor are pretty hardcore gods. So every- everything, just their whole philosophy on life is pretty, pretty hardcore. Probably some of the toughest humans to have ever lived.

   24. LBLars Brownworth12:15

       I think so, yeah. I mean, their gods are horrifying. They're, they're polytheistic. There was no universally accepted, um, head god.

   25. LFLex Fridman12:26

       Mm-hmm.

   26. LBLars Brownworth12:26

       I think Marvel has also led people astray in this.

   27. LFLex Fridman12:29

       Well,

4. 12:30 – 26:13

   Viking military strategy, tactics & technology

   1. LFLex Fridman12:30

      we'll talk more about, um, religion, but since you mentioned the boats, what, what do we understand about the technology that we're using? Can you just speak a little bit more to this one inch of oak idea? So these were these long ships that, uh, were also able to travel on rivers, so they're not... Like, what, what is structurally do we know about the boats that allow them to be so flexible in terms of where they can travel?

   2. LBLars Brownworth13:01

      Yeah. I mean, and this was the Vikings' great secret, and I think it's underappreciated. They built different types of ships, obviously for different purposes, but the thing that blows my mind is that they built these ships that could cross an ocean, cross the Atlantic Ocean, and at the same time, when they had a draft of less than two feet, so they could sail up rivers that were two feet deep. And if they came to an, you know, a block or something, uh, twenty men could pick up the ship and port it around. They were incredibly portable, uh, and, and their speed. The speed was the most frightening thing about the Vikings.

   3. LFLex Fridman13:38

      So the, these are the same kind of ship that they sailed the ocean on.

   4. LBLars Brownworth13:41

      Yeah. I mean, it's, it's insane.

   5. LFLex Fridman13:44

      So they're pretty, pretty-- sufficiently robust to handle the ocean and sufficiently mobile to travel, uh, on rivers and do so really fast. So-

   6. LBLars Brownworth13:56

      Yeah

   7. LFLex Fridman13:57

      ... you mentioned speed. That seems to be, from a military perspective, the great advantage of the-

   8. LBLars Brownworth14:02

      Right

   9. LFLex Fridman14:02

      ... Vikings, because they can move much faster than the land armies can. Uh, so, and not just the element of surprise, which they often had, but the element of speed was the thing that gave them a s- extreme advantage against the British armies.

   10. LBLars Brownworth14:17

       That was the big one. So an English army, if it had access to a good Roman road that was well-maintained, which frankly, there weren't tons of them, but they could average something like ten to fifteen miles per day-

   11. LFLex Fridman14:28

       Mm-hmm

   12. LBLars Brownworth14:29

       ... on a good day if they didn't have a, a large baggage train to slow them down. If you had a cavalry unit that didn't have to travel with the army, they could average about twenty miles a day. The Viking longships could average seventy to a hundred and twenty miles a day. So they're just moving in super fast motion. They could hit a place, raid it, drag off whoever they wanted, and get away before you could get your army there. Uh, it's just absolutely terrifying.

   13. LFLex Fridman14:55

       What do you think it felt like for Alcuin and the monks to see the Viking ships on the horizon? Do you ever think about trying to put yourself in the mind of those folks and imagining in that time, you don't have a full map of the world, right? And the oceans are not mapped, and you have a hazy conception of the world. And so out of the darkness from the ocean where you thought nothing can come, comes this terrifying, this brutal force. What do you think that felt like?

   14. LBLars Brownworth15:30

       Honestly, I think it's the end of the world. And, and I don't think that's-- I don't think they were wrong to think that. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says the night before Lindisfarne, the monks saw sheets of lightning in the sky in the shape of dragons, and this obviously meant to, you know, foreshadow the dragon ships coming up. I can't imagine the horror. I would-- It would shake my faith, I'm sure, to have these, these giant men jumping out of their ships with swords raised, and you're, "What do you have?" You know, cross.

   15. LFLex Fridman16:04

       Were the Vikings aware of the fear that they had caused? So did they use fear as a kind of weapon, or was this just a side consequence of their actions? Or did they understand and use it? Like the Mongols, Genghis Khan and the Mongols used the fear and the terror on purpose-

   16. LBLars Brownworth16:25

       Yeah

   17. LFLex Fridman16:25

       ... to increase the chance that they wouldn't have to f- avoid fights, basically.

   18. LBLars Brownworth16:29

       Yeah. Yeah. The Vikings absolutely used terror. It was a, a main weapon in their arsenal. They would, um, they would attack specifically on high holy days like Easter, Christmas, because they knew there'd be higher value targets there with richer clothing, richer offerings, and there'd be a lot of money available. So they were rather sophisticated, which I think is something also that they don't get much credit for. It's like they were just dumb brutes attacking and just destroying. Uh, but they were-- it was very sophisticated. They would show up. That's what I mean when I say Viking wasn't their, their day jobs. They would be traders in a, say, an English port, kind of looking around. They'd get everyone's schedule, then they would sail away and come back as Vikings, and they knew exactly where to go. They knew where all the money was held. They knew where all the, you know, the churches were, when to attack. They knew the entire Christian calendar. They knew when someone's baptism was, when someone's confirmation. I mean, they, they were aware of all of this. Uh, and they would, they would definitely attack to increase terror.

   19. LFLex Fridman17:32

       One of the signs of the intelligence of the Vikings is, is that the Viking Age is so short. So what happens is these explorers a- and these, uh, uh, rough men who do the raids, they very quickly are good at conquering and then start state building or conquering and then establishing trade routes and stop being the, quote-unquote, "Vikings." So basically, they just, they conquer, and then they start doing the usual institute-- build the institutions, start a state, and now they're normal kind of nation, civilization kind of thing. So this kind of force that is the conquering, raid, violent, intense explorers is like a short-lasting thing, a couple of generations at most.

   20. LBLars Brownworth18:25

       Yeah, that's right. I mean, the, the Vikings were ultimately a pragmatic people who, if it worked, they would keep it.

   21. LFLex Fridman18:33

       Mm-hmm.

   22. LBLars Brownworth18:33

       Which is frustrating because they, they disappear so quickly, uh, because of that.

   23. LFLex Fridman18:38

       With very little trace in the records.

   24. LBLars Brownworth18:40

       With very little trace. That's right.

   25. LFLex Fridman18:41

       With, uh, very little writing.

   26. LBLars Brownworth18:42

       That's right.

   27. LFLex Fridman18:43

       There, [laughs]

   28. LBLars Brownworth18:43

       Yeah.

   29. LFLex Fridman18:44

       No time for writing it down.

   30. LBLars Brownworth18:46

       No. Yes. We're not doing that.
5. 26:13 – 35:40

   Ragnar Lothbrok

   1. LFLex Fridman26:14

      Uh, you mentioned Ragnar Lothbrok. Uh, who was Ragnar Lothbrok? Did he actually exist? Uh, some people believe he's a composite from several real ninth century Viking leaders versus an actual singular human.

   2. LBLars Brownworth26:30

      Yeah. I'm, I'm a romantic. I would like to believe he existed.

   3. LFLex Fridman26:34

      [laughs]

   4. LBLars Brownworth26:34

      Um, I think probably he's a, he's a compilation of, of a lot, of different... There probably is a seed of truth there. There probably was someone named Ragnar. Um, the last name is a little suspicious. Lothbrok means, uh, hairy breaches.

   5. LFLex Fridman26:50

      Mm-hmm.

   6. LBLars Brownworth26:50

      He supposedly had magic pants that would prevent him from being poisoned by dragons or snakes. It's maybe a clue we're dealing with myth here. Um, but he is really the template for, for Vikings. You wanna figure out, like, what the Vikings wanted, who's their success story? It's Ragnar Lothbrok. He's born, um, Norway, Denmark, countries argue over that. Um, maybe Sweden. Some, some sagas say he's in Uppsala. Anyway, he is, you know, penniless, and when he is in his late teens or early 20s, he decides to invade, sail up the Seine. Uh, there is a well-known city on the Seine, uh, and he raids it. Supposedly, he takes the hinge of one of the gates from Paris to prove that he's been there. Uh, the, the Frankish king, I love the Frankish kings because they, their citizens give them names based on how much they hate them.

   7. LFLex Fridman27:49

      [laughs]

   8. LBLars Brownworth27:49

      So, you have, you have Charles the Great, right? Charles the Great, Charlemagne.

   9. LFLex Fridman27:53

      Yeah.

   10. LBLars Brownworth27:54

       He's followed by Louis the Pious. That's probably the best one.

   11. LFLex Fridman27:57

       Uh-huh.

   12. LBLars Brownworth27:57

       And Louis Pious is followed by Charles, uh, the Fat-

   13. LFLex Fridman28:01

       Uh-huh

   14. LBLars Brownworth28:01

       ... who's followed by Charles the Bald-

   15. LFLex Fridman28:03

       Yep

   16. LBLars Brownworth28:04

       ... who's followed by Charles the Simple or Stupid.

   17. LFLex Fridman28:06

       Nice. So, you can trust the names-

   18. LBLars Brownworth28:08

       You can trust

   19. LFLex Fridman28:09

       ... to, to give you the TLDR of how good of a ruler they were.

   20. LBLars Brownworth28:12

       Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

   21. LFLex Fridman28:13

       Okay.

   22. LBLars Brownworth28:13

       Exactly.

   23. LFLex Fridman28:14

       So, Charles the Great widely acknowledged as sort of, uh, o- o- one of the great leaders of the Frankish Empire-

   24. LBLars Brownworth28:20

       Yeah

   25. LFLex Fridman28:20

       ... AKA Charlemagne.

   26. LBLars Brownworth28:21

       Yeah.

   27. LFLex Fridman28:22

       Uh, so what, what else do we know about him? So there's, um, going to Perplexity, "Ragnar is portrayed as a Scandinavian warlord, often called a Danish or Swedish king," like you were mentioning, uh, "active in the ninth century during the height of the Viking raids." And then descriptions of the raids and the exploits. "Medieval traditions link Ragnar to famous raids in the Frankish realms, especially the attack on Paris in 845, where he repeatedly sails up the Seine and extorts a huge ransom from King Charles the Bald. [laughs] He's also associated with repeated attacks on Anglo-Saxon England, embodying the archetypal Viking chieftain, charismatic, brutal, and focused on wealth, fame, and honor in battle." So that, those are the ideals of the, of the Vikings, charisma, brutality-

   28. LBLars Brownworth29:22

       Mm-hmm

   29. LFLex Fridman29:22

       ... and focusing on wealth, fame, and honor, especially honor in battle.

   30. LBLars Brownworth29:27

       Then also, what does he do with it, right? What does he do with it? So this, he gets about 7,000 pounds of silver from Charles the Bald, which destroys, essentially destroys Charles the Bald's kingship. But he goes back home to, to Denmark, and the Danish king doesn't want him around because he's too powerful, he's too rich. He's a ring giver. You know, think Beowulf here, right? He's, he's got this large personal army which wants to join him for, it can do, you know, they'll follow him, and he is a threat, and so he is, he kind of is encouraged to go elsewhere. He ends up raiding England for something like 15 years. And then there's a, probably the most famous bit of the story is he, he's shipwrecked and King Ælla of Northumberland captures him and decides to kill him by throwing him into a pit with vipers.
6. 35:40 – 40:23

   The Great Heathen Army

   1. LFLex Fridman35:40

      uh, who, who was the, what was this great heathen army that invaded England in 865? What can we say about that?

   2. LBLars Brownworth35:51

      Well, there's this famous scene in the Viking siege of Paris in 845, which is really the Europeans' introduction, or Europe as a whole, to a Viking army, not just a raid, uh, and then what it could do. And the king, the Emperor Charles, said, you know, "Let's find out what they want, and how much do I have to pay to get them to leave?" And so his ambassador went to a Viking and said, "Who is your king?" And the Viking looked at him and didn't understand, and he, he said, "We have no king. We are all kings." So they're very, like, decentralized, tough. They only valued leaders who could prove that they had, they had won, you know, could give out the rings.

   3. LFLex Fridman36:34

      So flat organization, very meritocratic.

   4. LBLars Brownworth36:37

      Yes.

   5. LFLex Fridman36:37

      If you're good at what you do, you demonstrate that skill in battle-That means you get to have, uh, maybe a leadership position.

   6. LBLars Brownworth36:45

      That's right.

   7. LFLex Fridman36:45

      And the moment you're no longer effective, you don't get to have this leadership position. We're all kings. That's gangster. Throughout history, the Mongols, Genghis Khan was famous for this, meritocracy.

   8. LBLars Brownworth36:59

      That's right. Yeah.

   9. LFLex Fridman37:00

      That's one of the components of an extremely effective military force is meritocracy. It is, uh, prized. Same is true for who gets to rule. How do you determine the succession? If you're just giving it to your oldest son, that's gonna be a problem.

   10. LBLars Brownworth37:16

       Yeah. Yeah, I could not agree more. Uh, there are some problems with, with meritocracy and civil war, uh, because it tends to... The only way you can find out, like Alexander the Great, right? Who does your empire belong to? To the strongest.

   11. LFLex Fridman37:29

       Yeah.

   12. LBLars Brownworth37:29

       What kind of guarantees the civil war. At least with giving it to your older son, you know who's gonna be... There's an element of stability there, um, although you may end up with a Caligula. Uh, more likely than not, you're gonna end up with a Caligula, I would say, human nature being what it is. Um.

   13. LFLex Fridman37:46

       [laughs] Yeah. It's a-

   14. LBLars Brownworth37:48

       Yeah.

   15. LFLex Fridman37:48

       It's a [laughs] yeah, yeah, it always converges to the asshole, and the asshole holds power. The crazy asshole.

   16. LBLars Brownworth37:55

       Yeah.

   17. LFLex Fridman37:55

       Uh, so yeah, Great Heathen Army, 865.

   18. LBLars Brownworth37:58

       So the Great Heathen Army, they were war bands that each followed this guy and this guy, and I'm gonna sit you down in this room, I'm gonna tell you my plan. You're gonna listen, you're gonna push back, I'm gonna push back, and we'll just have this kind of creative discussion and come up with a plan we all agree on.

   19. LFLex Fridman38:13

       So it used to be relatively small Viking groups that are doing raids.

   20. LBLars Brownworth38:17

       Right.

   21. LFLex Fridman38:18

       And then the Great Heathen Army is this large coalition of Viking groups-

   22. LBLars Brownworth38:23

       That's right

   23. LFLex Fridman38:23

       ... without a real leader that was able to somehow stabilize enough to have something like governance.

   24. LBLars Brownworth38:31

       Yeah.

   25. LFLex Fridman38:31

       Basically, there seems to be a very rapid evolution of a Viking in every part of the world they touch. You go explorer-

   26. LBLars Brownworth38:41

       Mm-hmm

   27. LFLex Fridman38:41

       ... uh, raid, conquer, establish state.

   28. LBLars Brownworth38:48

       Yeah.

   29. LFLex Fridman38:49

       Uh, and trade routes, and always maintaining an, a grand ambition, but no longer doing the violence, and always being sufficiently programmatic and flexible where you can accept, accept, uh, conversion to Christianity, for example, if it's useful.

   30. LBLars Brownworth39:07

       That's right.
7. 40:23 – 50:34

   Rollo and Normandy

   1. LFLex Fridman40:23

      So you have a book, you have a podcast series on, uh, the Normans. So let's talk about Rollo. Who was Rollo, uh, the famous Viking war leader who became the first ruler of Normandy in northern France?

   2. LBLars Brownworth40:38

      Well, first, I should say, as someone of Norwegian descent, I'm gonna fall down on the Norwegian side of the argument here, because-

   3. LFLex Fridman40:45

      [laughs]

   4. LBLars Brownworth40:46

      ... Norway and Denmark almost came to blows over which was the birthplace of Rollo.

   5. LFLex Fridman40:51

      Yeah.

   6. LBLars Brownworth40:52

      But the consensus seems to be Norway.

   7. LFLex Fridman40:55

      Mm-hmm.

   8. LBLars Brownworth40:55

      Not just biased.

   9. LFLex Fridman40:56

      Yeah.

   10. LBLars Brownworth40:56

       Um, so he was-- The only thing we-- The only glimpse we get of Rollo as a young man is he was very tall, so he was called Hrolf Walker, Hrolf Granger, because he was so tall he couldn't ride the little Viking ponies. Uh, so he had to walk everywhere.

   11. LFLex Fridman41:12

       Mm-hmm.

   12. LBLars Brownworth41:12

       Um, but kinda poor, uh, probably raised on stories of Ragnar and, and the other Viking lords, and he goes. Uh, he may have participated in some of the earlier, like the 860 raids that they, they, the Vikings did on Paris or the Seine, you know? And then he eventually ends up plundering the, what will become the Norman coast. And in the, in the year 911, he makes a treaty, the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, with, uh, the Frankish king, Charles the Simple, uh, which is not stupid. It's, it's more like straightforward. There's no guile in how he talks.

   13. LFLex Fridman41:54

       Mm-hmm.

   14. LBLars Brownworth41:54

       Uh, and Charles makes a really interesting deal with Rollo, which is, um, "Why don't you settle here, integrate into the local aristocracy, and defend the Norm- the French coast against the Vikings?" Which [laughs] I don't know, it's like putting a burglar in charge of your security or so- I don't know, but it works.

   15. LFLex Fridman42:17

       Mm-hmm.

   16. LBLars Brownworth42:17

       It works. Um, and Rollo, by the time he makes that deal, he's probably in his mid-50s to mid-60s. It's, it's unclear when he was born, but the point is, he's lived the Viking life. Um, he's, he's got something like 20 or 30, if you add up all the sagas, they say they gave him this many coins or whatever. He has probably 20 or 30-Tons of silver that he has acquired and then probably given out to whatever. So-

   17. LFLex Fridman42:46

       So yeah, so he's done the full, the raid

   18. LBLars Brownworth42:49

       He's done the thing, yeah

   19. LFLex Fridman42:49

       ... and then the conquering, and then-

   20. LBLars Brownworth42:51

       And then the king says, "Can you settle here?"

   21. LFLex Fridman42:54

       Yeah.

   22. LBLars Brownworth42:54

       "Can I give you legitimacy?"

   23. LFLex Fridman42:55

       So he does the diplomacy of a treaty.

   24. LBLars Brownworth42:57

       Yeah.

   25. LFLex Fridman42:58

       Then he does the, the good statecraft and state building and then becomes, I mean, European.

   26. LBLars Brownworth43:05

       Yeah. Yeah.

   27. LFLex Fridman43:05

       In one life, you go through the full journey.

   28. LBLars Brownworth43:08

       It's... Yeah. Yeah.

   29. LFLex Fridman43:09

       And then his son, William Longsword-

   30. LBLars Brownworth43:11

       William Longsword
8. 50:34 – 1:01:06

   Viking religion and Valhalla

   1. LFLex Fridman50:34

      Yeah. So rewinding back, what was the religion, the religious beliefs, the gods that the Vikings believed, that we've mentioned a little bit of, Thor and Odin? How did they see this, this world and the universe?

   2. LBLars Brownworth50:52

      So the, the Viking gods are, are... I mean, they've been sanitized, but they're, they're, they're quite terrifying. But at, at the ba- their basic conception of the universe is an eternal struggle between chaos and order, which chaos will eventually win. So I think the best view of cosmology is of concentric circles, with Utgard is the outer realm, and that's where the chaos is, and those are the-- that's where the frost giants are, all the monsters that seek to destroy. The gods represent order and stability, and the monsters represent chaos, and it's a, it's an eternal war between the two of them. Um, so there are different categories of gods, depending on which circle you come from. The gods don't all like each other. They d- [chuckles] they're not... Sometimes they engage in wars. Um, some of the most famous gods, the Norse gods, you know, Loki or Freyja, come from outside the Æsir, the main gods. So it was kind of a fluid, it was kind of a fluid thing.

   3. LFLex Fridman51:53

      It's more a way to understand the world.

   4. LBLars Brownworth51:55

      I think so, yeah. The thunder is Thor fighting the, uh, ice giants, and, and that's what that is.

   5. LFLex Fridman52:03

      Uh, going to perplexity. Vikings followed a polytheistic, ritual-heavy religion centered on a pantheon of gods and spirits with no single holy book or unified church, and practices varied a lot by region and family. And so the major gods was Odin and Thor and Freyja. Odin was, his domain was war, kingship, wisdom, death. Thor was protection, thunder, fertility. Freyja was love, magic, battle dead. Um, typical worshipers for Odin were chieftains and elite warriors and poets. Typical, uh, worshipers for Thor were farmers and, quote, "ordinary people." And typical worshipers of Freyja were women, magic practitioners, and lovers. [chuckles]

   6. LBLars Brownworth52:52

      Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've heard it... I think you can break it down saying, like, Odin was the elite. Uh, he's kind of more aristocratic, right?

   7. LFLex Fridman52:59

      Yes.

   8. LBLars Brownworth53:00

      He, he's the god of poetry. You need to read, et cetera. Only the elite would know how to do that. A farmer wouldn't really care about that. When Thor is a more earthy god-

   9. LFLex Fridman53:08

      Mm-hmm

   10. LBLars Brownworth53:08

       ... you know, you want the waves to be less, you know, pray to Thor. Um, I find Odin, I think, most disturbing. He's the god of madness and the god of poetry, which I guess those are related.

   11. LFLex Fridman53:21

       Yeah.

   12. LBLars Brownworth53:22

       Um, but in battle, I mean, the berserkers, probably the most famous type of Viking warriors, were considered to be Odin's chosen warriors. They would show no pain, and they would just run at the enemy and attack with their nails and their teeth.

   13. LFLex Fridman53:35

       Mm-hmm.

   14. LBLars Brownworth53:36

       Even they could have their arms hacked off, they would still keep going. Like, uh, they would-- and they would attack other Vikings. They would just... They were berserk. That's where we get the word from.

   15. LFLex Fridman53:45

       Uh, what do we understand the mindset that leads to that? I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't religious in nature. There's not a, this kinda ideology. It's just a way of life and, and then a pr- prized honor and intensity in battle.

   16. LBLars Brownworth54:00

       Yeah. I mean, one of Odin's names is the Raven Feeder. I mean, you were-- by creating corpses, which ravens feed on, you are, you're doing the work of Odin. And, you know, the, the, the Viking view of the afterlife was unique. There weren't really punishments, not really, for doing bad things. Uh, unless you did something really bad, uh, then you ended up as basically a, an evil spirit, uh, haunting your grave. Uh, but if you were brave, then you got taken to the house of the dead, which was Valhalla, uh, to... and you were resurrected. Every day, you would fight, and whatever wounds you got would be magically healed that night, and the next morning, you'd get up and do it again. So you're essentially practicing for Ragnarok-

   17. LFLex Fridman54:50

       Mm-hmm

   18. LBLars Brownworth54:50

       ... the, uh, the final battle, uh, which you would lose. So I'm not sure. [chuckles] It seems it's rather pessimistic.

   19. LFLex Fridman54:57

       The battle is what-- I mean, it sounds like losing is not a-... thing. The battle itself is what matters. So Valhalla is a place where you fight a battle every day.

   20. LBLars Brownworth55:07

       Every day.

   21. LFLex Fridman55:08

       Unlimited food. There's like a boar or whatever.

   22. LBLars Brownworth55:11

       Yeah. That's right.

   23. LFLex Fridman55:11

       There's, and there's unlimited wine.

   24. LBLars Brownworth55:13

       Yep.

   25. LFLex Fridman55:13

       And you can die as much as you want.

   26. LBLars Brownworth55:16

       As much as you want.

   27. LFLex Fridman55:16

       You're reborn again.

   28. LBLars Brownworth55:17

       Yeah. It's like a video game.

   29. LFLex Fridman55:17

       And this is the idea of the, this is the idea of the highest-- This, I guess if there's such a thing as heaven in this kinds of construction of the universe, this is heaven.

   30. LBLars Brownworth55:28

       It's heaven, yeah.
9. 1:01:06 – 1:06:13

   Viking explorers

   1. LFLex Fridman1:01:06

      I have to ask about Vikings as explorers. They were truly one of the greatest explorers in history.

   2. LBLars Brownworth1:01:11

      Mm.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:01:12

      What can you say to what is it in their spirit that motivated them? I mean, they sailed, they reached North America five hundred years before Columbus. They sailed, uh, obviously to England, Spain, Italy, Russia, North Africa, the Middle East, Paris. And, and I'm just showing here a map of the ocean routes and the river systems that they connected to and sailed. What do you think drove them to explore the unknown?

   4. LBLars Brownworth1:01:42

      This boggles my mind. This, like, this map here just-- that messes with me because they, they didn't have a compass.

   5. LFLex Fridman1:01:50

      Mm-hmm.

   6. LBLars Brownworth1:01:50

      I mean, can you imagine shoving off from some fjord in Norway west? That's your only... West.

   7. LFLex Fridman1:01:56

      Mm-hmm.

   8. LBLars Brownworth1:01:57

      And there was a Viking named Naddodd. He's actually the first Norseman to reach Iceland, though it was a total accident. But here's the, here's the mind-blowing part. He decides to land and explore, and he gets off, and he sees two humans. They're monks from Ireland.

   9. LFLex Fridman1:02:14

      Mm-hmm.

   10. LBLars Brownworth1:02:14

       They got there in a canoe.

   11. LFLex Fridman1:02:16

       [laughs]

   12. LBLars Brownworth1:02:16

       Now look at Ireland and look at Iceland. That's even more impressive.

   13. LFLex Fridman1:02:20

       [laughs]

   14. LBLars Brownworth1:02:21

       They got in a canoe, a skin boat-

   15. LFLex Fridman1:02:22

       Yeah

   16. LBLars Brownworth1:02:23

       ... and they just went north because they were trying to get away from the world.

   17. LFLex Fridman1:02:26

       Yeah.

   18. LBLars Brownworth1:02:26

       And they found Iceland, and in a very excellent move on their part, they ran away as soon as the Vikings arrived, which is, you know, pretty smart.

   19. LFLex Fridman1:02:34

       I don't know if you know, there's this, uh, video of the deranged penguin with a Werner Herzog documentary where Werner Herzog is like, uh, overdubbing, explaining the thinking of the penguin, but the penguin leaves the tribe, and he just goes out into the mountains. I have to show you this video. This is my favorite video of all time. There's this low-key, uh, documentary where they're talking about penguins, and then there's one penguin that leaves-

   20. LBLars Brownworth1:03:08

       I'm out

   21. LFLex Fridman1:03:08

       ... [chuckles] leaves the tribe and just goes towards the mountains and, as Werner Herzog says, towards certain death. It always reminds me of this kind of Viking spirit or the m- or the monk spirit.

   22. LBLars Brownworth1:03:22

       Mm-hmm.

   23. LFLex Fridman1:03:22

       There's something, one human or a small group of humans just decide to go.

   24. LBLars Brownworth1:03:28

       Just go. Yeah.

   25. LFLex Fridman1:03:29

       And not look back.

   26. LBLars Brownworth1:03:30

       Are there sea monsters out there? Maybe.

   27. LFLex Fridman1:03:32

       Maybe.

   28. LBLars Brownworth1:03:32

       Is there any land? Are we gonna fall off the edge of the earth? Maybe. I-

   29. LFLex Fridman1:03:35

       And just as Werner Herzog says, you know, there's certain death. Now, he doesn't romanticize it. He says the penguin is just deranged and crazy. But look, the penguin did look back briefly.

   30. LBLars Brownworth1:03:48

       Right.
10. 1:06:13 – 1:19:35

    Vikings in North America

    1. LFLex Fridman1:06:14

       All right, we're back. Let's talk about this incredible fact of the Vikings, that Leif Erikson, who was a Viking explorer, was the first European to reach North America around the year 1000, five centuries before Columbus reached North America. Um, te-tell the story of his journey. What do we know about him?

    2. LBLars Brownworth1:06:35

       So let's begin with his dad. Uh, his dad's name is Erik the Red, who was forced to flee Norway when he was probably ten years old because his dad had killed some people. It's kind of hilarious. In the, in the saga, it says, "For a few killings."

    3. LFLex Fridman1:06:53

       Mm-hmm.

    4. LBLars Brownworth1:06:53

       Okay, I guess that's a thing.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:06:55

       [laughs]

    6. LBLars Brownworth1:06:55

       Um, so he went to Iceland, and he got a farm in Iceland, uh, which was already starting to become overpopulated. They had cut down all the trees. There were some-Climate problems of deforestation and farms just blowing away. So the population was essentially beginning to crash in Iceland, and he got into a fight with his neighbor, uh, and ended up killing his neighbor. And so he was exiled from Iceland. So he was exiled from the place his father had been exiled from.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:07:26

       So it runs in the family, this whole outlaw thing.

    8. LBLars Brownworth1:07:29

       What also ran in the family, apparently, was this streak, this courageous streak. Uh, and he had heard that there had been people-- So the, the Norwegian Vikings, they were aiming for England, and they hit the Hebrides, which are these kind of treeless islands above Scotland, and they found they were good for refueling, because they'd get, pick up water or whatever, and then on your way to Scotland to raid. Uh, and then a Viking had missed the Hebrides and discovered Iceland, and then another Viking had aimed for Iceland, missed, and hit Greenland. And a little fun fact about Greenland, it is both north, south, east, and west of Iceland. So it's [chuckles] any direction, you're gonna hit Greenland.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:08:12

       So Greenland is, uh, hard to miss.

    10. LBLars Brownworth1:08:15

        It's hard to miss, which is not to take away anything from the extraordinary danger, the certain death of going further west. But there was this, by this time, there was this idea that, you know, enough people had become famous by sailing west into the unknown and discovering things, that I think there was a general idea of there's more out there to the west. Uh, and so he had talked to someone who had seen Greenland and reported that there was this good land further west. Uh, and so he hired the ship's crew of that Viking. So it's kind of the deck was loaded, and he went to Greenland, where he was able to settle, uh, two different colonies. One was called the Western Settlement in the west, and one was called the Eastern Settlement in essentially the extreme south. And that was essentially the edges of where Viking technology could be. A cool factoid is that the Vikings practiced husbandry, raised animals, and obviously this is not an option in Greenland, although they couldn't have known it at the time. But they brought plants with them. So, and then they were able to trade with the, the native Inuit for walrus blubber and things like that, and they, they made a go of it. But what's obvious, you know, anyone who's seen Greenland, there's, there are no trees. It's almost impossible to survive by practicing husbandry. It is impossible to survive, as it turns out, just practicing husbandry. And by this point, I think this extraordinary Viking pragmatism is beginning to be played out, um, because one of the reasons the Greenland experiment fails ultimately in three hundred years, uh, is they fail to adapt. Um, it's clearly they should, they should focus more on fishing, on other sources, um, than, than just raising pigs and cows. But-

    11. LFLex Fridman1:10:07

        Oh, so we hit the, the limit of the, the Viking adaptability, which they have demonstrated throughout the world, actually.

    12. LBLars Brownworth1:10:13

        Yeah. Yeah.

    13. LFLex Fridman1:10:14

        Interesting.

    14. LBLars Brownworth1:10:15

        So Erik the Red is this, he makes his name by exploring, and he does, in fact, once he discovers Greenland, he calls it green. He says there's so many salmon in the rivers of, in the fjords that you can just scoop them out with your hands. You don't even have to fish.

    15. LFLex Fridman1:10:32

        Was this real?

    16. LBLars Brownworth1:10:33

        Is a lie.

    17. LFLex Fridman1:10:34

        Okay.

    18. LBLars Brownworth1:10:34

        That's not true at all. [laughs]

    19. LFLex Fridman1:10:35

        So he, so he's doing propaganda.

    20. LBLars Brownworth1:10:36

        He's doing propaganda.

    21. LFLex Fridman1:10:37

        So is that, is this story true that he called it green just so he can attract-

    22. LBLars Brownworth1:10:41

        It is.

    23. LFLex Fridman1:10:41

        So-

    24. LBLars Brownworth1:10:41

        The greatest real estate scam in history.

    25. LFLex Fridman1:10:43

        [laughs]

    26. LBLars Brownworth1:10:44

        Yeah.

    27. LFLex Fridman1:10:44

        Uh.

    28. LBLars Brownworth1:10:45

        Yeah.

    29. LFLex Fridman1:10:46

        Okay. Genius. Um-

    30. LBLars Brownworth1:10:48

        Yeah.
11. 1:19:35 – 1:39:14

    Vikings in the East

    1. LFLex Fridman1:19:36

       Uh, so like we mentioned, the Vikings really went all over, and one of the directions they went that ended up touching the Byzantine Empire and Constantinople is they went east. What can we say about the eighth century journey east in the river networks that, uh, the Vikings did, the Swedish Vikings, the Varangians, as they began to explore the river systems of Russia?

    2. LBLars Brownworth1:20:02

       So this was the most surprising part for me when I was first thinking about writing the book and, you know, discovering where the, the Vikings went. I never, in a million years, it would have never occurred to me that the Vikings went east. Um, but a, a good way to think of this is the Vikings launched themselves in whatever direction their country is facing. So Sweden goes to the east, Denmark goes down toward Germany, and Norway goes England and the New World. So there's a Viking named Rurik who goes east and manages to set up an encampment on this lake called Staraya Ladoga.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:20:41

       Which is a launchpad to both the Volga River and the Dnieper River.

    4. LBLars Brownworth1:20:46

       Yeah, and these are major river systems in the east that take you all the way down to the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. Because the Vikings, you know, such seaborne people, they can sail up rivers. This allows them access to the caliphates in the east, uh, and to the Byzantine Empire, where they, being Vikings, immediately decide to attack the city. The Byzantines essentially set the Sea of Marmara outside of Constantinople on fire-

    5. LFLex Fridman1:21:16

       Mm-hmm

    6. LBLars Brownworth1:21:16

       ... and burn up all the Viking ships. So then the Vikings decide, "Okay, we can't, we can't take Constantinople, so we might as well join them if we can't beat them." And they end up as probably the most famous guard in Byzantine history, the Varangian Guard. Varangian means the men of the oath.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:21:35

       Mm-hmm.

    8. LBLars Brownworth1:21:35

       The men who swore, sworn an oath. This is kind of an analog of the Praetorian Guard in ancient Rome. Uh, they were famously loyal to the throne, but not necessarily to the person sitting on the throne. Um, they're major power players. The last of the great Byzantine emperors, Basil the Bulgar Slayer, um, forms them in the late 900s, uh, and they're, they're there with the history all the way up until the end of it. In fact, many of our famous Vikings, Harald Hardrada, uh, serve in the Varangian Guard. If you go to Constantinople today, inside the Church of the Hagia Sophia, on the second floor, there's a marble balcony, and on the railings, you can s- find Norse runes that are carved in by Varangian Guards who were bored during a particularly long sermon in a language they didn't understand, but they had to stand there.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:22:29

       So, so that's a fascinating thing, which is the Varangian Guard guarding the emperor of the East Roman Empire is made up initially for quite a bit of time of Vikings.

    10. LBLars Brownworth1:22:42

        Yeah. Yeah.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:22:44

        [laughs] I mean, I mean, like, uh, speaking of pragmatic, they just integrate into everything.

    12. LBLars Brownworth1:22:49

        Yeah.

    13. LFLex Fridman1:22:50

        Now, eventually, the Varangian Guard, um, became less and less Viking over time.

    14. LBLars Brownworth1:22:55

        Yeah.

    15. LFLex Fridman1:22:56

        But this whole, you fast-forwarded the story, we should mention that, uh, Staraya Ladoga in 753 AD is when it was established, opening the connection to the two rivers, and they began trading on the rivers and establishing more stable states along the rivers, including the Kievan Rus in 862, 882, where the Varangians, so it's the Swedish Vikings, they took Novgorod, they took Kiev, and they established the Kievan Rus there. And that is what led to the connection to the Byzantine Empire, where they started to, again, the Vikings went from being Vikings, they go through this process of trading and then establishing a state. Now they're doing treaties of different kinds, and they're also waging, uh, or trying to, to wage war, and going all the way to Constantinople and having a deep admiration for Constantinople, uh, enough to then begin to dream of sacking Constantinople.

    16. LBLars Brownworth1:24:03

        Yeah, I mean, once they're alerted to the, the wealth that's there, you know, Vikings being Vikings, they, uh, they show up.

    17. LFLex Fridman1:24:10

        Can you speak to the Greek fire? So this was 941 and 944 when they tried, and then Greek fire was this technology developed by the Romans.

    18. LBLars Brownworth1:24:23

        We don't really know what it was, Greek fire. It was a form of napalm, obviously. Uh, we have the ingredients, what made it up, naphtha and oil and things like that, but it was this very flammable material that, uh, would ignite on contact. So, uh, the Byzantines would fill it into clay pots and then throw the clay pots. As soon as it's exposed to oxygen, it would start burning. They also had siphons. They would carry, like, flamethrowers on their back, and they would just spray it at, uh, enemies. And the, the real devious thing about it is that if you launched this clay pot at a ship and the material, you know, pooled across the wood and then dripped off into the water, being oil, it would float on top of the water and continue to burn, so that if you were a sailor and you jumped off the ship because it's on fire and jumped into this oil patch that's on fire, you'd be coated with it, and you'd, you'd burn underneath the water.Uh, it was a horrible way to go. So this was a state secret, closely guarded secret. So closely guarded, it remains a mystery to this day of what exactly it was.

    19. LFLex Fridman1:25:30

        Which is incredible, right?

    20. LBLars Brownworth1:25:31

        Yeah. But it, in, in the, the nine forty-four attack on Constantinople, I mean, the Vikings are coming on their ships. They brought these ships from Sweden. I mean, that's crazy. They're in the Black Sea. They've sailed, and they kind of swarm at the Byzantines. The Byzantines launch a bunch of decrepit old ships toward them that have Greek fire on them, and, and that turns the tide. But the Byzantine emperor so appreciates the strength of these horrifying Vikings that he forms a bodyguard of them.

    21. LFLex Fridman1:26:03

        And hence we get just a few years later, again, tried to sack Constantinople and then join them.

    22. LBLars Brownworth1:26:09

        And join them, yep.

    23. LFLex Fridman1:26:10

        The, the Varangian Guards in nine eighty-eight with Basil II and Vladimir. They make Varangian Guard into an institution, and then the word of mouth spreads that this is a real career path for the, uh, for the Viking, is to join the Guard.

    24. LBLars Brownworth1:26:25

        Yeah, that's right. 'Cause not only do you, do you get paid very-- you get compensated very well, obviously, for defending the emperor, particularly if you do a good job, but you also have opportunities 'cause the emperor sends you, "Let's go attack, you know, this tribe," and you get to keep whatever you take. So there's tremendous amounts of war profiteering you can accomplish. And the other great river system, the Volga, that brings you to the, the great enemy of the Byzantines, the Abbasid Caliphate. Uh, and they had a lot of trading links with the north. Um, so you get things like fur and amber, um, lots of slaves from the, uh, from the Islamic world going up. You even have, in a Swedish coin hoard, there is a Buddha that's been found. I mean, [laughs] in Sweden.

    25. LFLex Fridman1:27:18

        Yeah. So these networks of trade, I mean, so how incredible are they with geography, right? You can transform your understanding of land from the geography of the land to the geography of the river networks, because the way they raid and then invade and then conquer England is through the rivers. It's an incredibly different way of seeing the world.

    26. LBLars Brownworth1:27:42

        Yeah. And if you look at the kingdoms the Vikings created, and I'm thinking particularly of, like, Eric Bloodaxe, uh, in, you know, in York. Th- he's controlling parts of Ireland, uh, parts of Scotland, Wales, England. Like, there's no-- That doesn't make sense unless, unless you're a Viking, you know? Th- he's-- That also added tremendously to the terror that the Vikings brought because, I mean, you should probably be a little careful with absolute statements here, but I can't think of a major European city that's not on a river.

    27. LFLex Fridman1:28:19

        Mm-hmm.

    28. LBLars Brownworth1:28:20

        Uh, which meant now with the Vikings, 'cause they could travel up, you know, rivers that's, uh, shallow rivers and then carry their boats whenever they would. Everything was on the table now, even-

    29. LFLex Fridman1:28:31

        Mm-hmm

    30. LBLars Brownworth1:28:31

        ... hundreds of miles inland-
12. 1:39:14 – 1:47:57

    Byzantine Empire

    1. LFLex Fridman1:39:14

       And the Byzantine Empire is an interesting one. I don't understand maybe, uh... And, and then you articulated this well, but it doesn't get like the love that it maybe deserves in history. I think the, the framing of the book you wrote, uh, on the topic is the reason we have Western civilization as we know, or European-based Western civilization, in a sense because you have-- they-- Let's see. Maybe you can articulate the different ways they, they connected the thread, but one of them is they preserved the knowledge when the, when the West was, uh, w-when, uh, Europe was going through a dark period. They protected Europe in all those ways.

    2. LBLars Brownworth1:39:52

       And then eventually they, they jumpstart the Renaissance because people are-- Constantinople is going to fall. It's inevitable. It's surrounded by hostile powers, and so they start migrating, uh, to Italy.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:40:04

       Mm-hmm.

    4. LBLars Brownworth1:40:05

       Um, just at the moment, Italy is receptive to its Greco-Roman past. Uh, Greek had died out in the, in the West, actually as early as, uh, the time of Justinian in the, uh, five hundreds, five sixties. They needed-- If you wanted to travel between the Eastern and Western parts of the empire, you needed, you know, guidebooks with helpful Latin or Greek phrases. Uh, so Latin had died out in the East and Greek had died out in the West by the fourteenth century, so you needed Byzantine teachers to be able to read Plato and Aristotle.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:40:41

       The book also emphasizes, and as we've mentioned, a kind of great man view of history, so celebrating people like Constantine, Justinian. Or Justinian, who would be your number one top emperor in the history of the East Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire?

    6. LBLars Brownworth1:40:58

       That's a good question. I mean, romantically, it's got to be Justinian. Uh, he dreams big. He dreams big. He doesn't always get there, but he dreams big.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:41:07

       He, he dreamed and tried to reconquer the Western Roman Empire. I mean, he was, uh, a lot of wars of conquest-

    8. LBLars Brownworth1:41:18

       Yeah

    9. LFLex Fridman1:41:18

       ... and built, uh-

    10. LBLars Brownworth1:41:19

        Built the Hagia Sophia. I mean, I think this is-- You know, we, we're interested in the Egyptians because they built the pyramids. We're not interested in the pyramids because they were built by the Egyptians, right? It's like, what is the great thing that your society has created? I think the Hagia Sophia is that for the Byzantine Empire. I mean, to go in it today is still the closest you can come to the fifth century.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:41:42

        Mm-hmm.

    12. LBLars Brownworth1:41:42

        You know, and peel back the imperial splendor of what it must have been like. You know, you can still see it, you can smell it, you can feel it like it's there.

    13. LFLex Fridman1:41:52

        There's actually a really nice video on YouTube of you going from, I think, fifty to sixty years ago. I don't know. That's [laughs]

    14. LBLars Brownworth1:42:00

        Seems like that. It does seem like that, yeah. We actually were kicked out.

    15. LFLex Fridman1:42:04

        Oh, what'd you do?

    16. LBLars Brownworth1:42:04

        My brother and I went-

    17. LFLex Fridman1:42:05

        What would you do? [laughs]

    18. LBLars Brownworth1:42:06

        Well, you know, they-- As you know, they're very strict, uh, as to guides. They want to promote the local economy, so you have to have a, a local guide. You can't go in there and look like you're being a tour guide if-- without a license. You have fifteen different organizations. So we went there early, the, the hour it opened, and we had the entire cathedral to ourselves, and so we went around, and my brother's holding this camera, and I'm, you know, goofily pointing things out. Uh, and one of the guards noticed us, and, you know, we had to remove ourselves from the building.

    19. LFLex Fridman1:42:41

        And so one of the things, I mean, Justinian was a, a critical person in this too. He overhauled the Roman law. I mean, the, the, the legal system, the law, first of all, the Roman Empire in general, the East Roman Empire propagated it. They believed in the law. They held on to the law.

    20. LBLars Brownworth1:43:00

        That's right.

    21. LFLex Fridman1:43:01

        And that's many of the legal ideas we take for granted is grounded in everything developed in the Roman Empire and stabilizing the Roman Empire. So they, they carried that flag forward.

    22. LBLars Brownworth1:43:12

        Yeah. I mean, outside of Great Britain, all European legal systems are based on, ultimately based on the Code of Justinian. And then weirdly, because of the French connections, the state of Louisiana, you actually, if you want to be a lawyer, you have to, you have to pass a different bar in Louisiana than in everywhere else in the US.

    23. LFLex Fridman1:43:32

        Uh, why do you think the, the Western Roman Empire and then the Eastern Roman Empire collapsed? Just looking at the grand picture of the history of the Roman Empire, it's twenty-two hundred years starting from the kingdom to the republic, to the imperial period, to the East Roman Empire period. Why do societies rise and fall?

    24. LBLars Brownworth1:43:55

        That's a really interesting question, and there are probably as many answers as there are different kingdoms. Um, but just the, the Roman Empire, my take on it is that the collapse really starts at the end of the reign of Basil II. So the year is 1025. Uh, Basil is the last monarch of the Macedonian dynasty, which had seen the empire become the most powerful, uh, state in the Mediterranean, much more powerful and advanced than its Muslim or Christian neighbors. Um, he had expanded the empire essentially as large as it was going to be after Justinian. It was wealthy, it was glittering, it was educated. I mean, courtiers had to memorize the works of Plato by heart. The emperor, one of his favorite activities was to go and he would s- begin a quote, and you would have to finish it, but you didn't know where he would begin or what he was thinking that day. Uh, this is kind of what amused him. So they're incredibly literate. I mean, inside Constantinople itself, the literacy rate was close to a hundred, which is-

    25. LFLex Fridman1:45:02

        Mm-hmm

    26. LBLars Brownworth1:45:03

        ... crazy. But when he died, the court, which had been this magnificent court, this bureaucracy which had been running the empire, and which is vital to the workings of the empire, they convinced themselves that they could run the empire, they didn't actually need the emperor. And so they specifically selected weak rulers, and then that led directly to the disastrous Battle of Manzikert in 1071, where the Turks enter the story, uh, defeat, destroy the Roman army under Romanos Diogenes, who's attempting to break free of the bure- bureaucratic constraints. And then Anatolia gets flooded by these nomadic warriors, and the Byzantine gets pushed out of them. So once they've lost the heartland, they've lost their source of troops, they've lost their source of taxation, they've so- lost their source of food. At this point, it's impossible to recover. And the Crusades are an attempt, the First Crusade anyway, is an attempt by the Eastern Emperor Alexius to recover Asia Minor. More than Jerusalem, he wants to recover A- Asia Minor, and obviously it doesn't work out. Uh, so I think at that point, it's on a trajectory that can only end in collapse. And I think that's-- you can see that same kind of thing in the Viking world that we talked about, this stultifying, bureaucratic, this inflexibility.

    27. LFLex Fridman1:46:29

        Combined with the growing threats from all directions.

    28. LBLars Brownworth1:46:32

        Growing threats in all directions. Maybe your own success is beginning to be a problem.

    29. LFLex Fridman1:46:36

        Mm-hmm.

    30. LBLars Brownworth1:46:37

        And you can't adapt as quickly. You're not as lean and mean anymore. There's too many traditions, too many-- too much-- the weight of history breaks you.
13. 1:47:57 – 2:03:19

    History and human nature

    1. LFLex Fridman1:47:58

       Uh, on the topic of, uh, great men in history, so where do you land on this great debate? How important are individual humans versus systems? So what do you think turns the tides of history? Can individuals, r- rulers or individual warriors or individual humans have the power to change the course of history?

    2. LBLars Brownworth1:48:20

       Yeah, that's the question, isn't it? I-- The short answer is I, I, I subscribe to the great man or great woman theory. Um, I think there's moments, I, I can't imagine the Protestant Reform- I don't think you can just swap out Martin Luther and have a Protestant Reformation. I don't think you can swap out Augustus and have the Roman Empire. I mean, there-- I don't think you can swap out Con, and so on and so forth. I think ultimately, these impersonal forces are insufficient for explaining because we are people, we are humans. We are, you know, we-- everything is kind of a relational thing. Uh, and, but at the same time, you know, the moment needs the man, but the man also needs the moment.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:49:07

       Some of it is timing, some of it is the sys- the, the, the environment, the system around it.

    4. LBLars Brownworth1:49:12

       Yeah.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:49:12

       But yeah, I've just seen so many incredible humans that, uh, persevere through things that would break basically everybody, and they, the, the power of the b- belief they have. We were talking offline about Napoleon. Here's a guy who was a student of all the great military generals of the past.Extremely competent in being able to micromanage every aspect of military affairs of a nation, but also extremely confident in his vision of the world and ability to conquer anyone. And you have the same thing with Genghis Khan. Th-this, this boy, they came from nothing. Like, everything was taken away. Uh, united all of Mongolia and then conquered most of the known world to them, including eventually China. And it's like, well, can you possibly have the gr- the great Mongol Empire without Genghis Khan?

    6. LBLars Brownworth1:50:24

       No.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:50:25

       Yeah.

    8. LBLars Brownworth1:50:26

       Yeah.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:50:26

       And it's, and the same, and we as Americans ask ourselves that question about the founders. I mean, George Washington, not to romanticize it, but to give away power symbolically is a s- is a really powerful statement, like we mentioned with Augustus. Th-there's, when somebody's given power, and s- in some sense, absolute power, what they do with that power can reverberate through generations, and that's in the hands of an individual.

    10. LBLars Brownworth1:50:57

        Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. It's well put. You know, Cincinnatus in ancient Rome, same thing.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:51:05

        What lessons from-- This is a big, ridiculous question.

    12. LBLars Brownworth1:51:08

        [laughs]

    13. LFLex Fridman1:51:09

        What lessons from-

    14. LBLars Brownworth1:51:10

        Have at it

    15. LFLex Fridman1:51:11

        ... all the things we've talked about, the exploration of the Vikings, what lessons do you learn from Vikings?

    16. LBLars Brownworth1:51:17

        Lessons, [laughs] lessons to learn from the Viking Age.

    17. LFLex Fridman1:51:20

        By the way, I should mention one thing. It's a very practical lesson, uh, that we didn't talk about th-that you taught me, is the, the Vikings were, like, groomed themselves.

    18. LBLars Brownworth1:51:34

        Oh, yeah. Yeah.

    19. LFLex Fridman1:51:34

        They were, like, clean.

    20. LBLars Brownworth1:51:35

        Yeah.

    21. LFLex Fridman1:51:35

        This is, uh, very surprising to me.

    22. LBLars Brownworth1:51:38

        Yeah.

    23. LFLex Fridman1:51:38

        That they, like, washed themselves, and then both the men and the women-

    24. LBLars Brownworth1:51:41

        Yeah

    25. LFLex Fridman1:51:41

        ... really took care of themselves.

    26. LBLars Brownworth1:51:43

        Yeah.

    27. LFLex Fridman1:51:43

        You don't often think about that.

    28. LBLars Brownworth1:51:44

        There was this whole... Like, the Vikings, everyone at this, everyone has this very clear picture of what a Viking looked like.

    29. LFLex Fridman1:51:51

        Mm-hmm.

    30. LBLars Brownworth1:51:51

        And also has no idea what a Viking looked like, somehow at the same time. Like, almost everything about them is wrong-

Episode duration: 2:03:23