NARRATOR: The year was 793. On a small island off the north coast of England, the monks of St. Cuthbert's were enjoying their quiet routine of prayer and study. One peaceful day in June, from across the sea, a band of strangers approached the holy shrine. They did not come to pray. The pagan invaders from the north grabbed everything of value: gold and silver chalices, silk vestments and altar cloths. And they slaughtered anyone who stood in their way. The rest they took as slaves. No one escaped their wrath. This is the classic image of the Vikings - brutal barbarians, skilled in murder and mayhem. But the truth about the Vikings is more complex - and more elusive. The Vikings were much more than mere marauders. They were highly skilled craftsmen and traders. Their ships were marvels of nautical engineering. And their lust for adventure knew no bounds. Over the course of several centuries, the Vikings would have a profound impact on Europe. They would push the boundaries of the western world, venturing across the Atlantic to America. In the east, they would help found the Russian empire. Today, scientists are digging deeper into the soil of Scandinavia, Ireland, North America, and the former Soviet Union - uncovering long-lost secrets of the Viking Age. When warriors were poets, and lands were won - not just by brute force - but with superior technology, and political cunning. Finally, we are discovering the truth about the Vikings.
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NARRATOR: 1200 years ago, small bands of men from an obscure land in the north took the western world by storm. They came out of nowhere. And they seemed invincible. Starting in the late 8th century, Viking ships struck all along the coasts of Europe and the British Isles. Their violence was legendary.
THOMAS McGOVERN: The Vikings have had a really negative public image. They're the people who come around and burn down your house and run off with your daughter and wife, and probably your son, too. And this image has lasted consistently for the last 1,000 years, because it was established by the people who were literate, by the people who created history. And they were precisely the people who were the first targets of the Viking raids. So the Vikings get bad press because they had this tendency to burn down the newspaper office.
NARRATOR: Dozens of historical documents from the Middle Ages provide gruesome details of Viking attacks. And paintings highlight the cruelty of the northerners. More recent depictions of the Vikings, like this 1958 Hollywood film, starring Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis, romanticize the Viking myth. Rather than deranged criminals, they're depicted as brave and proud warriors. But this is no closer to the truth than the monks' biased accounts. Unfortunately, there is virtually nothing in writing from the people who knew the Vikings most intimately - themselves.
WILLIAM FITZHUGH: Well, the Vikings were not great writers, not great literary people. They were great storytellers. Their life was in their oral tradition. They had a great literary tradition, in a sense, but it was not a written tradition.
NARRATOR: The Vikings did have a form of writing, called Runes. Examples can be found throughout Scandinavia, especially in Sweden, carved into large monuments, or Rune stones.
1ST HISTORIC VOICE: Gervi and Gulla erected this stone for Anund, their father. He died eastwards with Ingvar.
2ND HISTORIC VOICE: Alve let this stone be erected for Arnfast, his son. He went east, to the land of the Rus. They fared like men far after gold, and in the east gave the eagle food.
1st HISTORIC VOICE: Andvatt and Gulev and Gunnar and Horse and Rolev let this stone be erected after Tord, their father. Fot carved the Runes.
WILLIAM FITZHUGH: A Rune stone is a document left by Scandinavians in Runes. It's written in an alphabet that is derived probably from Germanic scripts and things. But it - mostly they're memorial stones; they say, you know, "So- and-so - This stone commemorates so-and-so, my wife, who did this." It's their - they're not statements of, for the most past, history.
NARRATOR: While the deeds of Viking heroes were recorded on Rune stones, their bodies were laid to rest in cemeteries, sometimes marked by stone memorials in the form of Viking ships. Little else remains standing from the days of the Vikings. Most of the details of their life lie buried, hidden beneath the soil. The search for clues begins in the Viking homelands: The Scandinavian countries of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. On an island in Lake Mälaren, west of Stockholm, are the remains of Birka. Once a thriving trading center, today Viking Birka is virtually invisible, unless you're an archeologist. Among the researchers struggling to recover the ancient remnants of the Viking Age is Andrew Jones.
ANDREW JONES: One of the reasons why we have a rather romantic view of the Vikings, fearful wolves from the sea, is that there are very few hard facts about them. The buildings were made of wood and turf, which have either been burnt down or rotted away. But today modern archeologists have a vast range of scientific techniques to choose from, which will help give more detail about life in the past.
NARRATOR: An important tool in the investigation is ground-penetrating radar, which detects subtle variations in soil structure. The read-out can help locate underground streets and buildings. Large drills bring up core samples from throughout the site. Microscopic analysis of tiny charcoal fragments reveals the kinds of trees used to build Viking homes and workshops. But the Birka team also relies on traditional methods, carefully digging and recording every discovery. And painstakingly sifting the soil.
ANDREW JONES: Sieving is one of the really important activities that goes on on archeological excavations. It is impossible to sieve the whole site, so people take samples from selected areas, areas like house floors, post hole fills, maybe a small amount of soil from most pits will be sieved, but not everything. And here we have it going on, and we find all sorts of bits and pieces. There are some fragments of charcoal here, and this is even a bit of iron. See, it leaps up. It's definitely magnetic.
NARRATOR: Among the many finds sifted from Birka's soil were hundreds of fragments of ancient ceramic casting molds, which shaped beautiful jewelry like this silver pendant of a Viking woman. Tools and metal fragments uncovered in workshops help scientists reconstruct the fine skill and artistry of the Viking jeweler. Out of metal and glass, the craftsmen created beads and brooches, necklaces and rings. Often, the smallest objects left behind prove to be the most valuable to the archeologists.
ANDREW JONES: These little glass beads are a really good example of special archeological detective work. We know that they were only in fashion in the 8th century. They are called wasp beads because they are made of black and yellow glass. And it is often small objects like these, everyday objects, not big things like gold and silver objects, that are most useful to archeologists, because objects like beads and these bone combs change dramatically in shape through time. Early Viking Age combs are very different in form from middle and later ones. And they are of course used and thrown away. So all the finds associated with objects of one particular period can be dated by the presence of small objects of this kind.
NARRATOR: Clues leading to dates are crucial, because sites like Birka were occupied for hundreds of years, leaving layer upon layer of debris. To keep track of this complicated mass of information, the team uses infra-red surveying equipment to plot every feature of Birka in three dimensions. Individual objects are given bar-codes and fed into a giant database. When all the clues are put together, Viking Age Birka comes to life. Houses and workshops rise from the soil, just where they stood 1,000 years ago. This was just one block of a fortified town, covering at least 17 acres. The individual features are then transferred to a one-to-30 scale model of Viking Birka. Located on a lake flowing into the Baltic Sea, the town quickly grew into one of the busiest and richest ports in all of Scandinavia. With the help of computer effects, Birka is filled once again with its Viking inhabitants. More than 600 people lived in homes clustered along the lake shore. Most of the buildings were constructed with wooden frames, filled in with wattle and daub. Small saplings were woven together and plastered with straw, mud and clay. When fires broke out, the clay was transformed into solid ceramic blocks, still bearing the imprints of wood and grass. The evidence reveals a town crowded with traders and craftsmen. But beyond its busy borders, most Scandinavians lived on scattered farms, living off the land as best they could, and raising cattle and sheep. Some Viking farmers reaped more than others. A few rose to power, and became chieftains.
THOMAS McGOVERN: The power and authority of chieftains was very much dependent upon their ability to produce for their followers, that if you gave good parties with lots of beer, lots of food, lots of meat, lots of good things to eat, you were a good chieftain. If you rewarded loyalty with gold and you punished treachery with iron, you know, you didn't suffer people gladly to do you harm, then you were a good chieftain because you could defend your followers.
NARRATOR: In the early years of the Viking Age, the population of Scandinavia was on the rise, and so was the number of chieftains. The struggle for power intensified, with more and more violent conflicts. At the same time, contact was increasing with the lands beyond the horizon. In a few bustling ports, the Vikings brushed shoulders with merchants from all over the known world, including fur and silver traders from Russia and beyond. They heard stories of altars laden with silver and gold, in Christian churches and monasteries across Europe.
THOMAS McGOVERN: This is this period of tremendous fluidity. There's money coming in from the outside, mercenaries' wages, profits from trading which pre-date the Viking period. So the money is coming in, it's somewhat destabilized the society. Now lots of people can try to become chieftains, lots of these freemen want to have a shot at being at least a petty chief, lots of petty chiefs want to have a shot at being kings, and of course the kings would like to rule everybody. So there's a lot of conflict within society, a lot of sharp elbows are being felt.
NARRATOR: At the end of the 8th century, ambitious chieftains saw an opportunity they couldn't resist. They gathered their followers - young men ready for adventure - and set out on ships to seize whatever wealth they could - by force.
RICHARD HALL: The Vikings came raiding for one very simple reason: Gold and silver. They wanted wealth, they wanted loot, which would enhance their status back home, and make them looked up to as wealthy people in the community. And they realized through their contacts in terms of trade that there was gold and silver to be had, and they also realized that there were undefended monasteries, nice places, easily attacked from the sea, where they could bring in their boats, they could land, they could raid the monastery, they could grab the silver altar vessels or the posh book covers. They could take them away on their ships before any local king or lord could gather an army to fight them.
NARRATOR: Word quickly spread of the raids. Throughout Scandinavia, more and more ships set out. Soon, Vikings were striking the coastlines of England, Ireland, the Netherlands, and France. A monk who witnessed the attack of his monastery at Noirmoutier in France left this fearful account:
HISTORIC VOICE: The number of ships grows. Vikings in an endless stream, never ceasing, indeed growing. Everywhere the Christians are victims of massacres, pillaging and plundering. The Vikings conquer all in their path, and no one resists them.
NARRATOR: The brutality of the Vikings shocked the Christian monks. But were they any more violent than other Europeans of the time?
WILLIAM FITZHUGH: I think they were relatively ruthless, but you know, this was a ruthless age, and there were battles between rival princes who were vying for kingship and control of local regions and so forth. And so the Vikings were just another crowd, but they were a crowd that was identifiable because they were non-Christian, and because they came with no compunction about killing churchmen or women or children or whatever.
NARRATOR: The monks explained the Viking plague as the act of a vengeful God, but there were several reasons the raids were so destructive. The Vikings' battle techniques were described by a contemporary Arabic writer, who witnessed them in action.
HISTORIC VOICE: If a group of them is challenged to battle they will all go. They don't separate, but stand together man to man against their enemies until victory has been achieved.
NARRATOR: Their deadliest weapon was a double-edged sword: almost a yard long, light in weight, but extremely sharp. A warrior could also carry a protective shield or a battle-axe. But among all their weapons, there was one that transformed the Vikings into an incredibly effective invading force. The Viking longship. Sleek and steady, quick and easily maneuvered, the longship was a technological tour-de-force - and leagues beyond anything Europe had seen before. The classic longship had a simple design, but was built with great sophistication. How exactly was it constructed? Archeologists have been unlocking the secrets of Viking ships for almost a century, thanks in large part to the ancient pagan practice of burying entire vessels intact. Several were unearthed from Norwegian burial mounds in the early 1900s. These ships were buried in the 9th century AD. One served as a tomb for a wealthy woman - possibly a queen - and her slave girl. Dozens of offerings - including horses and an intricately carved wagon - were buried with them, for their journey to Viking heaven, called Valhalla.