It’s hard being a teenager. Coping with raging hormones, insecurities, and acne while trying to figure out just who you are and where you fit in society is no joke. It’s not really the best time to try and make important choices about your future. So, just imagine what being a teenager was like without the comfortable, modern amenities that we have today. Let’s face it, in Medieval Europe, you were lucky to have even reached your teens when childhood mortality was so high. Let’s travel back in time now to see what it was like for the youth of the Middle Ages, and why teenagers were given away to strangers and freshers had their teeth forcibly removed.

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Once again we delve into the reasons why you probably wouldn’t live very long in the Middle Ages. For one reason or another death seemed to be waiting around every corner. Having dealt with war, poison, and squalor in our last video we now move on to religion. Really, things just don’t get any better.

And with one year in particular being described as the worst year EVER to be alive, we can’t see any reason why you would want to even go there.

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Vikings, eh? Bloodthirsty, vicious barbarians, well-known for their willingness to loot monasteries and murder their enemies in a variety of gruesome ways.

Including perhaps the grisliest end you could imagine – the blóðǫrn, or more commonly known as the ‘blood eagle’. Reserved only for the worst of the worst in Viking eyes – people who had lost their honour through acts of cowardice or who had killed one of their family members – it was a horrifying torture method that struck fear into the hearts of anybody listening to the Orkneyinga Saga, or the Tale of Ragnar’s Sons, or any of the other tales told around the fire on a cold winter’s evening. While this would make for a delightfully grim way to confirm that Vikings were all bearded terrifying mercenaries who’d kill you as soon as look at you, as always with history, the truth is far more nuanced and that’s what we want to explore in this video.

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14th-century London was tiny when compared to today's modern cities, but much larger than any other English town at that time. In 1300, the population stood at approximately 80,000, all crammed into one square mile. It was noisy, pretty stinky, packed with people, and not the safest place to be when you consider that getting mauled by a pig was a thing. Let’s travel back in time now to the London of the Middle Ages and experience the sights, sounds, and smells of life there in the heart of the city. Welcome to Medieval Madness.

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It’s that time of year again when we want to hear tales about ghosts, demons and mythical monsters. And what better era was there for stories of these supernatural and fabulous occurrences than the Middle Ages? A period in European history that was thick with superstition and when religion commanded everything. A time when the Christian Church decided to place All Souls Day right in the middle of what Celtic Pagans called Samhain. The point of the year where summer light turns into winter darkness and life becomes death. Welcome to Medieval Madness!

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What did Vikings eat? Let's find out! A smoky longhouse, the sound of a fire crackling and fat sizzling off a haunch of venison, mugs of mead being quaffed and sagas being recounted.

Every day was a feast day in the world of the average Viking, right? Well, maybe not so much. The typical diet of a Viking was seasonal, varied, and apparently really quite indulgent at times. Welcome to the Viking Vault.

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Most of us have heard the fairy story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. What many of us don’t know is that the legend is based in truth. There is very little evidence as to what actually happened in the German town of Hamelin during the 13th century. In 1384 a short and sinister entry appeared in one of the town’s chronicles. It stated – “It is 100 years since our children left”, but what does this mean?

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Just suppose you could travel back in time and experience life as a Medieval. Maybe go back to the Middle Ages and live there, in England as an adult, (now why the hell would I want to do that, I hear you shouting, but just bear with me, it’s quite interesting). How would you survive?

What would you eat, or wear? Where would you work? How would you avoid getting into trouble with the Church and the authorities? 

Let’s journey back through time now and experience the past through the eyes of a Medieval time traveller. Welcome to Medieval Madness.

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Having Viking DNA doesn’t mean that you should automatically construct a longhouse and start planning your ship burial – although you’re absolutely free to do that if that’s what your seafaring heart desires. And actually, having Viking DNA doesn’t make you all that special – about 6% of Britons are likely to have Scandinavian DNA according to a study published in 2020, and about 10% of Swedes can claim Viking ancestry. 

To detract even further from your dream to claim that you’re a descendant of Erik the Red, some historians argue that being a Viking was actually more of a lifestyle or job than a nationality. So, while it’s likely that most Vikings would have been Scandinavian, not all Scandinavians were Vikings. As a result, even if you have got Scandinavian DNA running in your bones, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to have the urge to travel, raid monasteries, or quaff vast quantities of mead. Welcome to the Viking vault.

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For thousands of years, people have placed curses on their enemies and wished them misfortune. Many of these hexes have involved pleas to the forces of the occult with prayers and rituals. 

Sometimes it might be an actual object or a place that is cursed, like a tomb. Many Medieval tales involve warnings about destruction and deaths that appear to be linked to curses. Let us travel back in time now to the Middle Ages and hear about some of these mysterious tales of a biological bomb, the downfall of a dynasty, and why a bank in Tokyo opened an account in the name of a samurai warrior who had been dead for 1,000 years.

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