Harald Fairhair used his many sons as local rulers in his name. This worked well as long as he was still alive, but when he died, many of his sons found it hard to accept that their brother Erik should be the king of them all. It didn’t help that Erik didn’t do a very good job as king—or that he had a tendency toward fratricide, which earned him the nickname Bloodaxe.

Harald Fairhair gets the credit for uniting Norway under one crown. According to the legend, he did so because a woman he fancied made this her condition for marrying him. Not because he was a ruthless and vain brute. Once Harald achieved his goal, he persecuted his opponents, raised taxes and got a haircut. Lucky for him, his nickname is based on the last of those activities.

Various European rulers started to send missionaries to Scandinavia already before the violent Viking raids really became a thing. But it was slow going in the first century or so. Even though a handful of Scandinavians did switch to Jesus, Christianity only took off when local kings started to put pressure on their subjects to be baptized.

Even today, almost a thousand years after the Scandinavians abandoned the old gods for Christianity, people are fascinated by the stories about the heroic and hammer-wielding (albeit slightly thick) Thor, his dad Odin—the one-eyed King of the gods—and Loki, Odin’s evil blood brother.

The pre-Christian religion in Scandinavia is largely shrouded in mystery—not least because of the Church’s best efforts to eradicate the memory of its predecessor. Nonetheless, thanks to some eyewitness accounts from horrified Christian missionaries, snippets from sagas and the work of modern-day archeologists, we still know a thing or two about Old Norse religious practices, ceremonies and sacrifices.

Even though the Vikings had a rich literary tradition, it was mostly oral. The sagas that have survived were written down after the Viking Age is conventionally considered to have ended and the Middle Ages begun. But the Vikings weren’t illiterate. They used their own unique alphabet—the runes—and they've left us plenty of runic inscriptions all over the place. Except in Iceland.

Most Viking Age Scandinavians weren’t really Vikings. Instead of gallivanting across the seas in search for gold and glory, they spent their lives eking out a meager existence at some isolated farm somewhere where the summers were too short and the winters too long.

This episode is dedicated to a closer look at their daily lives.

The Vikings who travelled the furthest away from home, reached Muslim lands around the Caspian Sea and in the Caucasus Mountains. There, they encountered men who didn’t wear pants, but rather caftans or tunics, so naturally the Vikings called the place Serkland—or “Gown Land”. Many a Scandinavian trader made a fortune selling furs and slaves in Serkland. Many others lost their lives fighting local armies.

Constantinople with its golden palaces, splendid churches and lively markets captured the Viking imagination like few other places. They simply called it the Great City, Miklagard. For centuries Scandinavians would go there in the hopes of making a fortune trading in slaves, furs and silk. Some also worked as imperial bodyguards, impressing and scaring the locals with their long hair and reputation for ruthlessness.

Vikings traded and raided along the great rivers (almost) connecting the Baltic and the Black Seas. They sold slaves, furs and other goods, and in return brought home enormous amounts of silver from Byzantium and Baghdad. Some Scandinavians settled along the route and set up a network of city states they called Gardariki, or “The Realm of Cities”.