In this episode we traverse a lot of Viking ground. Dr. Jesch is a scholar who has written on several aspects of the Viking Age over a long and distinguished career, from women and the Nordic diaspora to poetry and the runes. We talk to her about the influence Vikings had on the various areas where they traveled and settled, the difference between Skaldic and Eddic poetry, and what a Viking Age poetry performance looked and sounded like. We discuss the transition from oral to written culture and the amazing ability to commit things to memory that the Vikings possessed.

If you’d rather watch the video version of the interview, you can find it here.

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In this episode we sat down with Dr. Davide Zori, archaeologist and historian at Baylor University who specializes in Vikings, to discuss some of Davide's most exciting finds at a farmstead in Iceland, including a grave which may be that of Egil Skallagrimsson, a famous Viking whose story is recounted in Egil’s saga Skallagrimssonar.

Read the saga in English translation here.

Davide worked the site for several years with Dr. Jesse Byock of UCLA and the University of Iceland. Their work is part of the Mosfell Archaeological Project.

We also talked with Jesse on another episode about the site and also Old Norse language. Check it out!