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Uncovering Viking Burials: Ancient Aliens or Human Rituals?
Episode 76 • 10th December 2024 • Digging Up Ancient Aliens • Fredrik Trusohamn
00:00:00 01:03:15

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This episode delves into the Viking Age burial practices and examines claims made by the Ancient Astronaut crowd that suggest these customs are evidence of alien interference. Together with Professor Howard Williams, known as Archeodeath online, we explore the complexities of Norse burials and the significance of ship burials, which were often associated with high-status individuals. The discussion reveals that Viking funerals were not merely about sending the dead off into the stars, but rather about creating memorable communal experiences that reflected social status and identity. We also challenge the misconceptions perpetuated by popular media, highlighting the importance of grounding our understanding in archaeological evidence rather than sensational theories. Tune in as we unpack the rich tapestry of Viking mortuary practices and the meanings behind their rituals, offering a clearer perspective on the past.

Find Professor Williams at these places:

Blog: https://howardwilliamsblog.wordpress.com/about/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@archaeodeath

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@archaeodeath

Order William's latest book here: https://www.sidestone.com/books/cremation-in-the-early-middle-ages

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The intro music is Lily of the woods by Sandra Marteleur, and the outro is named “Folie hatt” by Trallskruv. Visit Trallskruvs website here

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Transcripts

Frederick:

You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.

Frederick:

Welcome to Digging Up Ancient Aliens.

Frederick:

This is the podcast where we examine alternative history and ancient alien narratives in popular media.

Frederick:

Do these claims hold water to an archaeologist or are there better explanations out there?

Frederick:

We are now on episode 76 and I am Frederick, your guide into the world of pseudo archaeology.

Frederick:

This time we are closing out the Ancient Aliens Viking special by discussing the Viking Age and its burial practices.

Frederick:

As you might suspect, the ancient astronaut crowd suggests that the practices we see in the Norse burial ritual are evidence of alien interference.

Frederick:

But how is it really to sort this out, I have a very special guest with me, Professor Howard William, also known as Archdeath Online.

Professor Howard Williams:

Together we will look at these Norse.

Frederick:

Burial practices and see what they can actually tell us about our past.

Frederick:

And I want to thank all of you who support the show.

Frederick:

You're really helping out producing this content and I am humbled and grateful for your support.

Frederick:

If you want to help out, I'll tell you how to do that and even get some bonus content at the end of this episode.

Frederick:

And you can find additional sources and links at the website Diggingup Ancient.

Frederick:

And there you find contact info if you notice any mistakes or have any suggestions.

Frederick:

And if you like the podcast, I would really appreciate if you left one of those fancy five star reviews that I heard so much about.

Frederick:

It really helps the show to be discovered.

Frederick:

, if you're attending the TAG:

Frederick:

And I will be on stage at:

Frederick:

choose during the conference,:

Frederick:

Or if you want to catch the full session, it starts at 2pm now that we have finished our preparation, let's dig into the episode.

Professor Howard Williams:

So I want to welcome a very special guest to the episode.

Professor Howard Williams:

He has been here before in a way due to me being on his live TikTok live for a couple of months ago now.

Professor Howard Williams:

But I want to present Dr.

Professor Howard Williams:

Howard Williams.

Professor Howard Williams:

Welcome to the show.

Howard:

Hi, Frederick.

Howard:

It's great to be here.

Frederick:

So, for those who haven't encountered you.

Professor Howard Williams:

Before, could you maybe give a bit the cliff notes of your academic credentials and your different projects that you're proud of?

Howard:

Yes.

Howard:

So my job is professor of Archaeology at the University of Chester and I teach and research both early Medieval archaeology and burial archaeology as my two sort of primary fields of expertise.

Howard:

And I've done various fieldwork projects and death based projects, not only on those areas of investigation of the human past, but also I think a lot and try to explain a lot via social media about the misuses and different popular culture references of that data in our world.

Howard:

So I seem to spend as much time nowadays doing that side of things as the research on the early Middle Ages.

Howard:

But I've got a book just coming out co edited with Femke Lipock of who did a doctoral research at Leiden University.

Howard:

On coming out next month it with Sidestone Press called Cremation in the Early Middle Ages.

Howard:

Sort of looking it's an edited collection synthesizing all the different new work being done on cremation practices from all the way from Finland and Sweden, Norway and Denmark, Poland, Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium and Ireland and Britain.

Howard:

So bringing together all the evidence from Northwest Europe and the islands to tell us what we know now about burning the dead, which is obviously the early Middle Ages, was the last time those practices were widespread before the modern era and the return of cremation as a deathway of the late 19th century in Europe and sort of debunking a lot of the myths and misconceptions about cremation practices.

Howard:

So that's my next project that's imminently out.

Howard:

I've been working on it for five years and it's an edited collection by interview, so it's a different style of edited collection.

Howard:

So hopefully it's more conversational and hopefully more readable.

Howard:

So yeah, I'm working on those kind of fields of what we can learn about the early Middle Ages and death rituals as well as the uses and misuses in the present day.

Professor Howard Williams:

Sounds amazing.

Professor Howard Williams:

Sounds like a really interesting anthology.

Professor Howard Williams:

Is it open for pre order or will it be released on the set date?

Howard:

We've got a book launch on the evening of the 12th of December and you can pre order it already from the Sidestone website and it's going to be I think the way they've done it is silver open access, so I think you can read it on their website for free from the get go but you can order it in print.

Howard:

But after a year they're going to make it fully downloadable as a PDF.

Howard:

So we managed to get some funding to give it that open access but not the full gold because that was outside of our budget.

Howard:

But we're quite pleased that we were able to make it reasonably accessible.

Howard:

But you can pre order it if you want to get a physical copy.

Professor Howard Williams:

Yeah, I will put a link in the show notes for those who are interested in that.

Professor Howard Williams:

But Howard, have you encountered ancient aliens previously?

Howard:

I have to confess that I've been long familiar with it, but I've never had the mental and morale fortitude, the fortitude to actually watch it until you generously shared a clip of it with me.

Howard:

So I, like many, I have absolute admiration.

Howard:

I've looked from the sidelines on at those that fight the good fight debunking this stuff.

Howard:

But I must admit I've never looked at dead in the eye and tried to actually process my, you know, so, you know, having watched this clip that you shared with me, I, I must admit, you know, I feel I've aged.

Howard:

I feel the brain cells shedded, but I, I feel I'm still just about within reach of sanity to be able to articulate some thoughts.

Howard:

But my word, it's, it's, it's.

Howard:

They pack in a lot of, a lot of stuff into the.

Professor Howard Williams:

Yeah, and you, you even only got the 8 minute version of Ancient Alien.

Professor Howard Williams:

So.

Howard:

Yeah, yeah.

Howard:

I mean, yes, yes, I can be sweary.

Howard:

But I'll just say it was interesting in a very British way.

Howard:

That's my polite British way of saying it was an eye opening experience is the other way.

Professor Howard Williams:

Yeah, it's definitely an eye opener.

Professor Howard Williams:

And I really think more archaeologists should at least watch one episode, I think.

Howard:

So we do need to understand how widespread these.

Howard:

And it does explain a lot of the questions I get on social media where I'm learning as I go finding out various forms of misinformation.

Howard:

And sometimes I'm ready there with a, with an answer because I know where it's coming from.

Howard:

I know where they've got it from the TV show Vikings or a Disney film or whatever it may be.

Howard:

But sometimes you get things.

Howard:

I go, where what?

Howard:

And yeah, it's probably from here, you.

Professor Howard Williams:

Know, not impossible because yeah, they play very fast and loose with their sources and their claims about myth.

Professor Howard Williams:

But how about we start to break down.

Professor Howard Williams:

So the section you watch is about mainly Viking burial practice and how they are connected to ancient aliens because reasons ships flying and fire but they make a claim here that one of the first ships found or earliest finds if I remember correctly.

Professor Howard Williams:

Is that use now I lost my English.

Howard:

Yeah, that's fine.

Professor Howard Williams:

Could you maybe tell us a little bit about the ship burials and the ships we've found?

Howard:

at was at Snape in Suffolk in:

Howard:

And they assumed, based on the rich, you know, the people had 100 years of familiarity in Britain with Norse literature and the late 18th and early 19th century enthusiasm across Europe for stories of Norsemen.

Howard:

And there was, when they found a ship burial, they assumed it was, it was Viking, but it was actually turned out to be a late 6th, early 7th century ship burial.

Howard:

e now most famously know from:

Howard:

And then from:

Howard:

So yes, since the very end of the 19th century, in the early 20th century, we found archeological evidence that matches up with some of those saga accounts, that one of the ways in which Viking period people had a high status send off could be buried in a full sea going sized longship.

Howard:

But through the 20th century and into the modern, modern excavations, we're finding that ships are deployed in so many different ways, both before the Viking age and up to the, and in the Viking age, they're burning on land in ships, they're, they're burning, they're burying people in ships and they're representing ships and they're.

Howard:

And as they do show in the program, to be fair to them, they do allude to the fact that they're also stone settings in ship shapes.

Howard:

And we have that tradition from obviously much earlier in the Bronze Age of Scandinavia.

Howard:

But we also have examples that seem to be at least part of funerary and perhaps ceremonial in the Viking age too.

Howard:

So ship symbolism and actual ships as vessels for cremation and inhumation are a widespread practice by the Viking age.

Howard:

But as with so much about Viking period mortuary practice, there's so much variety.

Howard:

I mean, in fact, many scholars in the last two decades have made a point of the fact of saying there isn't a Viking way of death.

Howard:

There are so many, so much variety, it looks as if they're going out of their way to experiment with every funeral to do something different.

Howard:

And I think that's really important as a critical point of all these TV shows.

Howard:

lywood films the Vikings from:

Howard:

And with the TV show Vikings, we tend to say there's a Viking way of death.

Howard:

But actually, if one thing is Accurate about the TV show Vikings.

Howard:

As with our archeological record, every funeral is different.

Professor Howard Williams:

So, yeah, and that's a struggle often when people asking how did they bury people in the Viking age?

Professor Howard Williams:

Because it will depend on the region, what year it is and what context.

Professor Howard Williams:

But what other type of burials do we see during the Viking age most typically?

Howard:

I mean, I think these really rich, high status ship burials were surely made to be exceptional.

Howard:

And you know, once in a generation or once in a.

Howard:

They were intended to be memorable.

Howard:

And for that story of that elaborate funeral to go out with the various audiences that attended to be told as a story in itself.

Howard:

And this is an idea, for example, Professor Neil Price and also Professor Anders Andren have addressed in different, with different data sets, this idea that the funerals are almost like trying to create their own mythological narratives, honoring the dead, but also telling stories of who the community were and who the kingdom were and who they see themselves, where they come from and where they're going.

Howard:

So it's almost these funerals or theaters of expression of communal identity and elite power.

Howard:

And so in that sense, they are.

Howard:

They're kind of myth making as they go.

Howard:

And I think that's really a helpful way of thinking about these really elaborate, theatrical funerals in which ships are just one of the elements.

Howard:

And of course, on the Baltic island of Gotland, we have another form of using ships is to a part of picture stones.

Howard:

The Bildstein, where we have ships are such a prominent part of the symbolism of Viking age monoliths.

Howard:

So representing ships is also an important variant that you know, within the many ways in which ships appear in death ritual.

Professor Howard Williams:

Yeah, and now I'm not sure if I got a little flashback to ship burials and myth creating as far as I remember.

Professor Howard Williams:

Now this can be outdated or wrong, but as far as I remember, the whole ship wasn't buried at once.

Professor Howard Williams:

As far as I was teached at the university, part of the ships was open as a stage almost for a period of time and then buried.

Professor Howard Williams:

So it seems as they put on, as you describe, a staging play or something similar.

Howard:

I've heard different.

Howard:

And there is a debate about how long the ship would have been kept open.

Howard:

And I know that different scholars have refined that argument, but I think even if it's for a few days only, rather than a whole season, like it was argued, we've certainly got this point that you're almost building this mound of turf.

Howard:

So the ship is being installed, a wagon is being drawn in, animals are being slaughtered.

Howard:

It's a bloody, violent ritual.

Howard:

That may have actually been quite paced.

Howard:

Not a slow, somber affair like we think of a modern royal funeral or a modern state funeral of a president.

Howard:

Actually a really messy.

Howard:

Almost like lots of actors, there were a few ritual specialists that we can imagine would have had roles leading and guiding.

Howard:

And we have the account of Ahmad IBN Fadlan talking about an angel of death, an old woman who performed various particular sacrifices.

Howard:

But I think also the impression I get is a lot of rushed, messy violence and chaotic scenes.

Howard:

But the provision of grave goods, of personal items, of feasting, gear, of weapons and or treasures of forms, and also tents and all the things you would need for installing your life in this mound.

Howard:

And I don't want to go to the jump of assuming this is for a journey to the next world, which is what everyone assumes, but installing them with all the things they would need for a lavish life.

Howard:

But this may have been in itself a very staged performance over multiple days with feasting and drinking amongst a large number of gathered people.

Howard:

And then, yes, as you say, half the mound would have been constructed of turf and then the rest would have been filled in.

Howard:

And all that would have been about labor of hard work as well as hard celebrations.

Howard:

Because funerals in different cultures have different tempos and emotions.

Howard:

And from what we see of these elite funerals, they would have had somber, sad, and perhaps even fear inducing moments.

Howard:

But they would have also been, you know, there would have been a lot of jubilance at times as well.

Howard:

And I think there would have been crescendos of celebration as well as, you know, grim acts of violence.

Howard:

So I think it's very difficult for us to imagine, you know, a funeral quite like that, even though we have witnessed, at least in the UK of late, big state funerals of Queen Elizabeth ii.

Howard:

Nothing quite as chaotic as a Viking chieftain's funeral or a queen's funeral.

Howard:

But yeah, they would have been.

Howard:

I think the religious ideas would have been central, but I think there would have been a lot of this was about power and about status and about creating a memorable moment for a large number of people to remember the power and influence of the kin.

Howard:

Because all this is about the living, not the dead.

Howard:

You know, whatever they think the dead are doing and where they're going.

Howard:

This is really about showing off the power and status of the survivors and their claims to land, resources, alliances.

Howard:

Because, you know, these are troubled times when a leader dies or a member of a leading family dies, where the rest of the community has to reorientate themselves.

Howard:

So it would have been A very tense time where if you can put on a good show at a funeral, maybe it helps secure your legacy and your prestige and your claims to inheritance.

Professor Howard Williams:

Yeah, and show the power and wealth of the family.

Professor Howard Williams:

As we see with the runestones that pops up across Sweden and other places, it's not really for the person who died, it's more a power symbol for those who are living disguised as a memorial in these, more or less.

Professor Howard Williams:

But how differ, how much would the differ be between a middle class burial and one of these wealthy burials?

Professor Howard Williams:

Do we see any typical patterns in the lower classes or are they also aiming to represent some sort of large ship burial?

Howard:

But in that case, that's a really good question.

Howard:

So much of our conversation focuses on these actually exceptional burials in terms of wealth and range of symbols.

Howard:

And as I said, these were always probably the intended to be exceptions.

Howard:

And I think while there is a gradation of wealth and there are poorer versions of the same thing, there were smaller vessels of what would be equivalent to nowadays a rowing boat or a small coastal vessel interred, three, four meter vessels, you know, sort of more modest versions of the same symbolism.

Howard:

There are also more humble graves, cremations and inhumations where a few grave goods, a few artifacts are being associated.

Howard:

And also when in the rare cases where archaeology has the preservation quality to see it, there are just humble graves, simple cremations with perhaps one burnt artifact, and an inhumation grave with nothing.

Howard:

And we can think, well, some of those might be slaves or might be just people who, in circumstances where the living wanted to keep hold of all the objects, as well as local and regional variations in what was done with the artifacts.

Howard:

So I suspect there's a lot of messiness and variation to give another example for listeners.

Howard:

People talk about the Viking world as a warrior society and they point to the exceptional chamber graves of 10th century Birke as an example of the warrior society.

Howard:

But you know, if you literally, if you, if you're one of those archeologists, uncritically accepts those weapon burials as representing a warrior society, you still have to contend with the fact there are very few warriors banging around.

Howard:

Because if you took the whole duration of that site of 200 plus years and there's only sort of, there's under 100, I think weapon burial has been excavated there.

Howard:

So unless you, if you literally take that as an evidence of Viking society, it's probably one of those peaceful periods in history.

Howard:

And I'm not suggesting that, I'm saying that, I'm just saying that whoever's getting these objects can't be just because that's how they.

Howard:

That's their status in life.

Howard:

There must be a whole complex set of choices about which objects are going in the grave, which ones are going to get inherited by, you know, the different sides of the family.

Howard:

And we don't have access to all those choices.

Howard:

So it may be actually quite exceptional circumstances, not simply high status people, but unusual circumstances when so much gets invested in a funeral.

Howard:

So, yeah, most graves are much poorer, much, much more humble.

Howard:

But I think often because they're choosing to do other things with the objects, you know, they need them to be in circulation, to give them out again to the family or to retainers and to inherit them down the generations.

Howard:

And that's certainly what happens in the later Viking age when Christianity takes.

Howard:

People didn't stop investing objects and in their funerals, but they were simply not burying them with the dead, but they were circulating them back again into the communities.

Howard:

Suddenly society didn't become peaceful because Christianity arrived.

Howard:

We just stopped having weapon graves and other objects of martial gear in the graves because of changing traditions of where you put the objects.

Professor Howard Williams:

Yeah, of course.

Professor Howard Williams:

And I think that's often lost in these discussions since we tend to focus on those more fancy graves than the more humble ones because, well, swords and shields and power is more attractive to people.

Professor Howard Williams:

I think the main point that the ancient alien people want to make here is that the Vikings buried people in boats because it was sort of a symbolism of spaceships, because the Vikings would not have words for spaceships.

Professor Howard Williams:

But how is it with celestial journeys and that imagery in the Viking society?

Howard:

Do you know, honestly, this shows, as an academic, this shows my disconnect from popular culture because for me, there's nothing in a boat burial that speaks of celestial journeying.

Howard:

Indeed, if you ground yourself, even in the most romantic, old fashioned literary perspective, this is about journeying over land on our world, into another realm, not up into the stars.

Howard:

In fact, I really don't know where this literary trope originates.

Howard:

on a John Preston novel from:

Howard:

re the space race, before the:

Howard:

And I thought, that's weird.

Howard:

Who on Earth?

Howard:

And he's reading Flash Gordon.

Howard:

I think that's so unusual.

Howard:

I would have never thought of the mound one Ship bearer at Sutton who as about celestial journeying and likewise with the Viking material.

Howard:

When you visit these sites as you have, I know yourself like Valcied over near Gamla Uppsala, these are really prominent, striking locations that, that makes sense in their landscape, linked to rivers, linked to processional routes, linked to coal centers and magnate farms and you know, other cemeteries.

Howard:

It's very difficult to imagine.

Howard:

They're thinking there he goes, off into the stars.

Howard:

And that's just really odd.

Howard:

And you know, it's so odd because there's nothing in our, even in the most later fantastical written sources that would hint at that.

Howard:

And there's nothing in the archeological record.

Howard:

I mean if anything, I would imagine it's a multi stage journey into the underworld, into the ground or into other realms across the sea, down the river, a very material geographical sense of death and journeying.

Howard:

So yes, it may be to do with the ideas of journeying, but even then I often wonder about these big installations of ships in boats, on ridges, on prominent ridges.

Howard:

It's much more to do with installing the dead as a presence in that local landscape that the dead are.

Howard:

These are places where the dead may, I mean we don't know.

Howard:

I'm guessing here of course, but it's a much more informed guess than ancient aliens that you know by having such prominent burial mounds in your locality next to your settlement, you are not sending the dead off into some fantasy realm.

Howard:

You are keeping the dead close, keeping them actually active, prominent places.

Howard:

And if you want material evidence to prove me right, you have to look at the big burial mounds of Westfold.

Howard:

And what happens to them over 130 years, 40 years after they're installed in the kind of associated with the expansion of Denmark in the reign of Harold Bluetooth.

Howard:

We think, you know, the work of archaeologists is arguing based on the dating of the, the robbing of these big burial mounds, that this wasn't just robbing for treasure.

Howard:

They were trying to deliberately knock out the local ancestors who local people may very still have believed associated with legend and story were there in their graves.

Howard:

And this is almost like a deliberate political act of violence against the dead by robbing their graves.

Howard:

Now you may or may not ascribe to that interpretation, but it does suggest that the Vikings, he puts in square quotes, would have probably had a much more intense sense that the dead are still in the land and in their mounds than off flying off into the stars.

Howard:

So that's my.

Howard:

While of course we're all as anybody who crows back at any archaeologist who challenges this stuff.

Howard:

Oh, it's all speculation.

Howard:

Well, but this is grounded interpretation based on the saga literature and the archeology.

Howard:

It suggests that in many strands of evidence suggesting that while ideas about death and the dead varied considerably, people thought the dead were still close or could be accessed through their graves in many cases.

Howard:

And I think that's what's going on with the Ossaberg ship is that they're installing perhaps a queen, maybe in the traditional view or high status woman and her servant and maybe others in a grave to be an ancestor in the landscape, to be remembered, to be prominent.

Howard:

And so the ship isn't for some celestial ethereal journey that resembles sort of a middle Earth, you know, journey of Galadriel and Celeborn and Gandalf and Frodo and Bilbo at the end of the return of where they're going off and staying, staying, going into Valinor, you know, into the air and yet across the sea.

Howard:

This is nothing to do with that.

Howard:

I think this is very much about being there in the landscape.

Professor Howard Williams:

That's my thought and I think there's room for that explanations.

Professor Howard Williams:

If we look at sites on Gotland, for example, we see how some burial sites have been used from the Bronze Age and we have a dolmen on Gotland where there's several, maybe 50 individuals that's buried there and they even later burial during the Viking Age.

Professor Howard Williams:

There's several ships, stone ships nearby, there's different graves in the area.

Professor Howard Williams:

So they seem to put importance on the site and coming back to it again and again and again.

Professor Howard Williams:

So there must be some sort of access to the dead that's going on there because if the dead was gone, why reuse this specific location?

Professor Howard Williams:

In a sense.

Howard:

And while we have so much variation in disposal of the dead, even in Viking age, let's say central Sweden, there's so much variation.

Howard:

You know, the way these programs play fast and loose with the cross cultural.

Howard:

Well, the Egyptians and the Chinese, you know, if you have boats associated with some funerals at some points in the thousands of years of history of China then.

Howard:

And I don't think, I'm not even sure the evidence of that, but I think they're talking about Central Asia and the Tarim Basin.

Howard:

Not nothing to do with China, but anyway, maybe, maybe I just don't know enough about China, but.

Howard:

And then you go oh, in ancient Egypt, well, ideas I don't.

Howard:

I'm no expert in ancient Egyptian afterlife belief.

Howard:

That's nothing to do with journeying to the stars per se, is it?

Howard:

And even if it was, it would again, be only some Egyptians at some points.

Howard:

You know, this generalizations they make quite shocking.

Howard:

Yeah, sorry.

Professor Howard Williams:

Egyptians, well, they have this idea of you travel to the west.

Professor Howard Williams:

The dead was called the Westerners because they were buried on the western bank of the Nile.

Professor Howard Williams:

And that's why you had the.

Professor Howard Williams:

Well, for the pharaohs, these large burial.

Professor Howard Williams:

Or what would you call them, burial ships that would take them to the west, and then they bury the ships with the pharaoh and everything like that.

Professor Howard Williams:

But again, that was reserved for a very small class and wasn't really traveled to a new dimension.

Professor Howard Williams:

It was traveling just to the land of the dead that happened to be on the west bank of the Nile because.

Professor Howard Williams:

Yeah, they don't go somewhere else.

Professor Howard Williams:

They are still in this world actively.

Howard:

And it's rooted in a very specific geography, isn't it?

Howard:

A very specific culture.

Howard:

It's not some.

Howard:

Oh, cultures across the world have done this.

Howard:

I mean.

Howard:

Yes.

Howard:

And if you want to play that game even within the one society, then why isn't every Egyptian buried in a ship?

Howard:

They're not.

Howard:

You know, it's a.

Howard:

It's a very exceptional, unusual practice.

Howard:

And likewise in Viking age, and I've had people online do the.

Howard:

Well, you know, pyramids had ships, you know, therefore, you know, one on one makes five, you know, and it's just.

Howard:

Just got to look at society and like, we put the dead on gun carriages.

Howard:

The royal dead in this country get gun carriages.

Howard:

Well, big.

Howard:

Big, you know, for processions.

Howard:

Does that.

Howard:

Does that mean that we're gonna.

Howard:

They believe we're firing them into space with.

Howard:

No, not.

Howard:

Not really.

Howard:

You know, it's a military allusion to their status and their honorary role as leader of or involved in the military activities and military honors.

Howard:

It's not, you know, not to be taken literally.

Howard:

And what I find really funny about the people that push this stuff is how they're perfectly familiar with ideas of symbolism and metaphor, but until it.

Howard:

Until it suits them not to be.

Howard:

And then suddenly it has to be taken actually literally as, oh, there must be only one meaning, one source, and it all must be to do with journeying to the stars.

Howard:

You know, it's very frustrating and odd.

Professor Howard Williams:

Yeah.

Professor Howard Williams:

I mean, they play very fast and loose with myth and that they travel to the stars.

Professor Howard Williams:

I mean, there are cultures that have these ideas, but what ancient alien often do that I find very frustrating is that they kind of mix and match mythology.

Professor Howard Williams:

So if they find something they like from one mythology, they kind of invented to apply to the Vikings or anything else.

Professor Howard Williams:

So there's not always a basis for their claim.

Professor Howard Williams:

They kind of just go, well, ancient mythology is all the same, and.

Professor Howard Williams:

Except when it's not.

Professor Howard Williams:

And they are very.

Professor Howard Williams:

They are very, well, liberal with interpretation and everything like that.

Professor Howard Williams:

For example, if you had seen the first part of the episode, you would learn that the Hugin and Moomin were spy drones.

Professor Howard Williams:

Alien ship spy drones.

Professor Howard Williams:

Yeah.

Howard:

What else could they possibly be other than birds, you know?

Professor Howard Williams:

Yeah.

Professor Howard Williams:

You know, but talking about spaceships, they bring up Valhalla.

Howard:

Yeah, right, okay.

Professor Howard Williams:

That you saw.

Howard:

Yeah, yeah.

Professor Howard Williams:

So they're like your reaction to.

Howard:

Yeah, yeah, that was.

Howard:

This is taking it.

Howard:

I mean, this is.

Howard:

They don't even try to join up the dots, do they?

Howard:

That's the power of these shows is they don't even.

Howard:

It is like a trump speech.

Howard:

It's just like random half sentences and then you move on.

Howard:

And it's like, that's the way they play.

Howard:

So you almost.

Howard:

They leave you almost.

Howard:

They're almost making a mad inference, but it's not even there.

Howard:

And then they just go, if so could this be.

Howard:

No, no, we haven't even got to the.

Howard:

So, yes.

Howard:

So their argument seems to be that Valhalla is where the Vikings thought the slain went.

Howard:

Of course, we know that even from the most simplistic reading of the sources at our disposal, half the slain went to Valhalla or Volho.

Howard:

And then they said, because it's described as almost metallic is their claim, then maybe it was an orbiting spaceship.

Howard:

Right.

Howard:

So how you get there?

Howard:

I mean, so I mean, if I can just do from the sayings of Grimnir in the Poetic Edda, Grimnismal, it is the best description of Volhall.

Howard:

And the point.

Howard:

They're talking about metal on the hall.

Howard:

So people understand that a big, grand hall of the Viking age would have been a place of sleeping, eating, judicial activities, cult activities, feasting, a multifunctional big building of a family and a chieftain.

Howard:

We all get that.

Howard:

And the Vikings were imagining that Odin, the lord of the gods, at least the sources suggest they thought he had something even bigger and better.

Howard:

Right.

Howard:

Gods had all their own halls, and Odin's hall was biggest and best, or one of the biggest and best.

Howard:

And so they describe it as massive.

Howard:

So in that sense, the ancient aliens program is right, that the imagination of the gods is with bigger, better, more horses, jewelry, weapons, halls, ships.

Howard:

They've all got everything that you'd expect the aristocrats and the royalty to have, but they're bigger and better.

Howard:

But the point is that Odin's hall is made comprised of or ornamented by military paraphernalia.

Howard:

So it describes it as.

Howard:

The hall has spear shafts for rafters with shields in its thatched mail.

Howard:

Coats are strewn on the benches.

Howard:

So it's almost like.

Howard:

Because it's supposed to be where the chosen or selected warriors, those aren't selected by Freyja, are taken to fight and feast in a perpetual cycle training for Ragnarok.

Howard:

That's the idea.

Howard:

Then it's a place of military display, of.

Howard:

It's like a treasury.

Howard:

It's a military structure.

Howard:

It's huge.

Howard:

It has more doors than any other building.

Howard:

It has wolves at the door, it has an eagle hovering over it.

Howard:

It is supposed to be exceptional, it's supposed to be military.

Howard:

It's not.

Howard:

So when it says it's metal, just in case anyone's doubting, you know, the metallicness of the hall is to do with that.

Howard:

And if we're thinking about shields, I mean, if we want to take it literally, we know that from representations of Viking age halls, they may have had wooden shingles.

Howard:

So like wooden people who don't know what that means.

Howard:

It's like wooden tiles.

Howard:

So not thatched as in a thatch of hay that's carefully cut and laid, but actually wooden tiles.

Howard:

And if we're, if we're supposed to imagine this, and these are stories being told in halls about other halls, right.

Howard:

We imagine shields, wooden shield boards that overlap, creating this defensive but elaborate shining structure.

Howard:

And the hall, in the old English poem Beowulf of the king Hrothgar Heorot is described as shining with guilt and, and rich in treasures.

Howard:

So it's supposed to be a rich display piece of architecture, like an early church would be as well.

Howard:

It was also supposed to have, and perhaps even pagan temples were richly painted and carved and ornamented.

Howard:

And in that regard we do have archaeological evidence from sites like Gamla, Uppsala, where we have spear shaped ornaments that may have come from doors or walls.

Howard:

So we do have hints from the archaeological record that there are real world buildings that were ornamented richly on the outside and perhaps inside too.

Howard:

So that, you know, this description of the hall of the Gods is in interplay, is in conversation with the most elaborate buildings you would experience in Viking age Scandinavia of the halls of kings that would be decked in treasures and weapons or trying to look military.

Howard:

And I think that's all we're looking at here is sources that are in conversation with the real world experience, the grounded experience of Viking period poets and Skalds who are then telling stories of the halls of gods.

Howard:

We don't have to jump to some idea that it was a floating metallic ship.

Howard:

And I suppose one other point to quickly say is they make the jump between, well, halls would have been ships.

Howard:

Well, there is a, there is a sort of kind of half or no eighth truth.

Howard:

Not even quarter truth, not even half truth.

Howard:

There's an idea there because of course we do have some halls that are bow shaped, many particularly by the high status halls from the 8th century onwards.

Howard:

But then particularly in the 10th century we have these Trelleborg style halls which are bow walled.

Howard:

But that's not saying they were ships.

Howard:

And they could, you know, there is a symbolic allusion to ships maybe there, but it's also to protect the hall, to make it strong, to snow falls off it.

Howard:

There's a whole series of practical and other factors at play.

Howard:

So in short, it's nonsense.

Howard:

Valhalla is describing a high status feasting hall and the military paraphernalia.

Howard:

We have grounded archaeological evidence showing us that's how some halls may have been actually furnished.

Professor Howard Williams:

Yeah, I mean they kind of go and run with that claim that it's this giant spaceship circling space, giving the Vikings direction on explorations and metallurgy and all that.

Howard:

They have to then contradict themselves.

Howard:

Well then we have to say, well we've just been talking about inhumation boat, inhumed boats, but now we're talking about cremated boats and maybe they set fire to boats to emulate alien spacecraft taking off, which is just crazy.

Professor Howard Williams:

The classic Hollywood scene where they're pushing the boat out to sea and kind of light it with arrows.

Professor Howard Williams:

What would you say about those?

Professor Howard Williams:

Did they happen or is it just.

Howard:

Well, let me put it this way.

Howard:

I always try to keep our options open.

Howard:

I've heard some archaeologists be very dismissive and said there's no evidence of the Vikings ever push boats out onto water or burnt the boats on water.

Howard:

And I would say, come on, that's a bit strong, it may have happened and we wouldn't have the evidence.

Howard:

I mean, we do have, to my knowledge there's three written sources that speak to this as an idea.

Howard:

And the first is the old English poem Beowulf which I mentioned.

Howard:

And at the beginning we have this almost inspired by the biblical story of Moses arriving in a basket on the banks of the Nile as a foundling.

Howard:

The hero, the originator king, a skilled chief, comes over the water in the boat as a baby.

Howard:

And so when he dies, they deck his boat with treasures and it's pushed out onto the waves.

Howard:

And the idea is, who knows who will receive that cargo?

Howard:

So the idea is that he goes back to where he came back in this kind of mythical story that maybe have biblical illusions, but skilled chiefing is pushed out, but not burnt.

Howard:

He's pushed out.

Howard:

Then we have in the prose Edda, the story of the God Baldur who is placed in his ship and burnt in the ship on water, pushed out onto the ways while all the gods watch.

Howard:

And his boat is put on fire, but no arrows, no firing arrows.

Howard:

That's Hollywood, right?

Howard:

No flaming arrows.

Howard:

And then I think there's.

Howard:

In Heims Klingla, there's one king called Hucky who, because he died in battle, they put all his corpses of his warriors and he sort of self immolates.

Howard:

I think it is, if I remember rightly, he sort of sets fire to the ship himself while steering it.

Howard:

And it.

Howard:

The idea is, it's.

Howard:

So I would say, the way I would phrase it is it's not impossible.

Howard:

It was an exceptional, you know, one of the many crazy things the Vikings did.

Howard:

But it was evident.

Howard:

Do we have evidence it was a common disposal method?

Howard:

No.

Professor Howard Williams:

No.

Professor Howard Williams:

Yeah.

Professor Howard Williams:

And I kind of have this feeling that it's maybe was tried but wasn't so popular because I can imagine the boat coming back after it.

Professor Howard Williams:

Just the fire goes out and didn't sink and just float back into the town and have to start everything over again.

Howard:

Well, it's unpredictable.

Howard:

Cremation is an unpredictable practice.

Howard:

And in itself.

Howard:

And then adding water to the equation.

Howard:

You're absolutely right.

Howard:

And so I think that you have that issue.

Howard:

And there's at least to my knowledge, there's at least two pop culture plays on this.

Howard:

The first one being, I think it's Game of Game of Thrones.

Howard:

I don't know if it was in the original books, but they certainly have one character.

Howard:

They can't light the pyre on the river run of a character going down hostertully trying to set his boat alight.

Howard:

And then, of course, the Norwegian comedy show Norseman takes up this idea of a chieftain who's so lame he can't fire an arrow and just makes up the story.

Howard:

Well, if it wasn't Odin wanted it to happen, it would have happened.

Howard:

And anyway, funeral feast, you know, and it's just kind of, you know, But I think that's really.

Howard:

I always show that to my students because it just makes the point that actually funerals are really unpredictable.

Howard:

And, you know, maybe that's more authentic to the Viking age than anything else that, you know, if things didn't go to plan, you just simply made an excuse and moved along, you know.

Howard:

And I think that's quite a healthy way of thinking about funerals is that whatever the ideas of afterlife that are involved, there's always practicalities come into the equation.

Professor Howard Williams:

How they talk a bit about magical objects throughout the episode in general and a little bit in the part two scene.

Professor Howard Williams:

But how did the Viking people really approach these magical objects?

Professor Howard Williams:

The ancient alienist kind of claimed that it's some sort of representation of advanced technology.

Professor Howard Williams:

We have exoskeleton suit from Thor's belt or heat seeking missiles from Odin spear because it never missed.

Professor Howard Williams:

But for the Viking age people, how what did they see as magical objects or what was magical to them?

Howard:

I mean, I think that's a really so sad that the way these ancient aliens narrative doesn't even do justice to the stories of the objects before jumping to interpretations.

Howard:

And so it's doubly frustrating that even if you wanted to, as you say, get at how did Viking period people imagine magical things?

Howard:

Things that are made of materials that they're unfamiliar with or were exceptional quality.

Howard:

So they would have seen, they would have seen many a hammer, many a spear, many a sword, but they were imagining the gods had these objects that had all these extra qualities.

Howard:

And I think those again, I think a really constructive way of doing thinking about this is thinking about the very qualities of things that they experienced on the daily.

Howard:

And the anxiety of any warrior is an object that breaks mid use.

Howard:

When literally your life, if your sword breaks, which could happen quite regularly, quite easily, your life is as good as over or could be over.

Howard:

If your spear, something is not quite straight in the shaft or a slight deflection or wind and you've missed your target and you're exposed.

Howard:

And you know, people who are training in warfare, I mean, just keeping it.

Howard:

I'm not saying that the Vikings are as obsessed as we like to imagine with warfare, but if you think about hunting, missing a boar with a spear is going to be a life ending scenario.

Howard:

Or likewise horses that are reliable versus horses that are at the stumble.

Howard:

This is your neck being broken.

Howard:

So you know, all of these possible scenarios of ships that break or under the waves, anything that could go slightly wrong in your life, whether you're fishing, whether you're just traveling to see kin across the fjord, you know, you're in a world of so many uncertainties.

Howard:

And if you can imagine objects that are better, more reliable Then you're, you're in a, you're, all you're thinking of is a world where people are imagining something that didn't break, something that was able to be, you know, have those extra powers.

Howard:

And I think that is.

Howard:

And they are dealing with a world where there are hallowed objects, there are heirlooms that have stories that are being handed down the generations.

Howard:

And it's not simply that they're pressed precious objects that are not used.

Howard:

The stories of those objects are often stories about how they worked.

Howard:

So this was a spear that didn't let me down.

Howard:

This is a shield that didn't break.

Howard:

And they're valued for the stories they tell about particular encounters or particular.

Howard:

So I think it's really sad to see how the ancient aliens narrative disrespects people's artisanship and the material worlds of past people where they were fashioning things and valuing things, curating things, mending things, recycling things because of the values they had, not simply in terms of aesthetics and they were pleasing, but because they had, they were reliable or they're linked to stories.

Howard:

This is the, this is the belt that I took all the way to Iceland and back.

Howard:

This is the object I found in a monastery and relieved from some monks who didn't want me to give it to me.

Howard:

But they soon learned their lesson and I can tell that story.

Howard:

And I think this is a point that the archaeology archaeologist Dr.

Howard:

Steve Ashby makes about loot coming back to Scandinavia in the early Viking age, is that these objects would have had made of materials you could melt down, but they carried stories with them.

Howard:

And I think that's not a.

Howard:

Yeah, that's not too wishy.

Howard:

It's easy to see that as a bit of a wishy washy idea, but I think it's actually a really important way of connecting the material world with the magical world, if you like.

Howard:

It's not just simply objects that had a special, you know, shone bright at night every time orcs were close type magic or that, you know, that kind of fantasy magic.

Howard:

I think they're very much grounded.

Howard:

Objects that were blessed or sometimes objects that were cursed.

Howard:

You know, they're always following bad luck and choices of who to kill that led to the doom of people.

Howard:

So I think those ideas fascinated people in the early Middle ages and we should be respectful of those stories that come down echoes of them in later sagas rather than just conjure up nonsense about our modern high tech living to impose on these early medieval people.

Professor Howard Williams:

Yeah, I mean that's one of the biggest issues with ancient aliens is that they take the people out of these histories and try to implement the modern view or own ideas about what they must have seen.

Professor Howard Williams:

And it's always, like we said, on the boats that they set on fire, the funeral boats on the lake, they claim that it's to represent rocket engines taking off.

Professor Howard Williams:

Because they can't describe a rocket engine.

Professor Howard Williams:

You cannot take their own, well, intelligence from the people and civilizations they're talking about in these episodes in general, these.

Howard:

Were communities and societies that had really complex pyrotechnological practices.

Howard:

They were smelting iron, they were working with precious metals.

Howard:

And their myths represent this.

Howard:

With the dwarves, with Wayland, Volanda, in the Norse tradition, they were cooking.

Howard:

Do you know what?

Howard:

Everyone had a fireplace in some parts of Scandinavia.

Howard:

They were making pottery, or if not importing pottery, they were making charcoal, bitumen, they were tar, you know, for the lining their ships.

Howard:

They were using fire all the time to keep warm, to cook, to change, transform their world.

Howard:

And the idea.

Howard:

And it's really actually a criticism of archaeologists, too, that when we get to ritual practices, we say, oh, cremation, we'll set that as a separate kind of holy use of fire.

Howard:

But the most.

Howard:

Probably a meaningful way to approach burning the dead is to try and understand it in societies, in worlds of wood, in worlds of iron, in worlds of materials that you are needing to work with subtly and carefully to precise temperatures, as well as sometimes just massive conflagrations.

Howard:

And, of course, a world in which the world, your world burning down was a real threat, that the ultimate way you attacked your enemies was not stealing a goat and going there.

Howard:

Now you've learned your lesson.

Howard:

It's literally trapping them in a hole and burning them all to death.

Howard:

And in that sense, you know, fire was a, you know, drove the world of the Vikings.

Howard:

It kept them thinking about the benefits and the potential, you know, demise of their entire world by fire.

Howard:

And, of course, we have.

Howard:

The versions of Norse mythology we have are very much influenced by the volcanism of Iceland.

Howard:

But still, you know, I think fire would have been an important part of practical life that informed cosmology and mythology rather than trying to conjure up some kind of external fable from outside.

Howard:

And I think that, again, it's about.

Howard:

While we can sort of laugh at these silly ideas, it.

Howard:

It's.

Howard:

There is a fundamental disrespect being shown to not only our credibility and our how, but also to past people in.

Frederick:

The way they're doing this.

Professor Howard Williams:

It's robbing them of Their achievements, as you say.

Howard:

And they're just primitive people who could never have understood how fire could be used like come on, you know, or.

Professor Howard Williams:

How it was, or be able to describe what they can see with words in their vocabulary.

Professor Howard Williams:

So they have to use oh, it's a dragon instead, instead of a ufo because dragons spit fires and it takes away their imagination and creativity and all of that.

Professor Howard Williams:

And it's sad to see.

Professor Howard Williams:

And I think it's also often left out of the discussion regarding ancient aliens of how much to really take from these past people who have lived in the world.

Howard:

And often a point I know you and others have said about these issues is the biases towards pagan people versus Christian.

Howard:

You know, like would they be doing this with the stave church, you know, or.

Howard:

But it's okay to do it with a pre Christian boat grave.

Howard:

Is that double standard?

Howard:

You know.

Howard:

Now often it's applied outside Europe and to people of a non white complexion, a darker complexion.

Howard:

But even in.

Howard:

When characterized with northern Europe, when they weighed in, it's to do with the mystical pre Christian simple folk who, you know, are the ones that are characterized as those who would be in awe of the aliens.

Howard:

It's never like they're not doing this with Muslim, Christian, Jewish, you know, world religions that are, you know.

Howard:

Yeah.

Howard:

You know what I'm saying.

Howard:

It's very double standards all over.

Professor Howard Williams:

There's a bit of, I mean they do speak about Christian and Christian churches, but it's usually in relation to the Templars.

Professor Howard Williams:

Templar movement is usually part of a conspiracy.

Professor Howard Williams:

There's a group controlling the world and it gets very antisemitic at one point.

Professor Howard Williams:

But it's also.

Professor Howard Williams:

They talk a lot about the Jewish mythology or religion, but it's also in a more.

Professor Howard Williams:

These primitive people in the desert and then they get mana from heaven because the aliens come and give them food machines.

Professor Howard Williams:

Because how would they, you know, imagine that they got food otherwise?

Professor Howard Williams:

And same with the kind of Holy Grail or with what's, what's the box called from Indiana Jones for it.

Professor Howard Williams:

Yeah, the Ark of the Covenant, Jewish space weapon.

Professor Howard Williams:

Because how would those primitive people be able to conquer Israel without it?

Professor Howard Williams:

You know, it's a difference in between Christian and other religions, but it's very.

Professor Howard Williams:

You have to look for it in a way.

Professor Howard Williams:

But yeah, it's a problematic sphere.

Professor Howard Williams:

Ancient aliens.

Professor Howard Williams:

It is a lot.

Professor Howard Williams:

But Howard, if people want to hear more from you, where should they go then?

Howard:

Well, I've got a university website, but it's ever changing and ever confusing.

Howard:

And so I'VE got my Archaeodeath WordPress blog which has links to all my publications and I blog five times a month as well as having a YouTube channel Archaeodeath and a TikTok Archaeodeath.

Howard:

So Archaeodeath on all platforms is the way to find me.

Professor Howard Williams:

Amazing and I hope you didn't kill too many brain cells with this clip, but it was great having you here.

Howard:

Thank you so much for chatting.

Frederick:

It's been really fun and again, a huge thank you to Professor Howard William for his time and very detailed explanation.

Frederick:

I'm sorry that the audio maybe was a bit muffled during some periods, but things that happens unfortunately now.

Frederick:

I really hope that you enjoyed the episode and if you did, please leave a positive review on itunes, Spotify or wherever you listen on this episode.

Frederick:

Or even better tell a friend or two about this and recommend your favorite episode like this one for example.

Frederick:

And as usual you find all the links and links to Professor Williams projects at the website and down in the show notes.

Frederick:

And again, if you want to support the show you can do that by heading over to patreon.com digging up ancient aliens if you sign up there for a paid membership you will get earlier episodes and you get ad free episodes and you often get extended episodes.

Frederick:

You get videos, you get bonuses.

Frederick:

Yeah, you get bonuses.

Frederick:

Right now we're trying to read Chariots of the Gods by Erich Van Daniken himself and if you sign up, try to do that on Patreon's website, not in the iOS app because Apple, well they also decided to get a cut of that and apparently it affects me somehow according to Patreon or if you want to cut out Patreon all together, I have a special membership portal where you get all the fancy stuff that you get on Patreon but through my membership portal online find that@diggingupangetaliens.com support and while we add it, make sure to go and listen to the Archaeological Podcast Network's other great shows.

Frederick:

You find that@archaeologicalpodcastnetwork.com and they also have a membership thing going on and there will be some more live events taking place there so don't miss that.

Frederick:

And they also have a discord channel where you find me.

Frederick:

And yeah, there's a lot of things going on there and if you want to contact me it can be done through most social media sites and if you have other comments, suggestions or you just want to write that email in all caps, you find my content info at the website.

Frederick:

Sandra Martialor created the intro music and our outro is by the band called Truff, who sings their song Tinfoil Hat.

Frederick:

Links to both of these artists can be found in the show notes, and this episode was created by me, Frederik Trussoham, with the help of my producer, Ashley Array.

Frederick:

Now, until next time, please keep showing that.

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