Hello, and welcome back to the Viking Age podcast. My name is Lee. This is episode two of

reindeer and fishermen. In this episode, we'll dive head first into our tour of pre-Viking

Age Scandinavian history. This first series of probably four or five episodes will bring us up

to speed with the major developments in

Scandinavia before the Viking Age. We'll start with the arrival of the first reindeer

hunters in southern Scandinavia, around 13,000 BCE, and culminate with the Germanic Iron Age,

ending around 700 CE. Now, I can hear some of you asking, Lee, do we really need to cover all of human history in

Scandinavia in order to understand the Viking Age?

Can we just hop ahead to the horned helmets and longships, or at least, you know, the Iron Age?

Well, imaginary listener, first off, there will be no horned helmets. Horns are a

ridiculous thing to put on a helmet, and no self-respecting vikinger would be caught dead in such an

obviously compromising get-up. But I'm getting ahead of myself, and we'll cover that in lovely

ranting detail in a few episodes. Second, and more relevantly, to jump directly into the Viking Age

would be to ignore a very important aspect of Scandinavian history. Namely, the Norse of the Viking Age

were errs to an extremely long cultural tradition, elements of which stretched long back into the

misty past.

The first hunter-gatherers arriving in Scandinavia 15,000 years ago, settled and exploited a land

that was at once far away and yet ultimately recognizable to us today.

They established patterns of subsistence settlement in relationships with the lands and seas, which continued

in some areas right up until the Viking Age. And in the process of colonization, which was

seaborne in many cases, they also exhibited early on the spirit for adventure and exploration,

which is the hallmark in so many ways of the Viking Age. With the introduction of agriculture around

...