Hello and welcome back to the Viking Age podcast. My name is Lee, and this is episode 6,

The Iron Age. In this episode, we're going to do a lightning tour through the Scandinavian Iron Age,

beginning around 500 BCE and ending around 800 CE with the first Viking raids. This period, which spans over a thousand years,

is chocked full of political, technological, economic, and cultural change in the North.

Accordingly, there's basically no chance in hell that we will be able to cover the Iron Age

in the detail it deserves in only one episode.

Rather, the goal for this episode is to provide a general overview of the developments in Scandinavia during the Iron Age.

This big picture will then allow us to reach back and flesh out the relevant topics

when they become important to our narrative of

the Viking Age. For instance, we will only very briefly discuss Iron Age improvements made in shipbuilding

in this episode. But later on in a dedicated episode on Viking Age shipbuilding, we'll be able to go back and discuss the Iron Age

ships in their evolution in more detail. All of this is to say that if this episode leaves

you feeling like you've just been through a hurricane, worry not. The goal of this episode is to

provide a baseline understanding of the period which directly preceded the

Viking Age. Not for the test, but rather to give you a framework to work from when I start

blabbering on about the Iron Age in later episodes. Cool? Cool. Let's do it. So last time,

we explored the Nordic Bronze Age, and specifically we spent quite a bit of time discussing the mechanisms which allowed for power to be concentrated in the hands of a few chiefly families during that period.

Now, if possible, cast your mental hard drives back and load up those power structure files.

We won't be discussing them in depth again here, but they're very important to understanding

the rise by the end of the Iron Age of petty kingdoms throughout Scandinavia.

Now, as we alluded to at the end of the last episode, the late Bronze Age was a rough time

to be a member of a chiefly clan, or really any Scandinavian for that matter.

...