From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder,

power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond.

Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger and some of the world's leading historians,

as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life only on

History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II.

Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe.

Hello, I'm Matt Lewis.

Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest

millennium in human history.

We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking

research from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross

centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders to find the stories big and

small that tell us how we got here.

Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval.

In the fertile lands between the gushing rivers, Tigris and Euphrates,

a lowly goat herd spies a plume of dust, billowing dark against the

noonday sky. Weathered by Sunbeam and worked hard by his grazing flock, he takes little

notice. Couriers on horseback often pass by, traversing Mesopotamian arteries of spice

and silk, whipping up stale dirt as they race ever onward.

But the plume doesn't fade like it does most days. Instead, it darkens and grows,

rippling outward to blacken the sky, the harbinger of a nameless storm, edging ever closer

...