Hello and welcome to the History Extra Podcast from BBC History magazine, Britain's

bestselling history magazine.

I'm Ellie Corthorn.

The Vikings were much more globally connected than you might expect.

Dr. Kat Jarman's new book, River Kings, A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia

to the Silk Road opens up the story of Scandinavian trade, settlement and communication from the

Baltic Sea right through to Asia.

History Extra content director David Musgrove spoke to Kat to find out more.

So here in Britain, when we think of Vikings, we tend to think of them as the raiders from

the North who came here, robbed our monasteries, took our riches and that's a narrative that

goes from Lindisfahn, 793 and the raid on the monastery there for you to maybe 1016 and

King Knut or 1066, the Norman Conquest.

If you take the view, the Normans were Norsemen originally and we have various periods of

raiding and settlement by people who we think of as Scandinavians in that time, Danes and

Norwegians principally in modern terms of nationality.

I think nowadays we're also coming to terms with or it's coming into clear public consciousness

that Viking activity was also going on in an easterly direction from the Scandinavian

homelands, anyone who's watched the Vikings on TV or read any number of historical novels

on the topic will know that Viking warriors traveled through Eastern Europe and got up

to adventures there.

But those tend to be seen as two sort of separate, unconnected things and your book Kat sort

of brings those together for me when I was reading it, you brought those two spheres of

...