Vikings: Surviving Winter
Gone Medieval
History Hit
4.6 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 27 December 2022
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Vikings are often depicted as fearless warriors, but they were not immune to the harsh realities of northern weather. They not only survived in countries such as Greenland and Iceland but thrived. How did they adapt to the unforgiving ice and snow?
In this episode of Gone Medieval, first released in 2021, Dr. Cat Jarman is joined by James McMullen to explore elements of Viking settlement and winter survival - from insulating clothing, skating, and saga sources to social adaptations and housing.
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Transcript
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| 1:31.6 | Hello and welcome to Gone Medieval. I'm Doctor Cat Jarman. We're now well into winter here |
| 1:38.0 | in the Northern Hemisphere and when you're listening to this it might be cold and dark outside. |
| 1:43.4 | Maybe you're even somewhere that has snow. Today we're going to be going back to the Viking Age again |
| 1:49.2 | and talk about the fact that the Vikings not only travel to some pretty inhospitable places |
| 1:54.8 | with fairly extreme winters but they survived and thrived in places like Northern Scandinavia, |
| 2:01.6 | Iceland and Greenland. So today I want to find out more about what that meant in the Viking Age. |
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