When the Vikings met the Slavs
Gone Medieval
History Hit
4.6 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 28 November 2025
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Journey east with Matt Lewis and Martyn Whittock to uncover how the Vikings came face to face with the Slavs. Using clues like the Ingvar Rune Stones, Matt and Martyn discover how the Vikings reshaped Northeastern Europe, with Norse trade, warfare, and cultural exchange, as well as their role in the Byzantine Empire and Islamic Caliphates, and how these adventurers helped forge the Kievan Rus and influence Russian and Ukrainian identities.
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Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis. Audio editor is Amy Haddow, the senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.
All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the |
| 0:06.1 | greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking |
| 0:12.3 | details and latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to |
| 0:18.5 | popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve |
| 0:22.9 | into rebellions, plots and murders, to find the stories big and small that tell us how we got here. |
| 0:30.1 | Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval. |
| 0:37.4 | Music Welcome. |
| 0:46.8 | Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. The Vikings are back. |
| 0:52.9 | And despite the best advice of the village people and the pet shop boys, today they're not going west. |
| 0:56.1 | Instead, we're going to follow them east and explore what happened when they encountered the Slavs and how that meeting defined the geopolitical |
| 1:01.5 | landscape of northeastern Europe for centuries. Our guide on this voyage will be Martin Wittittitt, |
| 1:07.3 | whose latest book, Vikings in the East, tells the story of exploration, settlement, |
| 1:13.8 | and cultural and religious change. |
| 1:19.4 | Welcome to God Medieval, Martin. |
| 1:21.0 | Good to be with you. |
| 1:21.9 | It's fantastic to have you here to talk about something that maybe people don't think about |
| 1:26.0 | as much as they think about Vikings going |
| 1:27.7 | west, because everybody thinks about Vikings, obviously, all the time, and we quite often |
| 1:32.4 | think about them going west and particularly arriving, you know, where you and I are on the |
| 1:36.5 | British Isles and causing all sorts of chaos. But we're going to think today about them |
| 1:40.1 | looking to the east. And I wonder if you could start off by telling us when the Vikings begin |
| 1:45.7 | to look in that direction? Well, that's a very good question, because it begins at about the |
... |
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