October 16, 2025 • 39 mins
Ben here: we're out on the high seas this week -- true story! While we're away, we're sharing some of our favorite Classic episode. Here's one we absolutely loved, and travel-related: "Like many Viking leaders, Halfdan and Bjorn wanted to be known for their fearlessness in battle and their ability to locate the finest spoils -- they wanted the community to tell stories of their valor for generations to come. Their father Ragnar built a name for himself raiding Paris, so they wanted to kick things up a notch and raid an even more prominent city: Rome. However, there was one small problem with their plan."
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow ridiculous historians, We've all been there. You're a Viking.
You're out there to rave and ravage and pillage, and
then lo and behold, you run to the wrong town.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
And now you're trying to get your plunder on, and
you went in the wrong cardinal direction. So you can't
be both ferocious and have a good sense of direction.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Right right, right, And as we'll find in today's classic episode,
our buddies half Dan and Bjorn not to be an
old classic half Dan, they wanted to be known for
their ability to be the best Vikings out there. They
wanted people to tell stories about them in the oral
(00:43):
history of their community. But they accidentally went to the
wrong place.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
It's true. Let's jump right into the story already in progress.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the
(01:23):
show Ridiculous Historians and Possible Viking Descendants.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
My name is Ben, my name is Nol. I used
to have a little red in my beard. Does that
mean I'm a possible Viking descendant?
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Well, it means you definitely have the possibility of that
red hair gene. You know, we would need to we
need to do some more testing. I also have a
red beard when I grow it out. And in the
part of Tennessee where I'm from, there is this old
folk saying about how you can't trust someone who has
two different colors of facial hair, So like I have
(01:56):
brown hair on my head and then red hair on
my face, not to be trusted.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
What about people with two different color eyes? Because I
have the two different colored beard and two different color eyes,
I mean I'm super untrustworthy.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
No, no, no, not in not in my part of
the world heterochromia. They seem fine with that.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
They think I'm a witch. I think you might have
to have.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
A milky eye or very like apparently different eye, you know.
But you know who is super trustworthy? You know? Tell
me our super producer, Casey Pegram, who is also, I
believe not not a Viking. Is that correct, Casey?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
That is correct? Yes, I mean he's not an active Viking.
His raiding days are behind him, right, I don't want
to talk about it fair enough, Okay.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
So we were talking about Viking names a little bit
before we went on the air today and one of
the questions, one of the questions, I ad we have
one character in this story named hastein the raider, and
the question is how many raids do you have to accomplish?
How many do you have to rack up or have
under your belt for that to become part of your name.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
I know I said save it for the pod and
you did not like that.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
It's kind of like telling someone to shut up.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
That's not true.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I don't know if that's the end. It just no.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
It just means this conversation would be best had it
spontaneously in one go, instead of doing it once and
then trying to do it again, because the magic is
never the same.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Ben, I see where you're coming from. But it is
like telling someone to shut up.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Okay, Ben, that's fair.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
But but I seriously wonder though, Nola is like, do
you do one raid or do you do five?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
That's a really good question. I mean, surely there's a
metric for these things. Or maybe he gave himself his
own nickname. Ooh, good call, that's interesting. I bet that's
I bet that's true because it is kind of a
badass nickname. Oh yeah, And you can tell in a
lot of these stories when someone has a not quite
complimentary nickname like Charles the Bald or something exactly. That
(03:52):
was probably bestowed upon him by people that didn't care
for him too much.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yeah, propaganda. But why why are we talking about Vikings today?
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Who?
Speaker 1 (04:01):
What's this deal with hasting the.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Raider, Costing the Raider and his homie Bjorn Ironside, great name,
also a great name. They they did a little military blunder.
That's a lot of fun. It involves some sort of
trojan Horse like tactics. It involves possible decapitation of members
of the clergy, and a whole lot of raping and
(04:23):
pillaging and rating along the way.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Yes, yes, yes, at least that is if they actually existed.
That's the strange part.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
I hate that part about history where it's like, God,
this is so great, but it's probably not true.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, it or they'll try to make it a little
more optimistic and say they may have been real people.
You're thinking, what, I'm so invested in this story right now,
so take it with a grain of salt. This was
a long long time ago. Hastein was a Viking chieftain
in the late ninth century, and some of the characters
in today's story are going to be familiar to you.
(05:00):
If you are a fan of the television series Vikings.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yes, it's true.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Do you ever check that out?
Speaker 2 (05:05):
I haven't. I watched a little bit of it here
and there, But I also know apparently it takes quite
a few liberties with some of these stories as well,
and their depiction of the character of Bjorn Ironside, he
doesn't quite do what he probably actually did in the
historical accounts because it helped them with their storyline a
little bit.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Ah, yeah, I see what you're saying. Was that on
History Channel?
Speaker 2 (05:28):
I think it was like the weird, anomalous, like big
budget kind of Game of Thronesy type show on the
History Channel. That's right.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Well, let us know if you're a fan, and let
us know what you think they got right or wrong.
But this is a as much as we can determine
an historically true tale.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
It doesn't seem that way.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Yes, yeah, so we don't know much about hastein the
Raider his early life aside for the fact that you know,
he raided a bunch of stuff. It's right, it wasn't
around it now. And he came from a well established bloodline.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Yeah. All signs point to him being the son of
a Ragnar Lothbrock, and apparently that was also Bure and
Ironside's father, so they were possibly brothers.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
They were possibly brothers, or because bloodline was such a
big deal in this culture at this time, it is
also completely possible that Hastin just said that to try
to get some more street cred. Ship cred got it vikings.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
So these vikings, they they kind of had a singular mission,
didn't they.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yeah, yeah, they had the raiding economy. If you want
to call it that, oh I do. It's a it's
a It's a huge part of the life of this culture,
so much so that of course people would get appellations
or names for their performance or lack of performance in
(06:58):
a raid, and if if there was a really well
done raid, then it would become part of this orld tradition.
It was a legend. So Ragnar Lothbrock one of his
big claims to fame was the sacking of Paris. This
occurred in eight forty five and five thousand vikings led
(07:18):
by Ragnar took over Paris. It was the largest, richest,
most defended city in Northern Europe. This was this was
like a very violent proto heist right, and the king
of the time, Charles the Bald, paid a huge ransom
of seven thousand pounds of silver to Ragnar just to
(07:38):
make them go away.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Yeah, that'll do it. So that's what a sacking is, right.
It's so interesting that term because I think of it
in the British parlance as getting fired, but it also
means like getting kind of conquered, which I guess they
sort of mean the same thing.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah, yeah, it completely I guess I could see that. Yeah,
that's an interesting etymology. Well that's seven thousand pounds of silver.
Did not work. They returned a decade later to sack
the city again.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Yeah, there's no honor among Vikings, I guess, yes, yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
And the French in that time were prepared and they
were able to fight the Vikings off. But then in
eight fifty seven, Bjorn Ironside, son of Ragnar, actual son,
he takes his crew and they returned to Paris. But
they noticed that Paris is in ruins. Only after they're
(08:31):
done looting, only four out of the what twenty five
to thirty something churches were left standing. And they were
encouraged by this wanton mayhem, this gleeful destruction, and they said,
you know what raids are cool? Raids are super cool,
but Paris has kind of been done. Let's go for
something bigger.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Why was it in such ruins, Ben?
Speaker 1 (08:52):
So from eight forty five to eight fifty seven, we're
talking about three different sackings. There's not enough time for
the city to really repair it. So, you know what
I mean, you can only squeeze so much. I was
gonna see milk from a cow, but that seems weird.
You can't get blood from a stone.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Poor Paris. Yeah, haven't they had enough? I mean, so
that's basically what the takeaway was, right, That's what I mean.
They were literally like, you know what I think? Uh,
I think we're gonna leave them alone this time, right right,
pretty much right now, Ben, we should probably really quickly
mention that Hostein was such a badass that he actually
(09:28):
had quite a few names, whether they were aliases or
other nicknames, but he was known as aka half Dan.
That's my favorite one, by the way. I mean, he's
like half a he's got a full day. He's half
the d he used to be.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Yes, half the Dan you used to be.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
I like that. He's also allsting and also hasting with
that really cool ae combined letter. What do you call
that ben.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Technically speaking, it's a grapheme formed from the letters A
and E. It originally represented the Latin diphthong ae. Just
sort of got smushed into one thing.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Got it. Got it? So at this point, Hastein and
Bjorn decide to make their way to the south of
France on the Lore Riverluir. Ah, Casey on the case.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
You know what usually we I thought it was always
vampire rules with you, Casey, we invoke you. I thought
we had to invite you in now to jump in there.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
He couldn't. He couldn't. He couldn't let that that gross
mispronunciation stand. Just trying to save us all some emails.
I appreciate it, buddy, I appreciate it. So we're lure
lure luar. So yeah, So they're sailing, I believe, a
fleet of sixty two ships down the Luire River. Excuse me,
in case you don't need to have you popping into
(10:48):
my head again.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
And they're going to the Iberian Peninsula. So where they
are is in what is today modern day France, and
then they're going to what is now Spain and Portugal,
and along the way they don't always do too hot
because they're kind of persona on grada at this point.
They keep running around sacking places and pillaging and just
(11:10):
having their way. So people are kind of wise to
them a little bit at this point, aren't they.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Yeah, this is all during this time, This is part
of the Umad Caliphate, and you could only do this
kind of thing so many times before people start realizing
there's trouble afoot, you know what I mean, unless you
kill everyone in the town you attack. So they did
not have a flawless record. In fact, when they were
(11:35):
raiding ships along the Glacian coast, they found that the
local resistance overall was just too strong. So they weren't
moving because they were maybe seeking greater riches. They were
seeking easier targets, easier pickings, easier pickings. That's how a
lot of predators work, you know. And so they moved
on to pillage the west coast of the emirate, and
(11:56):
there they started encountering more success. So the coast guardard
of the time captured two long ships scouting ahead of
the main fleet, and they found that these ships, these
scout ships, were already full of treasure and food and
slaves or captives that were destined to be enslaves.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
So at this point they're almost in, they're almost switching
their tactics to more traditional pirate kind.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Of right, right right, and they suffer another defeat when
they land in southwest Spain. The fleet next goes to
the mouth of the guattle Quavier with the intention, maybe
historians guests, of attacking Seville for a second time. But
then they got confronted by the Moorish fleet. These were
(12:42):
actual trained soldiers, They had maritime war tactics. These were
not just helpless fishing community.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
And didn't they lose a whole bunch of ships and
men in this confrontation?
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah, because the Moorish Fleet had incendiary weapons. They were
literally lighting them up, And yeah, the ships burned, people died.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
What did the Vikings used typically? Were they using like
I mean axes, I imagine in close combat? But what
what would they use in ce combat? Do you think?
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Well?
Speaker 1 (13:11):
One thing we know for sure is that it was
a long standing rule of theirs to leave town, to
leave the scene if resistance was too strong. That's why
they're raiders, you know what I mean. So if we
if we're guessing, we know that a lot of their
fleets had little to know cohesion, you know, it's kind
(13:32):
of like more like a convoy on the road.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I see.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Yeah, So they didn't attack ships with the intent of
destroying them. They wanted to board them. So one of
their common tactics was to try to ram ships and
then once they're close enough, jump on the show.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
There you go, and then they probably go to town
with those battle axes right with them. But I do
believe they also used bows and arrows and spears and
things like that, and I could picture shooting volleys of arrows,
you know, onto other ships. Possibly I don't know, I
can't confirm that, but it seems like that would be
one way of getting it done.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
M Yeah, yeah, agreed. So typically their their aim was
to get in close quarters to kill enslave plunder. But
this other fleet that is well well accustomed to maritime
ship on ship warfare, they're you know, they're Wu Tang style.
(14:27):
They're nothing to with Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
For sure, No, And I mean they were designed for
that purpose of ramming as well. I mean the way
the whole the whole ship was kind of built with
that in mind.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
And so as as we said, Noel, they encounter professional
naval forces, and they get the horns slapped off the helmets, which,
by the way, is a stereotype, and they were barely
able to make their way home. The few that were
left alive were forced to pay a ransom to escape.
(15:01):
But this defeat, this ignominious defeat, did not scare or
extinguish the thirst for vast treasures in glory on the
part of Bjorn Ironside and Hastin half Dan, half Damn.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
I love half Dan. So at this point they've had
some wins, they've had some losses, you know, but they
still want more. That's sort of the nature of this
kind of life, right, You don't really rest on your laurels,
you know, otherwise you'll be seen as weak and then
(15:36):
you won't be the toughest viking in the sea, right,
and then what's the point. What's the point? Well, no,
it's it's kind of like mob rules, right, Like if
it's as soon as you let up and stop, you know,
kicking people's asses all the time and taking collections, then
all of a sudden, someone else is going to move
in on your turf. So they couldn't have that. And
I think we've all heard that expression all roads lead
(15:57):
to Rome. At this time. That was especially true because
Rome was seen as like the crown jewel of sackable places, right, Like,
that's the one that you would guarantee to have a crazy,
incredible haul because it was full of riches and wealth,
and it like we had this whole you know, civilized
society with culture and like it was just practically the
(16:19):
streets were paved with gold right in the minds of
these vikings and the minds these vikings. And this leads
us to another character. We have to introduce the Norman
monk Dudo of Saint Quentin. Ah Dudo, Dudo, dude.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Oh, we don't know a ton about this guy, except
that he was born around nine sixty five, he was
in the Norman court Normandy for a while, and in
his second stay in Normandy he wrote his history of
the Normans. And as for the rest of his life,
we know that he died some time before ten forty three,
(17:00):
So don't know a whole heck of a lot about him,
but we do know that he is the source of
the story that takes place next. Here's what happens. According
to this story, You're on Ironside and then his buddy,
half Dan. They land in a place after they've been
(17:21):
raiding the coast of Africa and getting their butts whipped
by some professional naval forces. They land somewhere in Italy,
and they think, this is the most amazing city. Holy smokes,
bro we made it. We're in Rome and we're about
to get down.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
We are going to tear the place up. We're gonna
light it up yolo big time. It's a total Viking
yellow sitch.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
So they want to use a little bit of cunning
because from everything they know about Rome, it's huge, it's
a home to opulent wealth, and it's probably very well protected. Right,
So they said, there's no way we can take this
by force, Like we're we're great guys, half Dan, but
(18:10):
we we got to think this through. Let's let's see
this through.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Our usual bloodthirsty, ruthless kind of smash and grab techniques
are not going to serve us in this particular situation. Yeah,
half Dan, that's how that went. Yeah, this is this
is a recreat Okay.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
So then I say, okay, well, let's let's give it
a night, let's think on it. The next morning, a
small group of Vikings approaches the city walls, and they say,
hold on, holda hi, hang on. I know we look crazy,
dressed in furs, dirty and sea worn, but we have
not come to plunder you. We have no strength left.
(18:50):
We're exhausted. We've been traveling a lot. Could you just
make peace with us and let us buy what we need,
you know, like food and provisions. Our chiefs are we
can broken and we need help.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
And our boy half Dan here is not doing so well.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Yeah, he is on death's door and he has seen
the light in the way of Rome. He seeks the
absolution of your religious leaders.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
And you know, let's.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Keep our opinions out of it, because he's the boss.
So he needs to be baptized if he dies here.
He wants to be buried in this city, a Christian burial,
consecrated ground.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
So and I mean, I think you know that probably
like the word conversion is like catnip to these people,
you know, I mean, it's like, okay, sure, the Heathens,
you want one, will give one to God. Let's do it.
Let him in, open the gates. So I guess he
and like a couple of his associates come in right, and.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
You'll hear a couple of different versions of this story.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Right.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
In one story, Costiner half Dan is already dead quote unquote,
and they his followers take this coffin in there to
just get the burial. And other versions of the story,
he is taken in and he's the technical word is malingering.
(20:13):
He's acting like he's a little more ill than he
actually is. And he sits through a baptism ceremony, right,
the anointed him with holy ointment and oil, and he's
smiling and he falls backwards on a stretcher. He's carried
back to the ship by his companions, really doing a
real Miisner number. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
And then after he gets carried back, they're doing a
con right. And so now the people trust that the
Vikings are sincere. And again, according to Dudo, I love
that name. According to Dudo, this is when half Dan
says to his followers, when night comes, you should say
(20:57):
to the priest and the duke that I am dead,
and fervently pray that I may be buried in this city.
Say that you want to give them the sword and
bracelet and everything that belongs to me.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Spooky stuff, right, treachery too, right, indeed, treachery most foul,
and so they.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Go back and they say, our chief, as you have
just named him, is dead. We pray that you could
be buried in your convent and that you received these
rich gifts he gave for you on his deathbed. So hey,
there's an upside for you Rome. But what happens next?
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Oh well, my favorite version of the story is when
he pops out of the coffin and slices off the
head of a priest and then says, you know, Yolo.
And then he and his dudes charged back through the
city to the gate. They open it up to the horde,
you know, the remaining foot soldiers, I guess. And then
something occurs to Bjorn or half Dan or Hastin. Hastin. Yes,
(21:56):
it's a terrible realization, man, quite embarrassing really, and I'm
not sure what did it for them, but something there
was an aha moment or like an oh moment. What
did they realize.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
They had successfully sacked the wrong city, a completely different city.
They were Viking rubes from the wild. They had no
idea that they never made it to Rome. Instead, they
were in a different town.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, it's called a luna. And again, these are all
some questionable retellings of this because there are two different versions.
We'll tell the other one in a second. But in
one version of this, they were so embarrassed that they
massacred the entire population of the city.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
They don't take well to surprises, I guess, so yeah.
According to this version, they turn into full on lunatics.
They kill everyone, or at least all the adult men,
and then they say, okay, we're gonna keep sailing. We're
going southeast, maybe to Alexandria in Egypt or something, and
(23:02):
then they raid the Mediterranean for a few years than
they return home, never to tell people of their embarrassing
wrong turn.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
That's right. And then there's a whole other conflict involving
Alfred the Great, where the forces of Hastein and Bjorn
are kicking it around Europe, the United Kingdom, specifically Wales. Actually,
his family gets abducted by the forces of Alfred the
Great and he ends up having to negotiate with him
to get this family returned to him, and one thing
(23:33):
leads to another, and he does not succeed, and he
more or less disappears from history around eight ninety six.
There's really no more mention of Hastein. Half Dan allsting,
whatever you want to call him. Yeah, yeah, you're correct.
He disappears around eight ninety six. By then he is
an elderly man. He's been described as the lusty and
(23:54):
terrifying old warrior of the Luoch and the Psalm, and
we now know that he was one of the most
notorious and successful Vikings of all time. But can't be
that way without making enemies. So the Norman monk Dudo
of Saint Quentin was incredibly critical of our boy half Dan.
(24:16):
He said, quote, this was a man accursed, fierce, mightily,
cruel and savage, pestilent, hostile, sombra truculent, given to outrage,
peestulent and untrustworthy, fickle and lawless, death dealing, uncouth, fertile
in ruses, wormonger, general traitor, fomentor of evil and double
diided dissimulator. Goodness, gracious, right, that is a war of words,
(24:41):
right there, my friend.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Fertile in ruses is such a great insult.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
He also uses pestulent twice, which I couldn't help but
notice that. But yeah, so he definitely lives on in
infamy even after, you know, disappearing from the record.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
You're right, he doubled down a pestil. He really did,
So the question then becomes a matter of how much
we can trust dudo. You know what I mean? Is
he just spinning tails to amuse himself or you know,
what are his sources? So we can say that this
(25:17):
still counts as ridiculous history, despite the fact that many,
many people died because these guys, if we are to
believe the story, were so intelligent that they figured out
a trojan horse type ruse or heist on their own, sure,
but still didn't know what city they were in.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Yeah. Well, I mean it's not like they had all
the maps or anything. They were kind of just like
going by their gut, their Viking guts. So thank you
so much for tuning in everyone. We hope that you
enjoyed today. Every time I thought maybe it wasn't gonna
happen again every time. Yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Gentlemen, Strickland a quizt or as you like to call him,
a quizzler. I take because it's like.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Using his name in vain.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
You know that quizzler is a trademarked candy coming straight
from the chocolate shop. I also happened to run.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Why are you announcing that in such an archway. I mean, congratulations, man,
that's cool.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Evil candy.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
That's you sell those giant gobstopper things like the jawbreakers,
you know that are impossible to fit in your mouth?
Is it like that frustrating candy.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Right, Yes, the kind that you have to unhinge your
jaw in order to put it in, and then they're
just stuck, stuck with it.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Edgy inconvenient candy.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
We like to turn good kids into horrible kids and
then release them upon the world. I don't go in
for all this nonsense of taking evil kids and then,
you know, turning them into blueberries. That's just that's amateur work.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Okay, okay, this became a bit of an exercise to
throw some shade at Wonka. Huh, you get nothing, all right, you?
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Actually it's a little early for that good day, sir. Yes,
let's find out if you will lose, because we all
know that I've been summoned here, and that tis my want.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Whenever I find out, when I finally figure out who
is summoning you, the woe be unto them.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
I just say, there's a little button under one of
these desks, but someone pushes it a light comes on
at my desk and I run over here as fast
as my little legs can carries.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Is it like a bat phone kind of situation? Do
you have like a red telephone that blinks?
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Or teller of what join the twenty first century? Nol
hair All right, So as I understand that you're talking
about an invasion in this, so I sacking. I've come
up with my ans, my own invasion quandary. If you
do not understand those listening what is happening, I don't
(27:51):
blame you. You haven't bothered to explain it yet.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Oh let's do let's do that part. So this is
the This is the part of the show where you,
Jonathan strick In the Quiztor, arrive at the most unexpected moments,
which tend to universally be towards the end of.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
The show, fully in disguise, despite the fact that you
have already established I am in fact Jonathan Strickland the Quiztor.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yes, yes, these are all true things, and you are
here to once again test our knowledge. You are going
to give us a scenario. Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (28:25):
That's a scenario, and then you will determine whether or
not in fact the scenario I present to you represents
a true event in history or if I made it
up seas, and you will have three minutes to do so.
In that three minutes, you will also be allowed to
ask questions of me, but only if you first obey
a rule of arbitrary nature that I will come up
with at the time of the question. So first I
(28:47):
will give you the scenario. Then I will tell you
what the rule is you must follow to ask any questions,
and then we shall begin the Great Grandfather clock timer. Okay, guys,
I haven't touched that since daylight saving.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
No, okay, look irritating me.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
It's an entire hour.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
I don't support daylight saving time. For the record, I
choose to daylight waster. Yeah. Well, we just.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Spent so much money on this clock. Quick peek behind
the curtain. This was a television show originally, but we
blew the budget on this enormous clock, and that's my fault.
And now we're a podcast.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
I still feel obligated to wear the costume.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Thank you man, Thank well. I just want to apologize.
I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry, Casey, I'm somewhat sorry. Jonathan,
he's tight's chafy so where are we?
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Where's just scenario? Here we are. The year sixteen hundred
and twenty five saw an entire English invasion of Spain
called off on account of drunkenness. Allow me to explain
for complicated reasons involving a Spanish princess giving the cold
shoulder to Prince Charles, the son of James the First,
(29:54):
the Duke of Buckingham, wanted to use the English fleet
to put a hurt on Spain. James died in sixteen
twenty five, and his boy Chuck became Charles the First.
Chuck dissolved parliament and Buckingham got to have his invasion,
except he forgot to supply the boats. So the fleet
attacked Cadiz, Spain, and takes over a superfluous fort, and
(30:18):
the commander of the invasion, seeing that he didn't have
the food and supplies needed to feed his invasion force,
gave the English permission to sack the fort's supplies, and
so the English began to drink copious amounts of wine
until the entire force of fifteen thousand soldiers were drunk
(30:39):
as skunks. Seeing no way to victory, the commander ordered
a retreat and Spain's invasion was cut very short due
to public drunkenness. Now, your arbitrary rule is, before you
ask a question, you must make a toast.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Start the timer, a right, give running start, oh for,
and we're off to the races. What do you think,
maw m, he's so good at this, He's really good
at this.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
And I hate to say it. I hate to even
give a shred of a compliment to the quiztor, but
he really knows how to push my buttons. Yes, yes,
let's see. That wasn't helpful for the question.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Valuable context man, A toast, A toast to half Dan,
good enough, who's in the episode that we just did? Okay,
so how common was wine at this time?
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Extremely? Wine is ancient. And then this was Spain, which
is not that far from I don't know if you
know your geography France.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
All right?
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Also a toast to Tuba solos.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
You're not even trying, mister, but they're great.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Was was Spain a caliphate at that time?
Speaker 3 (32:00):
This is immaterial of the question.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
I know, I've I've just tried to.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
I can give you a lot more details if you want.
I can either make them up seas or I can
tell you real things about sixteen twenty five Spain.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
That's true. That's an irrelevant question my part, Nol, do
you have a question.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
I just don't even know where to start. I'm just
so flummixed by this one. I tend to lean towards.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
I'm going with true. Okay, locket it three to one.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
True, you are current. Yeah, this actually did happen. Let
me explain what was happening, because the story gets so
much crazier. But really that was running a long already
and I didn't want to make it a super long one.
So here's the story. We have James the first of
England and he wants to make peace with Spain. There
(32:55):
would been hostilities between the two nations for quite some time.
You might have heard of a little thing called the
Spanish Arma. Elizabeth was all not having it anyway. To
a secure peace in the Renaissance really meant one thing,
which is mary one of your kids to one of
the snot nosed kids of the other place, and then
hope that everything turns out all right. So James reaches
(33:16):
out to see if perhaps they might be able to
arrange a marriage between a infanta of the Spanish royalty
and his son, Charles the First or Charles at that point.
Then Charles and Buckingham went incognito to Spain. That means no,
they weren't letting everyone know who they were. Are you
(33:38):
kind of sending to me, sir? So they go to Spain.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
I think condescending means talk down to people.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
No, you're talking to an expert. The Infanta says, thanks,
but no thanks, Chuck, I don't think you're really revving
my engines. And so they were returned to England, Buckingham
immediately bucking him by the where it was one of
James the First's favorites, possibly lover, and they wanted to
immediately to create an invasion of Spain. James the First
(34:07):
didn't want to make things worse, so until he died,
which was in sixteen twenty five, that's how things stood.
Then they tried to get Parliament to agree to this invasion,
but they were worried that perhaps Parliament would agree to
the invasion but then not pay for it to happen,
so they waited until Charles. Now Charles the First dissolved parliament,
(34:30):
so parliament is not in session, and then they go
and mount this invasion. They hire a Dutch commander who
was a brilliant land soldier. Okay, take up this armada,
invade Spain. They take over a fort that doesn't remotely
(34:50):
give them access to the town they actually need to take,
and the only supplies they had any access to a wine.
And then the commander says, tell you what, why you guys,
go ahead and get yourself something to drink because this
might take a while. And they got a rotten, stinging
drunk they ran away. One thousand English soldiers were left behind.
(35:11):
Not a single shot was fired in that invasion, and
all one thousand English soldiers were put to the sword. Cheerful,
cheerful into that story run.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Through as it were.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
They probably didn't notice, having been full of sack, which
is a very strong wine.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Oh wow, we're back to the We're back to sack,
you said, because we were debating. We were actually we
were trying to figure out on the fly while we
were recording the difference between sack, ransack and looting. And
there's not really one.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Well, and also sacks in getting fired in Britain, and
then sack is in taking over a city.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
Well, and there's also sack, which is very strong wine.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Which I love. Now I'm going to refer to any
cheap cheap wine as sack should Henry.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Henry the fourth Part one False Staff is known for
his sack. That's a that's a pun as well.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
I think we've okay, good so so very body, middle
school Shakespeare, A dirty dirty man is a baldy boy
middle school media? Was it completely off base? Jonathan Strickland
is also known as the Quizter. Thank you for returning
to the show. I think we're still a little behind him, might.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Be only one behind me this point. I think we're
almost even. You know what that means?
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Yeah, going to get way worse. I don't know that
that's possible. You're kind of the worst.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
I think. I think you're all right. I appreciate learning.
I'm gonna use the word sack a lot more. I
feel like I never appreciated it.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
You're sort of a Carmen san Diego type figure, you know,
Carmen sacked.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
It's true that Rockapella sings wherever I go.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
So so I Jonathan, I feel like we don't say
this too often when you are on this show. You
can be found not just here but on your other podcast,
Tech Stuff and the Brink, as well as large nerdrawn
collider coming soon available wherever you find your favorite shows.
(37:16):
So in the meantime, we hope that you enjoyed this story.
If you find names as cool as half Dan or
Pure and Ironside, let us know sack Man sack Man
half half sack.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
We gotta get it. There happened.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
People can tell we're recorded on a Friday. Yeah, list
so you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Join your fellow listeners over at our Facebook page, ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Dare we say it's more than just a page, it's
a family.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
Oh, I don't dare.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
No good there all the time.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
I know I'm there. I don't dare say it's a family.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Oh that would be nice because.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
The holidays are coming up, but I already have a
really long shopping list.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
That's fair, That makes sense. Well, thanks to all of
you guys out there in podcast land. Thanks to you
Ben for being such a good co host and friend
and happy holidays and all that. Quister, Thanks, thank you,
thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
You know I gave you a little present as your desk.
Don't drink it. I feel badly about it now.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Oh, thanks for the heads up, Okay, you know what.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
Back.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
We're a family show, so thanks to you, Casey Pegram.
As always, thanks to Alex Williams who composed our track
and Chris frossiotis our research associate for this episode.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
And stay tuned for the next episode where we talk
about the surprising roots of the Tooth Fairy. See you then.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow ridiculous historians, We've all been there. You're a Viking.
You're out there to rave and ravage and pillage, and
then lo and behold, you run to the wrong town.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
And now you're trying to get your plunder on, and
you went in the wrong cardinal direction. So you can't
be both ferocious and have a good sense of direction.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Right right, right, And as we'll find in today's classic episode,
our buddies half Dan and Bjorn not to be an
old classic half Dan, they wanted to be known for
their ability to be the best Vikings out there. They
wanted people to tell stories about them in the oral
(00:43):
history of their community. But they accidentally went to the
wrong place.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
It's true. Let's jump right into the story already in progress.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the
(01:23):
show Ridiculous Historians and Possible Viking Descendants.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
My name is Ben, my name is Nol. I used
to have a little red in my beard. Does that
mean I'm a possible Viking descendant?
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Well, it means you definitely have the possibility of that
red hair gene. You know, we would need to we
need to do some more testing. I also have a
red beard when I grow it out. And in the
part of Tennessee where I'm from, there is this old
folk saying about how you can't trust someone who has
two different colors of facial hair, So like I have
(01:56):
brown hair on my head and then red hair on
my face, not to be trusted.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
What about people with two different color eyes? Because I
have the two different colored beard and two different color eyes,
I mean I'm super untrustworthy.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
No, no, no, not in not in my part of
the world heterochromia. They seem fine with that.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
They think I'm a witch. I think you might have
to have.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
A milky eye or very like apparently different eye, you know.
But you know who is super trustworthy? You know? Tell
me our super producer, Casey Pegram, who is also, I
believe not not a Viking. Is that correct, Casey?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
That is correct? Yes, I mean he's not an active Viking.
His raiding days are behind him, right, I don't want
to talk about it fair enough, Okay.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
So we were talking about Viking names a little bit
before we went on the air today and one of
the questions, one of the questions, I ad we have
one character in this story named hastein the raider, and
the question is how many raids do you have to accomplish?
How many do you have to rack up or have
under your belt for that to become part of your name.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
I know I said save it for the pod and
you did not like that.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
It's kind of like telling someone to shut up.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
That's not true.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I don't know if that's the end. It just no.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
It just means this conversation would be best had it
spontaneously in one go, instead of doing it once and
then trying to do it again, because the magic is
never the same.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Ben, I see where you're coming from. But it is
like telling someone to shut up.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Okay, Ben, that's fair.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
But but I seriously wonder though, Nola is like, do
you do one raid or do you do five?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
That's a really good question. I mean, surely there's a
metric for these things. Or maybe he gave himself his
own nickname. Ooh, good call, that's interesting. I bet that's
I bet that's true because it is kind of a
badass nickname. Oh yeah, And you can tell in a
lot of these stories when someone has a not quite
complimentary nickname like Charles the Bald or something exactly. That
(03:52):
was probably bestowed upon him by people that didn't care
for him too much.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Yeah, propaganda. But why why are we talking about Vikings today?
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Who?
Speaker 1 (04:01):
What's this deal with hasting the.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Raider, Costing the Raider and his homie Bjorn Ironside, great name,
also a great name. They they did a little military blunder.
That's a lot of fun. It involves some sort of
trojan Horse like tactics. It involves possible decapitation of members
of the clergy, and a whole lot of raping and
(04:23):
pillaging and rating along the way.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Yes, yes, yes, at least that is if they actually existed.
That's the strange part.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
I hate that part about history where it's like, God,
this is so great, but it's probably not true.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Yeah, it or they'll try to make it a little
more optimistic and say they may have been real people.
You're thinking, what, I'm so invested in this story right now,
so take it with a grain of salt. This was
a long long time ago. Hastein was a Viking chieftain
in the late ninth century, and some of the characters
in today's story are going to be familiar to you.
(05:00):
If you are a fan of the television series Vikings.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yes, it's true.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Do you ever check that out?
Speaker 2 (05:05):
I haven't. I watched a little bit of it here
and there, But I also know apparently it takes quite
a few liberties with some of these stories as well,
and their depiction of the character of Bjorn Ironside, he
doesn't quite do what he probably actually did in the
historical accounts because it helped them with their storyline a
little bit.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Ah, yeah, I see what you're saying. Was that on
History Channel?
Speaker 2 (05:28):
I think it was like the weird, anomalous, like big
budget kind of Game of Thronesy type show on the
History Channel. That's right.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Well, let us know if you're a fan, and let
us know what you think they got right or wrong.
But this is a as much as we can determine
an historically true tale.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
It doesn't seem that way.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Yes, yeah, so we don't know much about hastein the
Raider his early life aside for the fact that you know,
he raided a bunch of stuff. It's right, it wasn't
around it now. And he came from a well established bloodline.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Yeah. All signs point to him being the son of
a Ragnar Lothbrock, and apparently that was also Bure and
Ironside's father, so they were possibly brothers.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
They were possibly brothers, or because bloodline was such a
big deal in this culture at this time, it is
also completely possible that Hastin just said that to try
to get some more street cred. Ship cred got it vikings.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
So these vikings, they they kind of had a singular mission,
didn't they.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Yeah, yeah, they had the raiding economy. If you want
to call it that, oh I do. It's a it's
a It's a huge part of the life of this culture,
so much so that of course people would get appellations
or names for their performance or lack of performance in
(06:58):
a raid, and if if there was a really well
done raid, then it would become part of this orld tradition.
It was a legend. So Ragnar Lothbrock one of his
big claims to fame was the sacking of Paris. This
occurred in eight forty five and five thousand vikings led
(07:18):
by Ragnar took over Paris. It was the largest, richest,
most defended city in Northern Europe. This was this was
like a very violent proto heist right, and the king
of the time, Charles the Bald, paid a huge ransom
of seven thousand pounds of silver to Ragnar just to
(07:38):
make them go away.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Yeah, that'll do it. So that's what a sacking is, right.
It's so interesting that term because I think of it
in the British parlance as getting fired, but it also
means like getting kind of conquered, which I guess they
sort of mean the same thing.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah, yeah, it completely I guess I could see that. Yeah,
that's an interesting etymology. Well that's seven thousand pounds of silver.
Did not work. They returned a decade later to sack
the city again.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
Yeah, there's no honor among Vikings, I guess, yes, yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
And the French in that time were prepared and they
were able to fight the Vikings off. But then in
eight fifty seven, Bjorn Ironside, son of Ragnar, actual son,
he takes his crew and they returned to Paris. But
they noticed that Paris is in ruins. Only after they're
(08:31):
done looting, only four out of the what twenty five
to thirty something churches were left standing. And they were
encouraged by this wanton mayhem, this gleeful destruction, and they said,
you know what raids are cool? Raids are super cool,
but Paris has kind of been done. Let's go for
something bigger.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Why was it in such ruins, Ben?
Speaker 1 (08:52):
So from eight forty five to eight fifty seven, we're
talking about three different sackings. There's not enough time for
the city to really repair it. So, you know what
I mean, you can only squeeze so much. I was
gonna see milk from a cow, but that seems weird.
You can't get blood from a stone.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Poor Paris. Yeah, haven't they had enough? I mean, so
that's basically what the takeaway was, right, That's what I mean.
They were literally like, you know what I think? Uh,
I think we're gonna leave them alone this time, right right,
pretty much right now, Ben, we should probably really quickly
mention that Hostein was such a badass that he actually
(09:28):
had quite a few names, whether they were aliases or
other nicknames, but he was known as aka half Dan.
That's my favorite one, by the way. I mean, he's
like half a he's got a full day. He's half
the d he used to be.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Yes, half the Dan you used to be.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
I like that. He's also allsting and also hasting with
that really cool ae combined letter. What do you call
that ben.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Technically speaking, it's a grapheme formed from the letters A
and E. It originally represented the Latin diphthong ae. Just
sort of got smushed into one thing.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
Got it. Got it? So at this point, Hastein and
Bjorn decide to make their way to the south of
France on the Lore Riverluir. Ah, Casey on the case.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
You know what usually we I thought it was always
vampire rules with you, Casey, we invoke you. I thought
we had to invite you in now to jump in there.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
He couldn't. He couldn't. He couldn't let that that gross
mispronunciation stand. Just trying to save us all some emails.
I appreciate it, buddy, I appreciate it. So we're lure
lure luar. So yeah, So they're sailing, I believe, a
fleet of sixty two ships down the Luire River. Excuse me,
in case you don't need to have you popping into
(10:48):
my head again.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
And they're going to the Iberian Peninsula. So where they
are is in what is today modern day France, and
then they're going to what is now Spain and Portugal,
and along the way they don't always do too hot
because they're kind of persona on grada at this point.
They keep running around sacking places and pillaging and just
(11:10):
having their way. So people are kind of wise to
them a little bit at this point, aren't they.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Yeah, this is all during this time, This is part
of the Umad Caliphate, and you could only do this
kind of thing so many times before people start realizing
there's trouble afoot, you know what I mean, unless you
kill everyone in the town you attack. So they did
not have a flawless record. In fact, when they were
(11:35):
raiding ships along the Glacian coast, they found that the
local resistance overall was just too strong. So they weren't
moving because they were maybe seeking greater riches. They were
seeking easier targets, easier pickings, easier pickings. That's how a
lot of predators work, you know. And so they moved
on to pillage the west coast of the emirate, and
(11:56):
there they started encountering more success. So the coast guardard
of the time captured two long ships scouting ahead of
the main fleet, and they found that these ships, these
scout ships, were already full of treasure and food and
slaves or captives that were destined to be enslaves.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
So at this point they're almost in, they're almost switching
their tactics to more traditional pirate kind.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Of right, right right, and they suffer another defeat when
they land in southwest Spain. The fleet next goes to
the mouth of the guattle Quavier with the intention, maybe
historians guests, of attacking Seville for a second time. But
then they got confronted by the Moorish fleet. These were
(12:42):
actual trained soldiers, They had maritime war tactics. These were
not just helpless fishing community.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
And didn't they lose a whole bunch of ships and
men in this confrontation?
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Yeah, because the Moorish Fleet had incendiary weapons. They were
literally lighting them up, And yeah, the ships burned, people died.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
What did the Vikings used typically? Were they using like
I mean axes, I imagine in close combat? But what
what would they use in ce combat? Do you think?
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Well?
Speaker 1 (13:11):
One thing we know for sure is that it was
a long standing rule of theirs to leave town, to
leave the scene if resistance was too strong. That's why
they're raiders, you know what I mean. So if we
if we're guessing, we know that a lot of their
fleets had little to know cohesion, you know, it's kind
(13:32):
of like more like a convoy on the road.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
I see.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Yeah, So they didn't attack ships with the intent of
destroying them. They wanted to board them. So one of
their common tactics was to try to ram ships and
then once they're close enough, jump on the show.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
There you go, and then they probably go to town
with those battle axes right with them. But I do
believe they also used bows and arrows and spears and
things like that, and I could picture shooting volleys of arrows,
you know, onto other ships. Possibly I don't know, I
can't confirm that, but it seems like that would be
one way of getting it done.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
M Yeah, yeah, agreed. So typically their their aim was
to get in close quarters to kill enslave plunder. But
this other fleet that is well well accustomed to maritime
ship on ship warfare, they're you know, they're Wu Tang style.
(14:27):
They're nothing to with Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
For sure, No, And I mean they were designed for
that purpose of ramming as well. I mean the way
the whole the whole ship was kind of built with
that in mind.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
And so as as we said, Noel, they encounter professional
naval forces, and they get the horns slapped off the helmets, which,
by the way, is a stereotype, and they were barely
able to make their way home. The few that were
left alive were forced to pay a ransom to escape.
(15:01):
But this defeat, this ignominious defeat, did not scare or
extinguish the thirst for vast treasures in glory on the
part of Bjorn Ironside and Hastin half Dan, half Damn.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
I love half Dan. So at this point they've had
some wins, they've had some losses, you know, but they
still want more. That's sort of the nature of this
kind of life, right, You don't really rest on your laurels,
you know, otherwise you'll be seen as weak and then
(15:36):
you won't be the toughest viking in the sea, right,
and then what's the point. What's the point? Well, no,
it's it's kind of like mob rules, right, Like if
it's as soon as you let up and stop, you know,
kicking people's asses all the time and taking collections, then
all of a sudden, someone else is going to move
in on your turf. So they couldn't have that. And
I think we've all heard that expression all roads lead
(15:57):
to Rome. At this time. That was especially true because
Rome was seen as like the crown jewel of sackable places, right, Like,
that's the one that you would guarantee to have a crazy,
incredible haul because it was full of riches and wealth,
and it like we had this whole you know, civilized
society with culture and like it was just practically the
(16:19):
streets were paved with gold right in the minds of
these vikings and the minds these vikings. And this leads
us to another character. We have to introduce the Norman
monk Dudo of Saint Quentin. Ah Dudo, Dudo, dude.
Speaker 1 (16:37):
Oh, we don't know a ton about this guy, except
that he was born around nine sixty five, he was
in the Norman court Normandy for a while, and in
his second stay in Normandy he wrote his history of
the Normans. And as for the rest of his life,
we know that he died some time before ten forty three,
(17:00):
So don't know a whole heck of a lot about him,
but we do know that he is the source of
the story that takes place next. Here's what happens. According
to this story, You're on Ironside and then his buddy,
half Dan. They land in a place after they've been
(17:21):
raiding the coast of Africa and getting their butts whipped
by some professional naval forces. They land somewhere in Italy,
and they think, this is the most amazing city. Holy smokes,
bro we made it. We're in Rome and we're about
to get down.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
We are going to tear the place up. We're gonna
light it up yolo big time. It's a total Viking
yellow sitch.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
So they want to use a little bit of cunning
because from everything they know about Rome, it's huge, it's
a home to opulent wealth, and it's probably very well protected. Right,
So they said, there's no way we can take this
by force, Like we're we're great guys, half Dan, but
(18:10):
we we got to think this through. Let's let's see
this through.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Our usual bloodthirsty, ruthless kind of smash and grab techniques
are not going to serve us in this particular situation. Yeah,
half Dan, that's how that went. Yeah, this is this
is a recreat Okay.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
So then I say, okay, well, let's let's give it
a night, let's think on it. The next morning, a
small group of Vikings approaches the city walls, and they say,
hold on, holda hi, hang on. I know we look crazy,
dressed in furs, dirty and sea worn, but we have
not come to plunder you. We have no strength left.
(18:50):
We're exhausted. We've been traveling a lot. Could you just
make peace with us and let us buy what we need,
you know, like food and provisions. Our chiefs are we
can broken and we need help.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
And our boy half Dan here is not doing so well.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Yeah, he is on death's door and he has seen
the light in the way of Rome. He seeks the
absolution of your religious leaders.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
And you know, let's.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Keep our opinions out of it, because he's the boss.
So he needs to be baptized if he dies here.
He wants to be buried in this city, a Christian burial,
consecrated ground.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
So and I mean, I think you know that probably
like the word conversion is like catnip to these people,
you know, I mean, it's like, okay, sure, the Heathens,
you want one, will give one to God. Let's do it.
Let him in, open the gates. So I guess he
and like a couple of his associates come in right, and.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
You'll hear a couple of different versions of this story.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Right.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
In one story, Costiner half Dan is already dead quote unquote,
and they his followers take this coffin in there to
just get the burial. And other versions of the story,
he is taken in and he's the technical word is malingering.
(20:13):
He's acting like he's a little more ill than he
actually is. And he sits through a baptism ceremony, right,
the anointed him with holy ointment and oil, and he's
smiling and he falls backwards on a stretcher. He's carried
back to the ship by his companions, really doing a
real Miisner number. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
And then after he gets carried back, they're doing a
con right. And so now the people trust that the
Vikings are sincere. And again, according to Dudo, I love
that name. According to Dudo, this is when half Dan
says to his followers, when night comes, you should say
(20:57):
to the priest and the duke that I am dead,
and fervently pray that I may be buried in this city.
Say that you want to give them the sword and
bracelet and everything that belongs to me.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Spooky stuff, right, treachery too, right, indeed, treachery most foul,
and so they.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Go back and they say, our chief, as you have
just named him, is dead. We pray that you could
be buried in your convent and that you received these
rich gifts he gave for you on his deathbed. So hey,
there's an upside for you Rome. But what happens next?
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Oh well, my favorite version of the story is when
he pops out of the coffin and slices off the
head of a priest and then says, you know, Yolo.
And then he and his dudes charged back through the
city to the gate. They open it up to the horde,
you know, the remaining foot soldiers, I guess. And then
something occurs to Bjorn or half Dan or Hastin. Hastin. Yes,
(21:56):
it's a terrible realization, man, quite embarrassing really, and I'm
not sure what did it for them, but something there
was an aha moment or like an oh moment. What
did they realize.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
They had successfully sacked the wrong city, a completely different city.
They were Viking rubes from the wild. They had no
idea that they never made it to Rome. Instead, they
were in a different town.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, it's called a luna. And again, these are all
some questionable retellings of this because there are two different versions.
We'll tell the other one in a second. But in
one version of this, they were so embarrassed that they
massacred the entire population of the city.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
They don't take well to surprises, I guess, so yeah.
According to this version, they turn into full on lunatics.
They kill everyone, or at least all the adult men,
and then they say, okay, we're gonna keep sailing. We're
going southeast, maybe to Alexandria in Egypt or something, and
(23:02):
then they raid the Mediterranean for a few years than
they return home, never to tell people of their embarrassing
wrong turn.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
That's right. And then there's a whole other conflict involving
Alfred the Great, where the forces of Hastein and Bjorn
are kicking it around Europe, the United Kingdom, specifically Wales. Actually,
his family gets abducted by the forces of Alfred the
Great and he ends up having to negotiate with him
to get this family returned to him, and one thing
(23:33):
leads to another, and he does not succeed, and he
more or less disappears from history around eight ninety six.
There's really no more mention of Hastein. Half Dan allsting,
whatever you want to call him. Yeah, yeah, you're correct.
He disappears around eight ninety six. By then he is
an elderly man. He's been described as the lusty and
(23:54):
terrifying old warrior of the Luoch and the Psalm, and
we now know that he was one of the most
notorious and successful Vikings of all time. But can't be
that way without making enemies. So the Norman monk Dudo
of Saint Quentin was incredibly critical of our boy half Dan.
(24:16):
He said, quote, this was a man accursed, fierce, mightily,
cruel and savage, pestilent, hostile, sombra truculent, given to outrage,
peestulent and untrustworthy, fickle and lawless, death dealing, uncouth, fertile
in ruses, wormonger, general traitor, fomentor of evil and double
diided dissimulator. Goodness, gracious, right, that is a war of words,
(24:41):
right there, my friend.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Fertile in ruses is such a great insult.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
He also uses pestulent twice, which I couldn't help but
notice that. But yeah, so he definitely lives on in
infamy even after, you know, disappearing from the record.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
You're right, he doubled down a pestil. He really did,
So the question then becomes a matter of how much
we can trust dudo. You know what I mean? Is
he just spinning tails to amuse himself or you know,
what are his sources? So we can say that this
(25:17):
still counts as ridiculous history, despite the fact that many,
many people died because these guys, if we are to
believe the story, were so intelligent that they figured out
a trojan horse type ruse or heist on their own, sure,
but still didn't know what city they were in.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
Yeah. Well, I mean it's not like they had all
the maps or anything. They were kind of just like
going by their gut, their Viking guts. So thank you
so much for tuning in everyone. We hope that you
enjoyed today. Every time I thought maybe it wasn't gonna
happen again every time. Yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Gentlemen, Strickland a quizt or as you like to call him,
a quizzler. I take because it's like.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Using his name in vain.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
You know that quizzler is a trademarked candy coming straight
from the chocolate shop. I also happened to run.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Why are you announcing that in such an archway. I mean, congratulations, man,
that's cool.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Evil candy.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
That's you sell those giant gobstopper things like the jawbreakers,
you know that are impossible to fit in your mouth?
Is it like that frustrating candy.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Right, Yes, the kind that you have to unhinge your
jaw in order to put it in, and then they're
just stuck, stuck with it.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Edgy inconvenient candy.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
We like to turn good kids into horrible kids and
then release them upon the world. I don't go in
for all this nonsense of taking evil kids and then,
you know, turning them into blueberries. That's just that's amateur work.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Okay, okay, this became a bit of an exercise to
throw some shade at Wonka. Huh, you get nothing, all right, you?
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Actually it's a little early for that good day, sir. Yes,
let's find out if you will lose, because we all
know that I've been summoned here, and that tis my want.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Whenever I find out, when I finally figure out who
is summoning you, the woe be unto them.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
I just say, there's a little button under one of
these desks, but someone pushes it a light comes on
at my desk and I run over here as fast
as my little legs can carries.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Is it like a bat phone kind of situation? Do
you have like a red telephone that blinks?
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Or teller of what join the twenty first century? Nol
hair All right, So as I understand that you're talking
about an invasion in this, so I sacking. I've come
up with my ans, my own invasion quandary. If you
do not understand those listening what is happening, I don't
(27:51):
blame you. You haven't bothered to explain it yet.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Oh let's do let's do that part. So this is
the This is the part of the show where you,
Jonathan strick In the Quiztor, arrive at the most unexpected moments,
which tend to universally be towards the end of.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
The show, fully in disguise, despite the fact that you
have already established I am in fact Jonathan Strickland the Quiztor.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Yes, yes, these are all true things, and you are
here to once again test our knowledge. You are going
to give us a scenario. Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (28:25):
That's a scenario, and then you will determine whether or
not in fact the scenario I present to you represents
a true event in history or if I made it
up seas, and you will have three minutes to do so.
In that three minutes, you will also be allowed to
ask questions of me, but only if you first obey
a rule of arbitrary nature that I will come up
with at the time of the question. So first I
(28:47):
will give you the scenario. Then I will tell you
what the rule is you must follow to ask any questions,
and then we shall begin the Great Grandfather clock timer. Okay, guys,
I haven't touched that since daylight saving.
Speaker 1 (29:00):
No, okay, look irritating me.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
It's an entire hour.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
I don't support daylight saving time. For the record, I
choose to daylight waster. Yeah. Well, we just.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Spent so much money on this clock. Quick peek behind
the curtain. This was a television show originally, but we
blew the budget on this enormous clock, and that's my fault.
And now we're a podcast.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
I still feel obligated to wear the costume.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Thank you man, Thank well. I just want to apologize.
I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry, Casey, I'm somewhat sorry. Jonathan,
he's tight's chafy so where are we?
Speaker 3 (29:33):
Where's just scenario? Here we are. The year sixteen hundred
and twenty five saw an entire English invasion of Spain
called off on account of drunkenness. Allow me to explain
for complicated reasons involving a Spanish princess giving the cold
shoulder to Prince Charles, the son of James the First,
(29:54):
the Duke of Buckingham, wanted to use the English fleet
to put a hurt on Spain. James died in sixteen
twenty five, and his boy Chuck became Charles the First.
Chuck dissolved parliament and Buckingham got to have his invasion,
except he forgot to supply the boats. So the fleet
attacked Cadiz, Spain, and takes over a superfluous fort, and
(30:18):
the commander of the invasion, seeing that he didn't have
the food and supplies needed to feed his invasion force,
gave the English permission to sack the fort's supplies, and
so the English began to drink copious amounts of wine
until the entire force of fifteen thousand soldiers were drunk
(30:39):
as skunks. Seeing no way to victory, the commander ordered
a retreat and Spain's invasion was cut very short due
to public drunkenness. Now, your arbitrary rule is, before you
ask a question, you must make a toast.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Start the timer, a right, give running start, oh for,
and we're off to the races. What do you think,
maw m, he's so good at this, He's really good
at this.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
And I hate to say it. I hate to even
give a shred of a compliment to the quiztor, but
he really knows how to push my buttons. Yes, yes,
let's see. That wasn't helpful for the question.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Valuable context man, A toast, A toast to half Dan,
good enough, who's in the episode that we just did? Okay,
so how common was wine at this time?
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Extremely? Wine is ancient. And then this was Spain, which
is not that far from I don't know if you
know your geography France.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
All right?
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Also a toast to Tuba solos.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
You're not even trying, mister, but they're great.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Was was Spain a caliphate at that time?
Speaker 3 (32:00):
This is immaterial of the question.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
I know, I've I've just tried to.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
I can give you a lot more details if you want.
I can either make them up seas or I can
tell you real things about sixteen twenty five Spain.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
That's true. That's an irrelevant question my part, Nol, do
you have a question.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
I just don't even know where to start. I'm just
so flummixed by this one. I tend to lean towards.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
I'm going with true. Okay, locket it three to one.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
True, you are current. Yeah, this actually did happen. Let
me explain what was happening, because the story gets so
much crazier. But really that was running a long already
and I didn't want to make it a super long one.
So here's the story. We have James the first of
England and he wants to make peace with Spain. There
(32:55):
would been hostilities between the two nations for quite some time.
You might have heard of a little thing called the
Spanish Arma. Elizabeth was all not having it anyway. To
a secure peace in the Renaissance really meant one thing,
which is mary one of your kids to one of
the snot nosed kids of the other place, and then
hope that everything turns out all right. So James reaches
(33:16):
out to see if perhaps they might be able to
arrange a marriage between a infanta of the Spanish royalty
and his son, Charles the First or Charles at that point.
Then Charles and Buckingham went incognito to Spain. That means no,
they weren't letting everyone know who they were. Are you
(33:38):
kind of sending to me, sir? So they go to Spain.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
I think condescending means talk down to people.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
No, you're talking to an expert. The Infanta says, thanks,
but no thanks, Chuck, I don't think you're really revving
my engines. And so they were returned to England, Buckingham
immediately bucking him by the where it was one of
James the First's favorites, possibly lover, and they wanted to
immediately to create an invasion of Spain. James the First
(34:07):
didn't want to make things worse, so until he died,
which was in sixteen twenty five, that's how things stood.
Then they tried to get Parliament to agree to this invasion,
but they were worried that perhaps Parliament would agree to
the invasion but then not pay for it to happen,
so they waited until Charles. Now Charles the First dissolved parliament,
(34:30):
so parliament is not in session, and then they go
and mount this invasion. They hire a Dutch commander who
was a brilliant land soldier. Okay, take up this armada,
invade Spain. They take over a fort that doesn't remotely
(34:50):
give them access to the town they actually need to take,
and the only supplies they had any access to a wine.
And then the commander says, tell you what, why you guys,
go ahead and get yourself something to drink because this
might take a while. And they got a rotten, stinging
drunk they ran away. One thousand English soldiers were left behind.
(35:11):
Not a single shot was fired in that invasion, and
all one thousand English soldiers were put to the sword. Cheerful,
cheerful into that story run.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Through as it were.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
They probably didn't notice, having been full of sack, which
is a very strong wine.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
Oh wow, we're back to the We're back to sack,
you said, because we were debating. We were actually we
were trying to figure out on the fly while we
were recording the difference between sack, ransack and looting. And
there's not really one.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Well, and also sacks in getting fired in Britain, and
then sack is in taking over a city.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
Well, and there's also sack, which is very strong wine.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Which I love. Now I'm going to refer to any
cheap cheap wine as sack should Henry.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Henry the fourth Part one False Staff is known for
his sack. That's a that's a pun as well.
Speaker 1 (36:03):
I think we've okay, good so so very body, middle
school Shakespeare, A dirty dirty man is a baldy boy
middle school media? Was it completely off base? Jonathan Strickland
is also known as the Quizter. Thank you for returning
to the show. I think we're still a little behind him, might.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Be only one behind me this point. I think we're
almost even. You know what that means?
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Yeah, going to get way worse. I don't know that
that's possible. You're kind of the worst.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
I think. I think you're all right. I appreciate learning.
I'm gonna use the word sack a lot more. I
feel like I never appreciated it.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
You're sort of a Carmen san Diego type figure, you know,
Carmen sacked.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
It's true that Rockapella sings wherever I go.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
So so I Jonathan, I feel like we don't say
this too often when you are on this show. You
can be found not just here but on your other podcast,
Tech Stuff and the Brink, as well as large nerdrawn
collider coming soon available wherever you find your favorite shows.
(37:16):
So in the meantime, we hope that you enjoyed this story.
If you find names as cool as half Dan or
Pure and Ironside, let us know sack Man sack Man
half half sack.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
We gotta get it. There happened.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
People can tell we're recorded on a Friday. Yeah, list
so you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Join your fellow listeners over at our Facebook page, ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Dare we say it's more than just a page, it's
a family.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
Oh, I don't dare.
Speaker 1 (37:49):
No good there all the time.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
I know I'm there. I don't dare say it's a family.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Oh that would be nice because.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
The holidays are coming up, but I already have a
really long shopping list.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
That's fair, That makes sense. Well, thanks to all of
you guys out there in podcast land. Thanks to you
Ben for being such a good co host and friend
and happy holidays and all that. Quister, Thanks, thank you,
thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
You know I gave you a little present as your desk.
Don't drink it. I feel badly about it now.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Oh, thanks for the heads up, Okay, you know what.
Speaker 3 (38:28):
Back.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
We're a family show, so thanks to you, Casey Pegram.
As always, thanks to Alex Williams who composed our track
and Chris frossiotis our research associate for this episode.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
And stay tuned for the next episode where we talk
about the surprising roots of the Tooth Fairy. See you then.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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