July 16, 2025 • 43 mins
If you asked the average person how Vikings solved their problems, they probably wouldn’t say through lawyers. And yet, early Scandinavian people were sticklers for due process. This week, Danièle speaks with Robert Lively about how a person became a Viking lawyer, what the process was for solving disputes, and how fixing bad behaviour worked in this shame-based culture.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Hi everyone, and welcome to episode two hundred and ninety
nine of The Medieval Podcast. I'm Danielle Sabalski, also known
as the five Minute Medievalist. If you ask the average
person on the street how Vikings solved their problems, they
probably wouldn't say through lawyers. And yet early Scandinavian people
(00:35):
were sticklers for due process. But don't worry, the Viking
legal world still had its spicy moments. This week I
spoke with doctor Robert L. Lively about Vikings and conflict.
Rob is a professor at Trucky Meadows Community College who
has worked on such diverse topics as rhetoric and Star
Trek voyager. His new book is Vikings Behaving Reasonably Nordic
(01:00):
hooff in Civil and Legal Rhetoric. Our conversation on how
a person became a Viking lawyer, what the process was
for solving disputes, and how fixing bad behavior worked in
this shame based culture is coming up right after this. Well,
thank you Rob for joining me to talk about Vikings
(01:22):
Behaving Reasonably. It is a pleasure to meet you. I'm
glad we made this work after some technical difficulties. Welcome
to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Thank you, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
The first thing I have to ask you when it
comes to a book like this is reading it. It
felt like this was a book that you had to write,
So tell us why you wrote this book.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
This book is really for me. It was really interesting
because it was sort of a nice confluence of events.
I'd been studying some rhetoric and I happened to have
read y'all Saga, and in y'all Saga, there's a major
court case there, and I started thinking about the legal
aspects of their red hor and then I started looking
(02:02):
more and more into it, and it just sort of
sprang from there. A lot of medieval rhetoric was predicated
on at least a history of rhetoric. Medieval rhetoric is
predicated on James Murphy's nineteen seventy four book Rhetoric in
the Middle Ages, and in that book he sort of
breaks down medieval rhetoric and only occurring in three instances,
(02:23):
whether you're looking at the art of poetry, the art
of letter writing, or the art of preaching. And as
I was looking at some of the rhetoric in this
court case in y'all Saga, I was seeing none of that,
and so it was like, well, what's going on here?
And so that maybe delve deeper into looking at some
of the rhetoric and the sagas and some of the
early Nordic laws and things like that, and it just
(02:46):
sort of sprang board from there, kind of launched me
into this looking at their civic and legal rhetoric and
kind of a broad scale. It's sort of a popular conception,
but there's so much misappropriation and misunderstanding of Nordic Viking
culture anyway that it's nice to see that they were
actually like thinking about society and culture and law and
(03:07):
you know, not just these big sort of hulking dudes
with bloody axes and things like that, which is almost
like a comical stereotype.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
I mean people are thinking always that Vikings are solving
their problems with bloodshed, and this isn't what you found
in your research. So we keep using the word rhetoric,
and this is a big part of the scholarship that
you've done. It seems like a big word, kind of
scary word. Sometimes, what does this word mean because it
is a big label for something that we do all
(03:35):
the time.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah, it also depends on who you read or who
you sort of take a look at. Aristotle breaks down
rhetoric to the art of persuasion, which is nice in
a certain context. But this rhetoriction, Houser said, it's dealing
with language, and it's language that gets people in groups
to get things done, whether it be like legal, civic,
(03:58):
in groups, whatever. How we actually approach that, I guess
it's kind of a persuasion, but it's using language to
affect some kind of outcome. And that's what I saw
a lot in their Sagas with the use of language
and trying to mitigate violence, not actually cause violence. I
mean there's a lot of violence in the Sagas, don't
get me wrong, but it's that's because things fall apart.
(04:19):
They don't start off that way, and people actually try
throughout the Sagas to stop violence, sometimes unsuccessfully.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
So when we're talking about rhetoric, we're talking about languages
meant to persuade. So in the Viking world, who are
the people that are trying to persuade. I mean, people
don't usually have an idea of maybe a lawyer in
a horned helmet, but this is almost what we're talking about, right,
People who are trying to persuade in the Viking world.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah, and just the clarification of vikings didn't have horned helmets. Yes,
that's more of a later invention from like the opera
in the eighteen nineties. But the lawyers were often looked
at and Iceland as being social prestigious. If you were
a lawyer, they'll mention it like this guy was like
the second best lawyer or the best lawyer, you know whatever,
(05:07):
or these two guys were like the best lawyers in Iceland. Lawyers,
I guess they would go under like a fosterage, I
guess what we would call it, where they would be
trained up in the law and you know, how to
present their cases and everything, and they were held in
find social prestige. And then they would go to the
quarter courts or the all thing and they would present
their cases to the judges. But it was considered an
(05:29):
honorable profession.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Now, if somebody decided that they wanted to be somebody
who spoke the law a lawyer, as we would call
it today, was that their entire profession or did they
do other things as well? And they were just called
upon to defend or prosecute people.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah, most of the time, they would have small farms
or be farmers. A lot of people in the Sagas
had farmsteads, and then they also were known for practicing law.
You know, Iceland at the time wasn't super super rich
or anything, so they would have to have some sort
of subsistence level job of farming and keeping sheep or whatever,
and then they would also be considered a good lawyer,
(06:10):
sort of the citizen lawyer.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
I love that. So you're called up to defend someone,
called up from taking care of your sheep, and all
of a sudden you need to defend someone. That's not
exactly how it went, because there were actual scheduled times
when people would have a case presented before the people.
So talk us through a thing.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
The whole concept of things is a very old concept
in the Nordic countries, and you'll see variations of the
word thing or ting or something throughout Scandinavia, Scotland, Ireland.
You know, along the coast where the Vikings settled, you'll
find like little references to these places. The things were
(06:52):
courts where people would get together and they would use
these things to hash out local difficulties, whether it be
like you know, property disputes. Maybe sometimes some family inner
family disputes, things like that, but it was a way
to take conflicts and actually resolve them peaceably. And so
these courts would often occur in like the spring or something,
and then they would resolve the smaller issues in these
(07:16):
kind of quarter courts, at least in Iceland, and then
if there were major cases or major problems, they would
go to the all thing that's like on Thingvettler in Iceland,
just a little southeast of Reikivic.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Today, I was wondering how you found out about these
things at all, because this is a culture and you
can tell us when and where we're talking about, but
this is mostly an oral culture, so rhetoric super important.
So how did you find out about this at all?
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Well, we have a large corpus of the Icelandic sagas,
and the Icelandic saga database has you know, a bunch
of them and you can pick them up, I mean
even like on Amazon you can buy a bunch of
different ones. And then several scholars I've done work on
thing sites and things like that has a book called
Things in the Viking World, which lays out the places
(08:04):
and kind of what went on there and Alexandra sam
Mark she's done some work on thing sites in Greenland,
which is really fascinating. I thought, there's some really interesting
scholars doing a lot of really interesting things, and I
just hope I did them justice trying to synthesize all
this material together. There's lots of talk about you know,
things and thing sites, and they seem to have permeated
this culture often their outdoor sites where people got together
(08:28):
and could work out their problems. Because keep in mind
that you know, a lot of these small communities in
Scandinavia at the time, they didn't have like a police department,
they didn't have anything like that, so they didn't have
any recourse of some kind of central policing or government
to appeal problems too. So they had to kind of
figure out a system for themselves and kind of agreed
(08:49):
upon this sort of court system that they developed.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
So let's talk through a case. For example. Well, imagine
that I'm a dude, because the rules women are lie
bit different. Yeah, I'm a dude. I'm a farmer. Somebody
has stolen my sheep? What do I do about it?
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Okay, So generally, if you were just like a worker
who your sheep went missing, and you think that maybe
some other lords. They weren't even lords at the time,
they were called gothie. They were the small farmers. The
person you've kind of sworn some kind of bond to
you would go to them and say, hey, I think
this other person stole my sheep. The gothie could go
(09:27):
to the other farm head and talk to him and
see if he can get the sheep back or whatever.
And then if that didn't work, you could always take
it to like a quarter court and present evidence that
like here's my sheep, blah blah blah, and plead the
case that way in front of a small quarter court.
If things couldn't be resolved that way, you know, things
(09:48):
could devolve into violence. However, for something as small as
a sheep, I think people would have probably seen reason
to either return the sheep or make some kind of
compensation for that. If things really got out of hand
and there was like people started taking up sides over
the sheep stealing or something, or maybe it was a
habitual for this one farmer to swipe people's sheep, Several
(10:09):
goth you might get together and actually bring a case
to like the all thing or something to say like, hey,
this guy's a habitual sheep stealer and we need some
sort of major judgment. And that was sort of shames
people into keeping the correct kind of social interaction. That way,
you can get away with a lot of you know,
not violence if you can kind of shame people or
(10:29):
get enough people against them to where they kind of
realize that I better straighten out a little bit, you know.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Yes, especially because this is happening under the open sky.
The whole community is there, so they're going to see
if you're willing to pay a fine for my sheep
or reconcile this. Everybody is going to know how reasonable
you are when you're there in the middle of the
court for everyone to see, right.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
No, exactly. It's a kind of social pressure that kept
people in line. And if you're living in a small
let me preface this a little bit, but the Vikings
TV show was kind of fun and there were some
interesting things they did, but a lot of it was
centered on, like, you know, how violent you know and everything.
If you're living in a subsistence community, you have really
harsh winters and like food can kind of be scarce.
(11:14):
You don't want to go killing off a lot of
your workforce, because then everyone starves to death. It's not
a good practical social solution. And so finding other, you know,
more reasonable kinds of ways to deal with these problems
is really going to help the entire community, because you
can't afford this. If you've ever traveled to like some
of the small villages and like Iceland along the coast,
(11:36):
or like villages in the fjords of Norway, which are
really beautiful, you realize if there's a problem, there's no
one here to help you. You know, you've got to
figure it out yourself. You know, we have cell phones
and mass transit and everything, but if you go back
to the Viking age, then there's not help coming. If
you screw up and you know, you kill off half
the population, there's not people to pick crops and take
(11:57):
care of things. So it would become a huge problem
socially if you like just grab your axe or a
sword and attack somebody every time you got mad.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah, it's not very efficient. I mean, I'm laughing a
little bit because I grew up in northern Ontario and
we knew better than to feud with any of our
neighbors in the middle of winter, because you don't know
if you're gonna need help later on.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Exactly. It's alluring to see all these like you know,
long ships and axes. It's kind of cool, I get it,
But at the same time, it's not practical whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yeah, and there's lots of structures in place for alternatives, right,
So what are some of the alternatives too? Violence? If
somebody needs to be punished somehow? What did people do
to make sure that things were resolved?
Speaker 2 (12:42):
First off, there was always some kind of redress. You've
done something wrong, you're going to redress it, either through
payment or something, you know, So that was always possibility.
If the person has shown that it's become a kind
of a continuing problem, I mean, you can always sue.
And they did this in the sagas. They would say
stuff like we're going to ask for like three years
of outlawry, you know, where you had to leave Iceland
(13:03):
for three years. People would cool off. A lot of times,
the people who left would either become traders so they
could acquire some money, or they would raid and then
they would come back and everything would have kind of
cooled down, and maybe they'd come back with some money
so they could sort of pay off or sort of
settle some debts or whatever. And then if people were
really bad and they were a constant problem and they
(13:23):
were like killing people and they wouldn't do stuff, they
would send them to full outlawry where you're like banished forever.
You can't come back here. You know. If you do,
then we can kill you because it becomes a societal
problem because you're such a bad dude. Those are extreme
cases where you like banish someone forever, you could repair
your reputation with the village or whatever. If you'd done
(13:44):
something wrong, you could always offer to the other person
a self judgment to like, what do you think I
owe you? And then I'll just pay it, you know,
And that shows contrition because you're willing to let the
other person set the price.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Yeah. I think that contrition is a a really important
part of this whole construction of making social structures of work.
And I also think one of the things that you
mentioned is important is we often think or we see
the vikings depicted as going off and raiding for a
glory or just because they have lots of bloodlust or something.
But imagine you're going off and raiding so that you
(14:18):
can pay a fine so that you can be integrated
back into your own community so you don't have to
go raiding again.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah, I'm not going to say that the Viking Age
was completely harmless or anything like that. I'm not making
that kind of that kind of statement, especially if you
were outside of the Viking community. You know. One of
the reasons I think that some of the monasteries were
hit along the English coast is they were easy targets.
You know, they weren't really defended on the sea side,
so you could land your long ship raid. These guys
(14:44):
had plenty of gold and not a lot of defenses.
It was an easy way to make some money and
then get out of there. But if you're dealing with
your community, that's a wholly different subject. People weren't violent,
you know, as much anyway towards their community because this
is their families, their clan, their their loyalty. It kind
of resided more locally at the time, I believe.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Well, I mean, it's important to make sure that we're
not making them look like they're cuddly, because we can't
discount the fact that they were going rating and things
like that. And we also can't discount the fact that
they are showing up to the things armed and this
is normal and this is something that is expected. So
you're going up to see your court case being presented
and you're coming there with arms just in case.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Right, Yeah, does that line which I just loved in
y'all saga and it says, you know, we must always
go fully armed to court, which I just think is
kind of funny. But the intent isn't there, you know,
for the violence. But at the same time, just in case,
it's always good to have a spear handy.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
You know, yeah, just in case they get violent. Right,
they might get violent, so I need to bring my
sword or my ags with me.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Yeah, exactly. Jesse Biok talks about different different aspects of
resolution for conflict. I think he has three different references
in there of how to do it, But the last
one is if everything else is worked through and nothing's working,
there's always that violent extreme that says we can kind
of control the violence, and you can have either like
a ritualized kind of dual, like a home gong or
(16:17):
something where this will solve it. To a certain extent,
it does become kind of problematic. But if nothing else works,
then that's always a last resort.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Yes, we see this in the modern world as well. Right,
people will resort to violence as a last resort. Morality
is a whole different discussion. Yes, we're not going to
get into right now. But one of the things that
you talk about that is important to your discussion of
Viking culture, especially in this context, is it is a
shame culture, not a guilt culture. So tell us the
(16:49):
difference between these two, because I thought this was a
really interesting and important part of your book.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Yeah, it's really interesting. I started looking at it sort
of like the heroic structure and looking at some of
the classical models like in Greece and stuff like that.
This idea of shame, the lens of a shame culture
is outside of you. So society determines what they consider
sort of acceptable behavior, and if you break that societal construct,
(17:15):
then you can be shamed. They will hold you up
to some kind of societal expectation, and if you don't
meet that, then you can be shamed. And there's all
kinds of ways that they do shaming, and we can
talk about that later if you like. But the society
itself determines that kind of morality. I guess we want
to call it, but the lens of looking at stuff
outside of you. Society says it's okay, it's okay. If
(17:38):
society says it's okay to kill somebody and these instances,
then if you do that, then they're not going to
look down on you. You won't be shamed, and so it's
just kind of a different focus. In guilt culture. The
lens is interior to you, right, so you're sort of
this lens looking out, and you have sort of an
ingrained sense of what's right or what's wrong, or what's
acceptable and what's not. And if you break that, no
(18:01):
one tells you that you're you're a bad person. You
just feel it. And this is a huge thing with
a lot of the monotheistic religions, this idea of guilt.
Christianity is considered to be a guilt culture because you
kind of feel guilty for doing bad things, breaking taboo.
But it wouldn't necessarily have been that way, for you know,
the medieval Scandinavians. Scandinavia converted to Christianity much later, and
(18:24):
then the spread wouldn't have been instantaneous. It had taken
some time to go through. But a lot of people
early on thought that an evolution from shame culture was
to guilt culture. And I think that just sort of
like a Christian bias towards the more guilt culture focused.
But a lot of the medieval Scandinavians would have been
(18:44):
shame culture. What society thought and said would have been
a hugely important to them, and it would have affected
the way they interacted socially within their community.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Yeah. Well, and I was thinking about how this works
in the modern world, like is there a comparison where
I think you can find it in thinking about apologies.
Right in the Viking world, if you said I'm sorry
you feel that way, and you made reparation with fine
or something, then that's fine because you've healed the breach
at a societal level, Whereas these days we are sort
(19:15):
of in a guilt culture in that like, if you
don't say sorry and actually feel bad about it, then
it's not a real apology. You're supposed to feel bad
about it, and if you don't, then that's not a
real apology. Is that sort of a good comparison, do
you think?
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Yeah? I think the intent you know, in the guilt culture,
if you said I'm sorry and you know, you don't
really feel sorry, then is it really an apology? You know?
I mean, I'm sure you've probably had your mom or
something like say you're sorry. You're like sorry, like say
it like you mean it. Yeah, But the idea of
a shame cultures. You said, you know, I'm sorry, or
you'd redress something, and the community found that that was acceptable,
(19:51):
then that would be good, whether you felt that way
or not, as long as it kept their honor and
saved face in the community with that apology or whatever
or a gift or whatever you gave to address the situation,
then they'd say, like, Okay, it's done. I think you
could just kind of move on with it. It's a
different view than we have today.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Yeah, And it's important maybe to mention that sometimes the
community did not accept that apology, did not accept that redress,
and they expected more from the person who was being
found guilty of something.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Right, Yeah, I would, I think would depend on the
size of the transgression. If you just something really horrible
and you apologized, and you offered something really minor as redress,
and the community found that unacceptable, they wouldn't accept it.
It would still be considered a shame. So it would
have to be commensurate, I guess with the amount of transgression.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Right, it has to actually fit the transgression that's happened,
otherwise it won't be accepted. And this is really going
to stick to you for a long time. And one
of the things that you mentioned when we're talking about
shame is that people will will say that you should
feel shame about something, even if you haven't admitted it yourself,
and they will go and actually put a sign on
(21:05):
your property Godfather's styles saying you should feel ashamed of yourself. Right,
tell us about how that works.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Oh, there is a great book by this guy Sorenson
called The Unmanly Man, and he talks about shame structures.
If you're like gonna be considered sort of unmanly and
it is awesome. But he talks about the different types
of neath these ideas that you know you've been shamed, right,
so you can do several things. There's the tongue beneath,
(21:31):
where you can just like slander somebody, shame them publicly
slandering them. There's one called the tray neath, which is
that you actually go and carve an effigy of someone like,
you know, having sex with an animal or something and
put it in front of their house, and then everybody
walking by is just like, oh my god, look at this,
and it's a public shaming thing. It's kind of wild.
And then one of my favorites is you get the
(21:53):
kneath stung the neath pole and like Ale Saga, for instance,
he's out and Eric blood Axis taken some land from
him illegally but won't return it or pay him off
forard or anything. So he cuts a pole, cuts a
horse's head off, sticks it on the pole, leans it
towards the house to show which person's getting shamed, and
(22:13):
then carves like little curse ruins on it so people
can walk by and see the ruins that are affecting
this guy. The neath poles are just a crazy way
to publicly shame someone. If he came out and saw this,
it'd be like, wow, you know this this is serious
because to do this, it's like taking it to the
next level of shaming, because you're purposely trying to curse
(22:34):
or embarrass or someone. In Scandinavia, even today, they'll have
instances of people using neath like stuff. You know, just
a few years ago in Iceland a person did a
neath pole towards a neighbor, and the cops thought it
was serious enough to maybe considered as a death threat.
During the Panama Papers scandal, one of the Icelandic politicians
(22:54):
was involved with it, and people protest it out in
front of the All thingy in Iceland, and they were
using either dead cod on sticks sort of like a
little neath pole, or you know, people having little mini
neath poles out there to sort of shame the politicians.
And I think it's fascinating that this kind of rhetorical act,
even after like eight or nine hundred years, is still valid.
(23:17):
I mean people still know what that is. It's a
public shaming event.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yeah. I mean, even if you're outside of the culture,
if someone is protesting you with a fish on a pole,
I mean, you can't imagine that this is something that
is meant to make you feel like you have not
done enough to deal with the problem that you have created.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Yeah. No, it's really interesting. They've even used the idea
of the shame the neath pole in video games. I
don't know if you do.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Play video games, yeah, sometimes, but I haven't played a
Viking one. I have to admit.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
In the Witcher three, you go to this island of Skealega,
and one of the quests is actually for this person
to get rid of the curse from a neath pole.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Oh there you go, So you can find one in
the game. People can now play the Witcher and look
for these neath pulls.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yeah, which your three has one? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Oh there you go.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Well.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
I love that people are looking back to history to
inform these video games, even though the Witch is not
supposed to be in our particular world.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Okay, so we're talking about Shane. We're talking about trying
to get people, if not to feel bad within, to
at least redress their wrongs. And one of the things
that you mentioned is that this is something that women
employ as well. So we imagine that I was a
dude with a lost sheep, because what women have to
do is different. So if I'm a woman on a
farmstead by myself and I've lost a sheep, now what
(24:39):
do I do?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Yeah, it's really fascinating. One of the things about a
lot of the Viking court cases is usually it's run
through sort of like the farmers, like the main farmers.
If you own like a farmstead, you had some sort
of like social standing, so you would go to the
all thing, and maybe you'd bring some of your retainers
along with you. But say like you're like a slave
or a bond's or hear one of the women who
(25:01):
work on the farm, or like part of the family,
and you're not allowed that access to the courts, then
there's this whole thing that is possible called goating, and
goating is something that occurs fairly regularly actually in the
sagas for people that are not allowed to access to courts,
they'll try to goat or shame someone into representing them.
(25:22):
So say like you're off doing something and someone takes
your sheep, and your husband is friends with the farmer
and doesn't really want to raise a stink, you know,
and cause problems in the district or whatever, You're totally
within your right to go them to action, so you
can kind of shame them publicly, usually be like at
dinner time when everyone's gathered around once again a very
(25:43):
public event, then you can kind of shame them saying like, hey,
aren't you supposed to take action? Aren't you supposed to
defend the farmstead, aren't supposed to protect a reputation and
try to goad your husband, brother's son whoever's sort of
the person in charge to take action, whether it be
to go talk to the other person, to take it
to court, to do something, and at that time, if
(26:06):
they choose not to, you can also keep shaming them
until you actually get to the violence, saying like, hey,
you know you haven't done anything. Now a reputation shot.
The only way to do this is to actually go
get those sheet back.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
So yeah, well, we talk about this in later ages
where women are making persuasive argument sort of behind the scenes,
but in this culture it is done very much in public.
And this is the role of women to do this.
It's not something that they should feel bad about. They
should not be doing. This is their job to make
sure that the reputation of the farm, for example, is upheld.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Right, Yeah, exactly. And then a couple of instances in
the sagas themselves, there's a couple of the short lines
where it's like a little comment from the peanut gallery
where they where the you know, the people say like
this was a good goat or you know, they agree
that this was not goating or something. You know, it's
really funny that they'll be like a little comment about that,
judging whether this was actually considered a goating or not
(27:04):
a goating, you know kind of thing. But it's funny
that obviously the writer is considered it enough to put
that little line in, you know, like this is the
sort of a thing that we do.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Yeah, it's just it's really.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Interesting, right, And so we have women who are accused,
especially in the early modern period, of being scold. But
this word actually means something important, right, It comes from
somewhere important.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Scold Actually it comes from the word skald, which is
an old Norse word. The skalds the poets there. They
would also compose poetry that could shame people or praise them.
But you know, if you were there and if you
did something wrong and it was widely known enough, they
could compose a shame poetry saying that you're a bad
(27:48):
person or not honorable or something, and that that's bad
because then they travel around singing the song and then
your reputation shot everywhere.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
It's definitely not what you want when somebody comes up
with it really catchy song. And actually I was reading
your book and I was thinking about the Robin Head cartoon,
the Disney one where people are singing that song about
Prince John, and it's so catchy, you know the one
I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, I like that movie.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
So not exactly a Skald, but there's a song that
people are singing that makes Prince John feel like he
has to do something, and of course he makes a
very bad decision about what to do.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
So, when we're talking about this and we're talking about
public shaming and maybe going as far as putting a
horse's head on a pole to shame people, it may
sound unsophisticated, but this is actually a really sophisticated way
of bringing the law forth and actually applying the law.
And what I'm talking about is it might sound like
we're rap battling or throwing insults, but this is actually formulaic.
(28:47):
And one of the things, if I'm really interesting in
your book, is that when you brought a case before
the court, if you did not follow the correct form,
it could get tossed out on technicality. So like, this
is a sophisticated it as what's going on today in courts, right,
So tell us about some of the formulas people were
using and how things could get tossed out on technicalities.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Yeah, a lot of the law cases the Icelandic law
codes were written down, and there are others too from
Norway you get like the Gula thing or the Frost thing.
The Icelandic law codes were written down, and this thing
called the Graugaus the Gray Goose laws. They wrote everything
down and these are sections on how to deal with
certain types of legal problems. And they had these sort
(29:31):
of like little formulaic passages that you'd sort of recite
and then you would present this to the case and
order and they had to follow a real particular legal procedure,
and so when you presented, you had to sort of
say these things formulaically to present your case and everything,
and if you screwed up somehow, it potentially opens you
(29:53):
up to you know, having your case thrown out or
you know, being judged against because you didn't follow these
real kind of formulate procedures. And I'm sure there was
much more complicated than I'm showing it here, but these
ideas of set functions of these laws were hugely important
because in Iceland at the all thing it was a spectacle.
It was like country fair, legal court, legislative session, that
(30:18):
kind of cool thing to go to. I would think
people came from all over the country and met at
the all thing and listen to people at the law rock.
And you know, if you're a society that's built upon
this sort of public performance, then they sort of expect
a kind of performance. That's the way it would work.
And so you'd have to have people swear oaths and
recite cases and you know, do these things in sort
(30:41):
of a proper order to maintain the decorum. And if
you messed up somehow, there would be problems. And this
is really one of the main problems in y'all saga
is that when the court case was being litigated, the
guys who burned in y'all, they were up to some
shenanigans and they like transferred the ownership of his farm
(31:02):
to a different person. So then when the people who
brought the case against them petitioned it in court, they
cited the wrong place for the court to take place in.
So it creates these little legal loopholes throughout. And that's
one of the reasons it eventually degenerates into some violence,
is because the other lawyer kept fiddling with the law,
(31:22):
you know, sort of one upship kind of thing of
changing it, resulting that the case was kind of thrown out,
and that's why it became such a huge violence at
the end of Nial saga. But this idea that everything
is really formulaic and had to be precise enough to
where it would meet that public standard, right.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
And what I'm thinking of when I'm thinking about these
lawyers that are coming up and they're presenting their cases,
is I think we have sort of a heroic idea
sometimes that somebody is just going to stand up there
with no legal training and they're going to just blow
everyone away. And so we see this sometimes a bit
of hubris when people represent themselves in a law which
makes you think of that phrase something like a man
(32:03):
who represents himself as a fool for a lawyer. So
how often do you think it would have been charisma
that won the day over legal practice, legal technicalities.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
I'm not sure I would classify it necessarily as charisma,
but I would think if the person maybe had more
social standing, a bigger retinue, something like that, then maybe
people would see like it would be better to find
on his side, so necessarily bad things wouldn't happen to
the rest of us. Yeah, it did happen. I think
(32:39):
generally people wanted to do right. But sometimes if you
had someone who was a pretty important person who had
a huge landholding, brought a court case against someone, even
if you think that the person who had the bigger
retinue was in the wrong, you might side with them
anyway because in the long run it would help the
village or whatever not to get this guy angry. Right,
(33:02):
So it wasn't a perfect system. But I'd also like
to point out the court cases today on a perfect
system either. Yes, how often do people who are rich
or people who are more powerful get all kinds of
extra benefits in court rather than being poor, destitute or something.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
So no system is perfect, right, And I mean it
gets to your greater point, which is that people were
trying to preserve the peace, so that they're making decisions
based on what is going to be the most peaceful
outcome for the community, even if that means some people
are getting away with things that maybe they shouldn't have
if we're falling strict moral or legal guidelines.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah, yeah, I think for the most part, you know,
people tried to be reasonable about it. It was in
their own benefit to be reasonable. The sagas you know
often tell they'll call them either oh ho, people who
are topically unreasonable, or they'll call them like oh yavin
the of uneven people, people who are just mean or
(34:04):
you know, not willing to work with their neighbors, stuff
like that. I mean, there's negative terms in the sagas
for these kinds of people, and they're not portrayed as
nice people.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
People can find a person who's not very nice sometimes
are not very sincere, and it's obvious to the community,
even if maybe they sometimes get away with murder. So
the one thing that we haven't talked about. We've talked
about lawyers, we've talked about the people who are coming
and watching the procedure, but we haven't actually talked about
who is making the judgment. So who makes the judgment
(34:33):
in the end.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Actually, they would get together and they would appoint you know,
several of the farmers, you know, the farmholders to be
a jury.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
They would vote, you know, and how many people are
we thinking about for this.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
It kind of depends on what kind of court you
were in, but somewhere around thirty six forty eight people
they listen to the case, they would hear the arguments whatever,
and then they would vote. The voting I think was
really important because sort of showed if you have landholders
from around the country listen and vote, then you're getting
a pretty good public consensus of people who have some power.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Yes, well, I'm thinking about how in the modern world,
one of the important parts about the legal system is
that you have a secret ballot when it comes to
the jury. Maybe they can talk about it later, but
you're not supposed to know how they vote. They all
render their verdicts together. But I'm imagining in these things
that we're talking about, these votes are pretty public as well,
(35:31):
aren't they.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah, everything would have to be public.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
So if you're like, are you on you know, thor
side or whatever, everybody raise your hand. Yeah, yeah, so
you can tell who's going to be voting for you
or not, and you will remember that as well. So
this is something to bear in mind when it comes
to peacekeeping in these court cases.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Right. Yeah, that's really interesting that, like it's so different
than some other types of voting. Whether you look at
the Greeks who would take little bits of clay called
ostraca and like write some thing on it and drop
it in like a little bucket, or Romans might use
colored stones or something to vote, so you could walk
up and drop and then they count and whatever. This
appeared to be a pretty public event, you know, where
(36:10):
like people would vote and you'd have not only the judges,
you'd have the lawyers and the other retinues of the
two parties, but then other people just around is sort
of like just the gallery watching the stuff. So it
was very public, very open under the sky. You know.
It's quite an interesting setup of legality in this instance.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Yeah, and the various responsibilities that you have when you're
weighing your decision, weighing it on the case that's presented
before you, but also all of the other responsibilities, all
the people looking at you. You know, you might be
shamed for this later.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Yeah. Historically, the biggest case that I found, I just
think it's super fascinating is for the conversion of Iceland
to Christianity because it was resolved through a court case.
So many times you hear about conversion, you know, like
Crusie narratives and whatnot. It's always like, you know, there
was a war, a battle and by the sword kind
of thing. But the Icelanders brought it to court. They
(37:08):
presented sides, you know, because a lot of feud had
been going up between Christians and Pagans at the time,
and the Norwegian king was Christian, and you know, he's
putting a lot of pressure to convert the Icelanders and
the Lost Speaker at the time was a Pagan, and
Norway was threatening basically an embargo on Iceland. And so
they had a case and he thought about it and
(37:30):
he made both sides vow that whatever he decided that
they would abide by publicly, and they said, okay, you know,
we're gonna abide by this. And then he went off
and thought about it and came back and he judged
that Iceland should become a Christian nation because it was
better that Norway didn't cut off the supply chain food, timber,
stuff like that. But he said that like, hey, but
(37:52):
if you're a pagan, you're still allowed to worship in
private and whatnot. So it was really interesting because it
touch a weird thing. You know, you often think about
either finding God or some kind of like military conflict
and then people were forced to submit or something. But
the Icelanders took it to a court case and they
decided it that way.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Well, this to me speaks more of what history was
actually like than what we see on TV. Right, although
maybe maybe it's not going to go so well for
you if you pitch to Netflix or something. Let's just
have these vikings sitting around saying let's talk about this.
Maybe that won't work so well. But to me, this
feels like what we would see if we dropped in
on just about any moment in history, people sitting down
(38:35):
and talking about what is going to be the best
way forward, rather than just swinging axes around everywhere.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Yeah, it's exactly right. You know, we have a tendency
to focus on it. And maybe it's the glamour or something,
or the hollywoodness of it, where we focused on a
lot of the violence and military campaigns and whatnot, and
maybe that says something about how we are as a people,
which is sort of sad if you think about it.
But a lot of times through history it is a
lot of people, you know, the bureaucrats, the people making arguments,
(39:03):
sitting down talking working through treaties that preserve peace. They're
doing things that are never really going to get recorded
all that much historically, or at least you thought of
it as very interesting. But if you were an average
Scandinavian in the Middle Ages. Your life had been probably
pretty peaceful and pretty pastoral.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, and there's probably a lot of people who are
not only interested in history, but probably a lot of
lawyers listening to this right now and saying, thank you
for this. We are peace makers and we get a
bad rap, but hey, we were important in the Viking Age,
just as we were important today.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
Oh absolutely well.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Thank you so much, Rob for coming on and showing
us how Vikings could and did behave reasonably and how
in fact this was a super important part of Viking culture.
Thanks so much for being here.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
To find out more about Rob's work, you can visit
his books page on the Our Humanities Press website. That
book is Vikings Behaving Reasonably Nordic hoff in Civic and
Legal Rhetoric. Before we go, here's Peter from Medievalist dot
Nets reports coming to you direct from England.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Hi, Danielle, I'm still here in England for a couple
more days. The International Medieval Congress was an amazing experience.
Lots of great papers presented. A couple of them I
want to tell you about quickly. Nick Morton detailed a
whole war in the thirteenth century that historians don't even
know about. George Tiotokis talked about the Byzantine general Balisarius
(40:31):
putting a spin on the old hidden pit trap trick
to defeat the Persians in battle. Lots of good stuff.
You'll hear more about it in the coming weeks. Now.
I was hoping to get some new pieces on for
the website while I was here. Unfortunately, my laptop had
a bad encounter with a bottle of water and it's
not going to be working ever again. So that being
(40:55):
the situation, I decided the best thing for me to
do was to focus on our summer sale of online courses.
We're going to extend it for another week and we
are now adding some more courses to that as well,
So please check that out and use the coupon code
Summer when you visit us at Medieval Studies dot thinkifk
(41:15):
dot com. Thanks.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
As Peter mentioned, there are a whole lot of online
courses being offered in September, including an introduction to the
fourteenth century by yours truly. So if you're interested in
learning with me all about history's best and maybe worst century,
get on Medieval Studies dot thinkific dot com to scoop
up your delicious discount with the coupon code Summer, and
(41:40):
to get you in the mood to learn all about
the one hundred Years War, why not tune into my
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This Is History. I'll be hitting the airwaves in just
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(42:04):
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(42:24):
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(42:46):
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(43:07):
Our music is Beyond the Warriors by gee Frog. Thanks
for listening and have yourself a fantastic did
Hi everyone, and welcome to episode two hundred and ninety
nine of The Medieval Podcast. I'm Danielle Sabalski, also known
as the five Minute Medievalist. If you ask the average
person on the street how Vikings solved their problems, they
probably wouldn't say through lawyers. And yet early Scandinavian people
(00:35):
were sticklers for due process. But don't worry, the Viking
legal world still had its spicy moments. This week I
spoke with doctor Robert L. Lively about Vikings and conflict.
Rob is a professor at Trucky Meadows Community College who
has worked on such diverse topics as rhetoric and Star
Trek voyager. His new book is Vikings Behaving Reasonably Nordic
(01:00):
hooff in Civil and Legal Rhetoric. Our conversation on how
a person became a Viking lawyer, what the process was
for solving disputes, and how fixing bad behavior worked in
this shame based culture is coming up right after this. Well,
thank you Rob for joining me to talk about Vikings
(01:22):
Behaving Reasonably. It is a pleasure to meet you. I'm
glad we made this work after some technical difficulties. Welcome
to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Thank you, thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
The first thing I have to ask you when it
comes to a book like this is reading it. It
felt like this was a book that you had to write,
So tell us why you wrote this book.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
This book is really for me. It was really interesting
because it was sort of a nice confluence of events.
I'd been studying some rhetoric and I happened to have
read y'all Saga, and in y'all Saga, there's a major
court case there, and I started thinking about the legal
aspects of their red hor and then I started looking
(02:02):
more and more into it, and it just sort of
sprang from there. A lot of medieval rhetoric was predicated
on at least a history of rhetoric. Medieval rhetoric is
predicated on James Murphy's nineteen seventy four book Rhetoric in
the Middle Ages, and in that book he sort of
breaks down medieval rhetoric and only occurring in three instances,
(02:23):
whether you're looking at the art of poetry, the art
of letter writing, or the art of preaching. And as
I was looking at some of the rhetoric in this
court case in y'all Saga, I was seeing none of that,
and so it was like, well, what's going on here?
And so that maybe delve deeper into looking at some
of the rhetoric and the sagas and some of the
early Nordic laws and things like that, and it just
(02:46):
sort of sprang board from there, kind of launched me
into this looking at their civic and legal rhetoric and
kind of a broad scale. It's sort of a popular conception,
but there's so much misappropriation and misunderstanding of Nordic Viking
culture anyway that it's nice to see that they were
actually like thinking about society and culture and law and
(03:07):
you know, not just these big sort of hulking dudes
with bloody axes and things like that, which is almost
like a comical stereotype.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
I mean people are thinking always that Vikings are solving
their problems with bloodshed, and this isn't what you found
in your research. So we keep using the word rhetoric,
and this is a big part of the scholarship that
you've done. It seems like a big word, kind of
scary word. Sometimes, what does this word mean because it
is a big label for something that we do all
(03:35):
the time.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah, it also depends on who you read or who
you sort of take a look at. Aristotle breaks down
rhetoric to the art of persuasion, which is nice in
a certain context. But this rhetoriction, Houser said, it's dealing
with language, and it's language that gets people in groups
to get things done, whether it be like legal, civic,
(03:58):
in groups, whatever. How we actually approach that, I guess
it's kind of a persuasion, but it's using language to
affect some kind of outcome. And that's what I saw
a lot in their Sagas with the use of language
and trying to mitigate violence, not actually cause violence. I
mean there's a lot of violence in the Sagas, don't
get me wrong, but it's that's because things fall apart.
(04:19):
They don't start off that way, and people actually try
throughout the Sagas to stop violence, sometimes unsuccessfully.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
So when we're talking about rhetoric, we're talking about languages
meant to persuade. So in the Viking world, who are
the people that are trying to persuade. I mean, people
don't usually have an idea of maybe a lawyer in
a horned helmet, but this is almost what we're talking about, right,
People who are trying to persuade in the Viking world.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yeah, and just the clarification of vikings didn't have horned helmets. Yes,
that's more of a later invention from like the opera
in the eighteen nineties. But the lawyers were often looked
at and Iceland as being social prestigious. If you were
a lawyer, they'll mention it like this guy was like
the second best lawyer or the best lawyer, you know whatever,
(05:07):
or these two guys were like the best lawyers in Iceland. Lawyers,
I guess they would go under like a fosterage, I
guess what we would call it, where they would be
trained up in the law and you know, how to
present their cases and everything, and they were held in
find social prestige. And then they would go to the
quarter courts or the all thing and they would present
their cases to the judges. But it was considered an
(05:29):
honorable profession.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Now, if somebody decided that they wanted to be somebody
who spoke the law a lawyer, as we would call
it today, was that their entire profession or did they
do other things as well? And they were just called
upon to defend or prosecute people.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah, most of the time, they would have small farms
or be farmers. A lot of people in the Sagas
had farmsteads, and then they also were known for practicing law.
You know, Iceland at the time wasn't super super rich
or anything, so they would have to have some sort
of subsistence level job of farming and keeping sheep or whatever,
and then they would also be considered a good lawyer,
(06:10):
sort of the citizen lawyer.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
I love that. So you're called up to defend someone,
called up from taking care of your sheep, and all
of a sudden you need to defend someone. That's not
exactly how it went, because there were actual scheduled times
when people would have a case presented before the people.
So talk us through a thing.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
The whole concept of things is a very old concept
in the Nordic countries, and you'll see variations of the
word thing or ting or something throughout Scandinavia, Scotland, Ireland.
You know, along the coast where the Vikings settled, you'll
find like little references to these places. The things were
(06:52):
courts where people would get together and they would use
these things to hash out local difficulties, whether it be
like you know, property disputes. Maybe sometimes some family inner
family disputes, things like that, but it was a way
to take conflicts and actually resolve them peaceably. And so
these courts would often occur in like the spring or something,
and then they would resolve the smaller issues in these
(07:16):
kind of quarter courts, at least in Iceland, and then
if there were major cases or major problems, they would
go to the all thing that's like on Thingvettler in Iceland,
just a little southeast of Reikivic.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Today, I was wondering how you found out about these
things at all, because this is a culture and you
can tell us when and where we're talking about, but
this is mostly an oral culture, so rhetoric super important.
So how did you find out about this at all?
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Well, we have a large corpus of the Icelandic sagas,
and the Icelandic saga database has you know, a bunch
of them and you can pick them up, I mean
even like on Amazon you can buy a bunch of
different ones. And then several scholars I've done work on
thing sites and things like that has a book called
Things in the Viking World, which lays out the places
(08:04):
and kind of what went on there and Alexandra sam
Mark she's done some work on thing sites in Greenland,
which is really fascinating. I thought, there's some really interesting
scholars doing a lot of really interesting things, and I
just hope I did them justice trying to synthesize all
this material together. There's lots of talk about you know,
things and thing sites, and they seem to have permeated
this culture often their outdoor sites where people got together
(08:28):
and could work out their problems. Because keep in mind
that you know, a lot of these small communities in
Scandinavia at the time, they didn't have like a police department,
they didn't have anything like that, so they didn't have
any recourse of some kind of central policing or government
to appeal problems too. So they had to kind of
figure out a system for themselves and kind of agreed
(08:49):
upon this sort of court system that they developed.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
So let's talk through a case. For example. Well, imagine
that I'm a dude, because the rules women are lie
bit different. Yeah, I'm a dude. I'm a farmer. Somebody
has stolen my sheep? What do I do about it?
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Okay, So generally, if you were just like a worker
who your sheep went missing, and you think that maybe
some other lords. They weren't even lords at the time,
they were called gothie. They were the small farmers. The
person you've kind of sworn some kind of bond to
you would go to them and say, hey, I think
this other person stole my sheep. The gothie could go
(09:27):
to the other farm head and talk to him and
see if he can get the sheep back or whatever.
And then if that didn't work, you could always take
it to like a quarter court and present evidence that
like here's my sheep, blah blah blah, and plead the
case that way in front of a small quarter court.
If things couldn't be resolved that way, you know, things
(09:48):
could devolve into violence. However, for something as small as
a sheep, I think people would have probably seen reason
to either return the sheep or make some kind of
compensation for that. If things really got out of hand
and there was like people started taking up sides over
the sheep stealing or something, or maybe it was a
habitual for this one farmer to swipe people's sheep, Several
(10:09):
goth you might get together and actually bring a case
to like the all thing or something to say like, hey,
this guy's a habitual sheep stealer and we need some
sort of major judgment. And that was sort of shames
people into keeping the correct kind of social interaction. That way,
you can get away with a lot of you know,
not violence if you can kind of shame people or
(10:29):
get enough people against them to where they kind of
realize that I better straighten out a little bit, you know.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Yes, especially because this is happening under the open sky.
The whole community is there, so they're going to see
if you're willing to pay a fine for my sheep
or reconcile this. Everybody is going to know how reasonable
you are when you're there in the middle of the
court for everyone to see, right.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
No, exactly. It's a kind of social pressure that kept
people in line. And if you're living in a small
let me preface this a little bit, but the Vikings
TV show was kind of fun and there were some
interesting things they did, but a lot of it was
centered on, like, you know, how violent you know and everything.
If you're living in a subsistence community, you have really
harsh winters and like food can kind of be scarce.
(11:14):
You don't want to go killing off a lot of
your workforce, because then everyone starves to death. It's not
a good practical social solution. And so finding other, you know,
more reasonable kinds of ways to deal with these problems
is really going to help the entire community, because you
can't afford this. If you've ever traveled to like some
of the small villages and like Iceland along the coast,
(11:36):
or like villages in the fjords of Norway, which are
really beautiful, you realize if there's a problem, there's no
one here to help you. You know, you've got to
figure it out yourself. You know, we have cell phones
and mass transit and everything, but if you go back
to the Viking age, then there's not help coming. If
you screw up and you know, you kill off half
the population, there's not people to pick crops and take
(11:57):
care of things. So it would become a huge problem
socially if you like just grab your axe or a
sword and attack somebody every time you got mad.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah, it's not very efficient. I mean, I'm laughing a
little bit because I grew up in northern Ontario and
we knew better than to feud with any of our
neighbors in the middle of winter, because you don't know
if you're gonna need help later on.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Exactly. It's alluring to see all these like you know,
long ships and axes. It's kind of cool, I get it,
But at the same time, it's not practical whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Yeah, and there's lots of structures in place for alternatives, right,
So what are some of the alternatives too? Violence? If
somebody needs to be punished somehow? What did people do
to make sure that things were resolved?
Speaker 2 (12:42):
First off, there was always some kind of redress. You've
done something wrong, you're going to redress it, either through
payment or something, you know, So that was always possibility.
If the person has shown that it's become a kind
of a continuing problem, I mean, you can always sue.
And they did this in the sagas. They would say
stuff like we're going to ask for like three years
of outlawry, you know, where you had to leave Iceland
(13:03):
for three years. People would cool off. A lot of times,
the people who left would either become traders so they
could acquire some money, or they would raid and then
they would come back and everything would have kind of
cooled down, and maybe they'd come back with some money
so they could sort of pay off or sort of
settle some debts or whatever. And then if people were
really bad and they were a constant problem and they
(13:23):
were like killing people and they wouldn't do stuff, they
would send them to full outlawry where you're like banished forever.
You can't come back here. You know. If you do,
then we can kill you because it becomes a societal
problem because you're such a bad dude. Those are extreme
cases where you like banish someone forever, you could repair
your reputation with the village or whatever. If you'd done
(13:44):
something wrong, you could always offer to the other person
a self judgment to like, what do you think I
owe you? And then I'll just pay it, you know,
And that shows contrition because you're willing to let the
other person set the price.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Yeah. I think that contrition is a a really important
part of this whole construction of making social structures of work.
And I also think one of the things that you
mentioned is important is we often think or we see
the vikings depicted as going off and raiding for a
glory or just because they have lots of bloodlust or something.
But imagine you're going off and raiding so that you
(14:18):
can pay a fine so that you can be integrated
back into your own community so you don't have to
go raiding again.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah, I'm not going to say that the Viking Age
was completely harmless or anything like that. I'm not making
that kind of that kind of statement, especially if you
were outside of the Viking community. You know. One of
the reasons I think that some of the monasteries were
hit along the English coast is they were easy targets.
You know, they weren't really defended on the sea side,
so you could land your long ship raid. These guys
(14:44):
had plenty of gold and not a lot of defenses.
It was an easy way to make some money and
then get out of there. But if you're dealing with
your community, that's a wholly different subject. People weren't violent,
you know, as much anyway towards their community because this
is their families, their clan, their their loyalty. It kind
of resided more locally at the time, I believe.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Well, I mean, it's important to make sure that we're
not making them look like they're cuddly, because we can't
discount the fact that they were going rating and things
like that. And we also can't discount the fact that
they are showing up to the things armed and this
is normal and this is something that is expected. So
you're going up to see your court case being presented
and you're coming there with arms just in case.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Right, Yeah, does that line which I just loved in
y'all saga and it says, you know, we must always
go fully armed to court, which I just think is
kind of funny. But the intent isn't there, you know,
for the violence. But at the same time, just in case,
it's always good to have a spear handy.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
You know, yeah, just in case they get violent. Right,
they might get violent, so I need to bring my
sword or my ags with me.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Yeah, exactly. Jesse Biok talks about different different aspects of
resolution for conflict. I think he has three different references
in there of how to do it, But the last
one is if everything else is worked through and nothing's working,
there's always that violent extreme that says we can kind
of control the violence, and you can have either like
a ritualized kind of dual, like a home gong or
(16:17):
something where this will solve it. To a certain extent,
it does become kind of problematic. But if nothing else works,
then that's always a last resort.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
Yes, we see this in the modern world as well. Right,
people will resort to violence as a last resort. Morality
is a whole different discussion. Yes, we're not going to
get into right now. But one of the things that
you talk about that is important to your discussion of
Viking culture, especially in this context, is it is a
shame culture, not a guilt culture. So tell us the
(16:49):
difference between these two, because I thought this was a
really interesting and important part of your book.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Yeah, it's really interesting. I started looking at it sort
of like the heroic structure and looking at some of
the classical models like in Greece and stuff like that.
This idea of shame, the lens of a shame culture
is outside of you. So society determines what they consider
sort of acceptable behavior, and if you break that societal construct,
(17:15):
then you can be shamed. They will hold you up
to some kind of societal expectation, and if you don't
meet that, then you can be shamed. And there's all
kinds of ways that they do shaming, and we can
talk about that later if you like. But the society
itself determines that kind of morality. I guess we want
to call it, but the lens of looking at stuff
outside of you. Society says it's okay, it's okay. If
(17:38):
society says it's okay to kill somebody and these instances,
then if you do that, then they're not going to
look down on you. You won't be shamed, and so it's
just kind of a different focus. In guilt culture. The
lens is interior to you, right, so you're sort of
this lens looking out, and you have sort of an
ingrained sense of what's right or what's wrong, or what's
acceptable and what's not. And if you break that, no
(18:01):
one tells you that you're you're a bad person. You
just feel it. And this is a huge thing with
a lot of the monotheistic religions, this idea of guilt.
Christianity is considered to be a guilt culture because you
kind of feel guilty for doing bad things, breaking taboo.
But it wouldn't necessarily have been that way, for you know,
the medieval Scandinavians. Scandinavia converted to Christianity much later, and
(18:24):
then the spread wouldn't have been instantaneous. It had taken
some time to go through. But a lot of people
early on thought that an evolution from shame culture was
to guilt culture. And I think that just sort of
like a Christian bias towards the more guilt culture focused.
But a lot of the medieval Scandinavians would have been
(18:44):
shame culture. What society thought and said would have been
a hugely important to them, and it would have affected
the way they interacted socially within their community.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Yeah. Well, and I was thinking about how this works
in the modern world, like is there a comparison where
I think you can find it in thinking about apologies.
Right in the Viking world, if you said I'm sorry
you feel that way, and you made reparation with fine
or something, then that's fine because you've healed the breach
at a societal level, Whereas these days we are sort
(19:15):
of in a guilt culture in that like, if you
don't say sorry and actually feel bad about it, then
it's not a real apology. You're supposed to feel bad
about it, and if you don't, then that's not a
real apology. Is that sort of a good comparison, do
you think?
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Yeah? I think the intent you know, in the guilt culture,
if you said I'm sorry and you know, you don't
really feel sorry, then is it really an apology? You know?
I mean, I'm sure you've probably had your mom or
something like say you're sorry. You're like sorry, like say
it like you mean it. Yeah, But the idea of
a shame cultures. You said, you know, I'm sorry, or
you'd redress something, and the community found that that was acceptable,
(19:51):
then that would be good, whether you felt that way
or not, as long as it kept their honor and
saved face in the community with that apology or whatever
or a gift or whatever you gave to address the situation,
then they'd say, like, Okay, it's done. I think you
could just kind of move on with it. It's a
different view than we have today.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Yeah, And it's important maybe to mention that sometimes the
community did not accept that apology, did not accept that redress,
and they expected more from the person who was being
found guilty of something.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Right, Yeah, I would, I think would depend on the
size of the transgression. If you just something really horrible
and you apologized, and you offered something really minor as redress,
and the community found that unacceptable, they wouldn't accept it.
It would still be considered a shame. So it would
have to be commensurate, I guess with the amount of transgression.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Right, it has to actually fit the transgression that's happened,
otherwise it won't be accepted. And this is really going
to stick to you for a long time. And one
of the things that you mentioned when we're talking about
shame is that people will will say that you should
feel shame about something, even if you haven't admitted it yourself,
and they will go and actually put a sign on
(21:05):
your property Godfather's styles saying you should feel ashamed of yourself. Right,
tell us about how that works.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Oh, there is a great book by this guy Sorenson
called The Unmanly Man, and he talks about shame structures.
If you're like gonna be considered sort of unmanly and
it is awesome. But he talks about the different types
of neath these ideas that you know you've been shamed, right,
so you can do several things. There's the tongue beneath,
(21:31):
where you can just like slander somebody, shame them publicly
slandering them. There's one called the tray neath, which is
that you actually go and carve an effigy of someone like,
you know, having sex with an animal or something and
put it in front of their house, and then everybody
walking by is just like, oh my god, look at this,
and it's a public shaming thing. It's kind of wild.
And then one of my favorites is you get the
(21:53):
kneath stung the neath pole and like Ale Saga, for instance,
he's out and Eric blood Axis taken some land from
him illegally but won't return it or pay him off
forard or anything. So he cuts a pole, cuts a
horse's head off, sticks it on the pole, leans it
towards the house to show which person's getting shamed, and
(22:13):
then carves like little curse ruins on it so people
can walk by and see the ruins that are affecting
this guy. The neath poles are just a crazy way
to publicly shame someone. If he came out and saw this,
it'd be like, wow, you know this this is serious
because to do this, it's like taking it to the
next level of shaming, because you're purposely trying to curse
(22:34):
or embarrass or someone. In Scandinavia, even today, they'll have
instances of people using neath like stuff. You know, just
a few years ago in Iceland a person did a
neath pole towards a neighbor, and the cops thought it
was serious enough to maybe considered as a death threat.
During the Panama Papers scandal, one of the Icelandic politicians
(22:54):
was involved with it, and people protest it out in
front of the All thingy in Iceland, and they were
using either dead cod on sticks sort of like a
little neath pole, or you know, people having little mini
neath poles out there to sort of shame the politicians.
And I think it's fascinating that this kind of rhetorical act,
even after like eight or nine hundred years, is still valid.
(23:17):
I mean people still know what that is. It's a
public shaming event.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yeah. I mean, even if you're outside of the culture,
if someone is protesting you with a fish on a pole,
I mean, you can't imagine that this is something that
is meant to make you feel like you have not
done enough to deal with the problem that you have created.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Yeah. No, it's really interesting. They've even used the idea
of the shame the neath pole in video games. I
don't know if you do.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Play video games, yeah, sometimes, but I haven't played a
Viking one. I have to admit.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
In the Witcher three, you go to this island of Skealega,
and one of the quests is actually for this person
to get rid of the curse from a neath pole.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Oh there you go, So you can find one in
the game. People can now play the Witcher and look
for these neath pulls.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yeah, which your three has one? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (24:08):
Oh there you go.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Well.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
I love that people are looking back to history to
inform these video games, even though the Witch is not
supposed to be in our particular world.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Okay, so we're talking about Shane. We're talking about trying
to get people, if not to feel bad within, to
at least redress their wrongs. And one of the things
that you mentioned is that this is something that women
employ as well. So we imagine that I was a
dude with a lost sheep, because what women have to
do is different. So if I'm a woman on a
farmstead by myself and I've lost a sheep, now what
(24:39):
do I do?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Yeah, it's really fascinating. One of the things about a
lot of the Viking court cases is usually it's run
through sort of like the farmers, like the main farmers.
If you own like a farmstead, you had some sort
of like social standing, so you would go to the
all thing, and maybe you'd bring some of your retainers
along with you. But say like you're like a slave
or a bond's or hear one of the women who
(25:01):
work on the farm, or like part of the family,
and you're not allowed that access to the courts, then
there's this whole thing that is possible called goating, and
goating is something that occurs fairly regularly actually in the
sagas for people that are not allowed to access to courts,
they'll try to goat or shame someone into representing them.
(25:22):
So say like you're off doing something and someone takes
your sheep, and your husband is friends with the farmer
and doesn't really want to raise a stink, you know,
and cause problems in the district or whatever, You're totally
within your right to go them to action, so you
can kind of shame them publicly, usually be like at
dinner time when everyone's gathered around once again a very
(25:43):
public event, then you can kind of shame them saying like, hey,
aren't you supposed to take action? Aren't you supposed to
defend the farmstead, aren't supposed to protect a reputation and
try to goad your husband, brother's son whoever's sort of
the person in charge to take action, whether it be
to go talk to the other person, to take it
to court, to do something, and at that time, if
(26:06):
they choose not to, you can also keep shaming them
until you actually get to the violence, saying like, hey,
you know you haven't done anything. Now a reputation shot.
The only way to do this is to actually go
get those sheet back.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
So yeah, well, we talk about this in later ages
where women are making persuasive argument sort of behind the scenes,
but in this culture it is done very much in public.
And this is the role of women to do this.
It's not something that they should feel bad about. They
should not be doing. This is their job to make
sure that the reputation of the farm, for example, is upheld.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Right, Yeah, exactly. And then a couple of instances in
the sagas themselves, there's a couple of the short lines
where it's like a little comment from the peanut gallery
where they where the you know, the people say like
this was a good goat or you know, they agree
that this was not goating or something. You know, it's
really funny that they'll be like a little comment about that,
judging whether this was actually considered a goating or not
(27:04):
a goating, you know kind of thing. But it's funny
that obviously the writer is considered it enough to put
that little line in, you know, like this is the
sort of a thing that we do.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Yeah, it's just it's really.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Interesting, right, And so we have women who are accused,
especially in the early modern period, of being scold. But
this word actually means something important, right, It comes from
somewhere important.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Scold Actually it comes from the word skald, which is
an old Norse word. The skalds the poets there. They
would also compose poetry that could shame people or praise them.
But you know, if you were there and if you
did something wrong and it was widely known enough, they
could compose a shame poetry saying that you're a bad
(27:48):
person or not honorable or something, and that that's bad
because then they travel around singing the song and then
your reputation shot everywhere.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
It's definitely not what you want when somebody comes up
with it really catchy song. And actually I was reading
your book and I was thinking about the Robin Head cartoon,
the Disney one where people are singing that song about
Prince John, and it's so catchy, you know the one
I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, I like that movie.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
So not exactly a Skald, but there's a song that
people are singing that makes Prince John feel like he
has to do something, and of course he makes a
very bad decision about what to do.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
So, when we're talking about this and we're talking about
public shaming and maybe going as far as putting a
horse's head on a pole to shame people, it may
sound unsophisticated, but this is actually a really sophisticated way
of bringing the law forth and actually applying the law.
And what I'm talking about is it might sound like
we're rap battling or throwing insults, but this is actually formulaic.
(28:47):
And one of the things, if I'm really interesting in
your book, is that when you brought a case before
the court, if you did not follow the correct form,
it could get tossed out on technicality. So like, this
is a sophisticated it as what's going on today in courts, right,
So tell us about some of the formulas people were
using and how things could get tossed out on technicalities.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Yeah, a lot of the law cases the Icelandic law
codes were written down, and there are others too from
Norway you get like the Gula thing or the Frost thing.
The Icelandic law codes were written down, and this thing
called the Graugaus the Gray Goose laws. They wrote everything
down and these are sections on how to deal with
certain types of legal problems. And they had these sort
(29:31):
of like little formulaic passages that you'd sort of recite
and then you would present this to the case and
order and they had to follow a real particular legal procedure,
and so when you presented, you had to sort of
say these things formulaically to present your case and everything,
and if you screwed up somehow, it potentially opens you
(29:53):
up to you know, having your case thrown out or
you know, being judged against because you didn't follow these
real kind of formulate procedures. And I'm sure there was
much more complicated than I'm showing it here, but these
ideas of set functions of these laws were hugely important
because in Iceland at the all thing it was a spectacle.
It was like country fair, legal court, legislative session, that
(30:18):
kind of cool thing to go to. I would think
people came from all over the country and met at
the all thing and listen to people at the law rock.
And you know, if you're a society that's built upon
this sort of public performance, then they sort of expect
a kind of performance. That's the way it would work.
And so you'd have to have people swear oaths and
recite cases and you know, do these things in sort
(30:41):
of a proper order to maintain the decorum. And if
you messed up somehow, there would be problems. And this
is really one of the main problems in y'all saga
is that when the court case was being litigated, the
guys who burned in y'all, they were up to some
shenanigans and they like transferred the ownership of his farm
(31:02):
to a different person. So then when the people who
brought the case against them petitioned it in court, they
cited the wrong place for the court to take place in.
So it creates these little legal loopholes throughout. And that's
one of the reasons it eventually degenerates into some violence,
is because the other lawyer kept fiddling with the law,
(31:22):
you know, sort of one upship kind of thing of
changing it, resulting that the case was kind of thrown out,
and that's why it became such a huge violence at
the end of Nial saga. But this idea that everything
is really formulaic and had to be precise enough to
where it would meet that public standard, right.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
And what I'm thinking of when I'm thinking about these
lawyers that are coming up and they're presenting their cases,
is I think we have sort of a heroic idea
sometimes that somebody is just going to stand up there
with no legal training and they're going to just blow
everyone away. And so we see this sometimes a bit
of hubris when people represent themselves in a law which
makes you think of that phrase something like a man
(32:03):
who represents himself as a fool for a lawyer. So
how often do you think it would have been charisma
that won the day over legal practice, legal technicalities.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
I'm not sure I would classify it necessarily as charisma,
but I would think if the person maybe had more
social standing, a bigger retinue, something like that, then maybe
people would see like it would be better to find
on his side, so necessarily bad things wouldn't happen to
the rest of us. Yeah, it did happen. I think
(32:39):
generally people wanted to do right. But sometimes if you
had someone who was a pretty important person who had
a huge landholding, brought a court case against someone, even
if you think that the person who had the bigger
retinue was in the wrong, you might side with them
anyway because in the long run it would help the
village or whatever not to get this guy angry. Right,
(33:02):
So it wasn't a perfect system. But I'd also like
to point out the court cases today on a perfect
system either. Yes, how often do people who are rich
or people who are more powerful get all kinds of
extra benefits in court rather than being poor, destitute or something.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
So no system is perfect, right, And I mean it
gets to your greater point, which is that people were
trying to preserve the peace, so that they're making decisions
based on what is going to be the most peaceful
outcome for the community, even if that means some people
are getting away with things that maybe they shouldn't have
if we're falling strict moral or legal guidelines.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah, yeah, I think for the most part, you know,
people tried to be reasonable about it. It was in
their own benefit to be reasonable. The sagas you know
often tell they'll call them either oh ho, people who
are topically unreasonable, or they'll call them like oh yavin
the of uneven people, people who are just mean or
(34:04):
you know, not willing to work with their neighbors, stuff
like that. I mean, there's negative terms in the sagas
for these kinds of people, and they're not portrayed as
nice people.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
People can find a person who's not very nice sometimes
are not very sincere, and it's obvious to the community,
even if maybe they sometimes get away with murder. So
the one thing that we haven't talked about. We've talked
about lawyers, we've talked about the people who are coming
and watching the procedure, but we haven't actually talked about
who is making the judgment. So who makes the judgment
(34:33):
in the end.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Actually, they would get together and they would appoint you know,
several of the farmers, you know, the farmholders to be
a jury.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
They would vote, you know, and how many people are
we thinking about for this.
Speaker 2 (34:47):
It kind of depends on what kind of court you
were in, but somewhere around thirty six forty eight people
they listen to the case, they would hear the arguments whatever,
and then they would vote. The voting I think was
really important because sort of showed if you have landholders
from around the country listen and vote, then you're getting
a pretty good public consensus of people who have some power.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Yes, well, I'm thinking about how in the modern world,
one of the important parts about the legal system is
that you have a secret ballot when it comes to
the jury. Maybe they can talk about it later, but
you're not supposed to know how they vote. They all
render their verdicts together. But I'm imagining in these things
that we're talking about, these votes are pretty public as well,
(35:31):
aren't they.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah, everything would have to be public.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
So if you're like, are you on you know, thor
side or whatever, everybody raise your hand. Yeah, yeah, so
you can tell who's going to be voting for you
or not, and you will remember that as well. So
this is something to bear in mind when it comes
to peacekeeping in these court cases.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Right. Yeah, that's really interesting that, like it's so different
than some other types of voting. Whether you look at
the Greeks who would take little bits of clay called
ostraca and like write some thing on it and drop
it in like a little bucket, or Romans might use
colored stones or something to vote, so you could walk
up and drop and then they count and whatever. This
appeared to be a pretty public event, you know, where
(36:10):
like people would vote and you'd have not only the judges,
you'd have the lawyers and the other retinues of the
two parties, but then other people just around is sort
of like just the gallery watching the stuff. So it
was very public, very open under the sky. You know.
It's quite an interesting setup of legality in this instance.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Yeah, and the various responsibilities that you have when you're
weighing your decision, weighing it on the case that's presented
before you, but also all of the other responsibilities, all
the people looking at you. You know, you might be
shamed for this later.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Yeah. Historically, the biggest case that I found, I just
think it's super fascinating is for the conversion of Iceland
to Christianity because it was resolved through a court case.
So many times you hear about conversion, you know, like
Crusie narratives and whatnot. It's always like, you know, there
was a war, a battle and by the sword kind
of thing. But the Icelanders brought it to court. They
(37:08):
presented sides, you know, because a lot of feud had
been going up between Christians and Pagans at the time,
and the Norwegian king was Christian, and you know, he's
putting a lot of pressure to convert the Icelanders and
the Lost Speaker at the time was a Pagan, and
Norway was threatening basically an embargo on Iceland. And so
they had a case and he thought about it and
(37:30):
he made both sides vow that whatever he decided that
they would abide by publicly, and they said, okay, you know,
we're gonna abide by this. And then he went off
and thought about it and came back and he judged
that Iceland should become a Christian nation because it was
better that Norway didn't cut off the supply chain food, timber,
stuff like that. But he said that like, hey, but
(37:52):
if you're a pagan, you're still allowed to worship in
private and whatnot. So it was really interesting because it
touch a weird thing. You know, you often think about
either finding God or some kind of like military conflict
and then people were forced to submit or something. But
the Icelanders took it to a court case and they
decided it that way.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Well, this to me speaks more of what history was
actually like than what we see on TV. Right, although
maybe maybe it's not going to go so well for
you if you pitch to Netflix or something. Let's just
have these vikings sitting around saying let's talk about this.
Maybe that won't work so well. But to me, this
feels like what we would see if we dropped in
on just about any moment in history, people sitting down
(38:35):
and talking about what is going to be the best
way forward, rather than just swinging axes around everywhere.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Yeah, it's exactly right. You know, we have a tendency
to focus on it. And maybe it's the glamour or something,
or the hollywoodness of it, where we focused on a
lot of the violence and military campaigns and whatnot, and
maybe that says something about how we are as a people,
which is sort of sad if you think about it.
But a lot of times through history it is a
lot of people, you know, the bureaucrats, the people making arguments,
(39:03):
sitting down talking working through treaties that preserve peace. They're
doing things that are never really going to get recorded
all that much historically, or at least you thought of
it as very interesting. But if you were an average
Scandinavian in the Middle Ages. Your life had been probably
pretty peaceful and pretty pastoral.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, and there's probably a lot of people who are
not only interested in history, but probably a lot of
lawyers listening to this right now and saying, thank you
for this. We are peace makers and we get a
bad rap, but hey, we were important in the Viking Age,
just as we were important today.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
Oh absolutely well.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Thank you so much, Rob for coming on and showing
us how Vikings could and did behave reasonably and how
in fact this was a super important part of Viking culture.
Thanks so much for being here.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
To find out more about Rob's work, you can visit
his books page on the Our Humanities Press website. That
book is Vikings Behaving Reasonably Nordic hoff in Civic and
Legal Rhetoric. Before we go, here's Peter from Medievalist dot
Nets reports coming to you direct from England.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Hi, Danielle, I'm still here in England for a couple
more days. The International Medieval Congress was an amazing experience.
Lots of great papers presented. A couple of them I
want to tell you about quickly. Nick Morton detailed a
whole war in the thirteenth century that historians don't even
know about. George Tiotokis talked about the Byzantine general Balisarius
(40:31):
putting a spin on the old hidden pit trap trick
to defeat the Persians in battle. Lots of good stuff.
You'll hear more about it in the coming weeks. Now.
I was hoping to get some new pieces on for
the website while I was here. Unfortunately, my laptop had
a bad encounter with a bottle of water and it's
not going to be working ever again. So that being
(40:55):
the situation, I decided the best thing for me to
do was to focus on our summer sale of online courses.
We're going to extend it for another week and we
are now adding some more courses to that as well,
So please check that out and use the coupon code
Summer when you visit us at Medieval Studies dot thinkifk
(41:15):
dot com. Thanks.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
As Peter mentioned, there are a whole lot of online
courses being offered in September, including an introduction to the
fourteenth century by yours truly. So if you're interested in
learning with me all about history's best and maybe worst century,
get on Medieval Studies dot thinkific dot com to scoop
up your delicious discount with the coupon code Summer, and
(41:40):
to get you in the mood to learn all about
the one hundred Years War, why not tune into my
new mini series this summer over on Dan Jones's podcast
This Is History. I'll be hitting the airwaves in just
a couple of weeks to bring you the story of
Francis Charles the Sixth, the King who had it all
until he turned to glass. If you love my series
The Iron King, check out The Glass King, which drops
(42:04):
July twenty ninth next week. This podcast hits three hundred episodes,
can you believe it? And in celebration, I'm opening the
floor to your questions. You can ask me anything for
free over on Patreon at patreon dot com slash Medievalist.
Whether you're looking for the tea on podcasting, seeking answers
(42:24):
to a burning historical question, or wondering if I actually
do live like a monk, So go ahead ask me anything,
And while you're there, if you'd like to level up
your membership to help me keep the ac running here
at the Medieval Podcast, I will be eternally grateful because
it's your generosity that has made all this possible. So
thank you for being here and I'm looking forward to
(42:46):
your questions for everything from Lawyers too Sawyers. Follow Medievalist
dot Net on Instagram at medievalist net or blue Sky
at Medievalists. You can find me Danielle Sebalski across social
media at five I n Medievalist or five minute Medievalist,
and you can find my books at all your favorite bookstores.
(43:07):
Our music is Beyond the Warriors by gee Frog. Thanks
for listening and have yourself a fantastic did
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