The Dawn of a New Era

The Dawn of a New Era is the fifth and final episode in the Vikings season from Ubisoft's Echoes of History podcast series.

Description

Viking attacks continued in England, but Alfred the Great and his troops fought back. Maybe it's time for you to go and discover the rest of the known world?

Transcript

• Introduction: Assassin's Creed: Valhalla and Xbox present, Echoes of Valhalla: Life of Vikings, the podcast.
• Narrator: In the land of our forefathers, at dawn, in the dark of winter. The gods sometimes send us the strangest signal. A green haze fills the sky like a fleeting puff of smoke. Flashes of emerald so vibrant they seem spectral. For a few moments, darkness gives way to these meandering spirals. Our ancestors saw in them the reflection of the Valkyrie armor sent by Odin. Others took them for dragons circling the skies. Following Alfred of Wessex's crushing victory and Danish chief Guthrum's conversion to Christianity, both enemies, now united through faith, signed an important peace treaty. Danelaw is limited to East Anglia, Northumbria, and North Mercia. Wessex gains control of South Mercia. Alfred's kingdom covers the southwestern stretches of the island, while we Danes control the northeast, but beyond the clauses of the treaty, Alfred is now in a position to call the shots.
• Alfred: Celebrate, my friend! Let us celebrate! From the River Thames, up the River Lea, all the way to its spring, our kingdom has never been so large.
• Advisor: All of this thanks to you, Alfred. You were able to quell them. This is a blessed day. Finally, you are victorious.
• Alfred: No, my friend, not yet. Only when our land is united under one banner will the day be truly a great one.
• Advisor: I don't understand. By ratifying the treaty, you've legitimized Danelaw and thereby gave land over to pagans.
• Alfred: Patience! The treaty allows me to keep an eye on them, but who'll really believes this peace will last?
• Advisor: Knowing our former enemies, I have my doubts.
• Alfred: Heh heh heh, we agree then. But this time, when war breaks out, we'll be ready. Then the time will come for us to reclaim all our lands.
• Alban Gautier: Between Guthrum and Alfred—
• Narrator: —Alban Gautier, Professor of Medieval History at the University of Caen—
• Alban Gautier: —things remain stable in the 10 to 15 years following the treaty. It gave Alfred 15 years of respite. Having said that, there were more Vikings than those under Guthrum's command, and Alfred had to fend off other groups of Vikings who didn't pose a serious threat during the 880s, but who became considerable foes in the 890s.
• Narrator: While Alfred uses his advantage to make London fall into his hands, Guthrum, for once, actually keeps his word. He remains peacefully confined in his kingdom of East Anglia and rules as a Christian monarch. Many great Viking warlords also choose to convert in his wake. Something had changed. One generation had passed since the attacks carried out by Ivarr, Halfdan, and the others. The Great Army's victorious momentum that had helped it swarm across the island had died down. The Viking wave had crashed onto the Wessex rock. The wind had turned and was now feeling the Anglo-Saxon sails. Had the Great Army offered all it had to give? Perhaps not.
• Alban Gautier: The Viking groups that were not victorious in England turned to Charlemagne's kingdom. These groups of Vikings were extremely active during the 880s but on the European continent. Then, in 890, they returned to England in great, great, numbers.
• Narrator: The apparent peace was in fact more of a long truce, enabling both sides to regroup and prepare for the battles to come. All Danes do not see Guthrum as their king; he cannot prevent scattered forces in different corners of the realm from picking up their swords. After his death, new waves of warriors land in droves in Kent. These Vikings do not land on the great island to carry out simple one-off raids: their plan was to continue the invasion.
• Ryan Lavelle: They were trying to try their luck, basically, within the West Saxon kingdom once again.
• Narrator: Ryan Lavelle, professor of History of the Dark Ages at the University of Winchester—
• Ryan Lavelle: But I think it's a kind of mark of the way in which Alfred used the hiatus, the—the period of peace after the treaty of 878. It's a mark of a kind of a degree of strategic thinking that Alfred used that moment to consolidate the defenses of the West Saxon kingdom.
• Edward the Elder: Father, the Danes have landed in Kent! They come from the continent!
• Alfred: Ha! It took them long enough. But as I always say, weeds will always grow back. And Alfred of Wessex will go back to war to rid ourselves of them yet again.
• Edward the Elder: Father, please give me an army. I will take care of them.
• Alfred: Ha ha ha, be off. Go, go, warn Æthelred.
• Narrator: Alfred, his son Edward, and brother-in-law Æthelred managed to push their enemies further north. But for the English, the only outcome is total victory over the new invaders. Pursued by Æthelred's troops, the Danish army, headed by chief Hastein, find themselves under siege at Buttington Fortress.
• Viking: Hastein, we've been under Saxon siege for weeks: our supplies are depleted, water is scarce, our men are starving to death!
• Hastein: I know. Yes, I know.
• Viking: Some are eating rats as a last resort! What will you have us do?
• Hastein: Gather our warriors. We're going to mount an attack.
• Viking: Really?
• Hastein: What? Don't look at me like that. If we're going to die, we might as well go down swinging. Rally the troops!
• Viking: At once. Soldiers to the gates!
• Narrator: The battle turns into a massacre on both sides. While the Saxons come out on top, they are unable to stop a fraction of the Danish fighters from fleeing to Essex. "Weeds always grow back," to quote Alfred. Six years after successfully stopping the new wave of invasions, the great king, as he was called even in his lifetime, passed away. He is given a solemn funeral. A page has been turned but war rages on. Through his son and grandson, kings Edward and Æthelstan, Alfred's dream of retaking all of the country is kept alive. One by one, they overcome the Danish princes of East Anglia, the five boroughs, and the town of York. But the reconquest is long and arduous. Danelaw survives and maintains its influence. All English kings are not cut from the same cloth as Alfred the Great. King Edgar's peaceful reign allows the Danish princes to pick themselves back up.
• Alban Gautier: Starting in the year 980, new and increasingly numerous Viking raids come to England's shores, now with even stronger weaponry and larger armies than in the late 9th century. And one of Æthelred II's defense strategies—and he wasn't the only one to use this—so one of this king's defense strategies was to pay the Vikings to return to where they came from.
• Narrator: A few decades earlier, King Harald Bluetooth of Denmark had converted to Christianity, which led to the Christianization of our homeland. But in these uncertain times, some clerics cannot help but wonder about the future of Christianity. Some watch for signs from Heaven. Would God let evil prevail? For the English, once again, the demons would come from the sea. Although he, too, had converted to Christianity, their leader bore a name that would make monasteries tremble: Sweyn Forkbeard. After setting foot in England, he dethrones King Æthelred and takes the crown. His son, Cnut the Great, reigned over an empire both massive and short-lived that included England, Norway, and Denmark. Upon his death, Alfred of Wessex's dynasty returned to the throne in the person of Edward the Confessor, but not for long.
• Alban Gautier: In 1042, seven years after the death of Cnut, Edward the Confessor—who spent most of his life in exile, fleeing the country in 1014—returns in 1042—almost 30 years in exile—after being called on by the elites of the kingdom to become king, and he reigns until 1066.
• Narrator: Upon Edward the Confessor's death, the throne of England remained vacant. The list of pretenders included Harald the Stern, king of Norway, who was said to be the last of the Vikings. Harald makes an alliance with the Duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror. But his death on the Stamford Bridge allows William to take the crown and rule supreme. As fate would have it, he, too, had Viking blood in his veins, as a descendant of the great jarl Rollo, who had conquered Normandy. Through him, the Norsemen had finally fulfilled their goal of conquering England.
• Ryan Lavelle: On the Bayeux Tapestry, we can see what could be thought of as perhaps evidence of the last great "Viking invasion" of Britain. The Bayeux Tapestry shows the Normans with their Viking-style haircuts—or what they thought what were Viking-style haircuts—and we could see the construction of Viking ships with overlapping planks and their great keels.
• Narrator: This marked the end of the great Viking saga in England. Two centuries of invasions and fighting, but also building, trading, sharing, and evolving. How far we have come, an adventure of epic proportions! Having left the homeland, my people made the earth tremble, and not only in England. Over three extraordinary centuries, some swept through France, sailing up the Seine to Paris. Others scoured the Mediterranean Sea all the way to Constantinople. Others settled in Iceland and never left, and more yet overcame the Slavic tribes and founded a state at the gates of the Orient.
• Ulric: Olla!
• Olla: Who?
• Ulric Olla, is that you?
• Olla: Ulric! Oh, I'm happy to see you once again, my brother. It's been so long. Come, sit and tell me where you've been all this time.
• Ulric: Do you recall that I went to seek fortune in Kiev?
• Olla: Yes, I recall.
• Ulric: There I stayed for some time, until my wanderlust called me on. From Kiev, I joined a merchant fleet sailing down towards Byzantium with a cargo of furs.
• Woman: You've been to Byzantium? I've heard its a majestic city!
• Ulric: It's the biggest city I've ever laid eyes on! And you should see the markets, it's heaven on earth for merchants.
• Woman: Around here, we certainly don't see many silk robes such as the one you're wearing.
• Ulric: That's hardly a fraction of what I brought back with me.
• Woman: I'll give you this one on the house if you promise to tell me more.
• Ulric: I swear!
• Olla: Oh, I see you haven't lost any of your business savvy.
• Ulric: Oh, don't make fun of me. What about you? What brings you here?
• Olla: Oh, I've much to be proud of as well. I traveled all the way to Iceland, where one goes to find walrus ivory. I filled my entire boat with it! Oh, I never ventured farther than that, but I've heard there are many more lands to explore.
• Ulric: Well, let's drink to the land we've traveled and to those that Njörðr will help us discover. To Njörðr!
• Olla: Yes, to Njörðr!
• Lucie Malbos: They landed in the New World and a site they called Vinland—
• Narrator: —Lucie Malbos, lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Poitiers—
• Lucie Malbos: —now called Newfoundland, where Scandinavian dwellings have been discovered. One can say that, in a way, the Vikings discovered America almost five centuries prior to Christopher Columbus.
• Narrator: What is left of the sons of the north? What is left of the Viking now that they have blended into new kingdoms, abandoning their customs and traditions? Has their trace vanished forever? Has the time of the Ragnarök come?
• Lucie Malbos: Much attention has been given to the violence of the Viking, the barbaric destroyer. Without denying their destructive history, today we think of the Vikings in terms of exchange, cultural, commercial, and intellectual, as well as the exchange of ideas, beliefs, and skills. Historians call this the Viking diaspora. There's no longer a single Viking culture, but rather, several Viking cultures spread out all over.
• Narrator: It was not the end of the world, only the end of one particular world: our world. But all is not lost. We have not vanished for good. The sagas tell of our achievements. Unearthed objects remind us of how ingenious our craftsmen were. Many languages across the globe are full of Old Norse words. But the main point lies elsewhere. It cannot be seen, it can only be felt. It is a state of mind: the mind of the Viking. Can you hear me? I cast these words to the wind. From atop this cliff, I gaze at the sea. I see the same views as those who set off one fateful morning on a quest for fortune and glory. I see the same horizon that unfolds into infinity, the eternal hourglass of life constantly being turned on its head, only to start again. And you, you are listening. If you feel the call of the sea, the call of the wilderness, the urge to explore new horizons, to overcome obstacles, and constantly reinvent yourselves, then the spirit of the Viking is not dead: it lives within you!

Cast

(By order of appearance, host indicated with italics)

• Bibi Jacob as Narrator
• Uncredited as Alfred
• Prof. Alban Gautier as himself
• Prof. Ryan Lavelle as himself
• Uncredited as Edward the Elder, Hastein, Ulrich, Olla
• Prof. Lucie Malbos as herself