Viking Lives

For the final episode of series 2, Kári has the story of an Icelandic chieftain who came to be known as Snorri Goði - Snorri the Priest of Thor: a manipulative and shrewd leader who devised a cunning plan to lure two extremely violent Swedish berserker warriors to their death. Viking Lives will return with series 3 on Tuesday 11 August. In the meantime, Richard and Kári will be presenting 'Viking Lives: Ghost Stories' live on stage at this year’s Byron Writers’ Festival in NSW on 14 August. Tickets available here.

This episode features the life of Thordis Sursdottir, a Viking woman from the tenth century. Thordis’s family was forced to escape Norway after her brother Gisli killed two men who wanted to marry her. The family set up a farm in the northwest fjords of Iceland, where she married her husband Thorgrim. But when Thorgrim was murdered in the middle of the night – again by Gisli – Thordis took her revenge against her brother, forcing him to become a fugitive.

Today’s episode comes from forecourt of Prague Castle in the Czech Republic, recorded while Richard and Kári were in Europe. It was here, under the pavement, that the bones of a medieval warrior were excavated in 1928 … with a Viking sword buried beside him. The discovery set off a fierce struggle between Hitler and Stalin to claim his ancestry. Was this man a Germanic Viking? Or was he a Slavic warrior in the court of the king of Bohemia? The answer, they believed, would determine the rightful owners of the entire city.

Gunnlaug Serpent Tongue was an arrogant and impetuous Viking, famed for his ability to compose brilliant poetry spontaneously for the kings of medieval Sweden and England. But in doing so, he became the deadly rival of another poet, who spitefully married the woman Gunnlaug had known since childhood. Relations between the two men became poisonous, and they descended into a cycle of pointless violence that neither could escape until one of them was dead.

Egill Skallagrimsson was both a vicious, murderous Viking raider and a poet of great sensitivity and feeling. He fought on behalf of an English king who rewarded him handsomely, but the queen of Norway detested him and tried to kill him. Eventually Egill retired to his family farm in Iceland, where a terrible loss brought out one of the saddest poems of the Viking Age.

Hannah Kent, author of the international bestseller ‘Burial Rites’ joins Richard and Kári to tell the story of our favourite Viking woman: Gudrun Osvifsdottir. Gudrun was an Icelander of the tenth century, who was famous for her high-mindedness and fine manners. But when her honour was slighted, and her heart was wounded, she brought down the man she loved, hated and needed all at the same time.

Melkorka was an Irish woman who was enslaved by Vikings in the ninth century AD. She was brought to Scandinavia, where she was bought by an Icelandic farmer named Hoskuld, who made her his concubine. But Melkorka was mute, and so Hoskuld knew nothing of her origins, until he caught her talking by a stream one day. Special guest Lisa Bennett, author of Viking Women: Life & Lore.

In this episode, Kári tells the story of the foundation of Iceland as a new kind of Viking society on the rim of the Arctic Circle, and of Ingolf, the man who led a party of settlers to the smoky bay he named Reykjavik.