VIKINGS - The Untold Story (Historical Documentary)

[00:00:00]You have been told who we were.

[00:00:02]Raiders, barbarians, [music] heathens.

[00:00:06]You were told the wrong story.

[00:00:08]We were not born to the sea. We were driven into it by hunger, by blood, by gods who demanded sacrifice, and by the silence of the dead. We sent our ships into the dark, and the dark sent storms to swallow us.

[00:00:28]We learned that the sea does not forgive. She only remembers.

[00:00:34]The stories say we came in fire and sword, but fire and sword have no names.

[00:00:41]We had names.

[00:00:43]Father, husband, grief.

[00:00:47]We took more than gold. We took hope, and in return, we gave our own dead to the earth.

[00:00:55]The balance was not fair.

[00:00:57]It was never meant to be.

[00:00:59]We were not only swords, we were traders, craftsmen, mothers, poets.

[00:01:06]We carved our names into bone. [music] We measured our wealth in silver, and we sold our soul for ships.

[00:01:15]Or was it the other way around? We found other gods on our journey, and they [music] found us.

[00:01:22]We saw what the sun hides.

[00:01:25]We learned that the world has teeth. The seer said the runes did not speak. They screamed, and they screamed my name.

[00:01:37]She told me I was already [music] dead.

[00:01:39]I just hadn't stopped moving yet. Einar sought wisdom. He found the tree first.

[00:01:46]The price for knowing is not understanding.

[00:01:50]It is silence.

[00:01:52]He paid it all. In Iceland, the land itself is cursed. The earth splits, the sky goes black, and the snow does not melt [music] until spring takes the children.

[00:02:05]>> Vashna >> We buried three that winter. Greenland was not green.

[00:02:10]>> [music] >> It was a lie we told ourselves. The worst lies are the ones we need to believe. The ice keeps [music] everything, even the secrets of those who never left. We found the new world, but the new world found us first.

[00:02:26]It had eyes older than Odin, and a hunger we could not name.

[00:02:33]I never saw her again.

[00:02:35]In battle, you see clearly. You see your death. You see your life.

[00:02:41]And you see [music] every life you have ended, all at once, standing before you in a line that stretches past the horizon. [music] Valhalla is not salvation.

[00:02:52]It is a cage. The dead [music] do not rest. They fight.

[00:02:57]And I had already fought [music] enough.

[00:03:00]I wanted an ending that was whole, or no ending at all.

[00:03:06]I was no longer sure which.

[00:03:08]The new god offered forgiveness.

[00:03:11]I did not want forgiveness. I wanted to be remembered. I wanted the ones I buried to know I had not forgotten them.

[00:03:21]The sea remembers. The sea never forgets.

[00:03:26]They burned our ships. They said it was the end of the old ways. They said we were no longer Vikings.

[00:03:34]But you cannot burn a people.

[00:03:37]You can only change their name.

[00:03:39]I came back here.

[00:03:41]The sea [music] was frozen.

[00:03:43]The fires were cold.

[00:03:45]There were no voices, only the wind.

[00:03:50]And I understood that I had been the wind all along.

[00:03:55]A force that passed through, moved things, terrified them, and left nothing behind but memory. I carved her name into the stone.

[00:04:07]I gave her back to the ground.

[00:04:10]I asked no god to take her.

[00:04:13]I asked only that she be remembered.

[00:04:16]I am still asking. The world turns. The seas rise and fall. Empires grow and crumble.

[00:04:25]But there are places where the past is not buried. It is waiting.

[00:04:30]Under the ice. Under the soil. Under the stones we built our houses on. The sword in the earth [music] waits a thousand years. The hand that holds it is not my hand.

[00:04:44]>> [music] >> But it is my blood.

[00:04:47]You are holding that sword now. You are asking whose hand it was.

[00:04:53]The answer is not in the metal. We are not gone. We are in the words you use.

[00:04:59]The names of your towns. The shape of your ships. The lines in your face. The question is not what we did. The question is what you will do with what we left behind.

[00:05:12]The past is not behind us. It is above us. It is within us. And when the storm comes again, we will [music] be waiting.

[00:05:22]We have always been waiting.

[00:05:51]>> Woo!