Bangkok--28 Nov--Image Impact
Program Title: The Vikings
Channel: HISTORY on TrueVisions (A23) and (D48)
Telecast date: Sunday, November 30, 2008
Telecast Time: 8.00 p.m. (Thai)
With the extraordinary discovery of aburied Viking grave-ship in Norway in the late 1900's, the true story of the Vikings civilization was revealed, shattering may of the myths that once defined them. Not just raiders and warriors--though this they certainly were--the Vikings are shown to be explorers and merchants as well, whose slender ships carry them all the way from Arabia to the coast of the New World--hundreds of years before Columbus ever set sail.
After savage infighting among their own clans spurs the development of the Viking longship, the Vikings strike out across the seas, seeking plunder, slaves and new lands. In the brutal Viking raid at the English monastery of Lindisfarn, in 793 AD, Europe gets its first lesson of the shocking speed, power and savagery of the northern raiders. Vikings quickly spread their raiding territory up the rivers and deeper into Europe, looting and destroying as they go.
The great Viking King Harald Hardrada unifies the Viking clans with a combination of charismatic leadership and ruthless violence, finally taking 130 ships to seize England for his own. In the pivotal battle of Stanford Bridge, fighting against the English, the Viking King takes an arrow in his throat and his army is defeated. Only 30 of his ships return to Norway and with his death the Viking surge of conquest dissipates.
In the end, the Vikings become assimilated into the European cultures. "Russia" comes from the word "Russ" meaning red, for the red beards of the Vikings who settled there. Normandy is the land of the Norsemen. As warriors, as settler, as explorers and traders, Vikings were agents of extraordinary social and political change--spurring global economic growth, and fortification of Europe, the development of national identities, advances in shipbuilding, navigation, and more. Their historical legacy is immense.