So far, on 'Blood of the Vikings',
I've traced the first 200 years of the Viking Age in Britain and Ireland.
From raids and invasions
to peaceful settlement.
This time I discover how a new generation of Danes conquer the whole of England
and put a Viking on the throne.
But why was rule in England short-lived,
while on the Isle of Man today they still have a Viking parliament?
It's 991.
93 Viking longships are advancing
up the Blackwater Estuary on the Essex coast.
This is the biggest raid England has seen for almost 40 years.
But these Vikings are no motley collection of pirates.
They've raised a powerful organised fleet
to threaten the shores of England once again.
The terror has returned.
In the previous years of peace
England has become rich.
But now it's ruled by Æthelred the Unready,
a young and militarily inexperienced king,
and the Vikings can sense an opportunity.
They sail towards Maldon and land on Northey Island to prepare their attack.
But on the mainland the English are waiting for them.
Under the command of Byrhtnoth, a veteran military leader.
This much is accepted as fact,
but what followed became the subject of an epic old-English poem,
'The Battle of Maldon'.
The Viking herald steps forward and makes demands.
Not for land but for tribute.
Money to go away and leave the English in peace.
The Vikings have turned to extortion.
The Poem has been studied closely by historian Dr Sam Newton.
He takes up the story as Byrhtnoth responds to the Vikings' demands.
"Gehyrst þu, sælida, hwæt þis folc segeð?
"Hi willað eow to gafole garas syllan
"ættrynne ord and ealde swurd..."
Which loosely translated, he says,
"Do you hear, sailor, what this folk says?
"We will give you spears as tribute,
"deadly points and time-tested swords.
"War gear from which you in battle will not profit."
It is the most immortal note of English defiance
which has echoed in various ways right down to the 20th century.
But the high tide means that so far it's just a war of words.
The two armies have to wait until low water to fight it out.
Then Byrhtnoth makes a tactical error.
He and his men stand back and allow the Vikings to cross the causeway.
He wanted to bring this lot to battle.
If not, they could sail away, up the estuary
and strike at will up and down the coast and it could be weeks, or months,
before the English army had a chance to get at them again.
And so, the Battle of Maldon begins in earnest.
The poem becomes very dramatic
centring on the heroism of the English
and their loyalty to their leader Byrhtnoth.
At one point he is struck by a spear,
his shield companion beside him draws out the spear from Byrhtnoth's body
and throws it back at the Viking who'd hurled it
and kills that Viking with the same spear.
But after all this heroism, who were the eventual winners?
Well, of course, in military terms, the Vikings were the winners.
But the Poem makes the resistance and defence of the English
such heroic a deed in itself that it becomes a kind of moral victory.
And a great rallying call for further resistance.
It's a bit like the Dunkirk spirit in that sense.
But there was no denying the English had lost.
In the end, King Æthelred had no choice
but to give the victorious Vikings exactly what they wanted.
He handed over £10,000 in silver,
a huge amount of money in those days,
in the hope that they'd go away and stay away.
It was a vain hope.
Because once the English paid up
it was inevitable that the Vikings would be back again.
With each fresh attack the Vikings demanded more and more,
and the English meekly paid up.
The payments became known as 'Danegeld', money for the Danes.
And in today's prices would eventually total hundreds of millions of pounds.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles tell of the rocketing extortion racket
which lasted for 20 years.
"994. And all the raiding army came to Southampton.
"And they were paid £16,000.
"997. The raiding army brought indescribable war booty...
"1002. Here in this year they were paid £24,000.
"1007. The tax to the hostile raiding army was £30,000.
"1012. £48,000."
Only a few were brave enough to defy the Danes.
This London church of St Alfege commemorates one,
a bishop who refused to pay and who suffered the consequences.
"Then, on the Saturday, the raiding army became much stirred up against the Bishop
"because he did not want to offer them any money.
"Also they were very drunk because there was wine brought from the south.
"Then they seized the bishop and then pelted him there with bones.
"And one of them struck him on the head with the butt of an axe.
"So that with he blow, he sank down and his holy blood fell on the earth."
But such resistance was rare
and the Danes grew richer and richer.
So where did all that money go?
Back here to the Viking homeland?
More Anglo-Saxon coins have been found in Scandinavia than in England.
And I'd like to know if they were earned through legitimate trading
or off the proceeds of a highly successful extortion racket.
In 1997, a hoard of 120 English coins
was discovered in a remote part of Denmark.
Is this 'danegeld'?
All these coins are '990ers'.
It's a coin type that was struck from about 991 to 997 all over England.
- So who's reign is that? - That's Æthelred II.
- So that's Æthelred the Unready. - Yes, it is.
And this is a coin with Æthelred's portrait, his name
and the inscription 'Æthelred Rex Anglorum'
'Æthelred king of the English'.
And it might be 'danegeld' payment because a usual hoard in Scandinavia
would be all mixed up... English coins, German coins, a few Arabic coins.
There'd be all kind of dates.
But this is a very, very pure hoard.
It seems unlikely that these coins had been in general circulation.
So, surely, this points to their being 'danegeld'.
Perhaps the share given to an individual Viking.
Jens, a lot of them look like perfect coins, don't they?
But some of them are bent, why is that?
Yes. The Danes at that period were interested in the quality of the metal.
And one way of checking the quality is to take the coin and bend it.
If it's soft and you can bend it easily it's good silver.
If it cracks it's bad silver.
But how, in just 40 years, had the Vikings become so powerful?
What had changed here in Denmark
to turn the Vikings into such an organised fighting force?
One clue lies here, in Jelling in the west of Denmark.
Today it's a small, quiet town
but in the 900's it was the capital of royal dynasty
and would become the birthplace of the modern Danish state.
The king first of a united Denmark was Harald Bluetooth.
He was probably given his colourful name on account of his rotten teeth.
But despite his dental afflictions
he was a ruler who changed the course of Danish history.
And here, carved in this massive boulder,
is the record of his greatest achievements.
One side is completely covered in runes,
an early form of writing used by the Vikings.
On another side is a strange carving of a mythical monster.
But this third side is the most astonishing,
because there's what appears to be the figure of Christ.
You can make out the face, outstretched arms and hands,
right down to the feet.
Now, surely, at this time the Vikings in Scandinavia were pagans.
So what are they doing carving images of Christ?
The runic inscription ought to provide the answer.
Pr. Else Roesdahl, a leading Viking archaeologist,
has come to translate it for me.
Now, what does this say?
It starts with the name of the king, Harald Bluetooth,
who raised the stone.
Harald King ordered these monuments to be made for Gorm, his father.
And in memory of Thyra, his mother.
'That Harald who won for himself Denmark and Norway.'
And then, the last deed, 'And made the Danes Christian.'
So his third great deed was to make Danes Christian, to christianize the Danes.
So that explains why you've got the figure of Christ on this side?
Yes. And it's the oldest great picture of Christ in Scandinavia.
So what made Harald become a Christian and convert an entire nation?
Could it have more than just his religious belief?
A very practical political reason may have been
that the great country to the south, Germany,
the German Emperor liked to convert pagan peoples.
He went on crusades and it's much better to do it yourself
than to be conquered by a foreign power.
Harald Bluetooth's conversion to Christianity
not only ensured that the Danes were left in peace.
It also helped to enhance his own status.
As a Christian king, he was acknowledged to be Christ's representative on Earth.
A position which brought almost universal loyalty and allegiance.
For the Danes becoming Christian
wasn't just a matter of exchanging a collection of Norse gods
for one Christian god.
It also brought them into the European fold,
into a culture that was centred on books and learning,
laws and taxes.
But perhaps more significantly a Christian king had divine authority,
which gave him huge power and the means of showing it.
Like this, the massive fort at Trelleborg.
When it was excavated in the 1930's
archaeologists found that its interior was laid out with perfect symmetry.
Divided by roads, each quadrant contained identical boat-shaped barracks,
sixteen in all.
This regimented design is very similar to that of Roman military forts
built nearly a thousand years earlier.
Archaeologist Dr Lars Jørgensen
has made a detailed study of Viking military architecture.
This is a huge amount effort
to put into constructing something like this, isn't it?
- I mean, enormous amount of resources? - Yes.
Were they always built of timber, these buildings?
Yes. In Viking-period Denmark, all houses were timber-built
and actually archaeologists have tried to calculate
how much timber has been used here?
And they have calculated 8,000 trees were cut down
in order to build this military installation.
So, how many soldiers would a fort like this contain?
Well, I would say around 1,000 would have been possible.
So, if you've got a fort like this, with 1,000 professional soldiers
and all the effort that's gone into this, why is the king building it?
There are different theories about that.
One is that they were constructed in order to control
internal troubles in his kingdom.
A second one says that they were defence against the German Empire.
And the third one says that they were for training soldiers
who were going to participate in the attacks on England.
Which of those theories do you like best?
I like the last one best, actually.
Because we have three of these fortresses like this size
and we have a fourth in northern Jutland which is much larger,
and it's quite clear that the large fortress in northern Jutland
is facing the English area.
So I think actually that, at that time they were planning to attack England.
Harald Bluetooth seems to have had a large well-trained and disciplined army.
And England, made rich through trade with a wealthy Church,
must have been a tempting target.
Although it wouldn't be until Harald was succeeded by his son
that the attacks on England would start.
Not only did the Danes have a new military machine,
but they developed new military technology.
Warships capable of delivering more troops and faster than ever before.
In 1956, amateur divers in the Roskilde Fjord at Skuldelev
discovered the frame of a Viking ship.
Of a type that hadn't been seen before.
And as more ships emerged,
this became one the most important marine excavations of the 20th century.
Under the stinking sludge, they found the remains of five Viking ships
broken into hundreds of thousands of soggy fragments.
Re-assembling this archaeological treasure
was a painstaking process and took 20 years to complete.
But the results present a catalogue of Viking ship design.
Of the five ships, three were short and wide,
designed for carrying large cargoes.
The other two were warships.
They were long and narrow, designed specifically for battle.
This is the biggest.
A warship 30 meters long.
This ship may well have played a key role in Viking attacks,
transporting 100 warriors at a time to battles in Norway, France or England.
That ship, Skuldelev 2,
is now being reconstructed at the Viking Ship Museum at Roskilde.
It's being built in exactly the same way as the original.
They've been using replicas of Viking tools.
And this has revealed why their ships were so well adapted to sea voyages.
The secret lies in their flexibility.
Here you can see one of the planks which is nearly finished.
And you can feel how smooth the surface is,
how very delicate it is.
And since we have made this plank in the way we have
where we have kind of followed the grain in the wood from top to end,
we get this very strong and very flexible plank.
- Please, try to step on it. - It won't break?
Please.
See how flexible it is?
It is really a strong plank.
I'll try to stand up.
- That's fantastic! - It even comes to the ground.
You can imagine when planks like this are built into ships
how these ships will move and bend in the heavy seas and stormy weather.
I want to find out what it's really like
to be part of the crew of a Viking warship.
But Skuldelev 2 is going to take another three years to build.
So I'm joining the crew of Number 5, the replica of the smaller warship.
It gets at an incredible speed very quickly, doesn't it?
I feel a bit of a fraud, actually, an Englishman rowing a Viking boat,
- is this allowed? - Yeah, it is allowed.
Even on a calm sea, I an feel the ship flexing as we pulled on the oars.
But it was exhausting.
The Vikings must have been incredibly fit.
Personally I was quite relieved when the sail was hoisted.
Harald Bluetooth's son, Sweyn Forkbeard,
could command a fleet of warships capable of transporting
thousands of soldiers across the North Sea.
And following the battle at Maldon, he led the Vikings in a series of attacks
on towns along the English coast and up rivers.
But one place in particular was considered to be the greatest prize.
The city of London.
Here, a quarter of all English coins were minted.
The city was repeatedly attacked
but again and again the Vikings were beaten off.
To get to their prize, the Vikings would have to take London Bridge,
which stood on the same site as the present one.
Today the Thames is crossed by many bridges
but 1,000 years ago there was only one,
connecting the walled city of London with the trading centre of Southwark.
It was made entirely of wood and was said to be so wide,
that two wagons could cross at the same time.
The bridge was fought over many times.
And lying in the Thames mud is the evidence of these battles.
John, what exactly are these?
I mean, they're axes, but what were they used for?
Well, they're battle axes of the Viking time.
And they were found very close to where we're standing now.
Just behind us here, the building there,
was built in the 1920's,
and a workman on the site found six of these plus six spears.
How do you know that these are Viking?
It's the shape. It's this very elegant broad blade,
beautifully curved, and they're a very handy weapon.
There is this old story that a skilled axeman
could shave somebody's moustache off in the middle of a battle
simply by using his axe.
Now, these are weapons but, what's that?
That's surely not a weapon, is it?
It's a grappling hook found with the axes and the spears in the 1920's.
It's the sort of thing you use on a ship board
perhaps for just pulling the ship into the side.
But also to link two vessels together for battle.
Hooks like these are mentioned in one of the Norse sagas
which tells of a daring attack on London Bridge.
It describes how the Vikings attached grappling hooks to its supports
and rowed off hard downstream.
Pulling the bridge, and all those on it, down behind them.
# London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down
# London Bridge is falling down my fair lady
At this time the English were burdened
with crippling taxes to pay the 'danegeld',
and lived under the constant threat of Viking attack.
They grew to loath their tormentors.
And there are stories of how they fought back and took revenge.
Here in the village of Hadstock, in Essex,
there's a grisly tale of the punishment inflicted on a captured Viking.
Local legend has it that, for centuries, nailed to the door of the church
was a piece of human skin.
It said that it came from a marauding Dane who was caught by the locals
and flayed alive.
Surprisingly, some of that skin still survives
in the museum at nearby Saffron Walden.
But is it really what it's claimed to be?
This is it.
A little, tiny fragment that was preserved
underneath one of the door hinges.
Now, I've never seen preserved, thousand-year-old human skin before
so I'm not really qualified to say that that's what it is.
But it's a horrible thought that this might really be something that's been
ripped from the back of a living Viking.
But according to the museum records
there's absolutely no doubt about what it is.
When it first came to the museum in 1847
it's described as, "a piece of human skin from the church door at Hadstock".
And a year later, in 1848, it was examined by Mr. Quekett,
of the Royal College of Surgeons, who states,
"I've been fortunate in making out the specimen of skin
"you last sent me to be human.
"I found on it three hairs which I preserved."
And he goes on further to say,
"I should state that the skin was in all probability
"removed from the back of the Dane, and that he was a fair haired person."
And in 1974, another test at Leeds University,
concluded that "the grain pattern corresponds closely to human skin.
"And it was from a person with fair of greying hair".
So there doesn't seem to be any doubt.
But now for the first time, we can take it a stage further,
and we can use modern genetic science to answer the question,
is this really a relic of some terrible grisly event?
Or is it just simply another legend?
We asked a team
from the Ancient Biomolecules Centre in Oxford to find out.
They were given permission to slice up a tiny piece
and analyse its DNA.
The team leader is Dr. Alan Cooper.
Alan, did you actually manage to get any DNA out of that bit of skin?
Well, we did. We're very pleased because we thought that
the amount of degradation that the skin was showing
would mean that there was no DNA left.
But we were able to get quite a bit of DNA from the material inside the specimen
once we'd taken off the outer, withered layer.
So what was it?
Well, we tried a variety of human primers
to see if we could pick up human DNA from the material
and got a complete blank
and zero combinations.
Then we thought we should try cow,
and that came back a roaringly strong signal.
So we're pretty sure it's cow, unfortunately.
So, how come all these scientists in the past have been so wrong about it?
Well, I think it was a very difficult bit of diagnosis
because it had been sitting on the door exposed to the elements
for some considerable period of time, so it was quite withered.
I think, also, we might be underestimating
some of the powers of forgery of some of these early artisans.
Because what we did notice was the skin was very thin,
much thinner that you'd normally expect for a cow skin,
so I suspect it was taken from the underbelly or some other area,
and it looked therefore, a lot more like human skin.
So they might have been disguising it, perhaps, a little bit.
So perhaps it's just an ancient forgery.
But it's one that obviously hit the mark.
Take a piece of cow hide, add imagination,
and by the 18th century you've got a gruesome legend.
Although the skin has turned out not to be human,
this small story still seems to illustrate a bigger picture
of the fear and hatred that must have existed
between the English and the Danes.
And this hatred finally boiled over
into what can only be described as 'state-sponsored ethnic cleansing'.
Not all the Vikings in England were marauders bent on extortion.
Danish settlers had been living peacefully here for over 100 years.
But in 1002, on St. Brice's Day, the 13th of November,
King Æthelred commanded that all Danes living in the country should be killed.
"This day was Saturday, on which the Danes are in the habit of bathing,
"and accordingly, at the set time, they were destroyed most ruthlessly.
"From the least even to the greatest, they spared neither age nor sex."
The massacre on St. Brice's Day provoked the wrath of the Vikings.
Especially, as one of the victims was said to be the sister
of Sweyn Forkbeard, the Danish king.
Over the coming years,
bitter hatred between the English and the Vikings would continue to intensify.
Soon it was a new generation at the top.
In a tangle of invasion, exile and death,
the English and Danish kings Æthelred and Sweyn Forkbeard
passed on the fighting to their sons.
Edmund Ironside and his young Viking adversary, Canute,
were head to head.
Canute was still a teenager
but he was about to trigger the most dramatic shift in power
in the history of Viking influence in these islands.
And in 1016, after a summer of skirmishes,
a confrontation in Essex proved decisive.
At the Battle of Assandun, heavy losses were recorded on the English side,
especially amongst the nobles.
"There was then killed Eadnoth, Abbot Wulfsige, Ealdorman Ælfric,
"Ealdorman Godwine, Ulfcetel and Æthelweard.
"The flower of all England was cut down."
With such an outcome the English king
was forced to give Canute northern and central England.
And then, only a few months later, Edmund died,
maybe from the wounds he'd suffered on the battlefield.
The rest of the country had little choice but to turn to Canute.
In an ancient ceremony, Canute was crowned king.
The unthinkable had happened.
The invaders had become rulers.
And there was a Viking on the throne of England.
But today people only remember one story about Canute.
King Canute tried to stop the tide coming in.
The tide? Trying to send it back?
Everyone thought he could do everything,
but then, he got his throne, he sat beside the sea
and he commanded it not to come in. And it did.
So that proved that he couldn't do everything.
And he got his feet rather wet, as I remember.
We all know the story, but where did it come from?
It's first mentioned in the 'Historia Anglorum',
a 12th century mixture of history and moral fables.
This tells us that Canute gave orders
for his throne to be placed on the sea shore
as the tide was coming in.
And that the King commanded the water not to rise and wet his clothes or feet.
The tide obviously ignored the King's commands.
But what came next in the story isn't often mentioned.
Canute is actually making a point,
that no matter what his courtiers may think,
he is just a man.
"Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings.
"For there is none worthy of the name but God,
"whom heaven and earth and sea obey."
The full story, then, puts rather a different slant on it.
Perhaps we had it wrong all these years,
and it was really written to show how pious a Christian Canute was.
We've no way of knowing whether this happened.
It may simply be a moral tale, but it's interesting to note
how we'd sooner believe in the arrogance of our kings
than in their piety.
But having seized the English crown by force,
would Canute be able to hang on to it?
Very little is known about his reign
but there's one priceless manuscript
that contains a drawing of Canute that shows how he himself wanted to be seen.
It was made at the time he donated a gold cross to the New Minster at Winchester.
As a Christian king, his power ultimately comes from Christ
seated well above him.
But the hand on the hilt of his sword
suggests a strong ruler who should not be challenged.
And the monks are firmly in their place.
Dr Ken Lawson is a leading authority on Canute.
In a sense, it's political propaganda.
And this is important to Canute
because he has no real claim to the English throne.
When the Church crowns and anoints him, this gives him a legitimacy
which he hasn't otherwise have.
So this is 'Canute Rex', the King, and I presume this is the Queen.
That is Canute's Queen, Emma.
She'd previously, of course, been queen of King Æthelred.
So is this quite an astute move on Canute's part, then,
to marry the widow of the previous king?
Yes. It almost certainly is, I mean,
she was probably quite a bit older than he was.
I don't think it was a love match of any kind.
Because Emma knows the English political system,
she can give Canute advise on personalities,
and in particular on how to treat the Church.
The giving of the great gold cross
is meant to show his piety and generosity to the Church.
But although Canute could be generous to those who were important to him,
there was also a ruthless side to his character.
The shady part of him is partly, probably, very heavy taxation.
Taxation which is enforced by people unable to pay taxes forfeiting the land.
And the coercive power behind all that
are the professional soldiers known as 'housecarls'
who Canute may have employed in considerable numbers.
It's possible there were garrisons of housecarls in certain cities.
And they are the people who, in the last analysis,
will come and persuade you to do what the King wants.
So these are Canute's heavy 'heavy mob', are they?
Yes, they are probably very heavy.
Such was Canute's ruthlessness
that he was able to build a huge North Sea empire.
Three years after he seized the English throne
he succeeded his brother as king of Denmark.
Then, using money from English taxes, he conquered Norway
and then part of southern Sweden.
Even the Scots accepted him as their overlord.
Canute's Empire stretched from the English Channel to the Baltic.
It was the most dramatic rise to power of any Viking ruler in history.
By 1030, a large proportion of the British Isles
were under Scandinavian control.
But not all under the Danes.
Earlier, Norwegian Vikings had captured the islands of the sea road
from Shetland to the Irish Sea.
And here, the picture of Viking rule was quite different.
On the Isle of Man it appears to be a story
of integration more than domination.
A view that's championed by archaeologist Andrew Johnson
from Manx National Heritage.
The Viking involvement with the island is not so much one of invasion
and of driving out the local population,
seizing the best land, all this kind of thing.
I think, instead, what you've got
is a relatively small number of people coming
and being absorbed by the existing population.
But making a very, very considerable imprint on that population.
Evidence to support this theory came to light in the 1980's
during the excavation of an ancient graveyard under Peel Castle.
Andrew was on site when the team stumbled on an intriguing grave.
In a Christian cemetery, a woman had been buried with grave goods
in the pagan tradition.
The first thing that was apparent were her leg bones
and, oddly enough, it looked as if apparently she had a third leg
and obviously that couldn't possible be the case.
And the closer we looked at this
we realised that this bar-shaped thing on her right side
was actually iron, a piece of iron.
The object must have been important
but no one on the team could tell what it was.
It was like nothing they'd seen before.
Then, you know, a few phone calls to various archaeologists
and the suggestion came back: what if it's a cooking spit.
And that's exactly what it turned out to be.
A symbol of domestic power,
part of a wealthy female burial.
Along with the spit there were other domestic objects -
a knife, a pair of shears into which was rested a bone comb,
and a necklace of multi-coloured beads of glass, jet and amber.
These objects suggested that this woman was a Viking,
but strangely there was no sign of the broaches
that were a characteristic part of everyday Viking dress.
So who was she?
I think that she was a local Celt,
someone who was married to one of these new arrivals.
And probably this was an arranged marriage
and this would be a perfect way for Scandinavian who didn't want
to get into the whole risky business of fighting to take over land with swords
but to gain land through marriage.
So, is there any more evidence for inter-marriage elsewhere on the island?
Viking runic inscriptions on Christian crosses
give the names of people they commemorated.
And those who had them made.
This one declares that it was raised by Þorleifr Hnakki
to the memory of his son Fiak.
Now, this is fascinating because Þorleifr Hnakki is a Viking name
but his son's name is Celtic.
Now, the most likely explanation is tat Fiak's mother was a Celt
who, despite being married to a Viking,
had chosen to name her son in her own language.
This seems like more evidence of inter-marriage,
of the mingling of two very distinct cultures.
And the result of this integrated society
is the extraordinary survival of a remnant of Viking rule: Tynwald Day.
Each year, the island's parliament meets on this grassy mound
to conduct its business.
Open to all, almost exactly as they did a thousand years ago.
"Learned deemsters,
"I exhort you to proclaim to the people in ancient form
"such laws as have been enacted during the past year
"and which have received Her Gracious Majesty's Royal Assent."
"Electronic Transactions Act
"which facilitates electronic transactions.
The origins or the Tynwald ceremony
certainly go back well into our Viking period.
But they established their form of government here in the island
and promulgated, read out the laws which they were suggesting
that the public of the Isle of Man should under annually.
And that is really a tradition which we, today, centuries later,
have been carrying out.
The Viking rulers have handed down their political traditions,
but has their genetic legacy also been handed down?
What proportion of today's Manxmen are direct descendants of the Vikings?
The answer may be revealed by the genetic survey of the British Isles
being carried out by the BBC and University College London.
What you have to do is to scrape inside the mouth ten times
and I'll have this tube of preservative
which just preserves the cells that are captured
when you're doing the swabbing.
They're sampling males because it's the Y chromosome,
which only males have, that will clearly show Norwegian genetic markers.
Back in the lab, analysis of the samples is just beginning.
When we carry out just the first preliminary analysis
we see that about 15% of chromosomes in the Isle of Man
are only found in Norway.
So it looks like those have a Norwegian origin.
So there are indications of a strong Viking presence here
confirming the evidence from archaeology.
The genetics does indicate that there is Viking genetic input
and that could be precisely through the kind of inter-marriages
that are documented in the archaeological record,
with Viking men joining the society.
Residents Act, which provides for the registration of residents...
The enduring nature of Viking rule in the Isle of Man
contrasts sharply with the short-lived experience of Viking rule in England
where it would last for only 26 years.
King Canute died in 1035.
His sons were unable to hold on to their father's gains for long
and within seven years, the impressive North Sea Empire that he'd built
had collapsed.
Canute had been king of all England
and he was buried like one,
alongside the Saxon kings in Winchester's ancient Minster.
But he wasn't allowed to rest in peace.
When this new cathedral was built his bones were moved
along with those of other kings and bishops
into wooden caskets.
And here there is an ignominious post-script.
Centuries later they became the target of Roundhead aggression
during the English civil war.
Cromwell's troops effectively looted the cathedral.
They rode up the aisle, some of them on horseback,
running more or less amok.
When they got here, of course,
looking up to right and left,
what did they see were these boxes with crowns on the top.
Well, if you can imagine, symbol of royal authority
was precisely the sort of thing that they had it in for.
So they pulled down the boxes from on top.
Smash! Out came the contents,
and then they picked up the bones and used them as missiles
with which to break the windows which had idolatrous, biblical imagery on them.
The surviving bones were later re-placed in the chests,
but they'd been jumbled up.
So where exactly are Canute's remains?
Is it impossible to have a look in the chests?
Well, the current feeling is that
one should leave these human remains to lie in peace.
So, the simple answer to that is 'no',
but I was allowed to check the conservation state of the remains
about 10 years ago, I suppose it was, and also to take some photographs
which I've got here.
So this is the chest that we've been looking at on the side there.
What this looks like is just a collection of long bones, a few bits of pelvis
and some arm bones. There's no complete skeletons in there, are there?
Exactly so. And what seems to have happened is that,
during one of the re-sortings, they sorted out these bones osteologically
and decided they ought to put the long bones into these two new chests.
The result then is that some of the other chests,
for example one which only bears the name of one monarch,
- and yet, as you can see... - Five skulls!
We've got five skulls in there.
So, a complete jumble.
But Canute is somewhere in amongst one of these chests, you think?
I don't think there's any reason to suppose
that Canute's bones aren't somewhere amongst these lot, even jumbled up.
This remarkable episode of Viking rule in England
finished when the Anglo-Saxon dynasty was restored
almost three decades after it had been overthrown.
In 1042, Edward the Confessor took back the English throne.
It so happened that Denmark was too busy fighting Norway
to launch an more contenders for the English throne.
And so, it looked as if the Viking Age in England
had finally come to an end.
But the death of Edward the Confessor
meant that the crown was once again up for grabs,
and this time the Norwegians were ready.
The extraordinary tale of what really happened of 1066
is in the next and final episode of 'Blood of the Vikings'.
Transcription by Fry.