User Reviews

To the vast majority of viewers, the Vikings are equated with a quasi-barbarian race, invading Britain after the Saxons and colonizing it, and ruling until the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066. Presented by Janina Ramirez, this short program shows that there was much more to Viking cultures than we first assumed. Filmed at the Vikings!! exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland (that took place in early 2013), this documentary investigates different aspects of Viking cultures through some of the artifacts: its writing, social life, its tendency towards aggression, and its reconstruction of Christianity. Ramirez argues quite plausibly what, while the Vikings were a warlike race, they were also quite pious, believing themselves to be enacting God's will as they set up their various settlements. Ramirez also dispels the myth that the Vikings were a separate race; she points out that the Normans were descended from the Vikings (the Word "Norman" is a diminutive of "Norse-man"), and hence when the Normans invaded Britain in 1066, they were merely another branch of the Viking race. Whereas a good number of the contemporary population are descended from the Saxons, there are an equal number with Viking descent, especially in the areas of England and Scotland where they settled (they even went as far south as the Thames. Hence they deserve to be treated with more subtlety than they might have been in the past. Presented with obvious enthusiasm for her subject by Ramirez, THE ART OF THE VIKINGS is a real eye-opener of a program.