#495 – Vikings, Ragnar, Berserkers, Valhalla & the Warriors of the Viking Age

The following is a conversation with Lars Brownworth, a historian and author of many excellent history books, including The Seawolves, A History of the Vikings, and the Normans, From Raiders to Kings. He's also the host of two history podcast series, the first called Twelve Byzantine Rulers, The History of the Byzantine Empire, is one of the first, if not the first ever history podcast launched over 20 years ago in June 2005. His second series, Norman Centuries, explores the remarkable rise of the Normans from Viking raiders to the rulers of kingdoms stretching from England to Sicily.

In this conversation we focus primarily on the Vikings, the seafaring Norse warriors and explorers who, over a period of just three hundred years, reshaped the medieval world and the trajectory of Western civilization. as we know it. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description or at lexfriedman.com slash sponsors. It is in fact the best way to support this podcast.

We got Laird in for understanding how AI is used in your business. Better help. for mental health, elements for electrolytes, Fin for customer service AI agents, Shopify for selling stuff online, and Perplexity for curiosity driven knowledge exploration. Choose wisely, my friends. And now onto the full ad reads.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (130 minutes, 21,004 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 10 episodes for $5, and monthly plans are cheaper still.