Discovery Channel - Bloody Britain (2004) Part 3 The Vikings

When History Was Really Horrible! Rory McGrath presents an entertaining history series that uses animation to shed light on some of the goriest events in Britain's past. Fresh, innovative, entertaining and revelatory, Bloody Britain combines strong historical research and storytelling with hands-on historical experiments (such as building and firing a trebuchet), an entertaining but extremely passionate presenter and atmospheric and innovative animation. Bloody Britain examines key historical events from ground level – looking at the lives and perspectives of all those involved in these events – king and commoner alike. Action and information-packed, each show is a fascinating and at times squeamish journey through some of Britain's most gruesome and awful, but momentous, historical events. In each episode of Bloody Britain Rory McGrath examines a key event from British history. Whether it's battles, rebellions, wars, plagues, social unrest, betrayal, executions, injustice or mass insanity, we'll concentrate on the mad, sad and bad moments from our past. In short, we'll zoom in on when the past was truly horrible and ask why, when and how these events came to be part of our history. From learning the tactics of the siege, through to troop formations and allegiances of the people, Bloody Britain demonstrates that history is always more interesting when it was horrible.

Part 3 The Vikings

Rory McGrath travels to Northumberland to learn the story of a Viking raider nicknamed 'Hairy Trousers' and finds out how to fight Viking-style. The Vikings were the scourge of Britain for almost 300 years. They came on raids from Norway, Denmark and Sweden, murdering, kidnapping and pillaging along the coast of Britain. Records for this period in British history are not completely reliable, because many accounts were written 200 years after the event. But we do have evidence from letters and chronicles written by churchmen and from archaeological finds both here and in Scandinavia.

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