 It's a transgressional period between prehistory and the Middle Ages. This is a Viking farm. It has never been here. We have built it up after what we have excavated in Wobbe as a south in Gerdland. And it's a rich man's farm. There were nine houses inside one fence. So it was a very rich family living like this. There's a long house where the rich farmer and his family were living. There's a blacksmith's house where he was living with the family. And that's the forge where the blacksmiths were working. You can walk around, look in all the houses. They are equipped with copies. Everything's a copy here. Also my dress and everything we've got here because then we can use it. So you can try different things with Viking tools and you can touch everything. It's a whole idea of this place is that you touch the things to know about them. To know how to use them and so on. We have built it up with the farm here. Though it wasn't here because one kilometer from here we have the fortress. The real thing where Harold Bluetooth had his soldiers with families living. And then you can compare because it's the same year, 980. You can compare how the soldiers were living with their families out there and how rich farmers were living here. And it was very rich farmers. 99% of all the Vikings were farmers growing their crops in the fields, having their gardens, having their animals. But it's the 1% who were traveling out. You have heard about it before. 90% of all the people they just stayed at home. They had to maintain their farmlands. This is here a farm and you'll need lots and lots of people to run it. They can't go viking every summer. They have to sow and plant and harvest. And if only the eldest son can inherit the farmstead. What should his younger brothers do? They are not slaves. They could choose to work on their brothers farm or they have to find another occupation. We have the possibility in the Middle Ages that you become a carpenter or whatever in a town. This is a transgressional period where towns start to develop out of trading posts. If you can't do this, you could become a soldier in another lord's retinue. On the other hand, one could go viking, meaning you sail the seas to do whatever you can there. And this might be a combined trading or fighting action. We have the term viking. We have the term v, or wick, which goes in place names. It's a kind of inland side, a harbour side, a trading side. Viking ships were very fast. They could take down their sails and come in nearly unseen by using the oars. And then you could easily have a raid and be gone before somebody has alarmed the local. It has a notion of being a pirate. They went to England, Ireland, probably Northern Germany and France especially in the 9th century when these countries had internal problems and couldn't master a sufficient defence. There is so much wealth accumulated there, you just want to have it. Then it is about connectivity, that you take the chances, see what people otherwise do and try to make things better at home. You may be able to come higher up in this society if you go raiding, if you go trading, if you leave your given place in your local village. So this is one of the few chances you have. The other chances of course would be work harder. Try to earn money to make your better life. Those who take out to sea, they are seen a bit as heroes. If we consider the individual, shall I go or shall I stay? It's still a hard decision because it is extremely dangerous to take to the seas to go raiding. Many of them didn't come back. So you have to persuade all the guys in a certain area, come with me, join my crew, sign under in the navy. We want to raid England. You will get rich, you will get wealthy, you will get honored. If you die, you get into a paradise or into Valhalla. So you can't lose everything. Young man, come on, join my crew. They might have taken the Christian paradise idea and have transferred it to the heaven Valhalla. Valhalla means war hall. So there we have this Odin who collects warriors and they are feasting all day. So this is the story they tell. So, dear warrior, get into war, get yourself killed. You will just have it better in the afterlife. Many left the country to go raiding, colonizing, exploring. And so this is in the 10th century or even the 11th century, they become armies. We have the bearded axe here of the Vikings. His name is bearded axe because it has a beard like me. One of the reasons is bearded axe because iron and viking age is very expensive. So one of the ways we can make it cheaper is we let go of some of the iron. In the viking age this year we probably have been sharp and pointy so I can poke someone in the shoulder and in the middle and I can then hook them into my own shield ball behind the shield ball and in that way my friends in the shield ball can then take the sacks or the sword and then give them a warm welcome behind the shield ball. So the short hitting area is when I hit someone on the armor maybe I will not cut through the armor if it's a chainmail or if it's a vams or a sloughcoft in Danish but I will still break the bones underneath it. So the most popular and cheapest weapon of the viking age. Then we have the sword. The sword is very expensive because it will take a long time to craft and you need a specialist. The thing is with the sword it needs to be soft. If it's not soft it can break when you use it. So some of the blacksmith in the viking age then found out we can have a sharp piece of steel in the middle and then hard steel on the edge. Then the middle of the sword then will be able to make the sword able to bend and the hard steel will make sure that the sword will keep its sharpness. Therefore it took a long time or it was very expensive because if you look at the blacksmith we have here on Fyrkat that blacksmith here is not able to make sword it's too short. You need more air in it so we can harden the heated, the whole steel at the same time so when it gets hardened it will be hardened equally. This here is a one-handed spear then we have a two-handed spear here. This here is one hand you can have a shield as well and this here is a lot harder to control with one hand so this here is more used for behind the shield wall then I can poke down the enemy. Then we have the dain axe. The dain axe is a lead weapon you need to know what you're doing but with this weapon if you don't you'll get killed. The reason is you have absolutely no way to parry with this weapon so what you do is you learn to nearly juggle with the axe if you're alone against enemies and you nearly juggle with it in different patterns hopefully in a pattern that the enemy will not be able to read. It's also very good in a shielded wall. The thing is when you have a shield wall you are prepared for a pressure to go towards you. You push into the enemy. You're not prepared for something coming behind you and then push into you. So if you then have a dain axe where you then stand behind and then pull it in then the shield wall opens and then you pull three or four enemies in and then you close the shield wall again and then you have all the men behind you that then stab them down with their weapons. The thing is with the shield the good thing with the center grip is it's bendy. I can fast move if I need to protect myself over here or here. I can move up and down as well. The good thing with a shield I can also use it as a weapon. I can bash with the shield in the edge. It will probably not kill a man but it will definitely disontate him so he will not be able to fight me for a couple of minutes. I can also bash him with the shield in here in the middle and bash him but the shield is around 10-15kg in the Viking shield so this is very light shields for safety when we fight with them. Hello my name is Christian. I'm 27 years old and I'm a member of the ASC Viking combat group. The ASC combat group is the oldest combat group in the entire Europe founded in 1992. What we do is that we have an extraordinary community of people that fight sing and bring together and have extreme amounts of fun on the battlefield and in the long houses one. We do Viking re-actment in all its aspects from cooking, campsite living, singing in the evening to battle in the morning and training all day. Many people I think they see it more as a sport than reconstruction of Viking fighting. Therefore their weapons are not necessarily reconstruction of Viking findings. Alright so this is our weapons container and it holds all the equipment that we use in our everyday training and also on the battlefield. These containers were mainly our weapons everything from hand axes such as these made in wood and metal to one handed spears like these which people also use. They have a safety tip on but we'll talk on that later. And also when it's all about there are two handed weapons two handed spears and then of course it also includes the mighty Danex which is also a two handed weapon and of course people have all their personal shields in different sizes according to how you build, how tall you are how tall your shoulders are. The people built in themselves have a trial number so everybody has got their own set of Viking combat gear and it's up to you to decide which kind of weapon constellation you want to fight with. If you want to fight with one handed spear and shield you want to fight with a two handed spear it's my preferred weapon or if you want to go for the Danex instead. This is where we keep all of our equipment and also camp equipment such as tents or kitchen equipment and all those sorts of things that you'd use in your everyday life when you're out doing Viking combat. But what we do here is more of a sort of sport than it's reconstruction of fighting because the reconstruction of the fight would include the head as a target zone our feet, our hands, everything that you could hit whereas this is a modern way of doing Viking combat. That means we have some safety issues that we need to attend one of them being all the weapons are blunt so that means they're not sharp all the spears are not pointed they have a safety tip welded onto them so to ensure they don't do any damage we have several different rule systems that we can fight within the most popular being the Western style fighting where all cutting weapons like axes, swords, Dane axes their target zone is the entire of a body not including the arm to within the t-shirt line entire of a body the stomach, the bottom and the groin as well and down to the legs the upper thighs not including the knees so if you're hit within that zone it doesn't matter how hard you hit as long as you just hit it's enough then you're out. Fighting style are not the same as the Vikings were made. We talked about the shirt being too small because it only has to protect my target zone which means that that allows my way of fighting to be in a different way than the Vikings because I don't have to protect my head I don't have to protect my lower legs my hands or my arms it's important to protect that in the Viking age because if you're sure you're hit you're done we have a rule of thumb that says metal kills and that is to avoid all these discussions that we have regarding if it was the lip tip or the edge or the side because we're moving at such a fast pace that it's very hard for people to figure out which side of the weapons that you were hitting so in order to get rid of that the rule of thumb is metal kills and that means if you get hit within the target zone with a piece of metal either quite softly or hard with a flat side you get stabbed whatever metal kills and it's only one hit that's for the sake of the playability of this game that we have a very important point in this way of fighting is that there is no judge we are each other's opponents because we're also the judges of each other not in that way that if you hit me and you think you hit me within the target zone then you get to call me dead no, I will respect you enough that if you hit me within the target zone I say yes, you got me and the other way around it's a lot about the trust regarding each other because we are pointing blank weapons at each other and I trust people not to hit me in the head that's why I don't wear any more safety gear than this because I trust people that have enough training and enough control and talent to not hit me in the face and of course I'll do the same the essential of the line fight is that you have two teams one in line up in front of another and then this team or of course try to kill this team and the other way around depending on who you're fighting what's the ring and what face we are in the battle you'll have to adjust that all the time to your own force of strength and your enforcement or potential it's a really huge game when you see it from this perspective it's actually a funny thing that draws all kinds of people together myself, I'm a chemical engineer I've got a masters degree in formation of epoxy composites it has nothing to do with the viking age nothing at all I just really like the historical aspect of it and the sport and the intensity of the fighting whereas others are dragged in from either their studies as archeologists or something else entirely being honest and together and I'm realizing that we're just having fun