You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.

Welcome to Digging Up Ancient Aliens.

This is the podcast where we examine alternative history and ancient alien narratives in popular media.

Do these ideas hold the water to an argument, archaeologist?

Or are there better explanations out there?

We are now on episode 75 and I am Frederick, your guide into the world of Sudo archaeology.

This time we are asking if the Vikings could have been aliens or maybe at least influenced by them.

With me I have Norwegian archaeologist Stefan Beck, who runs a very successful TikTok account where he talks about Vikings, 3D printings and well, other things related to archaeology.

And together we will ask the hard questions if Odin's ravens might have been spy drones, if Thor's belt could have been an exosuit, and if the dwarves in Norse mythology just were grey aliens.

And I want to thank everyone who supports the show.

You are really helping out with producing this content and I'm very humbled and grateful for your support.

And if you want to help out, I will tell you exactly how to do that and how to get some bonus stuff at the end of this episode.

Now remember that you can find sources and further reading suggestions at our website tickingupancientaliens.com and there you will also find contact info if you notice any mistakes or have any suggestions.

And if you like the podcast, I would really appreciate it if you left one of those fancy five star reviews that I heard so much about.

Now I think we have finished with our preparations, so let's dig into the episode.

So I want to welcome my guest and maybe first time podcast guest even Stefan Beck.

Buck, welcome to the show.

Thank you, thank you.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's got to be a pleasure and I can't wait.

I've heard many good things about the Ancient Aliens show, so it's going to be interesting to be able to talk about it.

There's a lot of interesting conversation I think we will have.

But for those who aren't familiar with your work or who you are, would you maybe give the Cliff Notes on your experience?

So I am currently, I've just finished my bachelor's in archaeology at the University of Troms in Northern Norway and I'm working at the University Museum of Tromse as well as a field archaeologist and also as a research technician right now handling finds and cataloging artifacts.

It was really fun.

And also most likely you might have heard from me on my TikTok account, StefanbachSigils, where I talk a lot about 3D printing, 3D archaeology and Viking mythology, stuff like that.

So how do you feel that 3D printing and that can help archaeology be more accessible?

Because I find that a quite fascinating topic.

Before we get to the ancient alien stuff we can.

Oh, perfect.

My niche.

Awesome.

No, I, I think that using 3D and especially 3D printing to make artifacts more accessible to a lot of people has great benefits for society, especially with how we teach people about artifacts.

There was a.

They've done something very interesting down at the Museum of Oslo where they've 3D printed a lot of Stone Age axes and put them next to the display case.

And that has allowed vision impaired guests to come up and actually touch the artifact instead of just listening to them on devices.

So it becomes an entirely new medium to touch and to learn about with the tactile feeling, for an example, opens.

Up a more easy way to create artifacts.

Because replicas can be quite expensive.

Or is this really a cost saving in your perspective compared to ordering a replica to 3D printing?

Do you see any cost benefits there?

So I actually had a whole presentation about the ethics of 3D printing and someone actually brought that question up.

Was I afraid that the trade of original artifact like replica making was going to be thrown out the window now that we had a more cost efficient way to do it?

But my answer was that you have to look at them as two very completely different things.

Because if you want to have a replica made, let's say the bronze brooch, you've probably seen me 3D print, if you want to have that cast in bronze, you definitely can.

But a replicated brooch that is cast in bronze or any kind of other things like that will not be.

You can't share it.

In the same way that, for example, a plastic replica that costs less to make, there's also the, there's also the aspect of like time spent with it and the material costs.

So for example, in a museum in London, they made.

No, in the US they made headdresses for.

I think it was Native.

Native Americans.

And the material that it cost to make these replica headdresses was so expensive that even though their main intention and usage for them was to actually hand them out, let people try them on, they had to be displayed next to the original artifacts in the class case and completely inaccessible.

So I think that 3D printing can definitely solve the issue of both cost and availability of artifacts, which gives people a completely different understanding of what they are.

Yeah, I wouldn't really give out real replica to a bunch of school children visiting a museum for Example, because as you said, it's an investment.

But 3D printing can really make a museum exhibition more accessible to more people who doesn't really always have their eyes.

Because we kind of focus a lot on objects in archeology, for obvious reasons.

But because we're, you know, a little trinket hoarders.

We love.

We love to touch and hold the trinkets.

Yeah.

And about trinkets, I want to shift over to Ancient Aliens.

Is this a concept you have been familiar with in the past?

It's.

It's some.

The only thing I've really read up about it, which is I've heard.

I heard a lot of horror and sci fi podcasts and they especially talk a lot about Aryans for an example, which is also alluded to in this episode of Ancient Aliens where they have sort of.

Would you like me to talk a little bit about it now or take it when we get to it in the.

A little bit later?

We haven't really talked about the Aryans in the past.

We can have it as a light introduction to the episode.

Yeah, well, it started really with like, it has ties back to white supremacy, of course, and also Nazi Germany and stuff, where essentially there's this higher being and higher race of aliens that's above the Greys that have white skin, super blonde hair, blue eyes, and they have names such as Freyr, Odin, Thor, and just it's been used in the most heinous way to like really like solidify the superiority of the white race.

Yeah, yeah, that's nothing really too unfamiliar to those listening to the show for quite some time.

It's strangely right wing and strangely Soviet propaganda coming in from Ancient Aliens.

So I mean, we get both camps there a little bit.

Okay.

I haven't heard a lot about the Soviet.

The Soviet angle.

Yeah.

But the Soviets wasn't always as well, scientifically honest.

And they kind of put out these very strange books on science and history especially.

There's a few examples, for example in Mohenjo Daro.

Are you familiar with that site?

No, not that I can say.

So it's in.

Oh, sorry.

I think it's in northern Pakistan.

I might have to go back and edit this part later.

No worries.

But it is one of the earliest cities that we have actually, and it's very nicely built.

We have a city layer or street grid and everything.

But there's a lot of strange claims about the site, such as it was bombed by an atomic bomb and this Russian alternative history science book written by a Soviet.

I think it's a physicist.

He was.

And it kind of got picked up by David childress in the 80s and 90s.

And from there it kind of evolved to this.

There was ancient atomic weapons in the past.

And who has atomic weapons?

Aliens.

Except it's just a mistranslation of a Russian history alternative history book that's based on a mistranslation of a British study on how the body is affected by radiation during skydiving, where they bring up historical examples and the historic example they really talk about here is example in Egypt that gets translated to Mohenjo Dara.

It's very confusing and a lot of things have gone wrong, but that's, you know, the butter of ancient aliens.

It's just if you get a ball rolling, just roll with it as far as you can.

Doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense.

It doesn't matter if you do leaps and bounds away from the main topic.

As long as you get to a weirdly confusing sentence at the end, then you're fine.

Yeah, as long as it sounds good and sells.

Yeah.

They are great salesmen.

I mean, most of them can craft very good stories, or at least decent stories.

I mean, ancient tales is good science fiction, as we see in Assassin's Creed, for example.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

But I feel like when, for example, when you start calling things alternative history books, I think we should go away from like listening to them and taking them as science books, you know?

Yeah, we should really come up with a new term for the whole alternative history segment as a whole.

But yeah, that's conspiracy propaganda, isn't that?

Well, because you'd think when they found out that it was a mistranslation, they come out with a statement and say, oh, sorry, we were wrong.

No, they're still going with it.

Oh, yeah, 100%.

No, no, that's what I'm saying.

But that's just like, to me, that's validity that they know that they're just talking from, like talking from ignorance and not being intellectually honest about what they're actually relaying to people.

Yeah.

But as I say, have said several times, I don't think they're in it for the honesty.

They're in it for the mystery.

Yeah, the money.

Yeah, the money mystery is how much can I make on this?

Yeah.

And then I think maybe some started that way.

But I think those who are the biggest names are hardcore believers at this point.

I don't think there's any.

Like a cult.

There's no really way out of it for them.

No it's like.

It's like sort of like.

Yeah, if they try to look themselves in the mirror, the mirror is going to shatter kind of thing.

Yeah, I can get behind that.

That makes sense.

And I mean, if your whole life is selling mysteries and ancient aliens, I mean, you don't really have any money of coming out against it there.

No.

That's fair.

So you're kind of stuck, in a sense.

But.

But yes, about being stuck.

So what did you think about Vikings and Aliens episode?

I think the best way that I can describe it is that this episode of Ancient Aliens makes Graham Hancock's ancient apocalypse look like a real documentary.

Because it's just.

It's just dramatic shot after dramatic shot after nonsense uttered after nonsense uttered after connections made that aren't there at all.

It's insane.

And in like, the most positive way, I don't understand how they could have come up with this logically and thought that this was something that they wanted to publish and say out loud.

Like, they had the entire internal monologue of.

One of my favorite bits is like, for example, that Hugin and Munin are alien spy drones.

Yeah.

And they believe this and they say it with their full chest and they.

But they always frame it as like, but could this be real?

You know, but couldn't it be that this could be the fact, actually?

And we're like, no, of course not.

That's silly.

Yeah.

But I mean, they usually make these very large jumps to conclusions, and their whole shtick is basically that ancient people can't describe advanced technology using the words that they have access to.

I mean, if you think ufo, we think two ravens.

Yeah.

Doesn't really make sense in that way.

And.

No, it's just.

It always comes back to, like, the almost infantilization of ancient cultures in a way of like.

Oh, no, they were.

They were like.

How do I say it?

Like, I don't use any offensive words, like.

But they view them as.

They were just lesser just because they weren't have.

They didn't have electricity and they didn't have big cities, like in the way that we do.

They were somehow less complex, which is just plain wrong, in my opinion.

A term they usually use is primitive, unfortunately.

Yes.

These primitive societies that can't accomplish these things by themselves.

Yeah, I was looking for that word.

I know that archaeologists in the past used this term, unfortunately, but we don't really see it in the books since at least 60s, 70s.

Yeah.

I mean, we kind of gone through it because it makes this weird connotation on how Ancient people were, because they are humans, they are as intelligent as us.

And at the same time in this episode, they seem to think of the Vikings both as this primitive beasts, the warriors that we often see, but also these very advanced people with advanced metallurgy and all of that.

So they can't really get an exact idea of what a Viking is or what image they want to portray of them either.

To some extent.

Yes.

I mean.

Yep.

Sorry, no.

They start the whole episode talking about how basically Vikings invented democracy as we know it today with their right.

Although their civilization was divided among numerous kingdoms, the Norse Vikings were united in their belief in the power of the individual.

They had a kind of early assembly that was very advanced for its time, before the other areas of Europe had any kind of democracy.

So they actually came up with the idea that power belonged to the people, not the royal.

They had something of a proto democracy and people would come from that particular region in order to argue issues of law or other kinds of cultural or issues of political significance at that time.

With their things and.

And the power to the people.

But the truly, the power should always be with the people, never with the countless kings that we have in the.

Viking age or the Jarls political.

Charles.

I mean, I'm no master on how the thing worked in at least Sweden, Viking age.

Do you have an understanding how it worked in Norway?

I know that there's difference between the countries who had voting and rights to access things.

From the way that I remember, from the way that I remember specifically, I had a page up here, but I can't speak much for Denmark or Sweden.

But in Norway, at least, what we view them as is they were places where free men could go and they could voice their opinions and they would sort of be collectively taken care of or talked about where settlements could be made, like, you know, Holden Gung and such.

Yeah, such and such.

That's kind of the thing that we have of them.

But it's weird that they're attributing this to the Vikings when we have traces of the tradition going way further back than the Vikings.

Yeah.

In my opinion, it just feels like a really, really weird way to misrepresent what they're talking about.

Yeah.

And they kind of have.

It's a very common thing.

They represent Vikings as one culture.

Because the thing, as you said, Norway sure will have some similarities with Sweden.

But if you compare with Gotland, for example, their variation of a thing was very different.

They had the big thing and then they have.

I think there's 12 districts on the island where they have separate things for what became the parishes later, basically with, you know, different levels of attendees and who can attend what level of these things.

So, I mean, there are some advanced ideas, but I mean, the Viking world isn't single world.

We're talking about a very mixed set of people sharing a similar culture.

No.

Yeah, Especially like it's what we talked about a little bit earlier too.

It's like the infantilization again of this culture, the Viking culture and the simplification of it is just like this one tiny thing.

Instead of considering the massive amounts of data, which they also tried to back up by saying, oh, we don't know anything about this period.

There's never been any written records.

Mostly only we have the two texts written down 300 years after the Viking age.

And that's.

It's just plain wrong.

And you're sort of catering to an audience by saying that you have no data, but it's only because you haven't looked at the actual data and stuff that's there.

Yeah.

And I also just want to touch on the way that they.

When you said that they don't know how to represent the Vikings, it becomes very clear after they say, specifically they say something along the lines of they were a very like rich, high cultured society.

And then they immediately show the attack on Lindisfarne where they're all dressed in barbaric tunics with like fur over their co and just slaughtering and killing for no apparent reason.

So I don't even think the show knew where they wanted to go with what a Viking was.

No.

And they are very split about what the Viking world is because they kind of start getting it right.

Oh, it's a large portion stretching from Sweden, Denmark and Norway all the way to America.

They leave out the whole Baltic area, Poland down the Volga rivers and all that that are also part of this Viking world.

But they kind of start good and then we just went sideways.

And as you touched on that, we don't have written records.

And then they call the writing system hieroglyphs.

Yeah, I noticed that too.

It was like, what do you mean hieroglyphs?

There's my partner.

I blessed them.

They sat next to me while I was watching this and they had to actually touch my hand and be like, hey, are you okay?

And I'm like, I am vibrating out of my seat.

This is so infuriating to watch.

I mean, there's some researcher who messed up, but I mean, it's runes and we.

You can maybe get away if you were talking about the petroglyphs, but they were never mentioned at all.

Unless and except they do have the one photo of the.

Of the longship.

Yeah.

And there are some Bronze Age petroglyphs, but I mean from a different era.

It's the Bronze Age.

It's way before the Viking Age in this case.

I think those were from Tarnum down in Skne, if I remember correctly.

I never brought up which ones they used, but it looked like Swedish at least.

Yeah.

Because I thought it looked a little bit like the one that's up in Alta.

That's what I was thinking about.

In Finnmark, the UNESCO World Heritage Site, they have one that I thought was very similar, but at the same time.

Most of those look kind of the same to some extent.

I might be wrong too.

It's just an association, I thought.

I see which one I'm thinking about.

And it's this, because this one I can agree with you that the other one looked way more Swedish.

This one has.

It has way more people on it and has a bigger keel on the one in Alta.

So I was mistaken.

I'll take it back.

It's fine.

We can edit that out.

Or I just make a little sound bite.

I'm mistaken.

No, leave it in, please.

People are also here not only for the app, but for.

To prove other people wrong.

It's fine.

But.

Yeah, but I mean the petroglyphs aren't really hieroglyphs.

It's not really a language spoken there.

I mean proto runic script maybe could be hieroglyphs, but at the same time they use actual runic Alphabet.

Even if it's just.

I mean they've just misspoken.

They just labeled it wrong.

They used the wrong.

I was about to use the wrong words myself but like they just use the wrong terminology to describe the thing and then instead of going back and maybe fixing it in post ed, they just went with it and left it in.

Because I don't think they understand the difference between runes and hieroglyphs.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean most Americans I don't think caught it but.

Or probably in general people watch it.

But I mean, it's a bit interesting that they bring up Greece and Rome as civilization we know a lot about.

But not the Vikings.

Especially since we have writings about the Vikings from the Byssan theme.

That's basically Rome later.

And we have the Venice lion that's from Greece with the runestone carved on it.

If you haven't seen it.

No, I've seen it.

I mean.

It'S like they're trying to sort of mystify the Vikings as to trying to clear up what they were.

And I don't know if that is in an attempt to try and sort of justify their bounds and leaps into.

Oh yeah, no, the Vikings could definitely been helped by aliens or if they just don't know.

That's always what it's for me.

Like do they, do they gen.

Like, yeah, we touched about a little bit earlier.

Like do they genuinely believe what they're saying here?

I think they believe what they're saying, but it might also be a technique to kind of muddy the water.

So if we have a lot of mystery that we can play on, then who really knows the truth?

Is it the so called experts or is it, you know, the alien theorists or what we should call them?

Yeah, because both, because you know, those two are exactly the same.

It's the same kind of information and the same kind of background and we're both just here for the answers.

Yeah, so I can see that approach as well.

But I just, it's very hard for me to believe that.

For me it's very hard to sort of align my views with that kind of narrative thinking a little bit, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I mean part of archaeology is the mystery.

I say.

But we kind of use it to tell a story based on the best evidence.

We don't try to really hide the evidence.

I think there's the main distinction between ancient aliens and historians and archaeologists, because.

What we do, look at least how I've perceived it, is that we work especially from the material record, from what is known into the unknown.

But what we sort of see with at least pseudoscience and people maybe in like ancient aliens environments, they work from the unknown into like the known.

They sort of like they go, oh well, if.

If Huggin and Moomin were birds that sat on Odin's shoulders and flew out into the world every day, doesn't that sound like spycopters?

Couldn't that possibly be alien spycopters?

So it's like they are using some sort of like some critical, like some thinking.

But I don't know if they're doing like critical thinking with the information they have.

I don't think they do.

And sometimes they kinda.

But they kind of use real sites too to defend their position.

As we saw with the Norse settlement in Newfoundland up in.

Now I lost the name of the site.

It was the Lyons Medal.

Lonzo Ox Meadows.

Yeah.

Okay, you got it too.

Yep.

Not sure about that pronunciation.

But they bring up that it was found in the 1970s and all that.

And it's true that it was a speculation.

But the thing is we actually found it and we found the archaeological record in the area that they were there.

It's not like the Kensington Runestone, for example, where they just found a stone and nothing else ever since.

Nope.

And in three different.

I would say stages of runology as well.

Different.

Wasn't it different time periods.

The runes from different time periods on the same stone.

No, it was from the same.

But the specific script is traced to a location in Sweden.

That's pre.

That's after.

Let me get this correct.

1880.

It can't have been earlier than that due to the runes used on the stone.

And as so happens, the guy who found it was from that particular region in Sweden.

Mysterious.

Mysterious.

Mysterious Very much indeed.

Several surveys later, they haven't found a trace of Viking encampment in Minnesota.

Basically.

Don't get me started on Minnesota.

I have so much to say about.

We even actually had a.

We had a class up here that is called like archeology, history appreciation and appropriation.

And then Minnesota came up as one of the main contenders for the appropriating angle.

There's a lot of good stuff that happens in Minnesota, too.

I do enjoy a lot of the work that they've done.

Like, for example, when they made the Viking ship.

That was very nice.

But then when you actually look about what they're publishing and saying about this Viking ship is that it's a 100% authentic Viking ship.

Yeah.

And they've combined like a replica.

I think it was a replica of the Gustav ship, if I'm not mistaken.

Sounds vaguely familiar.

And then they added like a dragon's head to it.

So, you know, a different kind of keel on it.

And it had a different shape.

It had.

It was way wider than the original ship as well.

So, like, they're taking liberties with it.

But the main.

The main reason why Minnesota came up as like, appropriation was because one of the biggest assaults on Native American rights and peoples in the US Was in Minnesota and the area surrounding Minnesota.

And that's almost never really talked about in the Minnesota counties and in the cities.

Yeah.

And that's a bit.

The dangers of using, for example, the Kensington Runestone as an artifact to kinda put themselves as a indigenous people to the land.

That they have the right to this due to earlier presence of Scandinavians kind.

Of erasing their own heritage and replacing it with something more ideal.

They creating their Own heritage.

Not that it seems to have been the creator's idea of the stone from stories seemed to be more.

I want to thumb my nose at those pesky kind of things.

At least what one of the hoaxers children said about their father, that, oh, he wanted to, you know, snub those fancy academics and all of that.

But that much is not really discussed.

I actually did an episode on the Kensington Runestone recently, so it's kind of familiar still.

It's the eternal struggle of farmers versus archaeologists.

Yeah, yeah.

A Norwegian, a Swede and another Swede.

So.

Yep, yep.

No, that's fair.

Jesus.

But whilst we're on it, did you remember the pictures and videos they showed of the travels of the Vikings in Ancient Aliens?

When they talked about going to Newfoundland?

Yeah, they talking about they're going across the Atlantic instead of through Iceland and Greenland.

For some reason, the Norse crisscrossed half the world in their longships.

In the east, they sailed down the rivers of Russia to the Black and the Caspian Sea.

In the west, they sailed down the.

Coast of Europe through the Strait of.

Gibraltar into the Mediterranean.

They reached out across the then unknown Atlantic Ocean.

They went almost everywhere there was and.

The arrow just goes.

It goes.

The worst part is they have it on the map and they go straight past it and they don't even mention it.

Nope.

And then they ask, but how could these primitive people sail across the Atlantic?

Something we.

No, they didn't.

No, you missed it completely actually.

But yeah, that's kind of how they do it.

There's another episode where they talk a little bit about Vikings and the Trelleborgs down in Denmark that they claim they are all on a line and they kind of draw this nice line on the map.

You know, everyone is connected.

But if you zoom in or try to use a Google map, you quickly come to realize that no, that's not the case.

The trailer borders is of course UFO landing spots.

No, of course.

Yeah.

Because they are circles.

Yeah.

That is the only thing.

And people can't do perfect circles.

Of course not.

Advanced technology.

You just need a string and a stick in the middle.

And not even that.

All you need is like a rope and a person holding it in the middle and then, oh, the length of the rope, hold it taut and just walk in a circle.

That's all you need.

Oh, I used to love.

I can't remember the name of the guy who did it, but someone who was using experimental archaeology to test a lot of the theories on how the pyramids were built.

Thank you yeah, yeah.

The person who showed how to move the stones, for example, with easy levers and how to make the bottom of the pyramid very level, for example, by flooding the basement with water and then etching onto the line where the water level was, for an example.

And it's like.

It's not.

Of course, it's not a laser.

What is called vada.

What is called, like the measuring thing.

The level.

Yeah, a laser leveler.

I don't know if that's the way to say it.

So it's not.

It's not science fiction in that way, but it's not primitive.

It's an.

It's a very ingenious way to use the materials and resources around you to do what you would like to do.

It's.

It's human ingenuity at its best.

Yeah.

The water level thingy is called actually spirit level.

Oh.

But as for the pyramids and using water, I actually did an episode on the pyramids and it seems to have been debunked that they could use water.

It would evaporate too quickly when they did test in the desert, unfortunately.

Oh, no, don't leave the desert.

Don't leave the Zen.

But yeah, but it was accepted idea.

And they also think that in some cases they could actually use water, depending on the location of the pyramids.

But the Giza Plateau, for example, it was not possible on.

Due to the too little water, too high up and.

Yeah, I understand.

I understand the concept of the debunking.

Damn.

Fair enough.

No, no, but like.

But still the point stands.

That the point stands.

Yeah, we kind of.

But that's something we kind of usually forgot is how to do stuff.

Yeah, I mean, we don't have to do make iron ore today.

And that's a common thing that they.

How did the Vikings get so good at getting ores?

Well, they had to.

And not all of them were especially great.

That's something they didn't live out from the settlement in America.

The iron slag that we find in this location is horrendous.

They did not manage to purify the iron properly compared to proper smith.

So not everybody had the knowledge.

And they kind of.

They do brush over it to just get the main, main facts of the story to move along as quickly as possible.

So you don't actually linger on any of these sort of questions.

And especially I noticed that when they were talking about the boat nails and the iron ore and.

Oh, they were master craftsmen who made super complex alloys to help protect the.

The boat nails from degeneration.

And rust.

Okay, which ones?

What are you talking about?

What information are you giving me?

Other than that they had alloys, which you've given me no evidence for?

No, but you shouldn't think too much about it.

No, no.

I think that's the slogan of this entire episode.

Just don't think too much about it and you'll be fine.

But that's also why they kind of just throw so much at you at the same time, so you don't really have time to sit and relax and let the information sink in.

You kind of getting hit with something new that you have to reflect on.

So now we go from both rivers to that.

The Mayans and Egyptians didn't travel the world while the Vikings were all over the place.

Yep.

Sorry.

Pardon?

And all of that.

So, I mean, they kind of throw everything so you don't really sit and think about it.

But as you said, the advanced science of metallurgy, I think it's Jason Martellus as that.

And different types of alloys.

And it's all out of context from other cultures they seem to be interacting with.

They had a very solid understanding of hydrodynamics in some of the ships.

We also found advanced signs of metallurgy, smelting and different types of alloys that they were using.

And this is all out of context from other cultures they seem to be interacting with.

It's just a strange statement out of nowhere, because, I mean, did they have some iron alloys that were really good?

Sure.

Did they have some iron alloys that was really, really bad?

Definitely.

Yeah.

But I mean, the Vikings had steel.

They put the bones of their enemies onto the swords that calcified the.

Some parts of the iron that purified it and made it into steel.

So that's why the Viking swords were so much better.

Mm, of course.

Yeah, of course.

That's how it worked.

The blood of my enemies and ancestors and all that.

Yeah, yeah.

And everybody had a sword because they are Vikings, that they kind of used axes or things like that or spears.

One of the most common ones.

No, but.

Yeah.

But do we want to move on to mythologies in the episode?

Because that was really interesting part of it.

Because that's sort of what.

When they started talking about aliens in Norse mythology, that's when I just realized that none of this.

None of this is true.

That they.

It can't be true.

I almost thought you'd sent me, like, a parody episode a little bit, because it's.

When you start.

When you start thinking of.

We start thinking of Valkyries, for example, as extraterrestrials and aliens that came to help the Vikings.

It just.

It goes way out of proportion for me.

Let's see.

Because I think I had a claim.

No, I think they claimed something.

Yes.

Because they say the Valkyries might have been extraterrestrials who chose warriors to bring to Valhalla, Odin's preferred home, which is completely different talking point, which is a completely different realm or planet, which completely.

Is completely false.

Because Valkyries are, you know, the divine figures in Norse mythology who serve Odin and are tasked with selecting warriors to join him in Valhalla.

So they've taken something that is very clearly stated in the mythology in the Eddas and then warped it and just added the word extraterrestrial on top of it.

I think it's because a huge part of the alien narrative is that they interbreeds with people to correct mistakes in human evolution.

So I think the idea there is a kind of a deep cut, but the idea is that the Valkyrias come and bring up the most noble people that then get to breathe with the aliens and create, you know, special race of humans kind of thing there.

And what color of skin would these people have?

Most definitely.

Why?

There we go.

There we go.

Jesus.

Because that, that's what it always boils down to with like alien theories.

And especially when you're talking about the Aryans, it's always like the whitest and purest of people who got to go, which is just.

It's just plain racism.

Yeah, yeah.

And they doesn't even try to hide it, really.

If they.

If you look at Von Daniken ideas, I don't think it was much in this episode, but I think you're familiar with him.

He's the heritage of the gods, German Swiss guy.

And he is a huge proponent of anti evolution stance and especially about how the human race evolved.

We have the, you know, the African people who kind of see as primitive.

And then the aliens come and say, oh, this doesn't really do.

And they kind of create the Asians and then they create the Aryans.

Much better.

And you know, he doesn't really put value in it in the text, but I mean, he kind of lose that.

You know, we start with something and then we evolve to something much better.

Right.

Does he have any opinions on the Dwarves or Sons of Ivaldi?

That was a little bit later on in the episode, perhaps.

Oh, that's kinda.

But David Childress is also problematic.

He's one of those who tend to quote both neo Nazis and Soviet propagandists.

If it serves his ideas.

But yeah, David Childress, he claims that the dwarves are just the gray aliens that the Vikings misinterpret.

Yes, I forgot.

And these little piece people are the ones who are making these high tech weapons for the Norse cause.

It would seem that these weapons are extraterrestrial in nature.

Why?

Now when you think of dwarf and think of extraterrestrial, you think little grace.

And I think the dwarves might have been alien grace.

That's yours, Nori.

Who says that?

And because they didn't know how to.

Describe them, they will call them dwarves or little people.

And these little people are the ones who are making these high tech weapons for these Norse gods.

And it would seem that these weapons.

Are extraterrestrial in nature.

Now when you think of dwarfs and think of extraterrestrials, you think of little grays.

And I think the dwarfs might have.

Been alien grays from coast to coast AM And I mean, it's just a problematic statement because if you read the Norse idea of the dwarves, it's not really aliens.

They're not Grey.

They're.

When you talked about the Greys being the people that will build this technology for the Vikings, Freyr's ship.

Can we just talk about Freyr's ship for a little bit?

Because in the mythology it is a ship that is built for Freyr that can be folded back and then put into your pouch.

It can be put down into your thing.

They got that right in the show.

Yeah.

And then they just leap with it to say that it's.

What was it?

An interdimensional spacecraft.

Yeah, that's not uncommon because I mean, there are mythologies where it is folding a boat or even a donkey together and putting in your pocket is common ideas, but since you can fold it, then it means that you can fold time.

Interdimensional travel, spaceship.

It's not that.

Just people kind of find it practical to put something in your pocket that's usually really big and that you want to just.

I mean, a ship costs money.

It's kind of tricky to get over land when you have to.

Yeah.

And actually putting up to the docks also just figuring out where to put it and it not getting stolen or being drifted away or being taken by the low tides and the high tides, for examples.

Of course, I mean, if I could fold my car instead of finding parking in the street, I would get one of those.

Yeah, no, I get.

I mean they do now have like the foldable bikes if you want one of those instead.

Yep.

Not really Pocket sized yet, but.

But we're getting there.

It could be a backpack, but.

Yeah, but it's this very strange leap.

And again, it's the idea that ancient people can't have imagination.

Everything has to be a literal interpretation of something they have seen.

It's not, you know, that they can make up stories to each other and just make things up as today.

Yeah, because I always feel like, for example, the supernatural explained in all mythologies, I feel usually just is a way for them to explain their surroundings.

And usually in ways that from a world that was more filled with more magic and filled with more of the supernatural, deity, religious mythology and stuff like that.

For example, the rainbow bridge, the Bifrost from Norse mythology, which they also mentioned in the show, which I always just thought was our rainbow.

They saw a rainbow and must have thought, oh, that could be the gods traveling from the Earth, from Midgard all the way up to Valhalla to Oskar.

Yeah, yeah.

Or the aurora borealis, for example.

Right.

With the light flickering over the sky, dancing as if, and just appearing and then disappearing.

Right.

Without knowing that it's magnetic pulses from the sun.

How do you explain that happening?

Yeah.

And again, it's not that they were stupid.

They don't have this access to the information that we have today.

And we are humans as a species are curious and need to explain the things around us in, in the ways that we can.

And of course, if we don't have a natural explanation for it, then we go to supernatural explanations that make sense instead.

It's not about intelligence.

It's what's accessible to you in that way and making sense of your day to day life.

I mean, most people look at a computer as something magical today because they don't really know how it works, but they could easily look it up.

But, but you look at it and yeah, phone magic.

No idea how that works.

No, no.

I always think about.

I don't know if you do, but have you ever thought about, like, what would I do if I got stuck back in time?

I'd be like, oh, I bring so much innovation.

I would spur times ahead.

And then I go like, how does a phone work?

Like, how could I make a stove?

I have no idea, no idea how to bring society back to today's standard.

It wouldn't change a single thing.

No, because we take it, we take it for granted.

Yeah.

I'm out hiking and that type of stuff.

So, I mean, I could maybe keep up with them, but hindered when I lost, you know, my modern knives and have to make my own new one.

Because I have no idea how to get mom for making iron or anything like that that they just did and made themselves to a large extent.

But I mean, could maybe talk about wash your hands with soap.

Yeah, I could make soap.

That could work.

Or I could just.

Yeah, like wash our hands, wash ourselves a little bit more regularly.

Disinfect wounds for an example.

Don't eat meat that smells sweet.

Having some sort of outside information.

We could maybe fare a little bit better.

But it's.

A coworker me said we were discussing, we were actually discussing like intelligent back in ancient civilized civilizations.

And it's not that humanity mentally like the capacity or for our brain thought has evolved that much in the last like thousand years.

If you took, if you took a Stone age child and just took it, plopped it out of time stream and plopped it right back here and us and it got adopted by a family here and they were raised, they wouldn't be that much different, if any different at all from any child that grew up today.

Definitely not.

And I mean, and if we went back to time, we most likely would only be able to influence a very limited area also.

And I don't think we would be prophets either.

No, I think I would get shot on the spot actually.

And also the language situation would be a nightmare.

I mean, old Swedish is kind of hassle to understand.

I speak Stavangers, which is.

It's all the way down the south in Madla, you know, Hafsfjord.

So I've got the R.

I've got the R.

I can use that and just kind of point to things and maybe try to articulate what I want.

But that was really fun though because I had a person from, I think he was from Wales and he told us about like old English words and when he spoke them, they just sounded exactly like they do now in Norwegian, or not exactly, but like they have the same kind of word build up and the sound and sounding of the words.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But there's a lot of influence of both Danish and Norwegian in the English language for some weird reason.

It's not that they went and pillaged and took over the island for.

No, no, no, no.

Just for kicks.

But they do actually mention that in the show as well when they go, oh, we actually get our, our word for thunder from the God Thor.

And it's like, well, yes, but it's T and T, you know.

Yeah.

But they do mention that in old Swedish Thor is associated with thunder, which is kind of correct.

We kind of said that the Thor is rolling over the sky and we.

Have that too, like his chariot with the goats.

And we also say that it's his an he's striking the anvil with his hammer and Aspa's making like the thunder.

Yeah, we have that too.

So, I mean, there's ideas of it that they get correct.

And I mean, something I want to bring up too is that they talk about the Christianization a little bit of especially Sweden.

They talk about Gamla Uppsala when they.

Get to the big temple.

Gamla Uppsala, Sweden.

This small town 40 miles north of Stockholm is one of the oldest continuously inhabited sites in Scandinavia.

Beneath this church, archaeologists have found what they believe are the remains of a famous temple called Uppsola.

Yeah, the home of the big temple.

And beneath the church there they claim that they found this old temple and.

No, they haven't.

They actually found the remains of two older churches beneath it in excavations.

But there's no old temple found in Uppsala as of yet at least.

There's actually very few cases where churches have been built over cold places.

The only one I know for sure is on Fre up in Jemtland in Sweden.

And under the floor in the church they actually found a birch stump that's been burnt and animal remains that seems to have been sacrificed at one point or another.

I think that's one of the few cases where they actually have a cult place that's been used as the well where the church has been built on top of the actual place.

Usually they're just built in the vicinity of the old place to kind of just move people from the old to the new.

Yeah, I mean, we have that sort of tradition here in Norway as well.

I don't know if you've kept up with the excavation in Stavanger under the Domscherke.

No, I haven't really on that.

Did they find any cold place?

So it's not necessarily a cult place, but they've definitely found traces of old Viking burials underneath the church, like directly underneath it, which is a structure that the church itself they started building around the 12th and 13th century.

But these bones, like quite a lot of them, seem to be dating to Viking Aryan a little bit before.

So, yeah, I could see that as a way to kind of replace the old cult or.

Yeah, like not necessarily to build on top of the old temple, but where people went for cult offerings in a sense.

Yeah, I can see because I don't think they've found a lot of.

There's not been a lot of Structure.

It's just been that.

I think it's four or five graves, if I'm not mistaken, with quite fully intact skeletons as well, but not a lot of grave goods.

And I think the main theory is that it's believed to be like in the transition from the Viking age and over to more Christian era and Christian.

Christian mannerisms.

But there's our pagan graves or are they in between?

I can double check that because the article, the news article didn't really specify a lot about it because I do also think it's an ongoing excavation.

So they don't think they've come out with a report yet.

Yeah, yeah.

So I'll be a little bit careful about stating things as fact before they come out with it.

But I do think.

No, they don't mention anything specific about if these are specific pagan graves.

Yeah.

It could be interesting anyway if it's an early Christian graves.

It's interesting to see the Christianization from it.

We have a couple of churches in Sweden that's on the brink between the Viking age and the Christian era, where we have this really, really early Christian graves in churches around that era too.

One of the oldest stone churches is in Varnham in Sweden, and it has burials.

It's the church of a very influential family in the area.

So it's their family church, basically.

But in there we have found the graves from those living at the farm and they had even tombstones carved with runes, which we also find in, for example, in Gotland we have several churches that has actually tombstones with runes in the Gotlandic churches.

Yeah.

And what time period will these be dated to?

Like when does this kind of stop and ebb off?

1300, 1400.

The cut off there.

Okay.

I think 1425 is the latest in Gotland, but then it's not really a Viking gray, but they use the, you know, runic Alphabet still on Gotland.

They do that very long into history, just as Jem planned.

Used runes, basically up till 1904.

We have the lost inscription known and all of that.

So, I mean.

Wow.

Yeah, Sorry, I just got a little bit.

Because I'm trying to figure out a little bit about the.

About if it could have been pingraves in the dumb shake and stuff.

It's only because it's positioned right next to the port.

So it would have been a big area where people would have seen immediately.

So it could definitely be a place where people would collect in the town and gather.

Yeah, I mean, it makes sense that we would want to reappropriate it and if they associate some early graves with the church, I mean it benefits the church, I guess.

Anyway, where should people go if they want to hear more from you?

They can go to my TikTok handle StefanbachSigils on TikTok and I've been thinking about maybe creating a YouTube channel that will be under the same name, but I've not gotten around to doing that quite yet.

So stay tuned if you'd like to see that.

But thank you very much for your time and hope to see you again.

Again, a huge thank you to Stefan and if you want to check out his stuff, there will be links to all of those in the show notes and next time we will speak with Professor Howard Williams about Viking burial rites and if they really were influenced by extraterrestrial beings.

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Until next time, keep shoveling that silence.

With the name of your heart.