Speaker unverified: belief

Transcript context

…So the understanding of the world is harsh, and that strength is the way you must face that world. So when you have those people, and especially the ones that self-select to get on a boat, to face the ocean with all the uncertainty, that results in the kind of brutality that we got to see. I think so. I mean, the way they would build their ships, they were clinker built, so they were overlaid, like planks overlaying. So they were undecked as well. And so they’d have tents. So can you imagine crossing the Atlantic, the northern Atlantic, you know, with these huge waves splashing over with an inch of oak between you and the ocean? I mean, the amount of bravery that must have taken to undergo is astounding. Plus they didn’t have a compass. They navigated by, “Where’s the sun? Where are the stars? What… are there birds in the sky? Do I see a different color of water? Do I see leaves floating?” I mean, it’s terrible. If you’re traveling 2,000 miles, that’s not great. So it’s kind of an intrepidness to them that I think is part of the reason why they’re so fascinating to us in our sanitized, more or less sanitized world. That this incredible courage to do this, and some horror at what they did on the other end when they arrived. But, you know, we’ll talk a little bit more about their religion, but they do not view the Christian God in particularly flattering terms. I mean, to them, he’s a weak God who won’t protect his adherents, and they can just come in and plunder as they… I mean, they’ll… One Viking famously says, “On land, I’m a Christian. When I’m on the sea, I worship Thor.” It was very much the kind of pragmatic take that the Vikings had. Yeah. There are gods, and they have many, but Odin and Thor are pretty hardcore gods. So everything, just their whole philosophy on life is pretty hardcore. Probably some of the toughest humans to have ever lived.…

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