Viking Games with “The Viking Professor” Terri Barnes

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I'm really excited.

I'm kind of nervous this week, Matt.

I don't know.

Nick is late, but I'm anxious because this is my former professor that we're going to have on the show.

Extremely cool.

I'm excited to hopefully learn a little bit.

And I, just to put you at ease, because I know you are nervous, I'm going to try not to mess this up or like joke around too much.

Okay.

I'm being honest.

Okay, great.

Hey, sorry.

Sorry, I'm late.

Yeah, but the train got delayed.

There's like something on the track.

But I'm so excited for this episode.

Yeah.

Yeah, me too.

And I don't want to steer the conversation too much, but I got a lot of questions about cherry, blueberry, apple, of course,

you know, Dutch apple, coconut cream.

I'm not, I don't, I'm hang on.

Chess.

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure I know where this is going.

Are you naming fruits here?

I don't understand what you prepared.

These sound like ingredients.

Sorry, I thought we were talking to a pie king, like a king of pies?

Shepherd's pie.

It's a savory one.

Mince meat pie.

Hang on, hang on.

Nick, shut the fuck up for a second.

I'm mad.

What do you think a fucking pie king is?

I don't know, like a person who's incredibly good at pies, like an expert on pies.

Like someone who pies.

Good at pies?

Yeah, knows everything about pies.

He's going to be great at making pies.

Maybe he won some sort of bake-off and got the title of king.

First off, you should know that we booked a professor.

Not a king.

Yeah, a professor of pie king.

Yeah, a professional fessor.

Wait, what?

Wait, what?

Wait, you're dumber?

Wait, what?

You're dumber?

No.

What's a fesser?

No, we...

You're dumber.

We have a Viking professor.

You're even dumber.

No.

Professor.

A Viking professor.

Not a Piking professor.

Both of you.

Both of you know.

Sorry, I think I understand.

I understand.

We're going to ask all sorts of questions about pedals.

What?

About seats.

What?

About handlebars.

What?

About frames.

What?

About wheels.

What?

We're talking to a biking professor, right?

No.

We stand a biking.

What?

I mean, sure.

It's a Viking professor.

A Viking professor.

Vikings.

Do you know what Vikings are?

Not Pikings.

Not Bikings.

And professors are teachers, Matt.

They're teachers.

I don't think I should let her on the show.

I think she's going to be really disappointed in you two.

You know, I think this is just a good, this is like actually really good for us to get get somebody in here who's going to actually teach us something.

And I just want to say, Heather, it's not fair that we just don't know everything that you know.

Okay.

Yeah.

Sorry, we're fucking dumb.

Sorry, we're idiots.

Sorry, we were fucking dumb.

We don't know things.

Sorry, we hear words and think they're different.

And I know that if you bonked Nick and I's heads together, it makes a hollow coconut sound.

That's not our fault.

Is that true?

Can I try it?

Yeah.

Yeah, sure.

Holy shit.

We don historically inaccurate helmets and yell at our sons as we discuss Viking games with an actual Viking professor this week on Get Played.

Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between.

It's time to get played.

I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger.

That's me, Nick Weiger, and I'm here with our third host, Matt Apodaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast, where I am extremely nervous about today's podcast because

I, so I, one of my former teachers is here today, and there's nothing that makes me more uncomfortable than the idea of a teacher seeing me in my regular life and judging every moment of what I've done.

But it's going to be a lot of fun, and it's going to be kind of a little bit different for our listeners than our typical

deep dive into a game.

We're going to be kind of deep diving into a concept and a genre.

But it also will be kind of the same because we also do that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it'll be kind of the same, but also kind of different.

Yeah.

Main difference being you might actually learn something.

But also sometimes you learn something from a regular episode.

So in that way.

I don't think anybody's ever learned anything from this show.

No, they've learned bad information.

It's like misinformation.

Hey, here's some real non-misinformation.

This month's We Play, You Play is Metaphor Refantasia, which we will be talking about.

at length in depth Monday, November 25th.

Very, very excited for that episode.

I'm so glad we're doing it.

I'm so glad.

I can't wait to talk about this game.

And I can't wait to talk with today's guest.

Our guest today is a medievalist historian who co-hosts the podcast, Vikingology, the Art and Science of the Viking Age, and has a YouTube channel, Shield Maiden in the Kitchen.

Please welcome the Viking professor, Terry Barnes.

Hi, Terry.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you so much for making time for us.

We have a bunch of Viking questions, which we will get to,

but I want to start generally, which is that you were saying before we began recording that a lot of your students, including Heather, heather uh have come to you as fans of viking video games is that correct yes yes and actually other themed games as well i mean a lot as a historian a lot of them will tell me okay what i know about the history of x period is what i've learned from video games wow I mean, that's certainly the case for me with some of the Viking-related video games I've played.

But you're not a gamer.

You're not someone who ever really played games growing up or you don't play games currently.

Correct.

And

so what are your your interests beyond Vikings?

Like what do you do to pass the time?

Oh no.

I know.

She only likes Vikings.

One of those unidimensional people.

This is the only thing I like, to be fair.

Yeah.

Well, I like cooking.

I'm a runner.

I do that.

I like traveling.

I spend a fair amount of time in Iceland every year because that's Viking territory.

Yeah.

You know, other places Vikings went.

So, yeah, I mean, those are the main things.

And when you're not traveling, you're in Portland, which you mentioned you like cooking Portland, a great food city.

Do you have any local food favorites?

Oh, no.

See, this is a terrible thing about actually being a person who likes to cook.

I actually like that.

And so, my favorite restaurant is

My Kitchen.

Hey, that's a dream.

I feel like the last few years was a great chance to really dig into our kitchens, too.

It's true.

What happened?

What?

How could you possibly not know that, Matt?

I don't believe for a second you don't know what happened.

I'm trying to think of where I've eaten in

the Portland area.

Obviously, when Voodoo Donuts was only there, I had visited that.

Yep.

And

well, I mean, I think the big Portland institution is Burgerville.

Oh, Burgerville.

Are you much of a Burgerville fan?

Yeah, I'm not a fast food person, but Burgerville would be one that I would do because, yeah, they're pretty much all like, you know, sourcing local and stuff like that.

So, yeah.

And they're union now, which is they've recognized the Burgerville Union.

So that's great.

Yeah, we like to move to Burgerville.

That sounds pretty good.

It's either there or Flavor Town.

Yeah, I could have a dual citizenship

in both residences.

Well, we have another question that we ask to everybody, Terry.

And

this one may not apply to you specifically, but we'll have something to talk about.

The question is: what are you playing?

What are you playing?

Hey, it's me, the Resident Evil Merchant.

Wait, wait, wait, man, why are you shaking your head?

We have an academic on the show.

Yeah.

I'm flattered that you think of me that way.

It just didn't.

It didn't like a.

No, wait, no, not you.

I appreciate that, and true.

I, I, I, uh, No,

yeah, I don't know.

I'm having a hard time with you.

To be fair, I have a hard time with me as well.

Guys, I'm here to ask you the question of the week as the Resident Evil Merchant, and that's, what are you playing?

Nick Wager, what are you playing?

Wow, Resident Evil Merchant, thanks so much for the question.

I've been playing.

Professor Resident Evil Merchant.

Okay, Professor.

Professor Merchant.

Vampire Survivors Owed to Castlevania DLC is what I've been playing.

This is the new DLC for the game Vampire Survivors that came out a couple of years ago that I really love and was a really innovative, obviously game.

Kind of gave us the bullet heaven genre.

I love when the Ouroboros of influence folds back in on itself.

This is like them doing a Castlevania DLC for something that is so aesthetically influenced by Castlevania.

You know, the art,

the tone of it, the weapons.

A lot of the weapons are just directly pulled from Castlevania.

The music certainly,

it's like,

I don't know what a great comparison.

It's like, it's kind of like the Fantastic Force showing up in the Incredibles.

You know what I mean?

It's like, this is a thing that influenced the thing, and now it's just part of it.

So it's, even though the gameplay owes more to like roguelikes like Binding of Isaac and Schmupps, it's still such a Castlevania homage.

And so it's kind of awesome that this happened.

And I will say it's really well done.

I haven't messed around with all the Vampire Survivors DLC.

I have bought it all to support the developer Ponkle or Ponkley, however you say that.

However,

the Castlevania one is very well realized and really like fits in

with...

you know, with the franchise that it's integrating into Vampire Survivors.

The one thing it does is it introduces more of a real like actual map progression and some real boss fight elements.

Like it's like you go to a discrete part, there's a boss fight, you unlock something.

It's got a little bit more of a, it's not hyper linear, but it's got a little bit more of like an actual sort of structure to it than a typical vampire survivors level where you're just sort of like doing this time attack thing where you're where you're wandering around

something of a void.

There's also some side-scrolling sections with really basic jump physics, which is like just mixes it up.

And I was surprised to see it.

Again, I don't know if that's in any other DLC, but there's side-scrolling in vampire survivors.

In vampire survivors, yeah, there's some sections where you go and the physics change.

And so all of a a sudden you're like walking along, you know, like a, uh, you're walking along one plane.

Um, and then yeah, you can jump as as well.

So it's, it's, it's interesting.

Uh, and the other thing is that you can unlock actual Castlevania characters, which is funny because so many of the vampire survivors characters are like royalty-free Belmonts.

So it's like, you're just seeing like, oh, wow, that, this guy who's called like, you know,

like Grover Belmond.

Now, now Trevor Belmont is coexisting with him, you know.

But I think it rules.

It's awesome.

And one of the reasons it rules is one of the reasons Castlevania itself rules.

It has a massive soundtrack of Castlevania music remixes.

It's hard to pick just one, but I thought I'd play a little bit of the beginning.

I believe this track is from Castlevania 3, originally composed by Konami Kukea Club, which is Konami's internal composition team.

The remix, which is awesome, is by Key Jen Church.

Ranch, can we play a little bit of the beginning?

That's extremely good.

And we're not even in it yet.

Anyway, just full of this sort of stuff.

This is, yeah, this is awesome.

If you fell off on Vampire Survivors or you just haven't played it in a while,

I think the Ode to Castlevania DLC is worth checking out because I think it's a great new spin on the formula.

And also, again, just awesome to see all that Castlevania stuff in there.

That's what I've been playing.

All right.

you should i you want maybe i should go yeah you can yeah go for it what are you playing well um you guys suggested it so i picked it up i've been playing bellatro wow um and i know that bellatro is not my kind of game it is a card game it is on my phone both of those things i've never talked about doing on the show before maybe with the exception of uh

final fantasy record keeper right yeah um and the other one huh first soldier as well that wasn't on on my phone.

Wasn't on phone?

No, it wasn't on my phone.

It was a mobile game, but I played on my iPad.

Oh.

You could also play it.

Anyway, it doesn't matter.

Phone is iPad's big phone.

It is big phone.

What the heck?

You're trying to tell me your phone.

You know what?

You're right.

You know what?

You're right, Matt.

You're totally right.

You don't know what anything is.

I don't even know your name.

But I've been playing Bellatro, and you guys were right.

It's a fantastic game.

It's a lot of fun.

What?

Nick.

What?

What is that?

You said it's a lot of fun.

fun.

Oh.

The breath presser left.

Yeah, she just signed off on that joke.

She tore her degree in half?

So, as you've heard, it's a kind of a

deck-building poker-based game that the boys have talked about on the show.

So I don't really have to go into the mechanics that much.

What I do want to say is that the aesthetic of the game is really appealing.

It has

sprite-based presentation with false scam lines.

And one of my favorite parts of the game is that when cards are put down on the table, the screen shakes.

So it has the sort of presentation of an action game, but the concepts of a poker game.

I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It's nice that each time you play it, it's completely randomized, totally different game.

You're constantly seeing new effects and

new jokers that you can unlock that have

like

really bizarre, some of them are really bizarre powers.

Yeah, some of these jokers are really crazy powers.

Yeah, they're crazy jokers.

And it twisted.

But I want to also say, because I said this to you, Matt, and you were upset, but I want to say it to the audience, which is that I did beat.

You're going to hurt my feelings again?

I did beat your ass.

No,

I beat the game and felt no more compulsion to continue playing it.

You mean you finished a run and you were like, I'm satisfied.

I don't need to keep iterating on this to try to beat my, to see how far if I can get there again or if I can best my score or what have you.

You smoked the entire pack of cigarettes as a punishment.

Yes, I smoked the pack of cigarettes and was then like, well, I'm no longer compelled to play this.

And so I deleted it from my phone, but it was a free download because it's on Apple Arcade right now.

But thank you guys for the recommendation.

I enjoyed it.

I'm done.

I can't wait to play another one that you guys recommend like Bellatro.

Probably good for your sanity and your screen time that you deleted Bellatro.

I did the same because it was just like it's too addicting.

But I will say, like, for me with Roguelikes, I do want to play it again after I finish Iran because I'm like, oh, I finished Iran.

Let's see if I can do this again or let's see if I can replicate it.

Well, my experience with Vampire Survivors was the same way.

When I finished it, I was like,

okay.

Well, I guess I'm done now.

And then I

don't have...

And the same with Hades.

Hades, yeah.

No, I remember this with Hades.

Yeah.

Hades even has a story to keep you going.

Yeah, once I complete what should be the finishing of an arc, it's hard for me to like let that game get its hooks into me again.

Interesting.

Matt, what have you been playing?

Well, I've been playing a lot of metaphor, of course, but I won't get into that.

I've been loving it.

It's fantastic.

But I'm also playing a phone game, and it is called

Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket.

And so what this is, it's a Pokemon trading card game on my phone, you see.

And so there's,

you get these, it's, there's, I'm just gonna go ahead and get out in front of this.

There are microtransactions.

I'm never going to spend any money on this.

Okay.

How much money have you spent so far?

$1,000.

None.

No money so far.

But what it is, it's like a, you know, it's just like a collection and you can like battle

like friends on here using the trading card game rules.

And so every day you get like,

you know, everything's on like a timer.

So like you can open packs on an hourly sort of timer.

It's like a, not hourly necessarily, but it's like every, you know, eight hours or so, you get the ability to open new packs and things like that.

And so then half of it is just the serotonin boost or dopamine hit, rather,

because you just get to see what cards you get.

And so you're just like, oh, look, those are.

I like those cards.

It's nice.

And sometimes they're nice cards.

And so right now, I would say I have,

I've been playing it since it came out on the 30th.

I have 250 cards in here.

You get about five cards in each pack.

And you just kind of, like, it's not really a game unless you, like,

do the

battling and trading is going to get unlocked later.

I guess when I level up or whatever, I'm level

nine currently.

Man, get on the ball.

Nick.

Got to get those numbers up.

I know.

I wish there wasn't something else I was looking at on my phone.

But

I'm finding this to be incredibly enjoyable and soothing.

Some of the cards, if you hold, not all the cards, but there was one card that I saw on our pal Iffy Wadiway's

profile that it had the ability to hold it down.

And if you held down on this card, it would show you like a little animation of the art on the card.

Like it went into, like it went inward, and you got to see the art around outside, you know, in the frame.

3D effect, yeah.

I loved it.

I loved it.

Yeah, they got some Marvel snap cards that do that.

I loved it.

I loved it so much because I wanted to see what else Pikachu was seeing.

So that was really nice.

And yeah, you can spend money in here.

And did I look at the screen and be like, how much could I spend in this really?

But

I don't think I, I just can't.

I can't do it.

I can't have another Simpsons tapped out situation on my hands here.

I did see that it would take two years to get all the cards in the current set without spending any money.

So I don't know how much longer I'll be playing this, but it is extremely fun to just look at the cards.

Maybe it'd be even more fun to engage in

battling people.

I put my friend code in

the Discord.

So that's in there if people

want to.

Oh, yeah, there you go.

I haven't done any of the social aspects really, but

I don't know.

It's cool.

It seems like people have been wanting something like this for a while.

So it's pretty exciting stuff.

Matt, are you caseless?

No, my case is just really thin.

Oh, okay.

I was shocked.

I was shocked that you might be caseless.

I'm caseless, and I hold my phone by the very corner when I walk around.

I simply just do not care.

This thing should come with a case.

That's all I'm going to say.

What's that?

But then you wouldn't be able to choose your case.

There should be a default case that it comes with.

That's like saying a child should come with shoes.

I believe that too.

Why do we even need that?

We should have evolved to this point to not need shoes.

Maybe if we had never taken up shoes, we would have evolved shoes.

Right, that is probably

gross.

Rougher, sturdier feet.

Yeah, like hooves.

Treads on them.

Look.

I have the ability to open a pack right now, but I'm not going to do it.

Yeah.

If I download this game, you'll battle with me.

Yeah.

All right.

Then I might give it a run because I used to love the Pokemon card game.

And some of the art is from the cards that you remember.

So it is just very nice to be like, hey, look at this.

All right.

I'm into.

Hell yeah.

I'm spending money.

Oh, no.

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I don't know if I call my own professor Terry or not.

Yeah,

so I guess on the podcast, I'll call you Terry and never again.

Terry,

what, so, so, this is what we've been, we've been playing, but you have a cooking channel on YouTube.

So, I guess I want to ask

what you've been cooking.

What I've been cooking.

Well, the show is, or not the show.

See, now you've got me thinking about the show.

The channel is um you know just one of these weird fluky mashups of things that i like to do and so it was kind of like air let's like score peg round hole let's smash cooking into viking history right and and so yeah i i cook things that i somehow twist so that i can talk about vikings um i think the latest one i did was i made um sourdough english muffins But then I talked about how Vikings were responsible for creating the kingdom of England.

So it's their fault.

Yeah, exactly.

Or there's like some.

There's a rando theory out there that King Harold Bluetooth, you know, the Bluetooth guy,

was that way because he liked blueberries.

So I'm like, all right, blueberry muffins.

That's what it is.

So

they talk about the history of Danish kings.

Wow.

So

I think I watched an episode once where you made Skier.

Am I misremembering that?

Skier?

No, no, yeah.

That was one of my early ones.

And I still do.

I make it every couple of weeks.

Skier, dear listener, is sort of a Viking Nordic yogurt that is a thicker.

They have it at the grocery store now.

You can like get skier in the dairy section.

And, but yeah, you made it from scratch, which was

the idea of making anything.

From anything, like the idea that a human could make butter in their house is overwhelming to me.

Do that too.

Just take heavy cream, pour it in like a jar with a lid, and then sit there and shake it for like 20 minutes and voila, you got butter.

That's impossible.

Wow.

That's impossible.

It's not impossible.

This reminds me of what I tell my students of like, if you got plunked down into the Viking age, you wouldn't last a week.

Yeah, sure.

You don't know how to do anything.

No, no,

I would for sure get killed for making somebody mad.

Terry, when you're not cooking for content, what do you like to make?

Like, what are some of your favorite go-tos just in your home?

Oh, boy.

I'm a pretty like simple eater.

I like simple, clean food.

So,

you know, grilled vegetables.

And I'm an omnivore.

So I couldn't probably survive without sausages of some kind.

So

I make and I make my own Italian sausage and stuff for

pasta and all that.

So yeah, I'm one of those kind of weird foody people.

Yeah, I totally believe in the whole, like, if I know what's in it, then i know what's in it no 100 is there like uh some sort of viking soup we talk about soup a lot on this show

yeah

well actually i mean okay so like the vikings you know live in this period of time from say roughly the mid 700s to around 1100 and for most of that they're in oral culture so that means that you know other than these kind of you know cryptic runic inscriptions they didn't write anything down themselves so we don't have any kind of like cookbooks that survive yeah so a lot of it is based on like okay where did they live?

What kind of animals did they raise?

All right, this is

what they could have eaten.

In Iceland today, which Iceland is, you know, settled by Vikings in the 870s.

And so, and it's got the probably

the sort of purest line of the history that still exists.

Icelandic, modern Icelandic is the closest thing to the old Norse that the Vikings spoke and stuff.

And they actually have what they call meat soup or kjop soup.

And it is usually largely lamb-based.

But yeah, it's just basically like a meat

soup with kind of a broth and you know carrots and potatoes and things like that.

So that would probably be the closest thing to Viking soup.

See, this is the most information we've ever had on the show.

It's a good transition into we could talk about Viking video games.

That's right.

Which is why we have you on the show.

And I think we could start by playing the trailer for Assassin's Creed Valhalla,

both to re-familiarize you, Terry, with the look and the feel of the game, and also because I'm not sure that you guys have played it, Matt and Nick.

I think I played about, I would say, 30 hours of it.

Wow, really?

But I don't know how productive the hours were.

Like, it was just me going around and,

you know,

doing stuff.

Just doing stuff.

I wasn't really following.

That was one of those games where I liked what was going on in it quite a bit.

However,

I couldn't just do the

main stuff.

I was like, oh, all the side stuff keeps popping out.

And

doing raids was so fun.

I loved it.

They are heartless.

Is Is that a live-action commercial?

No, it's that's what the game looks like.

The hell?

Those are CG guys.

Those are CG guys?

Those are CG guys.

So they're pretty clearly CG guys.

To describe this trailer, to those of you at home, it's your typical Ubisoft CG trailer.

You've got a setting of the

main

protagonists of the game, which are, you know, Vikings.

And the action of the game is largely set on invading and raiding

pre-England settlements.

Like Northumbria, which I remember from the game in my class,

or

Saxony, I think.

But you get a lot of these Vikings in outfits that have been made popular by

television shows like Vikings or movies like The Northmen.

And I am excited to find out

from

Terry,

the first impressions you have of this trailer, what is the most inaccurate thing that you see on screen during all of this?

Is it the outfits?

Is it the makeup?

Of course it's the language.

Oh, the most inaccurate.

Oof, I don't know about that.

I mean, the part there that they just, or what, that was Alfred the Great, I guess, the King of Wessex, who's like talking about them.

he's

there.

I assume that to him.

And that they murder and kill.

And, you know, my initial response to that is, yeah, well, so did everybody else.

I mean, I don't know if you're familiar with the Middle Ages.

So it's a pretty crappy time to be alive from that violence standpoint.

You know, it's just, you know, violence and killing and whatever.

It's, you know, like Thursday, you know, right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So also, I think, you know, it's definitely like, looks like it's from a Christian point of view, but Alfred was a Christian king.

So I guess, you know,

that's what it's coming from.

But I mean, I don't know.

I actually like the visual of it

and the feel of it.

I thought it was live action too, right?

Like I did.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It does look more like a movie.

Yeah.

And then, because, yeah, like I said, I was watching my niece play play it.

And

yeah, the stuff like you were just mentioning before, like with all the stuff that's pops up and everything, I'm just like, all right, that's just such noise.

Like, I want to sort of go and do the thing.

But, I mean, I don't know.

It looks like the standard kind of,

you know, Viking costumes and dress that, you know,

we don't actually know that much about that kind of stuff because, you know, as you probably know, I mean, clothing doesn't survive very well

under, you know usual circumstances and so especially if you buy it from old navy nick nick what that's fashion does it have a long shelf you think the viking helmets were coming from old navy h m or something

yeah i have one friend who's like a reenactor that talks about people that look like that and the thing is like oh yeah you know they get their ikea rugs on their shoulders

so yeah i mean

but it's it's it's a trope that gets created in like the 19th century and you know, just like the horned helmets and we just sort of run with it, you know, can't seem to shake it.

And I don't know if this is apocryphal, but the thing I heard about the horned helmets, which I feel like a lot of modern,

we don't, we don't really see them in the Northmen at all.

It feels like there's been more of a little bit more of a, we're going to try to make things a little bit less glaringly inaccurate, less obviously just fictional.

But the horned helmets were, did that come about from a Wagner production?

Is that what was that the original source?

Yeah, in part, that was a little bit later in the 19th century.

And we do know that there was an earlier

saga that was published in like the 1820s.

And some of the illustrations in that saga also had this kind of horned or slash kind of like winged-looking, you know,

helmets and stuff.

But yeah, so it's, you know, like how I say to my students, blame the 19th century for everything that's terrible because that's what I do.

So,

Ranch, can we bring up some of the images that I've pulled from the game so we can talk more specifically about

Ubisoft always prides itself on their historical accuracies in these games?

Not only that they've done a lot of their research hand in hand with

the most modern interpretations of archaeological records,

but also that they are...

They have

versions of these games.

You have like the typical game where you like run out and you do all your quests, but you also have an educational version of these games where you just have voiceover and sort of documentary experiences of the games.

But maybe you can elaborate a little bit for us.

I think what we're looking here, looking at here is an English settlement.

And it has these like tall preapetes and thatched roofs.

I think those are thatched roofs.

Would you say that this is an accurate

English

settlement, or is it a little bit,

does it lean a little bit more into fantasy?

Well, probably the latter.

I mean, they're going to mash up a bunch of stuff,

you know, periods of time and things like that, these big stone walls and

just this fortification.

I mean, the stuff that they would have been encountering and they, like being Vikings, when they first start really hammering the place in, say, the late 800s, I think England is still housed what this old kind kind of what they call mott and bailey.

So they're not into these big stone fortified castles yet.

That doesn't come until actually after 1066 with Norman England when it's a descendant of a Viking who then you know travels across the English channel and kills the English king and changes English history forever.

So it's kind of like a weird Viking.

Viking thing that comes back around.

But at the time of, I don't know if y'all ever saw back in the day that old movie Braveheart.

And there's like, yeah, yeah.

So there's like, you know, the Mott and Bailey, like the guy who's like the local lord who comes down, you know, and he's going to take the first night, you know, sleeping with the woman who just got married or whatever.

And, and, and he's, but he's living in this place that's kind of has this keep that's kind of sort of up on this hill and it's surrounded by this, you know, basically, you know, timber fence, pickets, you know, with pointy tops on them or whatever.

I mean, this is kind of a more primitive, which, you know, tended to be what would be more around at that time.

Although that's not to say that, because I think West,

was it Winchester or Westminster anyway, was around without with Alfred, but it still doesn't look anything like it does now.

So, you know, yeah, they're mashing up various styles here.

One of the things also, though, to keep in mind about architecture from, you know, the olden days,

and especially this is true like in Scandinavia with the Viking Age, is that, you know, when you have excavated ruins and stuff, a lot of times mostly what you have are this, these, you know, sort of impressions in the ground.

And so you may have, you know, like evidence of where post holes were and things like that, or maybe where the central fire was but then also you know there can be like a bits of a stone foundation um and other everything other than that like in archaeology i always say like basically you know from the foundation up it's all just a figment of your imagination because it doesn't survive and so that then they have to just sort of kind of do their best guess about how to recreate the actual building that you see if if they didn't get the english settlements correct did they at least get the viking settlements correct we have uh

like some of the images here from the Viking Viking settlements.

I think this is like a private home.

And then

this is an A-frame house.

It kind of looks like an old IHOP.

And then they also

and then they also showcase a long house

as like your main

gathering and cultural center.

Looks like a cheesecake factory.

To my eyes, and again, I'm just,

I'm only an enthusiast.

I'm not a professor.

This looks awfully elaborate.

Were longhouses this fancy?

Or is it?

Yes,

some of them definitely.

Yeah, some of them could be for sure.

And

by the time you get to actually then some of that predates the Viking age, you know, go back like history dirt on you here for a second, like the fall of the Roman Empire in the late 400s.

And you've got this period of time then for roughly, say, 500 to 700, 750 whatever so like the 200 or so years after the fall of the roman empire is this period um where a lot of the stuff that develops what is what's called hall culture and you know so the mead hall the big hall that you see here where the chieftain and all of his bros hang out and feast and drink and do all that stuff and so that was living we do have you know excavated ruins from big halls from before from actually even before the viking age and i'm talking big like there's one in uppsala in sweden that that is 165 feet long and 40 feet wide.

Wow.

So it's like basically like a 6,600 square foot building.

Holy cow.

Yeah.

And there's a couple of others that are

that long in,

well, one in Denmark for sure, but there's also another one in Norway that's even longer.

It's all over 260 feet long.

So some of these could get pretty huge.

And we do know with some of the remnants that have survived, you know, metal survives better than wood, that some of the decorations,

how they made the sort of like the hinges on the doors out of spearheads and things like that.

So these are big just, you know, it's almost like they're manufactured out of weapons in some way

with those, you know, being sort of in the posts in the walls and things like that.

So, I mean, some of this, yeah, it's right.

I mean, although, again, I mean, it's going to be based on, you know, sort of.

you know, fantasy, even things that you can go and see now in Denmark that look kind of like this.

At, for instance, a recreated longhouse at the Trelleborg Fortress, one of King Harold Bluetooth's fortresses, that you know, it kind of resembles the roof line resembles sort of an overturned ship, right?

You know, sitting on top of the building.

And so there's a sense of maybe potentially that kind of architecture having been a style.

But, you know, some of it we don't know.

But and then also keep in mind too that it just depends on where you are in Scandinavia, because if you get to places, you you know, farther west, like say out in Iceland, I mean, they don't have as much timber as they did in other places, like say in Norway.

And so they're building out of sod and turf and stone and a little bit of wood, but not quite as much as what you see here.

But

yeah, I mean, I would give this one a passing grade, probably.

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I eventually got off that roof when the sun rose.

You mentioned that, you know, it's only, and I never think of it this way, It's only like four or five hundred years after like Roman conquest of these areas part of what Assassin's Creed shows is

a lot of Roman ruins.

You'll see statues.

You'll see aqueducts

You'll see like even some semi-intact temples.

Do you think that that what that that's accurate?

Or do you think that that was just a way of the game to demonstrate how how

close in time those two eras were?

Like if you were were walking around in Viking times, how likely is it that you would see gigantic Roman ruins in England?

In England, there definitely could be some because, you know, the English, or sorry, not the English, the Romans, you know, were in England.

And I mean, you can even still go today in southwest England in a town called Bath and see the Roman baths that are there.

So,

you know, on Hadrian's Wall, which, you know, effectively is, you know, this historic wall that separates Scotland and England up there in the north of England.

I mean, that was built by

a Roman emperor.

Yeah, so

crazy walls.

I don't know.

People talk about other walls.

Adrian's Wall is pretty good.

It just lost that tree.

It was so, like, I got really emotional when that tree was cut down.

Oh, really?

There was like a big tree that was, that was, I think, featured in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.

Yeah, yeah.

Beautiful tree that you would see on posters, usually like inspirational posters that would be like ambition,

the desire to keep going.

There's always this famous tree that's beautiful and it's along the wall in between these two hills.

And

vandals cut down the tree.

Oh, vandals did it.

Yeah.

They just cut it down recently, like within the last two years.

You can't do that.

Yeah.

No.

Leave them there.

Yeah.

It's a beautiful, famous tree.

You don't mean vandals in the historical sense.

You mean modern vandals.

Yeah, no, this, I can't.

In the most recent two years.

Yes, yeah.

Wow.

Nick's trying to get extra credit.

Nuly noted.

Newly noted.

Can I ask?

Yeah, I mean, so the answer is like, yeah, in England, yeah, but in Scandinavia, no.

I mean, this is one of the unique things about Vikings is that Scandinavia was never part of the Roman Empire.

You mentioned, you know, that using, reappropriating spearheads to be used as door hinges.

What was the metalworking like?

Because so much of playing any sort of Viking game, I mean, they tend to be very combat or military focused whether we're dealing with action games or or grand strategy games uh they they tend to be very much focused on uh you know on combat

what what was the the metal working like in that era like did they have access to this to steel were these iron weapons what were they mostly working with Yeah, so I mean, the Viking Age is considered the late Iron Age.

So most of what they have is iron.

We do know that they seem to have coveted a particular blade that was not made in Scandinavia.

It was made on the continent somewhere.

We don't exactly know for sure, but you know, potentially in the area that's now Germany, there was a workshop there.

They're known as Ulfbert swords.

And they,

there's several hundred of them, you know, like I think a couple hundred or so that have been found in archaeology in Scandinavia.

And so it appears that at least some warriors coveted them

and, you know, got them, traded for them or whatever from abroad.

But they were supposedly made of like a kind of a Damascus steel or some kind of a steel that had higher carbon content.

So the blades were, you know, probably a little bit better.

But

but yeah, so, but most things are iron.

And what kind of weapons were like, you know, the standard, because I feel like you see a lot of shields, you see a lot of axes when you're seeing these things depicted.

You see, you know, thrown weapons as opposed to

as opposed to missile weapons.

Like what were the

what were the main sort of weapons of war of this of Vikings of this age?

Probably primary weapon was a spear,

a long spear, like you know, say six to nine feet or so.

Some of the spearheads anywhere from eight to 24 inches long that have survived.

Oh my god.

Yeah.

So, and then definitely kind of more for thrusting, not for throwing, because only a stupid Viking would throw his spear away to his enemy.

You want to keep a hold of it.

Yeah.

And then yeah, axes,

battle axes that would be a little bit different than just sort of your ordinary axe, you know, for the household use, like for chopping wood or something.

And some bow and arrow, but not necessarily for weapons, really.

And then, of course, the sword.

The shield is shield very important as far as not only defense, but offense, you know, with a, with a, with a certain proper hit, you know, you could kill somebody with the shield.

So, right.

Why don't we see as this is maybe a question for everybody, but why don't we see more spears

in movies or or in or in video games?

Because I think spears are cool.

Spears were like such a dominant weapon of war

for a long time, you know?

And I feel like that's, there's never like, oh, the hero has a spear that they wield.

I feel like, unless you're watching, say,

you know,

kung fu action movies where you'll get a little bit more spear.

Yeah, some more full arm action.

Sure.

I think that from my guess is that there's not a lot of

choreography

that looks

presentational and theatrical with spears because you don't get the big sweeping arcs.

You don't get the clang of metal on metal.

Right.

Like it's like, stay away from me, stay away from me.

It's a pointy stick.

Yeah.

And somebody else being like, no, you stay away from me.

But when you get

the sword combat, you're like up in each other's faces.

You can like have your small moments of dialogue as the swords clash and you're locked in combat with one another.

That's my guess, but I don't agree.

Now I've got to worry about Nick bringing a spear to the recording.

Can we see

some of these outfits

that they wear in

this game?

Yeah, it's hot.

Is this, so we're looking at the, I don't know, it's a combination of leather and tunics, a long skirt.

Tunicks, my nightmare.

What?

How dare you?

Two nicks.

Oh, my God.

Awful.

Awful.

But also my nightmare.

So I think this is a Christian knight or warrior's outfit.

It's sort of a pleated leather skirt

and some kind of shoulder harness also made out of leather and then like a cloth tunic cape that is bunched up.

Dude loves straps.

I think there's a lady.

Oh, so whoever this is loves straps.

I don't know.

Maybe it's a dude.

I guess it doesn't matter.

They love straps.

They're a video game person.

Yeah.

Is this a historically accurate Christian knight's clothing?

Oh, man.

A Christian knight's clothes.

Well, yeah, I guess he's got his cross around his neck, doesn't he?

There.

So he or she, whatever.

Oh, and then in the one on the, well, I guess actually in all three of them, what it looks like, he's got his little like Bible hanging off the side of his hip or something.

It's like a book.

Yeah, he does.

He's got a black belt.

I better wear my belt, my book carrier.

He's carrying it like a gun.

Tell him if I have a Bible.

The thing that's interesting, I think, about that, though, is that we know, I think, for, you know, pretty much that

the main thing that was a significant factor in what people wore was wealth and status.

And so if you had, you know, nice stuff, you wanted people to know it.

And this person with the book on the belt was like going the extra mile of like, yeah, and I can read too.

Right.

Yay.

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

How about Ranch?

Can you pull up?

There's somebody in a tunic.

And I remember from class

that you said that.

that yeah that one right there that uh that often they would wear long tunics and i thought is this the kind of tunic that you were talking about on this character here?

Yeah, that looks more, yeah, probably.

Yeah, and that kind of that pin that he's got that's holding it together, definitely some of those survives in the archaeology.

One of the interesting things about,

I think, about the Viking stuff is that, you know, other than the two pictures that you just showed before, which were pretty brightly colored, I mean, most people kind of tend to think it's all the sort of, you know, variation on brown or some boring color.

um and that it's a lot of wool including in the underwear

and

there were there was some of that but actually um i think we know a bit about their preference for linen and then also because they traveled so far and wide and traded in some pretty rich areas that that that there was silk that was involved oh wow

yeah as well so um yeah it's i mean it's so but again i mean it's so difficult because we don't really have a ton of clothing that survives from that that period of time.

So there is also a lot of guesswork in it as well.

You know, some of that stuff like what he's got, whatever, that pin and then whatever's just below it, some kind of a pendant, that round gold thing.

That those types of things, you know, as they survive in the archaeology, then sometimes if you're lucky, the metal salt from those, you know, from those metal pieces actually

does have an effect on helping to preserve little

fabric fragments that are near it or behind it or whatever.

And so that's one way that we actually have some tiny fragments to at least see

what were these pieces of clothing made out of.

But otherwise, yeah, I mean,

it's going to be some pretty basic stuff.

So those previous images might be a little bit of overkill with all the different layers of leather and belts and this and that and whatever.

Now, I recently in the news, there was a story of,

and again, listener, so

first off, Terry, can you explain what a saga is to our listeners who probably don't have as much experience in Viking history so that then I can explain what we recently discovered and then ask my question?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, so a saga is

The word saga comes from the old Norse word sekya, which means basically essentially just to speak or to say, which gives you a sense of the oral nature of the culture prior to Christianity going to Scandinavia and bringing kind of the written word or the book tradition with it.

And so people are telling stories.

So sagas are stories and they're told, they're performed.

And the biggest sort of corpus of sagas as stories, because they're all, you know, these narrative, you know, stories about people during the Viking Age come from Iceland.

Iceland has an unbelievable written tradition, even still to this day.

They hold the record in the world for like the most published authors.

And so a saga is written, you know, roughly in the 1200s, some in the 1300s.

So again, this is getting, you know, a century or more after the end of the Viking Age.

And, but, so, and it's recounting stories of people and places and stuff that, you know, existed during the Viking Age.

So, you know, sometimes people will question like, oh, the sagas are just, you know, these literary fictions.

They're just stories and they don't really tell us anything about history.

But one of the interesting things about this sort of the etymology of the word saga even is that um a derivative of it is sugu which is the word history so saga and history story and history are like two things that are the same they're very interlinked in this tradition but so these kinds of stories the icelandic sagas are um you know one of the one of the sort of surviving sources that we have from near to the time that you know give us a sense of you know how people were living you know what they were doing you know and a lot of it is you know they were getting pissed off at each other and killing each other and

um you know doing various viking kinds of things like that going off and sailing here and there and what have you but yeah so it's it's just a body of you know pretty important sources for what we know about the time And then recently there was a body found in a well

that seemed to allude to a saga

where

a Viking battle had taken place and in order to poison the water supply,

the invading group had thrown a body into a well and then bricked it up.

And then I think in the last few weeks, they've discovered this body, which seems to lend credit to the historical accuracy of the saga itself.

I don't know if you did, I'm sure

you heard that recently in the news.

Yeah, and then I also have a good couple of good friends who are archaeologists who worked on on exactly that type of issue in Iceland.

And it's, and it's, you know, when I first started going to Iceland several years ago, it's one of the reasons why I like live where I do when I'm there because it's right there in the valley across the street, basically, from the site that they excavated for a number of years.

And there's a very famous saga, uh, the saga of Eol Skatla Brimson.

And Eol was this guy who was this warrior poet, and he was, you know, sort of the picture of this like badass Viking, but he was also a complete jerk.

Um, and

and and but he lived in this place called Mospel, and he

with his family, well, he was living there as an older guy with his niece and her family.

But, you know, part of the story was like, oh, there's

he dies and he's buried in the mound.

And then Christianity comes to Iceland.

And then he's exhumed from his pagan burial and then buried in the church grounds and all of this.

And they excavated this site, which was a chieftains hall.

I think it's the second largest chieftains hall in all of Iceland.

And

then right next to it was a burial mound in the shape of a ship.

So the mound is kind of ship-shaped

that had a cremation burial in it of a guy.

And then there was a little church that got built right there next to that on the property as well that had its own little cemetery that had like, I think, of 27 skeletons that they were able to find there in total.

But there was some stuff there too that was very similar to like, oh, and look, you know, the church, we've got, you know, the story of Ale, you know, being exhumed from his pagan grave and buried like underneath the altar of the church on the family farm.

And then sure enough, there were bones there when they excavated it on the farm.

And some other things that

they, you know, one of the leads directors of the dig, a guy named Jesse Bayack out of DCLA, actually,

wrote an article about it where he was like, you know, doing that thing where he sort of like tried to medically diagnose people of the past and suggested that AL, if it is AL, which we don't know 100% sure, so it's just hypothesizing, but that maybe he had this thing called Paget's disease, which is like, I think, what is this, like a thickening of the bone, the bony structure of, you know, so the skull that they found had,

you know, kind of evidence of that.

And there was, I think, some similarities to the saga as well.

So, I mean, and this is, again, this is one of these things where typically, you know, in years past, there's been discussion in the scholarly community of like, you know, the people who are on one camp who say, yeah, the sagas are just stories and you can't believe anything they say or very little or whatever.

And then there's other people who are like, well, no, there might be something there.

And, you know, I'm always like living in the middle because I think that's where life really happens.

And it's like, they can be both.

I mean, they are stories and stories are meant to entertain.

And so they could be embellished and all of that, like stories always are, no matter where you are in the world.

But

also that they are about people that we know did exist in some cases, and certainly places that still exist there.

Um, so you can, you know, learn a few things from it.

Um, you know, without other evidence or some something written coming to light, saying, Yeah, that's ale that's buried right there.

Uh, we may never know.

But again, I mean, it's similar to what you're just saying about the well.

It's like, oh, look at this, we have this, and we have the saga that says this.

It's like, this seems pretty coincidental.

But yeah, so that being said, one of the features of Assassin's Creed Valhalla is finding these legendary weapons.

And I know that there are sort of legendary weapons featured in some of the sagas.

Is there a weapon or a story of a weapon

that you think might live somewhere in that middle where there is an actual sword that somebody, I know that there's a saga about a woman who goes, or

a son or a woman, I'm not sure if I remember because I'm a bad student, who goes and digs up their father's sword and it ends up helping them win this big war.

Do you think that that's apocryphal or do you think that there are these like legendary weapons out there waiting for us to find them?

Oh, I'm sure there probably are.

I mean, this is one of the things, I mean, a lot of the news that you'll see, I mean, it'll be like, oh, some kids like metal detectoring in his family farm in Norway.

And like, oh, there's a Viking sword, you know, kind of thing.

And so, I mean, certainly that stuff gets found and the silver hordes and and all of that so i mean i don't know if i mean if you're talking about like excalibur kind of stuff like i don't know yeah that's what i'm yeah that's exactly what i'm talking about

i'm not so sure about that but i mean there's definitely weapons in the ground and in other places because we know that they were a people who um did weapon sacrifice in you know places that they felt were, you know, sort of had, you know, kind of spiritual significance, like bodies of water and stuff like that.

So if you want to sort of,

you know, gift your weapon to the gods, maybe like toss it into the lake or what have, you know, stuff like that.

I mean, we've, there's been a lot of finds,

you know, across the Viking world, actually,

in places like, you know, that

do stuff like that.

So yeah, sure, that stuff is definitely there to be found.

Actually, I mean, in the treasure stuff, like, you know, one of the parts about Aeol's saga is he gets old, which is the worst thing you want to do as a Viking.

The culture was pretty specific about you know, being young and virile, and you know, all of that.

And then when you age out of that, it's like, okay, we're done with you.

Like, you get, you know, whatever.

And then it reminds me of Hollywood.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, totally, yeah.

And the uh, and the, the, the way, you know, the worst part is like the women are, you know, in the house making fun of him and kicking him around because he's old and he's blind and this and that.

Well, then he like tries to get revenge on them.

I takes his, his, he's got this silver cord that he says was given to him by a king.

And

he decides, he wants to go to the big, you know, public assembly meeting and basically throw it out to everybody, like just totally being an ass, you know, just like, and watching them all fight and scrap over the money.

And his family's like, no, old man, you're not going to the public assembly.

And he's like, okay, fine.

So he gets two slaves and a horse and he gets them, and he's blind, remember, to take him out into the countryside.

So he's going to bury his treasure.

And, you know, basically, this is kind of like, you know, spoiler alert, like kind of how the saga ends.

And the

next day,

his family spots him wandering around the countryside with his horse.

And they, so they go out and get him and bring him back home.

The slaves are nowhere to be found, and neither is the silver.

But then there's this sort of legend, you know, even to this day in Iceland, that somewhere out there in that valley is a buried Ale's silver horde.

And so, you know, some treasure hunters and stuff kind of like to think maybe they would find it.

Personally, I think the slaves took off with it.

And

we're out here with a blind old man wandering around.

He'll never know.

Like some back bay.

Yeah.

So, so,

Terry, a lot of my experience with Viking video games, I was realizing is through the civilization franchise.

And the civilization games are,

you know, strategy games where basically you are taking the entirety of a civilization's lifespan and simulating it.

And you can do things like take the Aztecs, start in prehistory, build settlements, and eventually enter the modern age where you're the point where you're doing the Apollo project

with

the Apollo program with the Aztecs.

Vikings are very often a presence in these games.

Sometimes they're distinct Viking civilizations.

There are other times where they've been like, you know, Denmark or Norway that's meant as like kind of a proxy for Viking or has some elements of Viking culture.

But one, there's a couple commonalities throughout these games.

One of them is that the most common leader you will see in these games

for your civilization, and this is a character who's also depicted in the anime Vinland saga, which we're big fans of, is Canute.

Can you give us some historical context for Canute?

That he was a historical figure.

Yes, he was a historical figure.

And yeah, I may not be a gamer, but I have seen Vinland Subuka.

Yeah, and as a matter of fact, yes, the writer or creator or whatever, that Yuki Mura, right?

Um,

one of the things that I saw an interview with him, and he said, um, that the Vikings, because they were asking him why Vikings, um, and he said, No other people lack love to their degree.

And I was like, What the?

This is not cool.

Um,

But anyway, all right.

So Wayne, why don't you repeat your question?

Again, I was curious about, could you tell us about Knute?

Yeah, Knut, Knut, yeah.

So

Canute is, well, I mentioned Harold Bluetooth earlier.

And so Knut is effectively Harold Bluetooth's grandson.

And

his father was Wayne Forkbeard.

And this is the days before surnames, you know, so it's like they're using these kinds of words to describe people.

But yeah, I mean, they were,

well, I mean, Harold Bluetooth was the king of Denmark and possibly parts of Norway.

And then Spain,

his son, you know, supposedly, we don't know for sure, but some of the stories talk about some kind of insurrection or at least some kind of conflict in which Harold Bluetooth dies.

So his son has a hand in his death somehow.

and then becomes even the bigger king because Spain takes a bunch of Vikings and goes off and, you know, effectively conquers England and takes over.

And he becomes the king of England as well.

So, um, and then, you know, when he dies, his descendants take over.

So that's where Canute comes in.

And he's actually seen as a very good king

until what is he?

He becomes king in like 1016 and he dies.

It ends with his death in like 1035.

And he's very solidly a Christian king.

So he's, you know, he's more kind of in the tradition of an Anglo-Saxon king than an actual kind of Viking king.

But he certainly, you know, he comes from Viking stock.

So he's real.

Terry talks about Viking history with the same sort of authority that we talk about like level 1-1 of Mario Legislature.

Like just

one-dimensional push.

No, this is great.

It's fantastic.

So

you've seen Vinland Saga.

I know that Nick has as well.

Matt, did you ever watch Vinland Saga?

Saga?

No, I did not.

Oh, dude, it did.

I just seem to watch it, though, because it seems like it's exactly what it is.

It's exactly what you would like.

Yeah.

Vinland Saga is

supposed to be historically inspired.

We have a sister podcast called Get Animate.

Is it when you were watching it, were you like, oh, this is a pretty good depiction of

Viking warfare and sort of Viking culture?

Or were you like, ah, this is

more like the way you wouldn't describe American history as Marvel movies.

Like you'd be like, oh, there's American cities in those in those films, but it isn't history.

Is that what you experienced with Vin and Saga?

Or were you like, oh, this is this is kind of on point?

Yeah, I think.

I think the latter, yeah.

I think, well, and to be fair, I've watched all of season one and probably only about a third of season two.

But yeah, I mean, I think that they actually do a pretty good job of getting, you know, some of the contours right.

You know, one of the things that's sort of weird, at least as far as I've watched it so far, is that the Vinland saga is not really about the Vinland saga.

And it's rarely about Vinland.

And I mean, it's there kind of a little bit in the background.

But

so it is this kind of interesting story that's more about, at least in the first one, about Canute and

all of that.

But I think, yeah, as far as how people lived in general,

warrior ethos, honor-coded society, and

yeah, some of the housing, you know, different things that we've been talking about so far with the Assassin's Creed.

I mean, I think that there is

something to it.

The thing that they do there,

though, it's sort of like the original history channel Vikings, which is what now on Netflix or whatever,

that ran for like six seasons is the compression of time and

people.

Right.

So it's like, okay, hang on.

So yeah, Thorfinn, the main, you know, character is like a real person from sagas.

And, you know, Canute, we know is a king and all this kind of stuff and Spain forkbeard and everything.

But those people were not like together, you know, at the time that it sort of makes it look like in the in the show.

But I mean, most people are not going to nitpick like that.

Right.

And quite frankly, I'm actually not one of those historians either who sits there and goes, well, actually,

you know,

I can watch it and, you know, take from it whatever.

Well, the one thing I will say I have to say, probably to me is not a nice thing to say but it's like there's like this weird piano music that they use that i really hate like

it's just like oh okay this is the time when we're supposed to be like being deep and thoughtful and um

or sad or something like that and it makes it sound like like really crappy funeral music or something like if you were a you know just this weird anyway so it starts kind of almost off-putting in some ways like it just feels like it doesn't doesn't go.

But otherwise, yeah, the aesthetic of it and stuff I like.

Another feature of the civilization games is that each civilization has a unique unit that like kind of, you know, it is that they have a standard sort of slate of military units that are shared across all civilizations, but there are some unique units that are specific to a civilization.

The Vikings and the Viking, you know, the esque civilizations tend to have berserkers.

Can you tell us about berserkers?

Yeah, berserkers are one of those things that become larger than life in modern pop culture.

You know, I'm probably for a good reason.

Why not?

You know, it's like, especially nowadays with all of the,

you know, more mainstreaming of psychedelics and stuff, people like think, oh, yeah, these guys like ate mushrooms and people or whatever.

But it's like, you know, there's like literally.

zero evidence at all that they ever did that.

But they were supposedly these warriors who then, you know, were like super, you know, psyched, hyped up and, you know, kind of get into the sort of battle frenzy kind of state.

And then,

you know, were sort of, you know, obviously feared, you know, because of that.

And then, you know, kind of had to come down for a while after, you know, they got done because they were just so.

amped up and stuff.

So, but, you know, there's always been this sort of sense of like, you know, they probably, you know, maybe ingested something.

But again, you know, to put them in that state, but we just, we don't have any evidence for that.

There's also these little figurines that you can see that survive.

They're chess pieces, actually, the Lewis chessmen that are these little warriors who are biting their shields.

And, you know, those are

that was part of the berserker thing, too.

You know, they're like, they're so crazy, like, uh-huh, biting their shields, you know, getting into warfare.

So,

or, or

Berserk, actually, the word, I mean, it is where we get our word berserk from because, you know, this kind of crazy frenzy thing.

But berserk in Old Norse is like either, well, we don't know.

It's sort of contested if either a bear shirt or bear shirt, as in bear, as in a bear skin they wore into battle, or they were bare shirted

without a shirt or, you know, without a garment on at all and kind of went into the, you know, the battle in that way.

I don't know.

Yeah, right.

I think at least a couple of scholars sort of, you know, lean towards the actual without, without the shirt on thing, but, but we don't really know.

But yeah, so the berserkers, yeah, they're kind of one of those legendary things.

And the reason that would be terrifying if you were in the opposing force is everybody shows up at these, at these battles with whatever armor that your family has.

Like you're putting on like your dad's helmet and you have maybe like your neighbor can loan you a chainmeal shirt or something.

So you go to these

battles terrified and in essentially a junkyard assembly of clothing.

Yeah.

And you see across the field a dude who showed up essentially naked.

Yeah.

You'd be like, oh, this guy has no fear of like not being the best on the on the field.

Yeah.

That dude biting his shield?

Get the fuck out of here.

Yes.

Yeah.

We should acknowledge, I just, just, because we're talking about Viking games, and I know we have listeners who are, uh, who are, who play this game.

It's not a game that I've played.

A survival game Valheim has a huge fandom.

It comes from a Swedish developer.

But the premise of Valheim, again, I haven't played this game.

My understanding,

it's a survival game set in a realm where dead Vikings are trying to prove themselves worthy of Valhalla.

From what we know of the culture, like, because you hear about Valhalla a lot.

It's a subtitle of the Assassin's Creed game.

Like, was that at the forefront of their

mythology, of their religion?

um yeah i mean to the extent that we can know that you know with a hundred percent i mean we can't um you know and again like like the sagas you know these things are written down after uh most of what we know about the you know what we call norse mythology a viking would have never called it that uh it you know is written in like would they have thought of it as their like religion or would they have thought of it as their like kind of their mysticism or just just a part of their culture?

Yeah, I mean, more of the latter.

I mean, it's interesting.

Yeah, I just actually actually gave that talk this week with my college students.

It's hard for people to understand because in modern pop culture, we sort of have this thing, the Viking religion, you know, especially whatever.

And it's like, they appear to have lived in a world that, you know, I mean, it's not religion as like, here's this separate thing that I believe in that.

And here's the book that describes what that's about and the rules and the doctrine and how to be a person who's a practitioner of that.

It's, it's more like they, have an understanding of it, it's in an older tradition that was even existed in like ancient Rome and other places.

It's called animism, you know, and so it's just this idea that the world is just kind of this alive place, you know, and everything is alive.

Rocks, trees, bodies of water, everything has a sort of spirit presence to it, animals, whatever.

And then human beings just kind of live in that world as well.

And so it's, it's more about a kind of a world view of human beings and their place in it.

uh and

rather than you know kind of this i don't want to say you know kind of manufactured thing about religion because that's not really fair either but you know what i mean like this sort of human construct that's just sort of separate thing of like here you should believe in this it's it's like and i think even well and hither you've read neil price i mean he says i think really well where it's like you know they they didn't believe in these things they knew them to be true so it's deeper uh than that and they're living in a world for them that is alive not only with human beings but elves and trolls and dwarves and all these other kinds of weird, weird things as well.

And so,

you know, in Valheim, I mean, or yeah, and that whole idea about Valhalla, I mean, it sort of plays into this larger belief system, too, about like, okay, then what happens to you after you die, right?

And

in the afterworld and preparation for that, if there is one and such.

And they did believe in a certain type of afterworld, it appears.

I mean, several of them actually,

depending on how you died.

And so Valhalla, famously, as far as the surviving stories go that we have, you know, is this place where half of the slain warriors go to live

with Odin, the god in his hall, which is Valhalla or Valvul in Old Norse.

And so,

you know, it's a pretty exclusive boys' club.

And in that way, it very much, you know, like lots of religions do cross-culturally in the world, right?

I mean, it reflects who the people are who believe in that thing.

And so, and what I mean by that is like, this is a warrior culture.

These guys are,

you know, trying to, you know, do the best they can to improve themselves, their wealth, their status, their influence, their power, all of that.

And they are like a band of brothers.

You have a chieftain that you're loyal to, and you're his thingmen, and you guys fight and raid and go to war with each other and all of that.

You feast with each other.

And then when you die, if you get to go go to Valhalla, you like live that life there as well.

I mean, Odin is nothing more than just sort of the best chieftain there is.

And his hall, Valhalla, is the hall, like the buildings we were looking at in Assassin's Creed.

And they feast, they drink,

they fight, and they prepare for Ragnarok.

And that's what they do.

So basically, the whole Valhalla ideal is that the afterlife is just, you know, a more ideal version of the life that you here on Earth.

Wow.

And yeah, it was important.

It was important to them.

Yeah.

So, this is making me think of a video game franchise that I, in particular, really, really love.

Everybody likes it.

I'm not unique for liking this.

Everybody likes it.

It's good.

But you're, but this is this is a game they really like.

This is Matt's game.

Yeah, this is my game.

It's called, it's called God of War.

And I guess the thing to explain about it is that it started off as a franchise where this character, a fictional character, Kratos,

went around

in Greek mythology times and killed all the Greek gods and then somehow ended up in the realm of Norse mythology and is now basically doing the same thing.

So is there an instance like of that ever actually happening?

Does that happen?

Actually, you know what?

That's not as far-fetched as it may sound.

And I just had this meeting with one of my students that, so each of my students, they're writing an essay about a particular aspect of the Viking Age that interests them.

And then I could pile it into a book.

And so we actually write a a little, you know, a book of history.

And so, what she's doing is looking at Vinland's song and

how real it is and whatever.

And, but we were talking about that with regard to the relationship to some of these older pantheons of gods and goddesses and stuff.

And, you know, particularly like with the Greeks.

And she's kind of like, oh, you know, sort of far-fetched, maybe, you know, that no connection there or whatever.

And I'm like, well, actually,

that Snorri Sturlison character that I just mentioned, who's the historian and author in Iceland that wrote most of what we know about those belief systems,

the myths and stuff,

recounts this story of how the Nordic gods, and keep in mind too, this is not unique to Vikings.

The Nordic gods, like Odin, Zor and all these, you know, Freya and all that, Loki, are part of an older kind of pan-Germanic tradition that predates the Viking age, even.

And so, but

the story that Snorri kind of tells is like Odin and a bunch of the gods actually originate in what is now Turkey.

So like over

near the Middle East.

And so that there was some sort of

relationship there to or involvement with

like Agamemnon, the king and Priam and the Trojan War and all of that, you know, in Greek history.

But then at a certain point, and I can't remember the details about why now, that Odin and a bunch of the other gods pick up stakes and migrate and head north.

And then that's when they go to Scandinavia.

So they have their origins back in that place in time,

at least according to Snorri.

And that part of that is believed by scholars is that, you know, as the mythology was sort of developing, these stories were developing in Scandinavia.

And you've got, again, like these chieftains who are really kind of on the make and interested in becoming legit kings.

And, you know, along with that usually comes,

well, the word I just said, legit.

They want to legitimize themselves and their rule and their family lines.

And one of the main ways to do that is to be able to trace it all the way back to these other really important gods or places or whatever, like the Greeks.

So, so yeah, I mean, there is some connection there in the surviving mythology.

Yeah.

Wow.

That's the most insane answer that could have been to your question.

Yeah, the most like,

I am kind of stunned, honestly.

It's just like, everyone is Turkish.

Yeah.

So that's where maybe Kratos is going next to finish the job.

I guess the thing that's interesting to me about those games is that like

it is obviously

they're rooted in sort of in mythology and mysticism and stuff.

So there is a little bit more magic at play versus

an Assassin's Creed, which is trying to take a more, I guess, quote-unquote, like realistic approach to it.

Like, for example, I mean,

you know, Kratos like wields an axe that can return to him if called.

Like that's which is of course reminiscent of Molnir and Thor's

main weapon, I guess.

But yeah, well I what I think is neat about what Terry said is that I think that the separation for Vikings and

I can't wait for her to correct me if I'm wrong,

is that is that the separation between what they what we think of as their mythology, so the stories that like, say, Kratos is interrogating through violence,

and the stories of people going to Northumbria and conquering, maybe in a Viking mind, those things are simultaneously true.

Yeah.

That it's like, oh, the story of like

Balder and the betrayal and all of that thing would be a thing that you would tell as like, oh, this is the thing that happened.

Just like, did you hear what Anderson did when he went across the sea and

raided a church?

Like, maybe those were like simultaneously true to them.

Is that,

yeah, why not?

I mean, this is the main thing, too, that I express to my students that the difference between, you know, religion, like what Christianity will bring to them, when you have something that is codified in a book, it's standardized, it's, you know, it's got a more of a formality to it.

There is a right way and a wrong way to do be a Christian, whatever.

And there are people there who are authoritative figures who are policing that and helping you be a good Christian and all of that.

The Scandinavians just don't have any of that.

It's very loose.

It's very organic.

It's very fluid.

Stories will have a kernel that is kind of, you know, okay, yeah, this is the basis of the story.

But every time somebody tells it in a different place or to a different audience, it can be, you know, again it's performed it can be embellished it can be changed a little bit

and and so yeah a lot of those different things can be can be true and and again this is so such an important part about their world again for like say two 200 years of the 300 years of the Viking age is that they understand the world through stories So myths are, I mean, myth is a kind of a weird word for us because like, you know, myth, that's a myth.

That's a tale, akin almost to a lie, right but that's not it myths are simply stories and they are stories they tell themselves about who they are and you know

their place in the world and how it's how they understand their world is by communicating these things and it's also cultural transmission you know it's the only way they learn something is by somebody telling them through these stories and there's good um scholarship about the poetry.

I mean, that's other things kind of, you know, I mean, who would think Vikings and then automatically think poets uh but even like ale that i mentioned the the warrior poet and that i said he was a jerk but he would always like recite these poems and he was really well known as a poem a poet that that poetry was used as a way to uh teach and reinforce what it meant to be a warrior in that society.

So if you're a young man or even a young boy and you know, you're listening to these stories over and over again about how, look, this is how you do this.

And you never turn your back on your brothers on the field and you never put down your weapon, and on and on and on.

It's like, and then you hear that just over and over and over again.

I mean, stories are everything.

It's absolutely a million percent how they understood and experienced the world.

And the myths, the thing that's cool about the myths, too, is that, you know, because my students too will always be like, well, but is this far true?

And it's like, no, don't, you can't be looking for literal truths like that because it's malleable.

And, you know, the main thing about myths, and especially in this kind of pan-Germanic tradition that I'm talking about, is that

you can never go back and say, well, here's the original one.

Here's where that story started.

So here's the true version of that.

Because there isn't one because there's no record of like, it would be like, well, when was the first time anybody ever told this story?

Like, who knows?

It's,

yeah, it's, it's gone, you know, and it has changed over time.

And the thing about myths is that they are, they are culturally important.

And so

they are told and retold as long as the story is important for some kind of reason.

And then once it's not anymore and it sort of, you know, falls out of fashion, for lack of a better way of putting it, then it, then it just disappears.

So even the surviving myths that we have, like thanks to Snorri, missed probably just a scratch of the surface of, you know, probably hundreds, if not thousands of stories that have existed amongst those peoples over time.

So yes, Heather, always have a long answer.

But yes, those things can all exist,

can all exist at the same time, and they got no problem with that.

There's no cognitive dissonance there.

What you're making me think of is that this game I played, and I've talked about it on the podcast a few years back, called The Forgotten City, this time-loop game that's set in ancient Rome.

But where the Forgotten City ultimately goes is

it lands in a place where, and I'll say this vaguely so as not to spoil the story for anyone who hasn't played it and wants to play it.

It's a really cool game.

But

it very much like just goes into how like the, you know,

Roman mythology was derivative of Greek mythology, which itself was derivative of another mythology, which itself was derivative of another mythology.

It's basically just talking about like, you know, all the different layers of, you know, like

Aries, where that god originally

came from was so many civilizations removed, so many cultures removed, so many centuries removed,

but it's still recognizable.

And it was just interesting to hear those commonalities of just like, all these things are just, there's so much cross-pollination.

And then every things just kind of gets remixed, for lack of a better term, into something that fits that specific culture.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So you can never really, it's almost, you know, effectively is impossible because then you're starting to get way back into some of these cultures that, you know, were not literate, you know, in the modern sense.

It's like, well, there's nothing to go back and look at to find that manuscript or whatever it is.

It's the original copy of that story.

It just doesn't exist.

And I think it's kind of cool that it doesn't, you know, because it's sort of like part of the human experience.

It just sort of changes and grows and morphs and does what it's going to do.

And, you know, as long as it's sort of relevant and that's cool and it sticks around.

And once it's not, it doesn't.

And yeah.

It's like trying to figure out who came up with the knock-knock joke.

You know what I mean?

Like it almost doesn't even matter because it'd be interesting, but it's just like, that's just the thing that exists that everyone has their own kind of spin on.

It was me.

Oh, okay.

Well, yeah,

I was the first one who ever told that.

That's my format.

It's pretty good.

Congratulations.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Because I was basing it on like, what if somebody was at your door?

Right.

And like, it was like a funny thing.

Yeah, yeah.

Because, like, what if somebody on the other side, you didn't know who it was.

Yeah, that is like such a crazy thing.

Yeah.

That's so funny.

Honestly, you should have a lot more money.

That's a very, very well-known joke.

So, I have a question for you, since I haven't played basically all of these games, any of these games.

Has anybody ever been blood-eagled in any of these Viking games?

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

I mean, I don't think so.

If that's the reaction Heather's having to that, I know that whatever that is is really bad.

It's terrible.

It's like the worst.

Why would you...

Matt is scared of everything.

So I don't know if you should explain what Blood-eagled is.

I want to know.

Nick would love to know.

I know what it is.

But no, I don't think I've ever seen it in a game.

i'll put it this way my day can't get worse so it's

it's probably been a mortal combat fatality or something but go on no it hasn't no it hasn't been okay yeah go ahead and go explain that

yeah yeah yeah so um well and for people who are interested go back to like the original vikings series um and it was i think it was season two like episode seven it's actually titled blood eagle and you can watch somebody have this done to them if you want to um or at least their interpretation of it but actually the reason i bring it up is because it's relevant relevant to what we were just saying about the original story and when that would have happened.

It's a

in modern culture, it's like this thing of like, whoa, okay, if you're going to talk about badass Viking stuff, this is like the poster child for what or these, you know,

terrible things that they did.

It was a method of, supposedly, a method of torture and execution, wherein a person's back was cut,

cut to the extent of not just, you know, the skin, but clear through.

So, cutting the ribs, pulling the ribs apart, and then reaching in and grabbing the lungs and pulling them out and kind of splaying them like the wings of an eagle.

And so, hence being called a blood eagle.

And again, it supposedly was torture and execution.

So, the person was ostensibly supposed to be alive for a part of that.

But there's an interesting article that was published several years ago now by a scholar who looked at our accounts that survive for this kind of thing to try to determine if it was really real and if it was as bad as it's depicted in modern era and stuff like that.

And what she found and argued pretty clearly, I don't even know if you could find a scholar now who would

say anything contrary to this.

It was such a landmark article, I think,

that it was what we know now is the result of a super big Viking telephone.

And so it's like, look at all of the sources and then look at how it morphs and changes over time in the centuries since the Viking Age.

And what you find is that, you know, the farther away we get from the Viking Age, the more shrouded in the mists of whatever, and it becomes this worse, more violent, more terrible, more horrific thing all along the way.

And she actually sort of calls it the bird that never was,

because she's like, if they actually did do this thing um it's nothing like what we think it is now in the modern era we we've made it so much more terrible than it was um i think most of the people from the fragmentary accounts of it and it's coming mostly from poetry actually that um are the accounts but um that uh

that you know it may have been you know they would torture somebody by simply incising um you know the shape of a bird or an eagle or something on somebody's back so you know taking a weapon or something and scratching it into their back to torture them.

But otherwise, you know, it may, it may never have existed at all.

But interestingly, talk about sicko people that about, I don't know, two or two or three years ago, maybe now, there were, there was a team of scholars, and most of them are like medical and forensic and things like that, if memory serves, who actually like

did some work, like not on a real person, I don't think,

but to find out, like, is it even physically possible to do this to somebody?

And furthermore, to do it and like have them actually be alive for part of it.

And then they did conclude, like, yeah, you could do it.

And

Jesus.

Yeah, but no, they probably wouldn't stay alive for more than you know, but just a few seconds or something like that.

But it just found that like really interesting, like sort of a scholarly community of like, they all get funding to do that kind of research, you know?

Yeah, the combat in Viking video games is typically hit,

hit with hands, hit with axe, hit with, you know, shoot an arrow.

That's typically it.

Yeah,

it's not like what would have had to have been like a three-hour sequence

of like very specific button combos.

But if you fail, it's just like you drop the sword on the ground and everybody booze you.

Yeah, that's it.

Blood Eagling was also featured in the film Midsummer.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But yeah, it's

to my knowledge, not in a game.

It's sick shit.

And

the most disturbing thing of all was how much Ranch enjoyed hearing the description.

If you want the tamer bit of it, you know, where it's kind of all nice and, you know, not so gruesome, is then, yeah, you go on my cooking channel.

And I did an episode or whatever where I called it a bloody good scone, and I made scones out of blood orange juice.

Wow.

There we go.

And then I talked about the blood eagle because, you know, those things go together.

I imagine somebody falling on that cooking channel, not knowing what it is.

Yeah.

And being like, oh, wow, an orange scone recipe, exactly what I was searching for.

And then getting this history

at the end where they're like, wait, what?

What?

What is this?

I guess I would prefer that rather than

reading some recipe online and learning about someone's entire life story about the summers they used to take with their friend.

Yeah, I used to take summers with my dad, and we would go down to Wisconsin in the Dells.

Anyway, we used to.

Yeah.

Terry Barnes,

this has been an amazing discussion.

Thank you for giving us so much your time.

The podcast is Vikingology.

The YouTube channel is Shield Maiden in the Kitchen.

Please, please plug

where people can check you out.

And where they can take your class.

And and where they can take your class uh yeah well if you're in the portland area you can take my class at uh portland community college or portland state university um if you are out there in the online world like heather was uh you can go on medievalist.net

and um we've got online courses through that platform and so i teach i have a couple of mine uh out there that uh people can take a look at i've got one on myth busting bikings and another one on uh sort of life and society and stuff like that So,

yeah, yeah, that's it.

But thank you so much for having me.

This has been great fun.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

I think we all learned something.

Isn't that a nice change of pace?

It is.

Because usually when you listen to our podcast, knowledge is removed from your brain.

Your brain becomes smoother.

Yeah.

Hey, it's time for a segment.

I'm going to name some dudes, and and we'll see if our producer Ranch can name them.

It's Dude Ranch, Sonic the Hedgehog Edition.

So, here's how this will work: I'll say the first name of a character from the Sonic franchise.

Heather and Matt will guess if Rochelle Chen, Ranch, our producer, can identify them by animal or description.

I'll give some leeway on this, but I'll say the name of the character, and then each of you guess if Ranch can ID them.

Okay, this rocks.

It's really, really good.

All right, first up: tails.

Yes,

I I think Ranch can identify tails.

Heather says yes.

I mean,

well, just to keep it interesting,

I'll say no.

And I'm supposed to say the animal.

Who is Tails?

Squirrel.

I think I got to give it to Matt.

I think I got to give it to Matt.

Miles Tails Per Hour is Sonic's two-tailed fox sidekick.

Originally from Sonic 2.

All right, my answers for the rest are no.

Next up,

Knuckles.

No.

I'm going to say.

I feel like it's like...

No way.

It's kind of like part of who he is.

So I'm going to say, yeah.

All right.

You don't really go around saying

Tails the Fox, right?

Yes,

you don't say Tails the Fox.

But you might say Knuckles the play.

No way.

Absolutely not.

Ranch, you've had your head buried in your hands so as not to tell us what's coming.

Do you know who Knuckles is?

Ant Eater?

Could you identify Knuckles?

Ant Eater.

Could you identify the color you think Knuckles is?

Orange?

Oh, no.

Who said no?

Was it Heather?

Heather.

I got to give this to Heather.

How many points are available?

How many points available total?

I mean, there's 10 of these.

So just give me nine.

Otherwise, I know.

He is red.

He is Echidna.

Is that how you say it?

Echidna?

I've always heard of Echidna.

Echidna.

Echidna.

And Sonic's friend of me, who first appeared in Sonic's CD.

And here's the thing.

Couldn't tell you what an Echidna looks like for a million dollars.

They're like spiny.

They're like colours.

Oh, really?

Yeah, they're gross.

Yeah.

Nasty, nasty little freaks.

I believe they have multiple penises.

Now I'm starting to like this guy.

I thought he was one-hogged, didn't know.

No, he's got a couple of them.

Knuckles the two-hog.

Okay,

Ranch, the next one, or the next one to guess whether or not Ranch knows who this character is, Shadow.

No.

Heather says no.

I think I have to say yes.

Rochelle, who is Shadow?

Is Shadow is skunk?

He's also Ace the Hedgehog.

Shadow the Hedgehog is a black and red male hedgehog who sometimes has a gun, originally from Sonic Adventure 2.

There's no way she's going to know any of the rest of these.

I don't know if we'll even do the rest of the game.

I guess we might as well.

Next up, Big.

No, this one's not fair.

Because there's more to his name.

I'm going to say no.

Well, yeah, but there's more to it.

But if I say the name, it will say, it will be.

But the name of the thing is.

I would say the thing about this one that's not fair is that everybody in the Sonic universe calls Sonic Sonic, not Sonic the Hedgehog.

Okay, but I will say, if I'm in Ranch's role in this game and someone's like, Nick, who is big, I will say, I know big.

I will be able to offer more.

Ranch has no idea who this is.

And I cannot wait to find out what she thinks it could be.

I'm going to send a psychic wave through Ranch's hands covering her face.

And I'm going to give this one to her.

Ranch, who is big?

Big the cat?

Let's talk.

Wow.

I'm psyched.

Wait, the bigger story is that I'm psychic.

You're psychic.

Wait, how do you know big the cat?

I feel like I've heard big the cat before, but I did not know what that was from Sonic.

You've been curious about this big the cat.

I've heard those three words put next to each other before.

And she processes.

Doesn't ask any follow-ups.

Oh, shit.

The cat.

Okay, all right.

Totoro is a light cat with a fishing pole originally from Sonic Adventure.

Next up, Rouge.

Does Ranch know Rouge?

No.

I might say yes.

I think Rouge has a life outside of Sonic the Hedgehog.

Nope.

Oh, yeah, on my hard drive.

Oh, my God.

Who is Rouge?

Is Rouge a rat?

No, you know what?

If we gave you rhyme points, you'd get a half point here, but it's Rouge the Bat, a very busty, anthropomorphic bat who debuted in Sonic Adventure movie.

And they fucking covered up her cleavage in the new game.

I'm so mad about it.

Heather gets a point there.

All right, next up.

Heather has three.

Matt has two.

Silver.

No.

Oh, I don't know if I do.

I'm going to say yes.

You do know Silver.

I do.

We've played this game.

Ranch, who is Silver?

Fox.

No, Silver is a hedgehog.

Silver the Hedgehog is Silver-Ferred Hedgehog.

Silver the Fox.

I I mean, from

that's originally in Psycho 6.

Yeah, Silver the Fox is pretty good.

I feel like Silver the Fox should be the name.

I feel like Ranch.

I feel like Ranch should get a point.

Okay, Ranch gets a point.

Ranch is on the board.

And maybe like the character, if somebody wants to draw him, he's like handsome.

Okay, next up.

Vector.

No.

Here's the thing.

I mean,

I have to say no also.

Ranch who's Vector.

Vector the Hedgehog.

It's a fair guess.

I think a pretty good guess, honestly.

Playing the odds.

You both get a point there.

Vector the Crocodile.

What?

From Knuckles Chaotix.

He looks pretty funny.

Yeah, I like Vector.

Vector's got a cool character design.

Speaking of cool character design, Charmie.

No.

I don't think I know who Charmie is.

I'm going to say yes.

Ranch who's Charmie.

Charmy the Rabbit.

That makes sense to me.

I hear it.

I don't know who Charmie is.

I do like it.

Charmie.

Charmie, Charmie B.

Yes.

Charmy B.

He's also from Knuckles Chaos.

Nothing.

Yeah.

Nothing.

And I'm probably the only person in the room who's played that game.

If you saw Charmie B, I think you'd be like, I'd recognize Charmie B.

Charmie B.

Is Charmie B an animal?

A bee.

Oh, Charmie B.

Yeah, it's one of those ones.

They don't say Charmie the B for some reason.

It's just Charmie B.

I can't remember who guessed no there.

Did you both guess no?

I guessed yes.

Okay, so Heather gets a point.

Heather has five, Matt has three.

But also, it's funny now that you've introduced this concept of like

Charmie B has no the.

Yeah.

It's funny to think of Big's name as Big Cat.

Sonic Hedgehog.

That's not that crazy, I guess.

Big Cat is better.

Big Cat.

Two more.

Mighty.

No.

I don't even know Mighty.

No.

Mighty Mouse.

No, it's not Mighty Mouse.

It's Mighty the Armadillo, of course.

A black and red

armadillo from Sega Sonic the Hedgehog for Arcade.

I've never played Sega Sonic the Hedgehog.

Is that the fighting game?

It's an arcade game.

It's a rolling game.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, no, what was the Sonic Fighters game?

Sonic Fighters.

Sonic Fighters, yeah.

We like that.

Sonic the Fighters.

Rolling technology has never really worked for me.

That was like Gen 1, though, like input methods for

arcade games.

I mean, you could go back to games like Missile Command or whatever using Track Balls.

They were just figuring shit out.

But I don't really love track balls.

I don't like it either.

I should be listening to who gets who gets.

Heather gets no, right?

Nope.

And Matt, you also get no?

Matt also gets no.

Okay, you both get a point.

Heather's going to win, but we've got one more point on the board.

Heather's got six.

Matt has five.

Finally,

Elise.

Nope.

Nope.

Nope.

Nope.

Nick, you're a fool.

I'm just going to say yes there's no way yeah i mean this is this is the way you could tie it up matt is but if you get if you uh

it if you guess yes and and ranch defies the odds and knows who this is i'm gonna send you one of my psychic waves ranch who is elise elise the woman i think matt takes it

what the fuck elise is a woman is a human being with human proportions a princess from sonic 06 who also does this ranch if you want to play this clip for us do you did you not dare you did you guess?

I guess because Elise just did not sound like an animal's name.

Are we going to play this clip?

Hang on.

Am I psychic?

You might be.

Oh, Chaos Emeralds, Gems of Miracles.

Please heed my call.

I wish to save this world.

I wish to cleanse my father's sin, and I wish to talk to Sonic

once again.

You have given me so many things.

Yeah, so that was a Sonic

kissing a human woman from Sonic 06.

Is that Elise?

Yeah, that's Elise.

God, dude.

Is that real?

Yeah, that was real.

That clip is edited.

That clip is edited, but that's a real thing.

It does have a real thing from the

very first game we ever covered on this show.

Yeah.

Wow.

So I guess there's a tie there.

Ranch on the board with one point.

Hey, that was Dude Ranch.

Who do we talk to about me being psychic?

Like, what do I do?

Do I talk to

the FBI or something?

Maybe not.

You're going to be in a chair with a crown on you.

And they're going to be like, where is he?

And you're going to be like, who?

They'll be like, you should know who.

That's Get Played.

Our producer is Rochelle Chen.

Ranch, yard underscore, underscore sard.

Our music is by Ben Prunty, BenPruntyMusic.com.

Our art is by DuckBrigade Design, DuckBrigade.com.

And hey, check out our Patreon, patreon.com/slash get played, where you can find our entire pre-head gum back catalog, plus ad-free main feed episodes, and also our Patreon exclusive show, Get Anime, where we are watching Gundam.

Gundam Requiem for Vengeance.

That's right.

It's the Netflix show that has just premiered recently.

The boys said, Let's do it.

And of course, I was on board.

We're watching episodes one and two this week on Get Anime.

And boy, oh, boy, oh, boy, am I excited.

I really hope it's good.

And I have a feeling it might be.

I have a feeling it might be.

Gundam, don't let me down.

Patreon.com/slash get played for the back catalog and forget animated.

And hey, I think, courtesy of the Viking professor Terry Barnes, we all got educated this week instead of played.

That was incredible.

That was a head gum podcast.