Today's show is sponsored by Sega's company of Heroes 3, available February 2023.

This story begins, well probably like most stories, before this story begins.

I mean, what historical account doesn't have its precursors or its back stories or its prologs?

In this case, we had an entire show and an extra show devoted to this very story, called

It Thore's Angels, and you'll hear me say that a couple of times in this discussion upcoming.

This is the last chapter in that story involving a people history often calls Vikings, but Vikings

are not a people. And how connected the people in this era are to today's modern day,

Danes, Norwegians and Swedes is iffy.

And the idea of ethnicity and cultural aspects and everything else is fraught with all sorts of baggage.

I mean, this story about who these people were about to talk about really worries buried beneath layer upon layer

and century upon century of romanticizing and demonizing and fetishizing and nationalizing of a people that once upon a time were just real folk

and converting them into Hollywoodized barbarian tropes. But once upon a time there were people all over

northern, western and central Europe who had a linguistic affiliation, a cultural affinity,

and believed in the same sorts of values and deities that these Viking-Aryskand and avians believed in.

And by the time the early Middle Ages rolls around, these people in modern day Scandinavian may be just north of Germany

are the only people left who do.

And there's a certain historical irony that the peoples who will put the lion's share of sweat into extinguishing these old gods,

these ancient deities are people who not that long before this time period believed in them themselves.

This is as the old radio announcer Paul Harvey would have said that when it comes to the Thor's Angels tale, this is the rest of the story.

The Sambas 7, 1941, its history, a date which will live in infamy.

The 14th day of Pervast, once by a priest Pervast.

The events,

...