Nordic Mythology Podcast

Journey far beyond the Viking Age as we step nearly a million years into deep prehistory with experimental archaeologist and AncientCraft founder, Dr. James Dilley. Dan and Mags explore the earliest evidence of human activity in Britain—950,000-year-old footprints found at Happisburgh—and the geological science used to date them using Earth's reversed magnetic polarity.

​Dr. Dilley breaks down the experimental heritage build at Stanwick Lakes, where his team is reconstructing an authentic Bronze Age jetty over water. We uncover how ancient communities accidentally discovered copper melting and casting long before iron, and the shocking reality of Bronze Age diets revealed by the preserved time capsule at Must Farm—including parasites showing they ate raw pike.

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Discover prehistoric craftsmanship, replicas, and experimental builds:
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👉 Stanwick Lakes Project: https://www.stanwicklakes.org.uk
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What lies behind the haunting Scottish legends of the Selkies? In this episode of The Nordic Mythology Podcast, host Daniel Farrand sits down with travel author and folklorist Nick Jubber (author of Monsterland) to explore Orkney’s legendary seal-people. From tragic tales of stolen seal skins and forced marriages to vengeful bull seals and shapeshifting seals in the Icelandic sagas, Dan and Nick break down how island isolation, shipwrecks, and untamed coastlines birthed these enduring tales. They also examine how ancient cultures demonized outsiders as "monsters," Nick’s night trapped inside an 18th-century Serbian vampire mill, and why William the Conqueror recruited a witch for battlefield warfare.

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For generations, archaeologists identified male Viking burials by the presence of swords and female burials by oval brooches. But what happens when modern osteological science proves those Victorian assumptions wrong? Host Daniel Farrand and archaeologist Mags Haggar sit down with Dr. Marianne Moen, Head of the Department of Archaeology at the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, to uncover the reality of skeletal sexing.

The trio breaks down how biological sex is actually determined from human remains—analyzing cranial traits, pelvic morphology, and cutting-edge tooth enamel peptide testing. Dr. Moen exposes how the obsession with grave goods ignores the 25% of Viking graves that cannot be neatly gendered, why trauma on a skeleton doesn't define a person's life, and why redefining history is the core of good archaeology.

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Why does world folklore remember male dragon slayers like Sigurd and Saint George while
erasing the women who faced the beasts? Host Daniel Farrand sits down with classicist,
broadcaster, and author Jasmine Elmer to explore her book, SLAY: The Hidden History of
Female Dragon Slayers.

From Saint Margaret bursting out of a dragon's stomach to the Japanese diver Tokoyo
battling an ocean serpent with a dagger between her teeth, Dan and Jasmine deconstruct
global serpent lore. They investigate why Old Norse mythology reserved dragon-slaying
strictly for male dynasts, how Christian monastic scribes reshaped oral traditions, and the
fundamental psychological difference in slaying motivations: male heroes fought for gold and
status, while women fought out of necessity and survival.

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👉 Book: SLAY: The Hidden History of Female Dragon Slayers
👉 Podcast: It's All Ancient History
👉 Instagram: @jas_elmer
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What does it take to complete a doctoral dissertation in archaeology—and what secrets lie within the Oseberg ship's fragile textiles? Daniel Farrand sits down with co-host and in-house archaeologist Margrethe (Mags) Havgar to deconstruct her PhD research: Tracing Threads of Thought: A visual exploratory reanalysis of the creatures of the Oseberg tapestries and their rhythms.

Mags details her four-year journey analyzing Scandinavia’s largest Viking Age textile find, debunking persistent myths along the way. She explains how early archaeologists labeled the Oseberg ship a fragile "pleasure craft" due to gendered bias and reconstruction errors, why the tapestries functioned like narrow 6-to-9-inch narrative comic strips, and how bird and serpent figures were deliberately arranged to guide the human eye.

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