AllMovie

As one in a series of documentary releases to systematically review the history of global warfare, event by event, this program travels back in time to the mythical Dark Ages - the period sandwiched in between the Fall of Rome and the Medieval Renaissance. It was during this era, as the program reminds us, that the coastal residents of Britain began to spot Viking longships dotting the ocean skyline - longships that brought barbaric Norse raiders to the mainland, and thus became indicators of death, destruction, misery and terror. The program travels beyond the frequently-mythologized images of these raiders to examine their approaches to battle; in so doing, it makes frequent use of maps, computerized graphics, recreations of battle scenes, and scenes of actors playing eyewitnesses, filmed against the backdrop of Lindesfarne.