Q. When is the Viking Age?
The Viking Age takes place from 793ce with the Raid on Lindisfarne, England to 1066ce with the Norman Invasion of England and expulsion of the Vikings
Q. When will the game be set within this era?
We currently can only speculate, but two settings in a Ubisoft Poll from a few years ago were during the Viking Era. The Invasion of England by the Great Heathen Army (865ce) and the Norman Invasion by William the Conqueror (1066ce). I’ll discuss more in depth below.
Q. Where will the viking game take place?
Based on polls from Ubisoft that included the viking settings of the Great Heathen Army and Norman Invasion, England is a relatively safe bet. It is also likely that at least some of Scandinavia will be available as well. From the map above, I believe the best guess would be the island of Britain (modern England, Wales, and Scotland), Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. I will be discussing all of Northern Europe that’s shown in the map, though.
Q. Why codename it Kingdom in the viking era, and what will the actual name be?
The codename Kingdom could be in reference to a number of things that could be present in the game. The vikings had several major kingdoms throughout the Age, the largest of which was the North Sea Empire ruled by Cnut the Great. It could also be in reference to the English Kingdoms that players may invade; or even a gameplay mechanic to making your “kingdom” stronger. While the official name has not been revealed, it’s widely speculated to be called “Ragnarok” as a reference to the end times in Norse mythology, due to the connection to Origins, popularity in media, and name being used in several unconfirmed and fake rumors plus a potential concept art leak from 2018.
Q. What evidence is there for the game?
While Kingdom has not been confirmed by Ubisoft, it was leaked by Jason Schreier, who has a perfect track record with AC leaks. It was followed up by a leak by french website xboxygen that many consider to be legitimate due to accuracy on Watch Dogs Legion leaks. We also have concept art from an artist at Ubisoft that was supposedly fan work for their portfolio, but named “michele-nucera-assassincreedragnarok-bay-09.jpg”. The naming convention and timing has many fans speculating heavily. This of course matches with at least one fake leak and several small 4chan rumors that have stated the next game will be named “Ragnarok” and follow Ragnar Lothbrok and his sons great army.
https://kotaku.com/odd-tease-in-the-division-2-spills-the-beans-on-the-nex-1833838193
http://www.xboxygen.com/News/29092-Assassin-s-Creed-chez-les-Vikings-nos-informations
https://gamerant.com/assassins-creed-ragnarok-ubisoft-concept-art/
Q. Will we play as assassins again with hidden blades?
Nothing is officially confirmed yet, but it is unlikely to be full assassins fighting Templars again. The term assassin did not exist until the crusades as a term used to describe the followers of Hassan Ibn Sabbah, who wasn’t born until about 1050ce. With the viking era ending in 1066, it’s unlikely his influence had been amassed and the Hidden Ones were rebranded within AC lore. Templars were in a similar state, with the Templar orders not existing until the early 12th century. Rather than playing as either a Hidden One and fighting the Order of Ancients, we may also play as a viking mercenary popular towards the end of the era called Jomsvikings to further capitalize on Odyssy’s success. I’ll discuss them more later.The hidden blade is a bit more likely though, with it having been invented around 460bce and popularized in 44bce.
Vikings raided and pillaged most of Europe during their voyages, reaching from the Baltic States and Kievan Rus as far south as North Africa, Italy, and even vandalizing Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. I will, however, be focusing on Northern Europe for this discussion, breaking down regions to discuss their land, cities, and architecture. This map of viking trade routes may also be helpful though it isn’t 100% accurate.
Europe is filled with rivers and marshlands as seen here, which was easy for vikings to maneuver due to their longships. As a result, I do think we might see a few rivers enlarged in Kingdom/Ragnarok in order to make ship travel mildly easier and more conducive to gameplay, much like Rogue did.
England, being the most likely to appear, seems to be the best place to start off. England is the largest of the countries in Britain, with the map previously shared it taking up Wessex, Danelaw, Mercia, and Northumbria. I’ll be discussing the changes of those Kingdoms later. England is a largely low lying country, with the largest mountain range, Pennine Mountains, in Northern England. Much of southern England, however, are forests and rolling hills in the center of the country, with much of the outskirts being thick marshes that viking longships could navigate through.A good map of Mountains can be seen here:
Map of swamps here:
I have seen maps of wetlands from the Uk that indicate that there used to be wetlands in the Pennine Mountains, but it seems to be fairly speculative.
Wessex was the southernmost kingdom, and under Alfred the Great underwent a large change to fortify many of its towns or burhs. Stone was hard to quarry and come by at the time, with most of it being taken from Roman fortifications and used in defensive perimeters and churches. This did make abandoned roman forts a popular place to start burhs though. We see largely wooden fences with a trench in front surrounding many towns to help defend from vikings. Inside are mostly 1 story houses separated by a few fairly wide streets. A church was oftentimes a centerpiece of the city, and it wasn’t uncommon to have some farms within the walls itself along with the outside. While burhs like this were more numerous, they likely won’t be the focal points for our adventure in the next AC, instead looking at larger cities instead. They may appear as forms of PoI though or tied to a settlement system. Those closer to Roman ruins were sometimes repurposed to include the first Motte and Bailey castles (more on them in a few moments).
Our bigger cities will likely include Winchester, Canterbury, London, Chester, Bristol, and York. York was by far the largest city with about 15,000 people in its walls by the time the Great Heathen Army landed, with the other cities having 5,000 or fewer. These cities, however, unlike the other burhs had large Roman walls around them already. This did mean that the city size was restricted though, and rather than rebuild walls, the people began building up.
Following the collapse of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Dark Ages the early medieval peoples lost the knowledge on how to build out of stone well, and quarry for more stone, making it a very valuable commodity. As I mentioned, this meant many burhs and towns were built on top of Roman forts, stripping them for stone to build churches and walls. The rest of the buildings had to deal with cheaper architecture. The most notable of which is wattle and daub. This is thin branches are weaved together and placed into upright slats and then have a thick mud caked on and hardened. This was the most common form of architecture in the early medieval period due to how cheap it was. Timber was still expensive, and despite using cheaper woods to create floors (these often had be elevated slightly on stakes in order to help slow rot, but had to be replaced regularly), was fairly expensive. Timber frames still had to be used though to help keep the shape of the building. Not common early on, at some point around the Viking Era in Britain, we begin to see diagonal bracing added to help keep houses steady.
In the older Roman Cities, many of the roman buildings and forts were stripped early on. London didn’t have any of the original Roman houses left by 1000ce, and by 1100ce had stripped the fort itself leaving only the walls behind. This stone was largely used to create stable foundations for buildings, including along the forming of Thames Street and eventually London Bridge. This also meant that combined with improved timber framing, people could start building upwards and outwards. The process of building high floors larger than the first is called jettying, and became synonymous with the medieval era, becoming very popular in the latter half. While jettying had been around for nearly 1000 years, it was still relatively new for Britain, and by 1066, houses were just reaching 2-3 stories high. We do know that this was incredibly popular by 1100-1200, and began being restricted and regulated in London by 1300 due to some fires in 1133 and 1212 due to building proximity. As buildings couldn’t grow their first floors to impede foot traffic (regulated by law), having more room in upper floors became a necessity. Somewhere in this time we begin to see the creation of skywalks or covered pathways between buildings. I could not find an exact date for when these appeared, but there’s evidence they existed in China in 220ce, so it’s not unreasonable for them to have made it to England within another 600-800 years. Again, while jettying was new, we also have mention of the Shambles in 937, a street in York that is famous for its tilted jettying. Most buildings in that picture are from 1300 onwards due to fires, but it’s not unreasonable to believe it could look similar.
Roofing will likely be almost entirely thatching, or made out of dried straw, reeds, etc over a timber frame. There is some evidence for use of wooden tiles, red roman tiles, turf, and timber as well for roofs, but vary in cost and abundance. Many depictions of medieval england use slate or shale shingles, which while possible would likely be anachronistic, as the first records of those don’t appear until the 1300s, more than the few years for other anachronistic changes.
Castles were still in very early stages in this period. The remains of the Roman Forts not picked apart had been used by royalty such as in Winchester and Canterbury, sometimes having a church built into them. The other type that may be linked to the smaller burhs are the aforementioned Motte and Bailey castles. These are very early castles that originated around the 8th-9th century in Carolingian France. In them, we have a protected area within an enclosure called the Bailey, and that included the only real way up to the often wooden watchtower or small 2-3 story keep. The motte was a large fortified hill that the tower sat upon. This provided a nice advantage and lookout for guards, while making it difficult to storm. These really did not reach England until about 1066 with the Norman Invasion, though even if we have an earlier setting, I can see a mild historical inaccuracy occurring to push these through, as French and English dynasties did get along and travel to each other on numerous occasions.
Overall, Anglo-Saxon Architecture was fairly basic work in the beginning of the period, creating square churches and houses from retrievable stone, timber, and mud. It does appear that the Carolingian Renaissance and frankish styles began spreading to England by the 8th century though, allowing for some larger buildings to exist. Make no mistake, stone work though will be fairly basic within the title, with the most elaborate stone work being window arches and a few stone carvings. Larger sprawling castles, complex stone churches with arches, and even brick based houses will not be in game. These advances were primarily coming from the gothic period and early Tudor dynasty which cemented the traditional fantasy medieval style in most people’s heads of churches like Notre Dame, 5 storied jettying houses with plaster filling and timber and brick frames, and massive stone castles with knights in plate armor.
Celtic lands consist of several major areas in the British Isles, now making up the countries of Ireland (and North Ireland), Isle of Man, Scotland, and Wales. The celts, while largely good stone workers, each had several unique flairs and differences across the lands due to different cultural influences.
Ireland is largely grasslands with a few major mountain ranges along the southern and northwestern coasts, as can be seen in this map. Within the inner part of Ireland and a few surrounding islands such as Mann and Skellig to as far away as Oakney, which were largely isolated from Britain became the home of the Celts, that - primarily in Ireland - lived in clusters of towns called Tuatha with a probable high king. More on his position later. In the neolithic through early medieval period we see the creation of stone huts called Beehive Huts. These may look familiar as the huts seen in Star Wars Force Awakens and Last Jedi which filmed on the Skellig Islands. The Tuatha meanwhile were a cluster of towns that each held 3000 people and 1000 large houses holding 30 people each. A good example of this is Rathcroghan. Smaller houses for single families could be seen too, and like the large houses were mostly circular wood and largely straw homes. Ireland was far less wooded than Britain, forcing the settlements to rely on wood, stone, and straw far more. Vikings began to settle in Ireland though, creating the first real large cities of Ireland by founding Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, and Limerick which were used as ports and easy staging areas for future raids, especially to Britain.
Unfortunately Wales history has been extremely hard to research and understand the architecture of this mountainous and rugged country. Many fires and revolutions during the high middle ages destroyed the history, leaving behind stone castles built post Norman Invasion and records of political turmoil in the early kingdoms of Wales (more on that later). It’s highly suspected that despite the Celtic Influence from Ireland, the Britons of Wales, especially in the northern Gwynedd, had architecture similar to the Frankish and English. The city I can find the most on that definitely existed in this era was Bangor, which is one of the oldest Welsh cities overall. It seems there were Roman Forts at modern Newport and Cardiff, but the extent of the settlement there post Rome is unknown. Vikings did settle the town of Swansea as well in the early 1000s, but other than that held no permanent residence in Wales due to the Welsh Kingdoms power.
Scotland during its early years was made up of a few separate kingdoms which started to become United under Alba by the Viking Era. The records of many of the country’s cities were actually hill forts nestled into the rocky, mountainous, and ravenous terrain of the region that include Craig Phadrig, Aberdeen, Dunadd, Dumbarton Rock, Edinburgh, and Scone. What wasn’t Roman Fortress was largely low lying single story wattle and daub houses with timber frames, wooden churches, and a few stone beehive huts, most of which was described to blend into the hills.
Scandinavia contrasts heavily with medieval England though. Rather than being a single large Island or collection of isles, Scandinavia describes modern Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. To make it simpler, I’m going to break it up into Viking and NonViking Scandinavia, which was predominantly based on how far north the vikings went.
Viking Scandinavia is primarily Southern Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Norway is a very mountainous and hilly region creating massive and beautiful Fjords or inlets with high cliffs. Sweden is on the east side of the mountains being mildly lower but hilly and mountainous nonetheless. Both are mostly covered in a Boreal Forest, or a subarctic Taiga, a forest that is characterized by evergreens in a very cold climate, with tall but skinny trunks and wide but thin branches. This contrasts from the deciduous forests native to England and most of Europe including Denmark, the southernmost part of Scandinavia that’s a low lying peninsula known as the Jutland Peninsula with a collection of several large islands known as the Danish Archipelago.
The Jutland was home to three of the largest trading hubs in the Viking world, being Aarhus, Ribe, and the largest of Hedeby which contained about 1000 people. Most of the largest cities in Scandinavia were not founded until after the viking era was over, but several major cities weren’t far from them. The religious city of Uppsala and the nearby town of Birka were relatively close to modern Stockholm in Sweden and Roskilde near modern Copenhagen. Oslo (or Anslo as it was called) was founded around 1040, meaning it could appear in the title. Kaupung and Trondheim were larger hubs in Norway, with Trondheim towards northern Norway along the coast of the Norwegian Sea. Reykjavik and a few other towns were founded in Iceland in 874, so it’s not impossible to see them too.
There are many contemporary and modern sources on viking architecture, and while it was almost entirely wood and mud, I do want to discuss some common themes I’ve seen doing research into Viking Architecture styles. To begin with, some commonalities are that viking villages are generally flat with low single story buildings and wide streets. Ubisoft’s last foray into the viking era with For Honor had shown off a viking village with the opposite though, being taller 2-3 story houses, narrow paths on a hill. While undoubtedly visually pleasing, it’s certainly inaccurate. As we see from the potentially leaked concept art for Ragnarok, Bay 09 includes a sprawling viking city on a mountain side overlooking a Fjord, with high towers, multiple story buildings, and even a bridge with houses built onto it. Again it’s visually appealing, and would likely work well with parkour despite being on a more fantastical side of what we ought to see. The other big commonality is that most viking villages had a sizeable mead hall that was used for town religious and political purposes, often being a timber longhouse.
While most viking houses were wooden and had straw and mud roofs, it appears that some commonalities were more based on region. This bit is speculation, as I’ve had difficulty verify the veracity and historical accuracy of this architectural style, but based on the aforementioned concept art, it’s not unlikely to be seeing a more mythicized version of the world, meaning a few historical discrepancies are likely. From what I’ve seen, these largely wooden and more ornate buildings, despite being 1-1.5 stories were more commonly associated with Norway. I’d speculate that more mountainous terrain could make creating foundations for a house, especially longhouses, fairly difficult; thus forcing smaller and more stable homes to be designed out of primarily wood rather than earth works. Sweden, on the other hand would try to marry a larger footprint of longhouses such as in Denmark while being ornate and suited to the terrain, creating wood, straw, and mud houses that may have been similar to this. Denmark would largely focus on larger footprints using primarily longhouses within their city’s defenses, which likely owed to creating some of the larger cities of the viking era like Hedeby. During Harald Bluetooth’s reign and even as late as Cnut the Great, the Viking Ring Fortress became popular, especially in Denmark and Sweden, comprising of several longhouses and smaller houses in squares surrounded by a large earth wall, created by digging a trench along the outside of the desired hill. During construction the hill, 4 wooden passageways were left through the hill, with dirt and sod packed on top and to the sides, allowing people to freely move in and out of the fortress. The hill was then fortified with large timber siding on both the inside and outside, while allowing people from the inside easy access to the top of the hill, which now acted as a wall.
Iceland greatly differs from these areas though, with a far harsher environment. About 50% of iceland is covered in rough rocky volcanic lava deserts and glacial wastelands in a region called the Highlands. The rest of iceland is rocky and mountainous grassland surrounded by massive Fjords. While there were numerous viking settlements throughout the island, the largest and one of the first was the now-capital-city of Reykjavik. Unlike traditional viking settlements though, many homes were timber built but completely covered in mud and sod. This was to keep the heat trapped in the home due to the harsher environment, creating settlements that may have looked a bit like this.
Northern Scandinavia was left largely uninhabited by the vikings, having small tribes of the Lapps and Sami people control the regions, especially in what’s modern Finland. The farthest north of this area was of course marked by the arctic circle and boreal forest while the west was more mountains and forest from Norway and Sweden. Finland, though, has a massive area known as central lake plateau, which is a plateau in the center of the country that is full of lakes, swamps, and boreal forest. Going farther south to the Baltic coast will be met with a large swamp and “Archipelago Sea”. The Sami and Lapps never contained large amounts of wealth or large cities, creating only small settlements of Mud and Wooden huts, not dissimilar from American Indian Tipis.
Frankish territory extended far past modern France, making up modern France, Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, and a few other countries in what was the Holy Roman Empire. Prior to the viking age, the empire collapsed and eventually split into several regions marked on the map, more on the politics of this later. Seeing all of the Frankish Kingdoms is pretty unlikely, as is seeing any of them in the main game in my opinion, but they do hold some of the richest lands and cities in the Early Medieval Period in Europe.
The vast majority of this region is open grasslands, soft rolling fields, and forests scattered throughout the areas labeled as Brittany, West Francia, Normandy, Lotharingia, and Saxony. Frisia and part of northern Saxony were large swamp lands. Angers, Tours, and Orleans are the southernmost cities in western Francia and near the border of Brittany. Rouen was just inside the Duchy of Normandy, with Paris along the same river not far outside the borders. Frisia’s largest city was Utrecht, with many modern towns like Amsterdam only existing as fishing villages if at all. In Saxony and Lotharingia we’d see larger cities of Hamburg and Frankfurt. While the exact populations of many cities are unknown, by 1050 Cologne had around 21,000 people and Paris had 25,000 by 800, far more than any English city.
Just to the east we have the regions of Pomerania and Lusatia, both regional names for kingdoms of Bohemia and Moravia along with groups of people living in what’s now modern Poland. The northern area of Pomerania is a fairly flat and grassy area known as the Polish Plain, contrasted with the southern portion that has steeper rolling hills. Wolin was a major stopping and trading hub for Vikings, and likely related to the potentially mythical city of Jomsborg. To the south three major cities existed along separate riverways that fed back into the Baltic: Poznan, Prague, and Krakow.
Most of these areas had a very distinct architectural style known as Preromanesque, which as it sounds came before the architectural style Romanesque. The Merovingian Dynasty from the 5th century to 751 is what really inspired this architectural choice, which then split into 2 similar but different styles of Carolingian and Ottonian, after rulers in Carolingian Dynasty and King Otto. An example of the Preromaneque Architecture would be Charlemange’s Palace, which upon observation has clear Roman influence due to presence of arches and round structures, but overall left a fairly flat facade. This Carolingian Monastery has fairly few discernable differences to this Ottonian church in Frankfurt. We do see a large emphasis on the interior beauty though, as evidenced by this carolingian church. By the 11th century we start to see a shift towards being larger and more ornate buildings such as this church, which has an obvious emphasis on the facade. While this is the era in which castles and keeps started to be made, most buildings would not be above 3 stories, and real castles wouldn’t be built until after the Norman Invasions of William the Conqueror. For now, we’d likely just see more Motte and Bailey castles.
That primarily covers the big landmarks made by and for the kings and religious. Peasants, however, did not have such luxuries, often living in the stone houses left behind by the romans in these cities and forts. As the cities grew, due to walls existing, much like England, it became common (even earlier too) to start building up by using wattle and daub, stripping the stone as needed, though France (at least with the rich) had far less of an issue with acquiring stonework. Paris was subjected to multiple raids, though two really stood out and were encapsulated in art that can help show what the city may have looked like at the time. The first was in 845 at the hands of Ragnar Lothbrok, and as we can see, it had a decent sized Carolingian Palace in Ile de la Cite (please note that the larger cathedral attached to the palace and Conciergerie weren’t built until the 13th century, but the section with the lower roofs were updated around 800), juxtaposed by the Preromanesque churches and Roman Ruins on the outskirts. By 885, however, Rollo had to face walls on the other side of the bridges, helping defend the outer city more. The TV show Vikings actually did cover this as well, seemingly combining the two sieges and adding a more anachronistic flare such as the taller roofs on the towers and greatly exaggerating the size of everything, despite Paris definitely being more built up than English cities. It would not be unlikely to see cities largely built up as the classic fantasy medieval cities, though with mildly less stone and no bricks; not dissimilar to this (https://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/medieval-port-3d-1144332). Even in that we see the Carolingian church rather than a larger gothic one, which is an important thing to remember for the early medieval period.
Kievan Rus was the most different to any region discussed so far. Like other Northern European areas, it’s largely plains, a few rolling hills, and mountains to the southwest of the region in what is now mostly Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus. I do include the modern Baltic States in the map of Kievan Rus territory though due to the area being primarily inhabited by small tribes, Slavs, and often being used as a hub for piracy and trade by the Varangians that inhabited Kievan Rus.
I want to discuss this group of people later, but their land was very important, being the easiest way for vikings to trade with people from Greece, Turkey, and the Middle East, as the Varangians controlled every major trade route in Eastern Europe from the Black to Baltic Sea.
This lead to what would be the most interesting architecture in the title though, as despite likely having roots from vikings, eventually turned to Eastern Orthodoxy based on Byzantine tradition, and developed the architecture as such. By about 1000ce, the capital of Kiev was decorated with large wooden and stone monuments with exotic and ornate domes inherent to the Byzantine Structure. Kiev, while the capital was one of the 3 major cities in the region, with the other 2 being Polotsk in the north west, and the original capital of Novgorad in the north.
TL;DR: There were several distinct regions and architectural styles in the early medieval era, ranging from the viking single story houses and longhouses, to multi story compact cities made of wattle and daub and timber frames which could be surrounded by large stone churches, juxtaposed by the exotic domes of the eastern Rus.
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France v Belgium: Fans gather in Moscow ahead of World Cup semi-final - live! ... World Cup 2018 - Quarter Final Betting Previews - Duration: 32:13. Racing Post 1,659 views. 32:13. SBRForum's Natalie Rydström previews the ATP Garros French Open Masters Event 2013 and discusses the betting odds with new guest Nila Amerova, handicapper and sportswriter for SBRForum. Brent Graham previews stage 18 of the Tour de France and he also takes a look at the latest betting. Bela08 Eurovision Previews 2008 Belarus France vs Croatia Betting Tips, Preview And Prediction 1. Please go to https://t.co/Boh23y6rwX or http://t.co/7lR1UW1Jci 2. Sign-in or register (it's free!)....