We always aim to create videos shorter than 10 minutes on our YouTube channel, Yourway2Norway, as we heard you should do so.
When we visited the Viking Ship Museum the duration exploded.
Could a lengthy video survive YouTube?
This is the story about how we were forced to give it a try.
For a long time ...
we had wanted to create a video about Vikings. As we have had some prior success with lists, we went for the idea «10 Viking Myths Busted».After the research tour to The Viking Museum of Oslo, we soon realized this film was going to be one of our longer ones.
- Even more than 8 min, maybe 9. Max 10!
Here you see the host, still optimistic, running his intro. In the background, the fantastic Oseberg Ship.
The take on
the narrative, was to interview visitors about the biggest myths.The most obvious number 10 of 10 was «Vikings had helmets with horns».
The host asked; «If I was a Viking, how would I dress? What is missing? ».
Everyone said, «You need a helmet with horns, BIIG horns»
The Twist
was our appointment with one of Norway’s greatest experts on Vikings, an archaeologist from the National Norwegian Cultural Museum. She waited inside, eager and bloodthirsty to bust myths. Thankyou, Ellen, that you blew up our duration limit.
Needless to say,
Ellen killed the long living myths about horns instantly.
At our first segment, we realized that with this storyteller, our allotted YouTube time would be in danger of burst.
Ellen is incredibly visual and skilled.
Just listening to her dispelling a myth about helmets, could fill an entire movie.
Did you know
that there have only been found one Viking helmet in the whole world? One!
In the video Ellen explains why. The whole segment took time, but how can one turn down interesting and new facts, when told that interesting?
The Vikings weren’t occupied by arts and crafts
«NEVER!», the visitors were pretty assertive, «They were only interested in killing and going berserk».
Well, inside … Ellen could tell a story of brilliant craftsmen that were sensitive and occupied by beautiful things.
This is one of four heads found in the excavations of Oseberg.
The Vikings liked pretty
and civilized stuff around them. Much of this was religiously inspired, but also worked as a protection against the powerful and menacing nature.
The Viking’s arts & crafts takes forever to process.
Just like the topic takes a long time to explain. A tiny voice in our head whispered; “it's possible the video will exceed 9 minutes … “
At this point, in our fun, short video,
myth number 8 was supposed to be at approximately 1-2 minutes into the video.
We are idiots. Number 8 enters at 4 or 5 minutes into it…
We realized this going to be a YouTube-video extending 11 min. This is going to be something close to a mini docu. Fun – but how will people react?
Well, what did the visitors believe?
The majority of the visitors meant the Vikings could not read or write.
Out of ten persons asked - one person knew they had some kind of language.
Over to you, Ellen …
We had heard about the runic alphabet, What we did not know was that it is highly inspired by Latin.
The Vikings did not care about spelling. It took a long time carving the letters into wood or stone, so the Vikings took shortcuts. To quote Ellen; “Like an SMS – ‘LOL’”.
Fun. But not a fact you tell in a flash. And it was more to The Runes than that. Cut. Cut!
Myth 7 of 10: The Vikings did not talk, Just Raped and Killed
- Obviously they raped and killed a lot. That’s fine if you are stronger than the people you attack, but … If you are not stronger, you will have to communicate. The Vikings actually spoke Persian … You want me to tell you more about this?
Ellen – stop – we do not have time for this.
Myth 6 of 10: The Vikings Was Not Occupied by Style
No one thought the Vikings were occupied by their looks. “You are just killing, raping, stealing a woman and you are happy”, people said. What do you think, Ellen?
(Please – let the answer be short told, we have 5 more myths to tell – and we haven’t even counted in the bonus fact at the end).
|- Off course not, The Vikings wanted to look good
… Don’t you want to look nice in front of the opposite sex?
We could stand and listen to Ellen for ages as she told us how occupied the warriors were by their looks.
They plucked their eyebrows before going into a battle. Not to mention their toilet map …
Myth 7 of 10: The Vikings Were Giants
Outside – Ronald: “Do I look like a Viking?”. The answers are unanimous – “NO!”.
Inside – well … Let’s just jump to the next myth. You understand
Myth 8 of 10: The Vikings Ate Like Barbarians
Not at all, off course. At this point we had resigned. What Ellen could tell us about their delicious food just made us standing there with our jaws down.
(Thanks to VisitYork.org for the cool picture)
Myth 9 of 10: The Vikings were not great thinkers, quite stupid?
Ellen sighs. We have lost control over the length of our movie.
At this point, Ellen has so much interesting to add, we don’t care anymore and let her talk about technology and innovations.
“Facebook go home! This is high tech!” (pointing at the ship). And then she starts …
Myth 10 of 10: The Women had no Power
We will save the answer to this as Ellen told us a story that blown us away. We want to keep this as a tease as you might want to see the movie.
The truth is, no, they had power, but there’s more to it.
So how did the lengthy video perform?
It ended with a duration at 20 min. Since launch, a couple of days ago, it has gained 1400 views. Half of the viewers watch the full length!
It will be shared by museums and other relevant sites – so we await. It has gotten lot of positive feedback. People want to go to Norway due to this video.
As long as the topic is interesting and well told, we see no negatives in creating long duration videos.
See you!
Thanks a lot for going through this with us. Click the picture above if you want to go to our channel. The link to the Viking video is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_A53R6N1D0
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