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Phishing · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Nke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Nothing spreads faster than a good piece of trivia from
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  Speaker 1: a far off land. We all have an appetite to
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  Speaker 1: learn the strange and wonderful quirks of far off places.
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  Speaker 1: That's partly why you listen to this show. Sometimes what
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  Speaker 1: we can learn can shock us, sometimes it can amuse us,
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  Speaker 1: and sometimes the lwer details are difficult to believe. In
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  Speaker 1: early October of two thousand and nine, a strange news
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  Speaker 1: stories started circulating from the Chinese news agencies shin Hua
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  Speaker 1: and Harbin News. It was a curiosity piece about a
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  Speaker 1: place in northern Sweden with a particular history, a town
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  Speaker 1: known as Chakabo. Founded in eighteen twenty, Chakabo City had
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  Speaker 1: a population of twenty five thousand people, about the same
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  Speaker 1: size as Key West, Florida today, large enough to provoke interest,
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  Speaker 1: but small enough that it wasn't surprising that the world
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  Speaker 1: at large had never heard of it. What made Chakabo
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  Speaker 1: City worthy of news coverage, however, was the nature of
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  Speaker 1: that population. The report claimed that this city was populated
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  Speaker 1: entirely by women. Men were categorically forbidden from living there,
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  Speaker 1: working there, or even visiting. The article explained that the
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  Speaker 1: woman who had founded it almost two hundred years earlier
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  Speaker 1: was a wealthy widow who desired a sanctuary far away
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  Speaker 1: from the eyes of men, so she founded an enclave
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  Speaker 1: where only women could live. To the present day, if
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  Speaker 1: a man showed up, they would be harshly turned away,
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  Speaker 1: maybe even beaten up by blonde guards who stood at
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  Speaker 1: its gates. Women, however, were welcome to visit as tourists.
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  Speaker 1: As for the citizens, the over twenty thousand women who
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  Speaker 1: lived within its walls primarily worked in woodworking and forestry.
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  Speaker 1: This was not a nunnery, however. The citizens of Shakabo
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  Speaker 1: were permitted to leave the city if they wanted to
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  Speaker 1: have a relationship with the man, They would just have
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  Speaker 1: to wash themselves before they returned, a practice that doesn't
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  Speaker 1: sound dissimilar from the Amish concept of from Springer. The
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  Speaker 1: women who didn't leave developed romantic relationships with each other.
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  Speaker 1: This naturally caught the eyes of the headline writers all
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  Speaker 1: around the world. As the news of the city spread
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  Speaker 1: throughout the international news. It was publicized as Sweden's secret
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  Speaker 1: lesbian city. Swedish tourist sites were swamped with requests for
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  Speaker 1: information about this place, leading several sites to fully crash
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  Speaker 1: from the traffic. Eventually, representatives of Sweden's Tourism board had
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  Speaker 1: to issue a statement regarding Chakabo's city. It does not
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  Speaker 1: ex exist. The Swedish government said that there is no
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  Speaker 1: way a city of that size in northern Sweden went
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  Speaker 1: unnoticed for so many years. There is no secret lesbian
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  Speaker 1: city lurking in the forests. Once the announcement was made,
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  Speaker 1: it all seemed rather obvious. The rumors about Chacowell City
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  Speaker 1: read like a laundry list of cliches. A town full
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  Speaker 1: of women who work as lumberjacks all day, who only
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  Speaker 1: know the touch of a man when they went on holiday.
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  Speaker 1: It's the sort of fantasy that feels like it was
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  Speaker 1: dreamed up by a lonely single guy. As amusing as
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  Speaker 1: this hoax was, one question that was never fully definitively answered,
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  Speaker 1: How and why did this story reach actual news agencies?
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  Speaker 1: Was it an anonymous tip a prank from within the
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  Speaker 1: staff of those agencies? Well to this day, while there
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  Speaker 1: are many theories, the motive remains a mystery either way.
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  Speaker 1: Although it was definitively proven false, the Internet latched onto
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  Speaker 1: the story as an amusing fiction. Online communities created a
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  Speaker 1: flag for the fake Lesbian City, wrote humorous web comics
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  Speaker 1: about the hoax. Someone even made a short film set
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  Speaker 1: in the city in twenty ten, less than a year
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  Speaker 1: after the initial hoax. And of course, the Internet of
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  Speaker 1: today is a much more noisy place than it was
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  Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine. There are even more websites,
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  Speaker 1: content mills, and social media accounts entirely dedicated to churning
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  Speaker 1: out misinformation. Throw in the use of AI to create
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  Speaker 1: images and text, and it's hard not to imagine a
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  Speaker 1: website making a claim like this today, even one that
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  Speaker 1: purports to be a press outlet. What is hard to
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  Speaker 1: imagine is this story achieving a similar level of virality today.
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  Speaker 1: After all, when it comes to fake stories on the Internet,
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  Speaker 1: misinformation is no longer the exception. Sadly, it's the rule.
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  Speaker 1: If you go to enough trivia nights at the local bar,
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  Speaker 1: you're bound to get a question like this, what tenth
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  Speaker 1: century Viking king is a modern Wi Fi technology named
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  Speaker 1: after Bluetooth technology? Is the answer. It was named after
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  Speaker 1: Harold Bluetooth Gormson, the Viking king of Norway and Denmark,
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  Speaker 1: and he got the name because he had a dead
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  Speaker 1: bluish black tooth in his mouth. Now, Bluetooth was considered
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  Speaker 1: a great uniter because he was the first king to
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  Speaker 1: unify the Danish territories, and that's why the company named
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  Speaker 1: their technology after him. Bluetooth as a technology brings all
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  Speaker 1: of your devices together. Oh and by the way, the
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  Speaker 1: company logo that you'll actually see in your phone's settings
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  Speaker 1: is Bluetooth's name written the way that it would be
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  Speaker 1: carved into ronestones from all those years before. During the
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  Speaker 1: Viking Age, runestones were stone monuments that were erected to
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  Speaker 1: remember significant battles or events, or to honor the dead.
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  Speaker 1: They were painted with bright colors and put in high
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  Speaker 1: traffic areas where the entire community would see them often.
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  Speaker 1: There are only about two hundred and fifty known runstones
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  Speaker 1: from the Viking Age, so for a Viking's name to
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  Speaker 1: be carved into a runestone that was kind of a
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  Speaker 1: big deal, which means it's fair to say that King
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  Speaker 1: Harold Bluetooth was one of the most famous Vikings to
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  Speaker 1: have ever lived. And yet if being mentioned on a
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  Speaker 1: runstone is proof of a Viking's importance, there was actually
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  Speaker 1: someone who was far more celebrated than Bluetooth. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: this Viking is honored on more runstones throughout Denmark than
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  Speaker 1: any other Viking of their age, and yet their story
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  Speaker 1: has been mostly lost to history. The Viking in question
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  Speaker 1: you see was related to Bluetooth. It was his own mother, Tyra,
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  Speaker 1: the Forgotten Viking Queen. She lived in Denmark in the
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  Speaker 1: tenth century, but because histories were oral at the time
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  Speaker 1: and that oral history has largely been lost, almost nothing
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  Speaker 1: is known about her life. She married King Gorm the Old,
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  Speaker 1: who enjoyed a relatively uneventful reign, and of course she
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  Speaker 1: had a son that's Harold Bluetooth. In most modern history books,
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  Speaker 1: that is the beginning and the end of Tyra's story.
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  Speaker 1: She's a side character in narratives about powerful men. But
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  Speaker 1: new evidence suggests that there is more to Tyra than
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  Speaker 1: we originally thought. Recently, archaeologists at the Swedish National Heritage
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  Speaker 1: Board conducted a study on four runestones scattered across Denmark.
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  Speaker 1: They all celebrate a Viking named Tyra, but Tyra was
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  Speaker 1: a common name at the time, so there was no
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  Speaker 1: way of knowing whether it was the same Tyra being
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  Speaker 1: mentioned on all four stones. Two of those stones are
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  Speaker 1: located in Yelling, Denmark, which was the royal seat of
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  Speaker 1: power when Tyra was alive. The other stones are located
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  Speaker 1: in nearby towns, and so a senior researcher named kitzler
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  Speaker 1: Afeld study the runestones using a three D scan. The
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  Speaker 1: scan let her analyze the carvings in a way that's
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  Speaker 1: similar to modern day forensic handwriting examinations. The scans revealed
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  Speaker 1: that all four runstones were carved by the same person.
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  Speaker 1: On one of the ruinstones, that person gives gives Tira
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  Speaker 1: the title of queen, and the other stones all linked
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  Speaker 1: to King Gorm and King Harold, and that proved that
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  Speaker 1: all four stones were celebrating the same Queen, Tira. They
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  Speaker 1: say that she was a powerful woman of status. She
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  Speaker 1: owned land and had legal authority, but carvings also suggests
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  Speaker 1: that Tira played a key role in unifying the Danish realm.
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  Speaker 1: She may have even been more influential in that cause
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  Speaker 1: than Bluetooth himself. One runestone calls her Denmark's strength and salvation.
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  Speaker 1: The idea is supported by historical records from the twelfth century.
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  Speaker 1: They credit Tira as the one who built the Dona
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  Speaker 1: Verka Fortifications, an eighteen mile long series of walls and
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  Speaker 1: trenches that protect Denmark from foreign invaders. But maybe what
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  Speaker 1: proves this legacy most is the fact that two of
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  Speaker 1: her runestones were commissioned by her husband and her son.
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  Speaker 1: They wanted to immortalize her legacy, which begs us to
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  Speaker 1: ask an important question. If Tira was so beloved, why
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  Speaker 1: don't we remember her story today. While historians began to
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  Speaker 1: study Vikings in the early nineteenth century at a time
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  Speaker 1: when the Western worldview was predominantly male oriented, now researchers
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  Speaker 1: think that these early historians relegated Viking women to the sidelines,
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  Speaker 1: and instead they focused on the men who ruled the
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  Speaker 1: Viking Age. In reality, Viking women enjoyed more freedom than
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  Speaker 1: women in most other societies at the time. Political life
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  Speaker 1: was still dominated by men, but Viking women were seen
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  Speaker 1: as capable rulers as well. The men in Tyra's life
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  Speaker 1: understood this, and that marriage gave her the title of Queen,
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  Speaker 1: a title carved in stone. But her accomplishments, it seems,
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  Speaker 1: are what carved her place in history. I hope you've
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  Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
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  Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
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  Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
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  Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
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  Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
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  Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
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  Speaker 1: learn all about it over at Theworldoflore dot com. And
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  Speaker 1: until next time, stay curious.