Occasionally, you come across a resource that is so incredibly good, it amazes you that it’s free. The Yale Early Medieval Lecture Series (available free on Youtube) is one of these cases, and is an amazing contribution by the Yale outreach programme to leveling the playing-field and getting everyone access to the humanities.
You can access this lecture series in full here, for free on Youtube. The introductory lecture is embedded below, starting with the fall of Rome.
Pick and choose a specific time period that interests you (the lecture on the Vikings is particularly good, focusing on a European-wide perspective), or watch the entire series for a holistic overview.
If you’re interested in learning some more background skills for being a historian, including the methods and theories historians use to understand the past, I have recently launched a new set of free online notes here.