Vik ings at War
To Jens Halvor and Wilhelm
Summa pia gratia nostra conservando corpora et cutodita, de gente fera Normannica nos libera, quae nostra vastat, Deus, regna. (By your great and merciful saving grace, O God, protect us and ours from devastation by the wild men of the North.) from an antiphon dedicated to st vaast or st menard
Kim Hjardar and Vegard Vike
Vikings at War
Oxford & Philadelphia
Published in Great Britain and the United States of America in 2016 by CASEMATE PUBLISHERS 10 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford OX1 2EW, UK and 1950 Lawrence Road, Havertown, PA 19083, USA © Casemate Publishers / Spartacus Forlag AS, 2016 Original edition in Norwegian: Vikinger i krig © Spartacus Forlag AS, Oslo 2012. 1st English edition 2016. Translation by Frank Stewart. Hardcover Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-403-7 Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-454-9 Cover and book design: Eivind Abusdal/Katie Gabriel Allen Layout: Punktum forlagstjenester AS Drawings: Anders Kvåle Rue Maps: Kim Hjardar Technical drawings: Vegard Vike Front cover: Skafti Helgason, photographed by Kim Hjardar. Back cover: The Roskilde Viking Ship Museum. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher in writing. Every attempt has been made to secure the appropriate permissions for material reproduced in this book. If there has been any oversight, written submission should be made to Spartacus Forlag AS. A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library Printed and bound in India by Replika Press For a complete list of Casemate titles, please contact: CASEMATE PUBLISHERS (UK) Telephone (01865) 241249 Fax (01865) 794449 Email:
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[email protected] www.casematepublishers.com Published and distributed in the Nordic countries by Spartacus Forlag AS ISBN 978-82-430-0986-8 www.spartacus.no
Contents foreword 6 beaduheard meets his fate 8
1. THE VIKINGS Who were the Vikings? Viking society The Viking warriors’ religion
12 24 34
2. THE ART OF WAR Viking troops Viking military techniques
44 58
3. VIKING FORTIFICATIONS Viking fortifications
112
4 . VIKING SHIPS The Viking ship
136
5. VIKING WEAPONS The Vikings and their weapons
154
6. VIKING INVASIONS The world of the Vikings The Islands in the West Ireland England The Frankish Empire and France The Iberian peninsula The lands in the East Byzantium Greenland and America
200 202 222 242 296 336 348 370 376
notes bibliography indices list of maps image credits
384 386 390 399 400
Foreword
F
or the Viking, war was everywhere. It was part of the fabric of society, it was raw and brutal like all other warfare at that time, and it led to major upheavals in Europe. The warfare of the Vikings left various traces. Among other things, it played a part in the unification of countries such as England under one king, prepared the way for the unification of fragmented northern lands into independent nations and laid the foundations for the kingdom of Russia in the East. Vikings at War describes Viking military history between 750 and 1100 AD, popularly known as the Viking Age. This was one of the most expansive and innovative periods in the history of the Nordic countries. The Viking expeditions extended to the Caspian Sea in the east, to Jerusalem in the south, to the furthest border of the known world, America, in the west and into the great Russian forests in the north.
We describe the historical developments, causes and conditions which led to the raiding expeditions, military campaigns and conquests originating from Scandinavia during the Viking age. We present many of the most important military events and significant characters and groups. We discuss different aspects of offensive and defensive warfare, weapons technology, military tradition, theory and tactics. We hope to challenge some of the established presentations of the Viking as a peaceful trader, skilled hand worker and adventurous settler, and instead present an objective and nuanced assessment of the Viking warrior. Through examples and excerpts from original sources, reconstructions, maps, illustrations and photos, we aim to give the reader a vivid insight into one of the most exciting periods of North European history – the Viking Age. Vegard Vike wrote the chapter on Viking weapons. The other chapters were written by Kim Hjardar. Kim Hjardar and Vegard Vike
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Beaduheard meets his fate 789 AD: summer was well established and the little kingdom of Wessex in the south of Saxon England must have looked its best. In the fields the golden heads of corn swayed gently in the wind, promising good yields, and the forests were full of wild game. Peace blessed the land.
K
Opposite: Vikings in the Great Army arrive in E ngland, as illustrated in ‘The Life, Passion and Miracles of St Edmund,’ from around 1130. 8
ing Beorhtric of Wessex had recently married the daughter of the mighty neighbouring King Offa of Mercia, thereby sealing the peace between the two peoples. But that summer three unknown ships arrived at Beorhtric’s kingdom. The strangers on board settled on a little island called Portland. They began to take tolls from passing ships and claim support from the fishermen and the farmers living on the island and the nearby mainland. Finally the news of the disrespectful foreigners reached as far as the royal town of Dorchester. Beorhtric was told that they had not declared what business they had with him or his bailiff, and that the people now lay under their control. So he ordered his bailiff, Beaduheard, to travel to the coast and ask the strangers to report to the bailiff in Winchester and make their business known, so that tolls could be collected on the trading goods they surely had with them. The bailiff and his little group of men shouldered their weapons and rode off on the journey. On the way they met several farmers who confirmed that the foreigners had demanded taxes from the population in the form of both fish and livestock.
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They had also abducted several of the farmers’ wives and daughters as slaves. People said that the foreigners called themselves Northmen, and that they were from a country called Hordaland, somewhere far north over the sea. Arriving at the coast, the bailiff ’s men could look over to Portland and see the strangers’ ships drawn up on the beach. The number of plumes of smoke rising up from the island indicated that there had to be more than just a handful of men. The bailiff engaged local fishermen to ferry him and his men over to the island. By the time they landed, a group had already assembled on the beach to meet them. Beaduheard observed that some of them looked quite dishevelled, as if they had just got up from a night of drunkenness, but others were well clad and looked more fresh and sober. Some of them had tattoos on their arms and chests, of strange patterns and symbols resembling animals and trees, while others had quite well-groomed beards and hair. All of them had tanned, furrowed faces from their life at sea, but their bare chests were light red as if they had been too long in the hot sun. Several of the men who swarmed round the bailiff’s little group carried axes and spears, and they
immediately started chattering among themselves. The bailiff could only understand a few words they said, but gathered from their speech that he was dealing with the people known as Danes. The men stood aside, and one of them stepped forward. He was taller than the others and had a carefully trimmed beard, long forelocks and a shaved neck. He pushed his cape aside, revealing a silver inlaid sword handle. He said his name and his father’s name and presented himself as the spokesman for these men, and then bade the bailiff and his men to lay down their weapons. Beaduheard was the king’s agent. His duty was to see that everybody who came here followed the laws of the kingdom and that traders paid the king tolls on their goods. He obviously had the right to use whatever force was necessary. So he must have hesitated for a moment in response to the Viking’s request, and reached instead for his own weapon. However, faced with a group of strangers who didn’t respect his authority, he was powerless. By the time he realised this, it was already too late. He and his men were cut down.
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The blows which felled Beorhtric’s bailiff and his men would echo through the whole of the Christian world. The episode was seen as so signi ficant that it was recorded in the Anglo-Saxon chronicles. This was the first episode of violence at the hands of seafaring Scandinavians to be recorded in the written sources. Together with the attack on the monastery on the island of Lindisfarne in 793, the Northmen’s raid on Wessex in 789 marked the end of a long time of peace in Christian North Europe. This was a time when people used to a life of peace had pulled down their sea defences and coastal military installations. Lucrative trade had developed between the countries around the English Channel, the North Sea and the Baltic. For Vikings hunting for wealth and glory, this presented tempting targets. Soon no coast would be safe from the long-ships from the North. The Viking attacks on England initiated a period of 300 years which would have major consequences, both in the Nordic lands and on the continent.
1. the vikings
Who were the Vikings? In the early 9th century, Scandinavia did not yet have nations with well-defined borders. Politically, the region consisted of a number of petty kingdoms connected by various military and political alliances. What united the peoples was their common culture, language and belief system.
S Opposite: Finds of elegant weapons and equipment dating from the centuries before the Viking Age indicate that powerful rulers dwelt in Scandinavia. This 7th-century helmet was found in a boat burial in Vendel in Uppland, Sweden. 12
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candinavia was not isolated, however. Scandinavians had close trading links and contact with other northern European populations. In fact, they had set fashion trends for the English and French nobility at the end of the 8th century. The royal court of Northumbria adopted Scandinavian fashions in dress and in hairstyle. There had been trade and communication between Scandinavia and the rest of Europe for centuries, however Viking raids were the first direct experience that a French or English farmer would have of Scandinavia, which he would have previously considered only as a vague and unknown world. Nor was waging war in distant lands a new pheno menon for the Scandinavians. The Scandinavian peoples were able to mobilise large armies and make war both between and beyond their own territories, even before Viking times. In the first few centuries AD, clear power structures already existed and Scandinavian leaders were able to wage war on a scale previously unknown to them. They learned military strategy and technology from the Romans. After a major defeat by the Germans at Teutoburg Forest (in modern-day Germany) t h e vi k i ngs
in 7 AD, the Roman Empire had established a permanent northern border along the Rhine. German and Celtic mercenaries already made up a large part of the Roman standing army at that time, and chieftains’ sons from the whole of northern Europe received military and cultural education from the Romans. Roman luxury goods and weapons and military skills spread north. These military skills also reached Scandinavia, mainly through the Nordic mercenaries who fought as support troops alongside the Roman legions. This is confirmed by the finding, especially in Denmark, of large quantities of Roman weapons and equipment. Weapons and knowledge were also acquired by trade and through the many alliances and connections between powerful tribal leaders in Scandinavia and tribes further south. Partly as a consequence of this new military technology, a powerful military aristocracy evolved in Scandinavia during the 3rd century AD. This had its origins in the military leaders of the Germanic tribes, who were called kings. From then until the 6th century, increasing militarisation of the tribal societies and widespread warfare led to the collective tribal institutions being replaced by
A glimpse of the earlier warrior culture
After the battle the warriors’ equipment was cast as offerings into a lake in modern-day Illerup on Jutland. The warriors who fell here were probably on their way home to west Norway after the end of their service in the Roman army. The finds confirm the close contacts that existed between Scandinavia and the Roman Empire in the centuries before the Viking Age.
In c. 200 AD, an army from Norway lost a big battle, not far from Illerup on Jutland in Denmark. All the warriors’ personal equipment and weapons were ritually destroyed and cast as offerings into a nearby lake. Weapons belonging to about 750 ordinary soldiers, 100 soldiers from the middle ranks and 12 officers were found. The warriors were well equipped, with elegant Roman weapons but also with more homely things such as antler combs and working tools. They had been well paid, for their purses were full of Roman denarii. If we estimate that the Norwegian
losses were around 50% (which corresponds to a serious defeat), the total force could have been around 1,700 men, about the size of a Roman auxiliary troop. The Norsemen may have been on their way home to western Norway after serving in the Roman army. We know the names of some of those who took part in the fateful expedition, because they had carved their names in runes on their belongings: Wagnijo (Wayfarer), Nithigo, Gauthi, Laguthewa, and Swarta (The Black).
a system of petty kings who dominated different geographic areas, supported by local chieftains. During this period a series of defensive works was raised and major building programmes initi ated for military purposes, such as roads, bridges, 14
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canals and earthworks. The extraction and use of iron continued to increase in importance, and possession of weapons became more usual among the lower classes. In the course of the 7th and 8th centuries there was further professionalisation of
the military forces. All this was happening at a time when Scandinavia was experiencing a period of relative peace.
When was the Viking Age? The Viking Age is part of the period which Scandinavian archaeologists call the Nordic Late Iron Age (600–1050 AD) This period is further divided into sub-groups which sometimes overlap. The time before the Viking Age is known in Scandinavia as the Vendel Age (550–800), after the rich finds from Vendel in Sweden, or the Merovingian Age (482–751), after the dynasty of French kings who ruled France from the fall of the Roman Empire until the Carolingians came to power in 751. The Nordic Late Iron Age was followed by what Scandinavian archaeologists call the Middle Ages (1050–1500). The Viking Age comes between the Vendel Age and the Middle Ages. According to our definition, the Viking Age is mainly a period when people in Scandinavia were heathen, not yet Christianised, and when Nordic chieftains and kings engaged in widespread plundering and warfare both at home and throughout Europe. The timespan of the Viking Age can be defined in various ways. The most usual is to say that it started with the attack on the monastery on the island of Lindisfarne in England on 8th June 793. Among other things, this is well documented in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where English monks wrote their annual reports. The event is also named in several letters written by churchmen. It is clear that this attack shook the church institutions in England, and it has continued since then to be regarded as the event which initiated the Viking Age. However, there are reports of earlier Viking attacks on England. In the introduction, we have already described the killing of Beaduheard and his men in 789. In 792 King Offa, who ruled the English kingdom of Mercia from 757 to 796, organised coastal defences, almost certainly in response to increased Viking pirate activity. We must also consider that many raids were never recorded in writing.
This definition is useful to mark the beginning of the Viking period in England, but an event outside Scandinavia is not well suited to define a Scandinavian epoch. We should look within Scandinavia for other events: we shall consider technological innovations such as the development of sail and increased iron production from the 750s, combined with social and political factors. The same applies to the end of the period which in many cases is defined by the defeat of Harald Hardråde in England in 1066. The population of Scandinavia gradually converted to Christianity over the course of the Viking Age, and it is reckoned that more or less all of Scandinavia, with the exception of the region of Uppsala in Sweden, had been converted by the middle of the 11th century. The change in religion cannot however be used to define the transition from the Viking Age to the Middle Ages. Many of the leading Vikings – Kings Olav Tryggvason, Canute the Great and Olav Haraldsson (St Olav), to name but a few – were more or less Christian. In the Middle Ages the Scandinavian countries emerged as independent kingdoms, but the process of nation building was in progress both during and after the Viking Age, and was almost complete in c hap ter 1
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The arrival of the Vikings 787 (789). In this year Beorhtric took King Offa’s daughter Eadburh (as wife). And in his time there came for the first time three ships with Norsemen from Hordaland. And the bailiff rode to them to bid
them appear in the king’s town, because he didn’t know who they were. So they killed him. These were the first ships of Danes that came to the English folk’s land.1 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Peterborough manuscript)
Denmark long before 1100, in Norway sometime after 1100 and in Sweden not before 1200. So neither the change in religion nor the political development of the Nordic countries into statehood can be used to define the end of the Viking Age. The end of the period cannot be linked to any particular event or societal change, but to many different processes and events: the gradual cessation of plundering raids and invasions from Scandinavia; a break in the stream of immigration to the Islands in the West (Orkney, Shetland, Faeroes, the Hebrides and Iceland) and to England and France; the increasing power of the church over the everyday life of the people; and the increase of royal control by means of military power, law, trade and not least, worldly goods. Looking at all these elements together, we can say that the Viking Age as we understand it was over by the year 1100, though it can be argued that the Viking Age continued later in some places. In the 13th century, people could still be found worshipping the old Norse gods in some parts of Sweden. Caithness in Scotland and the Islands in the West were ruled by Norse earls and chieftains who continued summer plundering forays until the 14th century. However, we choose 1100 as the year when the Viking age ended, and this book will use a time frame of 750–1100 for the Viking Age.
What does ‘Viking’ mean? The word ‘Viking’ immediately evokes a familiar image: warriors with helmets, shields and axes; traders sailing to England in their longships; or the adventurous settlers fearlessly crossing the sea to Iceland. But ‘Viking’ was an ambiguous description 16
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when used either by the Scandinavians themselves or by others. In France they were called Norsemen or Danes. In England they were all labelled as Danes or heathens. In the East they were referred to as Rus or Varangians, but in Muslim Spain they were called al-madjus (fire-raisers) or Norsemen. No distinction was made between Norwegians, Swedes and Danes such as we have today. Only in Ireland, where the common expression heathens was also used, do we gradually find traces of a differentiation between Norwegian and Danish Vikings. The Norwegians were called Finn Gall and the Danes Dub Gall. Opinions differ about the origin of these terms, but Finn Gall can be interpreted as either ‘the white foreigners’ or ‘the old foreigners’ and Dub Gall as either ‘the dark foreigners’ or ‘the new foreigners’. The expression ‘Viking’ was used at that time, but not as a description of a race of people. The word is found in sources in both E ngland and Scandinavia, but there are several theories about the etymological origin of the word and what it really means, and no source has confirmed where it originated geographically. ‘Viking’ is found in contemporary sources such as runic inscriptions on stones, in skaldic lays, and in European narratives and chronicles. The first time the expression appears in a literary context is probably in the Anglo-Saxon poem, Beowulf, which may date from the middle of the 8th century. The words wigendra/wigend and wigfrecan appear and are both interpreted as ‘warrior’. The word ‘Viking’ as we know it appears for the first time in Anglo-Saxon sources. In The Exeter Book from the 9th century we find a reproduction of a poem, Widsith, which may be from the 6th or 7th century. A part of the poem refers to tribes or groups and chiefs who apparently are Scandinavian.
What were the Vikings called? In what are now Germany and France the Vikings were called nordmanni, nortmanni or askomanni. In England they were described as dani and northman, and in Ireland as gall or lochlannach. In Spain they
Among them are Vikings (line 60) and Sami (line 80). The unknown author of the heroic poem describes a journey through Europe at the time of the tribal migrations in the 5th and 6th centuries: I was with the Wenlas, Waernes and Wicingas I was with the Gefthan, Winedas and Gefflegan I was with the Angles, Swaefe and Aenanas I was with the Saxons, Sycgans and S weordweras.
‘Wicingas’ may be the name of a particular tribe, but it is more likely to be either a professional description, for example ‘sea warrior’, or a description of a place of origin, such as Viken, the land around the inlet of the Oslo Fjord. When the word ‘Viking’ appears in the AngloSaxon Chronicle entry for the year 878 (879) the meaning is more apparent. Here, it is probably an expression for ‘sea pirate’ or ‘plunderer’. We can deduce this because the Scandinavian warriors of the large army which was operating in England at the same time, ‘the Great Heathen Army’, are referred to as Danes. Had all Scandinavian warrior bands been called Vikings at that time, the chronicle would surely also have referred to the warriors in the army as Vikings. Perhaps the best explanation of the meaning of the word comes from Scandinavian sources. The designation ‘Viking’ is found on many rune stones,2 both in a masculine form (vikingr), which is translated as ‘sea-warrior’, and in a feminine form (viking) as a term for a military expedition. The most common use of the term on the rune stones is ‘to go on a Viking expedition’, but the word also appears sometimes as a man’s name, or as part of a name (Tóki Vikingr). It may then refer to his main occupation – Toki the Sea-Warrior.
were called lordemaõ, madjus, al-madjus or al-magus. In Russia and Byzantium they went by the names of yzantium they rus, væring, varæger or varjager. In B were also called skytere.
‘Viking’ may at the same time have meant travelling out to acquire wealth. In this sense, it is almost synonymous with piracy. The saga writers in the Middle Ages used the term to refer to pirates and piracy. In his book, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum from c. 1070, the church historian Adam of Bremen uses the term as a Nordic word for sea-pirate, and this is the meaning which many of the authors of the sagas ascribe to it in the centuries following. It is obviously possible that saga writers who knew of writers such as Adam acquired the word and its definition from him. As the expression was used both in and after the Viking Age as a term for sea pirates, we can suppose that this was a prevalent understanding of the word outside Scandinavia at that time. At any rate, it probably described a military type of event or character. If the rune stones are to be believed, a vikingr was someone who went viking, and that was no peaceful activity, ‘Viking’ is a good description for the people who sailed forth from Scandinavia hunting for booty and glory. To sum up: The term ‘Viking’ seems to have its origin in the centuries before the Viking Age, as a description for a sea warrior or a member of a band of warriors. During the Viking Age itself the term seems to have acquired more negative connotations and to be synonymous more often with ‘pirate and plunderer’, even though the older sense of the word also continued in use. In the late Viking Age and the Middle Ages, the term became totally negative, a synonym for ‘evildoer’. In modern times the expression has lost some of these overtones and become more neutral, with a wider meaning than previously. It refers to both a period of time – the Viking Age – and a group of people – the Vikings. Today the term is used to describe all Nordic residents, traders, settlers or warriors. That is how the term is used in this book. c hap ter 1
This rune stone from Växjö in Sweden introduces us to a Viking named Toki: (T)oki, Toki vikingR, ræsti stæin æftiR Gunnar, sun Grims. Guð hialpi salu hans! (Tóki, Tóki Viking raised this stone in memory of Gunnar, son of Grim. May God help his soul!)
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What does Viking mean to us? The word Viking evokes thoughts of ancient heroes, hazardous expeditions and military glory. For many northern Europeans, it is part of their sense of identity. Why is this? The Viking has become a universal symbol of the Scandinavian peoples, used by football teams, businesses, organisations, the tourist industry and others. When they travel abroad, Scandinavians feel proud to be recognised as descendants of the Vikings. ‘Viking’ has become a global expression which others can use to categorise Scandinavians and their history. During the football World Cup in 1994, a local South American newspaper carried the front page headline: Vikings v. Aztecs 1-0 when reporting Norway’s match against Mexico; a war of civilisations, ancient heroes against ancient heroes. Norway v. Mexico 1-0, sounds fine to a Norwegian but doesn’t sell papers in Ecuador. Modern English, French, Germans, Spaniards, Russians and Americans are major consumers of Viking history. Many are proud of having been associated with the Vikings as their victims or as their descendants. The Vikings are among history’s star celebrities.
On important occasions, the Viking is a symbol of unity and identity. Swedish football fans using the Viking helmet as their cultural symbol.
Why did the Vikings start raiding?
Opposite: Watercolour by Tone Strenger showing a fragment of tapestry from the Viking Age, found on the island of Rolvsøy in Østfold, Norway. 18
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Contact between Scandinavia and the European continent was not new in the Viking Age, but had continued more or less unbroken since the Bronze Age. Many spectacular grave finds from the centuries before the Viking Age contain evidence of this contact. There are many indications that the contact was peaceful, and that its main purposes were trade and the support of dynastic links. So why did this contact change to violence in the 8th century? The Viking attacks coincide with several greater or lesser events and social changes, both in Scandinavia and on the continent. We shall consider the most important of these. At the end of the 8th century, powerful Christian princes such as the French King Charlemagne and King Offa of Mercia in England had brought peace and prosperity to western Europe such as had not been seen since Roman times. Harbours, towns and church establishments stood unprotected along the coasts, and trade between the Christian countries flourished. They did make war with each other from time to time, but the church institutions and their possessions and personnel were mostly shielded from attack by a shared value system. Nobody seems to have feared invaders from the t h e vi k i ngs
sea, for coastal defences had either been demolished or were non-existent in large areas of France and England. The heathen Vikings respected none of the established values, such as regarding churches and monasteries as holy places, observing Sunday as a day of rest, and so on. That is why their raids were considered so shocking. The first Viking attacks were on defenceless churches and trading centres. Here they could find riches to carry away without particularly great risk. They were looking for church goods, luxury items, captives to ransom and slaves to sell. Only later did invasion and settlement become important. One factor which is often quoted as a reason for the Viking expansion at the end of the 8th century is their level of technology, especially in ships and weapons. Marine technology is obviously an important prerequisite for voyages of plunder. The Viking ships were innovative and differed from many European ship types. They carried both oars and sail. They were slender and very flexible, which made them fast. They did not sit low in the water, and so were able to operate in shallow waterways. Tests on a copy of the Oseberg ship show that even when fully laden it had a draught of only 60 cm. Many people suppose that the Vikings were innovative in the development of sail and ship-building
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Large amounts of Arab silver coins found their way to Scandinavia during the Viking Age. The silver may be one reason why the Vikings were interested in penetrating even further into Russia. These are some of the 6,000 or more Arab coins which have been found on Gotland.
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skills. However, sailing ships had been in common use around the continent since Roman times and the rest of Europe was far ahead of Scandinavia in warship technology. But there were some innovations. The introduction of the keel along with the sail as supplement to oars, combined with a gradual development of lighter and more flexible hulls, enabled the Vikings to operate over much greater distances and cross bigger stretches of sea. These developments facilitated the Viking expansion, but they did not initiate it. There has also been an assumption that it was the Vikings’ weapons which made them capable of eventually challenging the armies of the established t h e vi k i ngs
kingdoms in England and France, and that this was why they started their attacks. The question is whether the Vikings really had better and more advanced weapons than their adversaries. We know that iron production increased greatly in Scandinavia in the 8th and 9th centuries, and that tools and equipment became more readily available. Weapon manufacture also increased considerably, and many more people now had access to weapons. Some contemporary Irish sources claim that the Vikings’ military success was due to their overwhelming military technology, and especially their use of chainmail, ‘hard, strong and durable’ swords and ‘well-nailed’ spears. However, the Vikings did not generally have better weapons than their opponents. On the contrary, for example they preferred French sword blades to their own homemade ones, to such an extent that the French kings had to make a law forbidding the sale of weapons to the Scandinavians. Spears and bows were also in common use in Europe. On the other hand, the Vikings used axes as weapons, a practice which seems to have been less common outside Scandinavia, where axes were mainly regarded as a working tool. Nor did the Vikings have better protection. In fact, leather body armour and padded tunics were much more common than chainmail, which was only available to the elite. There are also many descriptions of the Vikings fighting without any form of body armour at all, which must have made them more vulnerable than their enemy. So the Vikings were not better equipped than their opponents; in fact they generally had inferior weapons and equipment. To sum up, we can say that the Vikings’ shipbuilding skills, combined with increased iron and weapons production, were basic requirements for them to be able to undertake their raids, but these factors cannot explain why they started raiding in the first place. There is a common idea that population pressure in Scandinavia in the Viking Age forced parts of the population to emigrate. There were less than a million people in the whole of Scandinavia around the year 800, a slight increase in the population from the centuries before. Archaeology from all over Scandinavia shows
that new farming land was being cultivated and taken into use and old land abandoned throughout the whole of the Viking Age, as everywhere else. This obviously implied that people in marginal areas where new cultivation was impossible, such as around the fjords in the west of Norway, had to move elsewhere or emigrate. However, the population pressure was not enough to bring about a new mass migration. Nor are there indications in Sweden and Denmark of any sudden increase in population as the cause of the first voyages of plunder. Later in the Viking Age we do however see a greater migration from Denmark to occupied regions of England and to Normandy. A comparatively small Swedish elite settled in trading centres along the Russian and Ukrainian rivers. The Islands in the West were colonised by people from western Norway. Some scholars have therefore assumed that there was a surplus of population in that area, which made such emigration possible. This could be true to a certain extent, for there must have been enough people in western Norway for the villages and small settlements not to be abandoned. There is however no evidence of a population explosion which forced people to emigrate. Moreover, the colonisation of the Islands in the West only started many years after the start of the voyages of plunder. The settlements on Iceland and the other Islands in the West and later in England and France were more the result of the Viking raiders becoming aware of easily accessible land in these regions, than of a need to emigrate. There is little evidence that scarcity of resources forced people to leave Scandinavia in the Viking Age. In fact, agriculture in the Viking Age produced surpluses. This freed parts of the population from agricultural labour, giving them time and opportunity to engage in trade and in voyages of plunder. The opportunities for trade were probably among the most important reasons for the Scandi navian expansion, particularly for the Swedish Vikings. But can that explain the plundering? As mentioned, the 8th century was a time of stability and economic growth in western Europe. Demand was growing steadily, both for luxury goods such as amber, furs and walrus ivory, and for everyday goods such as hides, honey and down. Trade with Scandinavia was becoming more and
more important for European countries. The Northern peoples had been trading for centuries. What was new was that the demand for goods was leading them to travel further north and east looking for the raw materials. Enormous wealth and prestige could be won by those who could control the export of raw commodities or – even better – trading centres in and beyond Scandinavia. In the course of the 8th century Swedish traders travelled into what is now Russia and settled along the Russian rivers. Here they demanded tax payments in the form of luxury goods which ended up in the western European markets. Around the same time, traders from the Middle East were travelling up the Dnieper, Volga and Don rivers. As a result of this, large numbers of Arab silver coins found their way to Scandinavia. This silver may be one of the reasons why the Vikings were interested to penetrate even further into Russia and Ukraine and set up, take over or establish themselves in trading centres there. The arrival of Arab silver in Scandinavia coincides with the start of Swedish Viking activity. The numerous trading ships crossing the Baltic were tempting targets for pirates. Piracy was so profitable that it is easy to imagine the trend spreading into the North Sea area, where the trade between France and England had led to the growth of many large trading centres. This increased trade can be part of the explanation for one type of Viking raid: the early inter-Nordic pirate expeditions. The main targets of these were local traders and inhabitants of the settlements along the coasts of Scandinavia, and according to the sagas they were a widespread problem for local chieftains and petty kings throughout the whole Viking Age. But we have to find a different explanation for the major voyages of plunder against monasteries and ecclesiastical centres in western Europe. At the end of the 8th century, political power in Scandinavia began to be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. There are probably many reasons for that. Increased iron production led to more weapons in circulation, and to more warfare. Larger populations required more stable and durable political institutions. Control of the lucrative trading links and trading sites gave the chieftains and kings greater power and more wealth and status. Contact c hap ter 1
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with European culture probably inspired many Nordic leaders to gather more wealth and greater power into their own hands. At the same time, the age-old cult of Odin was in decline and many disillusioned young men needed to find other ways of expressing themselves, just when the elite, who had access to resources in the form of ships and armed men, felt the need to operate in wider arenas. This may be an important cause of the attacks and the wave of plundering against Europe. In Scandinavia it was common for men with a birthright to princely titles to fight for the right to the highest positions. The structure of society was such that there could be very many claimants to thrones at the same time. Powerful men surrounded themselves with many women, and all male issue from these relationships had theoretically equal rights of inheritance to the father’s land. According to old Germanic tradition, the usual arrangement was for a kingdom to be divided and shared among all the sons, but this changed during the Viking Age as it became increasingly important to keep the kingdom together. The challenges were therefore many and bloody, and many men of high rank were forced into exile with their followers, often reappearing as leaders of Viking bands in France and England. At a lower level of society, controls on behaviour were increasing, whether through the collective responsibility of a family for the actions of its members, the system of penalties and punishments set up in parliamentary assembly at the ting, or the concentration of power in the hands of chieftains and kings. This made it difficult for young men to earn themselves honour, renown and the consequent social advancement. Such honour was normally won by undertaking successful raids against neighbours and adjacent regions. As that gradually became more difficult, the hunt for honour may have pushed the Viking voyagers further abroad to find fame and fortune. When royal power in Norway grew stronger and more assertive at the end of the 9th century, many chieftains refused to submit and decided instead to travel to England and Ireland and to the Islands in the West with their entire households. Many heirs to thrones earned themselves wealth and renown in exile prior to travelling back to the homeland to 22
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fight for power. Others tried instead to win kingdoms for themselves abroad. The strengthening of centralised political power in Scandinavia probably led to the increase in attacks on the Continent and on England and Ireland throughout the Viking Age, but this cannot fully explain why they started in the first place. The Frankish king Louis I (Louis the Pious) had three heirs: Lothar, Louis II (Louis the German) and Charles the Bald. The strife that broke out between them over the inheritance has been seen as a possible trigger for the Viking raids. The Danish King Harald Klak, who was driven out of Denmark in 813, was one of Lothar’s vassals. He probably used his remaining power bases, including Vestfold in Norway, to encourage the Vikings from there to attack Lothar’s rivals. However, Lothar and Harald Klak lost control over the Vikings. The great wealth the Vikings brought back to Scandi navia stimulated further attacks. Soon, Viking bands were attacking all parts of France, including Lothar’s part. But this can only explain the escalation in the 9th century. It has also been proposed that the Viking attacks on monasteries and ecclesiastical centres in the earliest part of the Viking Age were a political reaction against the development of Christian states on the continent, which threatened the Scandinavian system of small, non-Christian kingdoms. At the end of the 8th century the Danish kings felt themselves under pressure from the expanding influence of the Christian French. In 782 the Franks forcibly baptised and beheaded 4,500 Saxon men in Verden in modern-day Germany and destroyed religious sanctuaries. News of the massacre and of the French treatment of non-Christians spread throughout the whole of Scandinavia. In the short term, this led to Nordic leaders refusing to enter conflict against the French. In the slightly longer term, however, it may have increased the ill-will against the Christian world and may have been one reason that several of the first Viking raids were directed against high-profile Christian targets in Europe. In 798 the French discussed the possibilities of converting the Danes to Christianity. They had founded a mission station just south of the Danish border, and two years later Charlemagne proposed
an alliance with the kings in England, with the specific intention of an invasion of Denmark and subsequent forced conversion, on the model of what had been done in Saxony. The Danes must obviously have felt this provocative. The question is whether the wave of Viking raids along the coasts of Friesland, France and England at this time were a reaction to this threat, or whether it was the raids that provoked the plan to forcibly convert the Danes. We cannot give a conclusive answer to that question, but one thing is sure: there was no Frankish invasion of Jutland. Instead the Franks consolidated their kingdom throughout the constant waves of Viking plundering. Looking at the sources for the 9th century, there is nothing to indicate that Christian institutions were attacked specifically because they were Christian. In 858 the Vikings came to the monastery at St Germain-des-Prés in France. Most of the monks had fled with all the valuables. The Vikings killed a couple of the monks’ servants and set fire to a building before they left. The monks who were left behind extinguished the fire and set about rebuilding. The fact that the Vikings left monks living indicates that Christianity in itself was not their main target. So it is not possible to show a single cause for the start of the Viking attacks. The Viking raids have to be seen as the result of a variety of factors. There was a slight population surplus in Scandinavia,
freed from work on the land, and technical innovations in shipbuilding combined with increased iron extraction enabled the people of the North to cover greater distances faster. Internal conflicts in Scandinavia forced out parts of the warrior aristo cracy, who then had to find something else to do. At the same time the pressure on Scandinavia from Christian k ingdoms increased. Some chose to meet this pressure with counter-attack. The gradually spreading piracy and the growing trade with Europe revealed that the countries generally lacked coastal defences and that many well-established religious centres were on remote sites, difficult to travel to by land but readily accessible from the sea. This made them tempting targets. But perhaps the most important reason for the start of the attacks was that from the Vikings’ point of view, attacks on such targets were ideologically unproblematic. So the main explanation is cultural. The people of the Northern lands had a different view of the world to the people in Christian Europe. Such raids were a means for the participants to increase their glory and wealth and achieve greater status at home. In the next section we shall look more closely at the precise cultural traits which meant that Scandi navian warriors had no scruples about attacking and plundering defenceless monasteries and trading centres.
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Viking society
The Vikings lived in a stratified agricultural society where membership of a family, bonds of friendship and control of land were the most important determinants of status and rights. A religion largely based on war and a focus on strength and skill in combat set the framework for individual achievement.
T Opposite: A member of the royal guard and an enlisted soldier from c. 1100. The royal guardsman, a professional soldier, is sitting on the horse. The simply equipped foot soldier is a landless farmer conscripted in time of war. The cavalryman is based on a picture from the Baldishol tapestry, early 12th century. The foot soldier carries the three basic weapons – shield, axe and spear – as required by law. 24
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he different social layers within the population were perceived as ordained by the gods. This did not however exclude the possibility of a degree of social mobility. A person could be raised to a higher social level, or could sink to a lower one. At the top of Viking society were the kings, earls and chieftains. In the internal order of rank among these, the kings and earls sat highest and the chieftains were lowest. Chieftains could advance to become earls and even further to become kings if their family relationships allowed. This group were the absolute rulers of society, and they were admired and credited with qualities which others did not have. Those who could claim princely or divine kinship were considered to have a number of inborn qualities. Unusually high intelligence was one such quality. They were also considered to be better qualified to lead religious ceremonies. It was also important for a leader to be generous, to have a capacity for strategic thinking and to be able to show ruthlessness towards his enemies. The prince also needed to be able to show outward qualities such as a strong body and beautiful clothes if he was to be well thought of and considered a worthy t h e vi k i ngs
leader. A good reputation led to popular support. Being of good family was a sort of guarantee that one had a better chance of good luck than ordinary men. ‘Good luck’ here refers to a person’s talent for making the right choices and taking important decisions, what today we might describe as being favoured by fortune. This was seen as decisive in whether one would succeed as a leader. Prosperity in times of peace and victory in war confirmed that the gods were protecting the leader and that his capacity for good luck had stood the test. A leader could however lose his reputation for ‘good luck’ if he misused the talent or had bad luck. If this happened the followers, whether they were an entire state or a warring band of brothers, had no other solution than to choose another leader who could restore the relationship with the gods. In extreme circumstances, such as a famine, the leader himself could be killed as an offering in an attempt to restore the balance. The poem Ynglingatal tells that the Swedes once did this with their king. Generosity was also a central trait of a worthy leader. The princes were obliged to distribute their wealth in gifts and by other means. From a political point of view the most important ‘gift’ was a great
Norway in the Viking Age Around the year 800 there was a more or less homogeneous population with a common language inhabiting the coastal areas from Båhuslen to as far north as Malangen in Troms. The territory was divided into a range of smaller kingdoms, lands, counties and legal districts such as Ringerike (‘Kingdom of Ring’), Oppland (‘The Highlands’), Hedmark (‘The Moorlands’), Trøndelag (‘The Law Area of the Trønder) and so on. These geographical areas comprised several districts with a number of smaller townships which had gathered together under a prince or under a shared legal system. These small kingdoms were often governed by a king. The power of the king could vary greatly between regions. There were probably about twenty petty kings in various parts of the country in the year 800. In Trøndelag things developed slightly differently. Here the kings disappeared around 800 and were replaced by a sort of republic or law-district – an area with shared laws. We know little about the political situation in Norway prior to the Viking Age. One of the written sources is the Greek geographer Ptolemy of Alexandria who around 150 AD mentioned a Germanic race whom he calls the chaldenoi. This is the same group of people who were later known as the people from heiðnir (Hedmark). The writer of the history of the Goths, Jordanes, names a number of Scandinavian tribes in the middle of the 6th century. Some of these have been identified as Norwegian: håløyger, romerikinger, ranrikinger, greener, egder, adelryger, raumer and horder, to name a few. On the other hand we do know the names of the most important kings in Norway during the Viking Age.
feast with food and drink, provided by the prince for his supporters. Gifts such as weapons, gold rings, clothes and sometimes ownership of land were also given. Such gifts obliged the recipient to give the donor political or military support, or preferably both, and thus they forged a bond of friendship. If the prince broke his obligations to provide a feast or gifts, or if he was unable to hold a feast on a large enough scale, the bond of friendship was broken. His supporters were then no longer obliged to maintain their bonds of loyalty to the prince but could support other princely candidates who were 26
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seeking to strengthen their position by giving gifts and feasts. Besides the family bonds, friendship appears to have been the most important social cement in the Viking Age. Under the princes were the independent farmers who were the core of old Norse society. The entire Norse world view has its base in the farm collective. Even the gods were idealised farmers, with extensive lands and numerous cattle and slaves. To be recognised as a farmer with full rights, you probably had to demonstrate at least four generations’ cultivation of the farm. The farmers grew all types of produce, but
corn and cattle were especially important. Between ploughing and harvest times, farmers who had the means and opportunity could themselves organise voyages of plunder and/or trade. In the late Viking Age and the Middle Ages, the farmers made up the main part of the military mobilisations. The farmers were divided into various ranks. The hauld had the highest status, sometimes surpassing that of a chieftain. The most powerful hauld in Norway around the year 1000, Erling Skjalgsson, even challenged the king in power. To be considered a hauld, your family must have been on a farm for six generations or more. Haulds and other big farmers could administer enormous assets. These could be rented out to tenant farmers, who owned no land of their own and who stood lower on the social scale, or they could entrust management to their own slaves. However, most farmers owned less land, which they worked themselves with help from slaves and family members. The farmers were responsible for protecting those who lived on the farm. Moreover, they were important participants and supporters of the chiefs in parliamentary assemblies at the tings, and it was from the ranks of the farmers that young men were recruited into the chiefs’ armed followers. Lowest in rank were the slaves. The Vikings captured a significant number of people whom they sold as slaves, both at home and abroad. There was a very long tradition of slave ownership in Scandinavia, and by the Viking Age it was a well-developed institution of great importance to the community. Most of the small farmers did not have slaves to work their land. A medium-sized farm might have up to three slaves, and bigger farms could have many more. The slaves were a supplement to the work force and could free parts of the population for other pursuits, such as warfare and trade. Not without reason, the slave trade was one of the most important and lucrative lines of business for many Vikings. Somewhere between 20 and 30 per cent of the population of Scandinavia in the Viking Age were slaves, varying slightly in different places and times. This was a significant proportion, and to hold them in check, society developed a system of very harsh punishments for rebellion. Slaves could be granted their freedom. Freed
slaves formed a class between freemen and slaves, with strictly defined rights and strong obligations towards whoever had granted them freedom. Many farms made use of freed slaves and their descendants, and of landless peasants without political rights. Slaves and freed slaves could in extreme circumstances be armed to take part in the protection of their owner’s or liberator’s home and possessions. There are examples of a man winning his freedom by distinguished service in the defence of his master, for courage and loyalty were highly valued by the Vikings.
Scandinavia in the Viking Age Norway, Sweden and Denmark were the Viking heartlands, but their geologies and climates presented different challenges to the inhabitants. Norway, with its long coastline, looked west towards the North Sea and north towards the Arctic, whereas the people of Sweden looked east across the Baltic. Denmark directed its attention south and west. c hap ter 1
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Sweden in the Viking Age Around 500 AD the Gothic historian Jordanes wrote that the area which comprises modern-day Sweden was inhabited by many different tribes. At around the same time another historian, Procopius, recorded that Sweden consisted of 13 tribes, each with its king. The Scandinavian sources also tell of many kings in Sweden during the tribal migrations and the early Viking Age. The Yngling sagas at the start of Snorre’s historical account of the Norse kings, relates that a king called Ingjald killed six minor kings in Uppland and created a single kingdom for himself there – probably some time before the start of the Viking Age. The many petty kingdoms were gradually reduced to two or three larger entities, and in the Viking Age Sweden consisted of two ‘peoples’, the Svea and a Gothic tribe known as the Geats. These two peoples were physically separated from each other by the big Lake Vättern and the Kolmården and Tiveden forests, which formed a natural boundary. The Svea lived along Sweden’s east coast and in the region around the Mälaren Fjord. Their political and religious centre was Old Uppsala (‘The High Halls’) in Uppland. According to Adam of Bremen, the temple there contained magnificent idols of the Norse gods. In the 9th century the lands of Södermanland, Blekinge and Möre together with the islands of Öland and Gotland also belonged to the Svea. Estland (modern Estonia), on the other side of the Baltic, was probably also under the influence of the Svea at that time. The Geats dwelt on the large plains of southern Sweden. Götaland was divided into two large regions, East Götland and West Götland. The peoples of Svealand and Götland were very different. They had different ways of measuring land, crops and money, and royal power was differently organised. An example of how separate the regions were is that the first route through the forests dividing them was established at the end of the 12th century. At that time it took a month to travel the land route from the trading town of Birka in the north to Skåne in the south. The route went through the principal town of Skara in West Götland, through East Götland and Södertälje. In winter, considerable time could be saved by crossing the frozen lakes. However, the journey could be made by boat along the coast in five days, from which we must assume that this was the usual way to travel between the regions.
Norway has a very extensive coastline stretching 2,532 kilometres, excluding the fjords. A large mountain range follows the coast from Lindesnes to North Cape, dividing south-eastern Norway from western Norway. There were only a few places where the mountains could be crossed in summer. The centres of population lay mainly along the coast, and the most important means of communication between them was by boat. Long coastal fjords penetrate into the land. Most of the fertile land is concentrated in Østland in the south-east, round Lake Mjøsa and along the internal valleys Østerdal and Gudbrandsdal up towards T rondheim, but 28
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there is a thin strip of fertile land along the coast and the fjords. Because of the Gulf Stream coming in from the Atlantic Ocean, the west coast and the fjords mostly remain ice-free, meaning that travel along the coast is possible all year round. At the start of the Viking Age, areas of human settlement in Sweden were few but large.5 In the Viking Age, modern-day Sweden was mostly covered by dense, impenetrable forests. These separated the centres of population in Uppland, around Uppsala, from the Götalands in the south with their power centres on either side of Lake Vättern. North of Uppland, dense forest and huge bogs formed
The religious and political capital of Svealand was Uppsala in Uppland. Carl Johan Billmark’s 1858 lithograph of the centre of worship at Uppsala shows the old church from the Middle Ages and the ancient mounds.
an almost impenetrable barrier against the more sparsely populated areas in Jämtland, Medelpad and Hälsingland. Trade and communication here was also mainly by ship, both along the coast and up the big rivers. The situation in Denmark was quite different.6 Here there was a more homogeneous society, politically and geographically consisting of the Jutland Peninsula, the islands of Fyn and Sjæland and the southern areas of modern-day Sweden: Skåne, Halland and Blekinge. Most of Denmark is relatively flat, and the soil is well suited to growing corn and raising livestock. Denmark could therefore sustain a relatively large population, which gave the political elite much bigger access to resources than the elites in Norway and Sweden. A centralised kingdom therefore developed much earlier here. Unlike the rest of Denmark, the southern part of Jutland was unpopulated, and for much of the Viking Age the woods and bogs formed an effective barrier against the Saxons and the Slavs to the south.
Royal power in Scandinavia At the start of the Viking Age the whole of Scandinavia was a patchwork of numerous small kingdoms (such as Ringerike, Raumarike) and lands (Hordaland, Götaland), ruled by minor kings
and chieftains who quarrelled and warred among themselves but who also forged alliances and entered into federations. Increasing concentration of power gradually enabled stronger kingdoms to absorb smaller ones in a steady process of nation-building. Royal power did not develop uniformly throughout Scandinavia, because the geographical and political situations varied considerably. The Kingdom of Denmark developed early, and the Danes’ geographical and economic advantages led to them dominating Scandinavia for much of the period. Danish control of some of the more northerly regions did not usually amount to more than the recognition of the Danish kings as overlords. They seldom intervened directly in the administration of the territories beyond what was then defined as Denmark. Even after Canute the Great’s North Sea Empire collapsed, the Danes continued to play a leading role in Norway and Sweden. At the end of the Viking Age, around 1100 AD, the Danish population was around half a million people, whereas in Norway there had only been between 100,000 and 150,000 around the year 800, and about 200,000 in the year 1000. Sweden had a population of about 400,000 in the year 1000. These figures include both men and women, free and slave. The oldest territorial divisions in Scandinavia are obscure. In Sweden they begin to become clear c hap ter 1
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Denmark in the Viking Age The Danish kings had several advantages. They ruled a large population, and the country was relatively easy to protect and administer. However, the most important reason for the kings’ power was control of the shipping channel to the Baltic. The kings could dominate and often control trade between the Baltic region and western Europe. This trade increased significantly at the beginning of the 9th century, when furs and other sought-after goods were exported from all around the Baltic. From time to time the Danes also controlled Viken, which consisted of the regions on both sides of the Oslo Fjord, from Agder, Vestfold and the Oslo area in Norway, southwards in modern-day Sweden to the mouth of the River Göta where the city of Gothenburg now stands. To the south, the River Eider formed a natural border between the kingdoms on the continent and those on the Danish peninsula. The great forests in Schleswig and Holstein also made an effective barrier towards the south. The only safe overland connecting route was along a road stretching from the Elbe north through the whole of Jutland. This route came to be known as ‘The Army Route’, which indicates its strategic significance. The kings of Jutland and of Denmark could quickly bring forces south if an enemy approached. To the east, the forests and marshes in what is today Småland separated the Danish territory of Skåne from the people of Götaland. Denmark in Viking times was divided into districts called ‘hundreds’, which had their origins as a way of organising defence forces. In 720, when the first ‘unification’ of Denmark is reckoned to have taken place, the country consisted of about 200 hundreds. In addition to mounted knights and supporting footsoldiers, the hundreds could also provide a ship on demand, manned by 40–50 men. With the support of such a system, a king could muster a large and effective force if danger threatened or if he wanted to undertake major building works.
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from the 13th century onwards, when the most important descriptions found are ‘land’, ‘hundred’ and ‘parish’. The term ‘land’ occurred when smaller settlements grew together or were put together under a shared legal system or for shared religious practices. The ‘lands’ mostly developed into bigger political units consisting of areas under the same government, and after the introduction of Christianity they were the basis used by the church to form b ishops’ dioceses.
Life in a militarised society In a ‘militarised society’, there is no distinction between the civic and the military, between civilians and soldiers.7 The supreme leader was also the military leader, and all free men had the right to carry weapons. To die in battle was a natural end for an armed man. All levels of society were involved in this. Women took an active part in the maintenance of this social order. They instigated conflicts, urging men to undertake revenge and raids and to re-establish lost honour. They were important as supporters inciting their men during battles, they scorned and mocked men who abandoned the field, and they looked after the wounded. As official mourners, women also took the lead in remembering the fallen. Wealthy widows and mothers raised rune stones in memory of relatives, or mourned in other ways to keep the memories alive. In extreme situations, women could take up arms in pursuit of revenge and the restoration of family honour. Among other duties, the woman was responsible for bringing up the children, and she was responsible for preparing young men for whatever society required of them. An Arab source gives us a unique insight into how important it was to prepare young boys for what awaited them. In a report from around 922, probably describing an event which took place somewhere in the middle of the 9th century, Ibn Rustah relates that when a boy was born among the landless Vikings in the East, the father stepped forward with a drawn sword, cast it on the ground
in front of the newborn boy and said: ‘I shall not leave you any possessions, all you will have is what you earn for yourself with this your sword’. As the boy would be brought up to depend only on his weapon, it was very important for him to learn to use it from a young age. The child’s father could be away for long periods, or could die young. Therefore it was the mother’s duty to ensure that he had the training he needed. Ibn Rustah made another interesting observation which illustrates how Viking society was permeated by the threat of violence and death. He claims that when Vikings on expeditions needed to go to the toilet they never went alone, but always in a group of four. That was because a man could be in danger of being killed by other Vikings and robbed of his possessions of clothes, weapons and, not least, silver – which they always carried on their person. Tings were the legal assemblies at which the free men of a specific area were required to meet. The system of making and administering the law in tings was common to the whole of Scandinavia and in many of the places where the Vikings settled. At the ting, the farmers, chiefs and kings could debate matters of common concern and cases could be presented. In many cases the dispute could be settled by conciliation and a fine. Questions of war and raiding were also debated, and men recruited. The function of the ting as a council of war was probably important in the Viking Age. The tings were not, however, democratic in our understanding of the word. The chiefs and kings held the power, and in reality they could make whatever decisions they wished, if they had enough supporters. The farmers put their honour and their life at stake if they didn’t support their leaders. Honour was an important condition for the maintenance of peace and order in a society where there was no centralised power. Honour was everything to a Viking. A settlement at the ting was therefore not enough if one man had offended another’s honour. The only solution in such cases was a duel or a blood feud. The least insult or disrespect could set off a blood feud, which could involve all the relatives of the two parties. So in the Viking Age, nobody could feel safe from sudden attack from avengers if matters were not resolved properly. ‘Honour’ is the central c hap ter 1
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Rape There is a popular perception that the Vikings regularly violated and raped women in the areas they plundered. This is not confirmed in the sources, which do not mention anything of this sort. While reports of killing, plundering, burning, abduction into slavery, extortion and robbery abound in the sources, rape is not mentioned. In comparison, St Bertin’s annals, an important source in relation to the Vikings’ activities in France in 830 and 831 cites two cases of rape carried out
The wisdom of Odin Cattle die, Kindred die, We ourselves die just the same; But the good repute Never dies Of one who has earned it. Håvamål, verse 76
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by Christians (in one case against nuns). It has been proposed that this absence in the sources is because such violations on the part of the Vikings were so common and so obvious that they didn’t need to be mentioned. But it is more likely that the Vikings were no worse than others in this respect. Adam of Bremen, who wrote in the 11th century, says among other things that in Scandinavia it was a capital offence to abuse virgins.
theme in the sagas, the skaldic poetry and the rune stone inscriptions. Honour had several forms, but the most important was personal honour. This affected a man’s family, the women and children, the leaders he served, his friends – nearly everyone with whom he had a relationship. Whether personal honour was strong or weak depended on how one adhered to values and concepts such as loyalty, duty and a sense of decency. A warrior had to show loyalty to his family, his comrades and his leader, and he had an obligation to carry out revenge, whether for himself or on their behalf. The consequence of not avenging an offence was loss of honour and consequent shame. The extreme consequence could be total loss of honour. A person who had totally lost honour was no longer part of society. The struggle for honour took place between people of more or less equal social status. It would not be honourable for a chief to compete against a farmer. The object of the power struggle was to overcome others and develop social distinctions. The outcome of this would be for the majorities within the various layers of society to be oppressed for the benefit of an elite. It was especially honourable for Vikings to kill enemies in battle. The Scandinavians have preserved many rune stones and skaldic lays which praise those who have ‘fed the raven’ or ‘fed the eagle’ – in other words killed enemies. A killing outside the conditions of war could also be honourable if it took place in the right circumstances, for example as vengeance for an insult against self, family or friends. In the sagas, murders carried out in the hunt for goods and property are not seen as honourable. t h e vi k i ngs
It is uncertain to what extent this is a Christian concept. Taking life in order to acquire wealth is indeed the essence of what it is to be a Viking raider, but in this there is a distinction between ‘abroad’ and ‘at home’. A Viking who commits murder to enrich himself abroad, that is to say outside his own ting, district, chief ’s territory or family area, would not be sanctioned or suffer loss of honour. On the contrary, it could increase his honour. However, such an action within one’s own area could be seen as dishonourable and would provoke vengeance from the victim’s family or friends. It was also considered dishonourable for men to commit violence against women, and a man committing such an offence could expect reprisals from the woman’s relatives. In the same way as for murder, the abduction of women from abroad could under certain circumstances be honourable. Many Irish women were taken to Iceland, for example, and many such abductions also took place e lsewhere. Killing people was not the only way to earn honour, however. It could also be gained by demonstrating courage in battle or in single combat, or by taking part in raids which yielded wealth in the form of slaves, cash or portable goods of high value. It was also honourable to show loyalty towards one’s leaders, to keep one’s word to one’s leader and brothers-in-arms, and not to flee the field of battle. There are many rune stones with inscriptions in praise of fallen warriors who did not flee from a more powerful adversary: ‘He did not flee’, ‘He fought as long as he had a weapon’, and so on. A French source gives an eyewitness account which confirms that to flee from a battle was dishonourable. The Viking warriors who returned to the camp after an unsuccessful attack on Paris in 885
Women’s honour A man’s loss of honour affected his wife. Women had personal honour too. Even though their actions were reflected (either negatively or positively) in the honour of male relatives, in contrast to women in many other societies they did have a degree of control over their own honour. In the Viking Age women could for example divorce themselves from men who did not respect their honour. In some circumstances they could take over roles which would usually be reserved to close male relatives, such as responsibility for personal assets and making decisions about marriage, and in extreme situations they could even carry out acts of revenge to restore family honour.
The men’s honour reflected on their women. Women were therefore important motivators in conflicts. Silver ornament with female figure from 10th-century Köping on Öland.
were scorned by their womenfolk and ordered back into the fray. A man’s loss of honour carried over to his wife and family. Leaders were under a heavy responsibility to defend their own and their followers’ honour. A leader was particularly expected to lead the attack from the front, and he would be highly respected for not fleeing from an enemy. The Norwegian warrior king Magnus Barefoot (king 1093–1103) is reputed to have said about leadership: ‘One should have kings for honour, and not for long life’. In other words, it was better for a leader to die young and with honour than to live long. Magnus himself died in Ireland, barely 30 years old. The Vikings did often flee from the battlefield without incurring loss of personal honour, but this was nearly always when their leader had been killed, which released them from their bonds of loyalty. In reality there is always a difference between theory
and practice, and we must consider that many fled simply because they wanted to save their lives. However, they risked loss of honour in doing so. The Vikings’ unceasing hunt for honour can be part of the explanation for the explosive wave of raids of plunder in the 9th century. On the home front, one of the problems with the endless struggle for honour was that the growth of one man’s honour always had to be at the expense of another’s, with consequent threat of revenge from the losing party or from his friends and family. The struggle for honour was therefore often very perilous. Honour was a scarce commodity to be shared among the members of society. If some were to have more, others must have less. Therefore, making war outside their own society might offer an easier way for young warriors to gain honour and social advancement.
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The Viking warriors’ religion The theatre and symbolism of war were central to the Vikings’ cosmology. The established order in the world of the gods was the result of a war. So it was important for people in the human world to worship powerful gods.
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Opposite: Odin is traditionally seen as the foremost of the Norse gods. In the mythology, it was he who started the first battle in the world, when he flung his spear, Gungne, against the Vanir. This head, probably representing Odin, was found in Oslo. 34
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he Old Norse texts tell of a war between two families of gods, the Æsir and the Vanir. Neither side managed to defeat the other, and so they came to a settlement and exchanged hostages. Three of the Vanir: Frey, Freya and Njord, fertility gods connected to sexuality, crops and times of peace, went to live with the more militarised Æsir in Åsgard. We shall mainly concentrate on three of the Æsir: Odin, Thor and Tyr, who have the closest connections with warfare. Odin is interpreted as the chief of the Old Norse gods. According to the mythology, it was Odin who started the first war in the world, by throwing his spear, Gungne, at the Vanir. Odin was the gods’ supreme war strategist who lays the plan of battle before the gods’ great final war, Ragnarok. The beliefs and practices of the cult of Odin persisted long into Christian times. When Adam of Bremen wrote about Scandinavia around the year 1070, he was told that the Vikings offered sacrifices to Odin when war was expected. Sacrifices were also made to Odin for victory in expeditions or wars. Archaeological finds and reports both support a theory that human sacrifices were also offered to Odin in such circumstances. Odin had a special place in the ideology of war. t he v i k i ng s
People believed that Odin was invisibly present on the battlefield, and that he decided which fighters should die and which side should win. Before a battle started, the field of battle was dedicated to Odin with the cry, ‘Oðin á yðr alla’ – ‘Odin owns you all’. The outcome was predetermined. The most important thing for a warrior’s posthumous reputation was not necessarily victory or defeat, but how he had acquitted himself at the end.
The realms of the dead There were many different realms of the dead where people could end up when their mortal days were over. In Åsgard there were at least two such realms. In addition to Valhalla, which was where dead warriors went to dwell with Odin, there was another ‘warrior’s heaven’ in Folkvang with Freya. When the Valkyries brought the warriors killed in battle to Odin, Freya had the right to choose half of them for herself. The ones chosen by Freya were generally more modest and less bloodthirsty than the ones who were taken to Valhalla. It is not clear why that was so, but perhaps as they were to serve a woman, they needed to know how to behave.
Were human sacrifices made before a battle? It is certain that the Vikings from time to time sacrificed humans in time of distress and in connection with burial ceremonies. A human was the foremost offering one could give to the gods. But did they also make human sacrifices before battles? The saga author Snorre Sturluson tells of a rumour that Earl Håkon had sacrificed his only son, Erling, to the family’s divine protector, Torgerd Holgebrud, for victory over the Danes in the naval battle at Hjørungavåg in 986. It was usual to offer sacrifices to the Valkyries before important conflicts, but we do not know if this could involve human offerings. It is possible that in extreme situations, people would be willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice to the gods to secure victory in conflict.
Thor’s hammer was especially popular as a decoration in the 11th century and can be seen as an alternative symbol to the Christian cross. This is a fine example from Kabbare in Sweden.
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Scene showing human sacrifice, on a picture stone from Lärbro on the island of Gotland. Pictures showing human sacrifice are also found in the Oseberg ship.
Odin’s and Freya’s realms would be destroyed at Ragnarok, but other realms would survive to accommodate the dead. Those who died at sea, of whom there were plenty, would dwell with Ran the sea goddess, who had a yarn to pull drowned sailors up from the sea. She was married to the sea god Ægir, who was not one of the genuine gods but one of the Jotun giants. He lived not in Åsgard but in Jotunheimen, the home of the Jotun. Ægir’s residence was a holy place, noted for its food, drink and feasting. It was good to dwell with Ægir and Ran. When people who had been drowned reappeared as ghosts, it was a good sign which showed that they had been well received by Ran. Another place the dead might end up was Brime, the Jotuns’ feasting hall in Utgard, where good drink was plentiful. Snorre writes that in Gimle, ‘Good and righteous people live for ever’, and among the dwarves, in Sindre the metal-smith’s hall built of red gold, ‘good and cultured people live’. On Nåstranda, on the other hand, there was a big and undesirable room with its door facing north. The whole room was built of serpents braided together, like a house t h e vi k i ngs
made from willow, and all the serpents’ heads turn into the house and blow venom, so that the room was running with rivers of venom. Outlawed murderers and people who had broken oaths waded in the venom, but the worst place of all was the room known as Kvergjelme, where the serpent Nidhogg sucked the bodies of the walking dead. Under the earth there was a death-realm known as Hel or Helheimen, ruled by Hel, daughter of Loki and Angerboda and sister to the wolf Fenrir and the Midgard serpent. The Edda poem Vegtamskvadet tells that Odin travelled down to Hel and found a hall adorned ready to receive the god Balder, with benches decked with coats of mail and cushions decorated with gold. Nearly every farm had one or more grave mounds. The Vikings believed that many of those who had been laid in the mounds chose to live on inside the mound and continued to be part of the life of the farm, following what was happening outside the mound and protecting the farm and its people. In a ship burial, the living could also try to make the dead stay on in the mound by securing the
Ragnarok – the end of the gods Ragnarok was Old Norse society’s concept of the end of the world, the fall of the controlling superhuman powers. Both the Gods and the Jotun would perish in the final battle. First, all the powers of chaos break loose: the wolf Fenrir breaks his chains; Naglfare the ship built of dead men’s nails snaps its anchor chain; Loki breaks out from his prison to lead an army of Jotun. The dead Viking warriors dwelling in Valhalla have been training for this. They are drawn into the action, and the great battle begins. Odin faces Fenrir, Thor fights the Midgard Serpent, Heimdal fights against Loki and Frey against Surt the fire giant. All is in vain; the world perishes. But after all this darkness, life rises up again in a new world. The myth of Ragnarok was central to the Vikings’ religion of war. Despite the inevitable end, Odin’s dead warriors defied fear and fought the opposing army to the last man. This ideal was mirrored in real life when warriors threw themselves into real battles without thought of their own safety. The Vikings’ apparently unconcerned attitude to their own lives contributed to their reputation as fearless fighters.
Ragnarok and the last days were a favourite motif on picture stones. This stone from Alskog on Gotland shows a warrior arriving in Valhalla on Odin’s horse and being met by a Valkyrie, with others arriving by ship.
ship with an anchor, as in the Oseberg boat burial. The concept of an ancestral mountain, however, is only known in Iceland. Torolv Mosterskjegg and his family believed that they would be accommodated in Helgafjell, ‘The Holy Mountain’, when they died. To go into such a fellowship with dead forefathers was a good death for Icelandic farmers and chieftains. Because Helgafjell was situated so near the farm, it was at the same time a fellowship with the surviving family members on the farm.
The Norse gods The Norse gods required people to worship them, but that had nothing to do with adoration, gratitude, or approval. The gods demanded only a recognition that they existed as an unchanging, fixed part of everything. If you wanted to avoid disaster, you had
to sacrifice and come to terms with the gods. And for a warrior, some gods were more important than others. Odin, king of the Norse gods, lived in Valhalla. The Vikings believed that many who fell in battle were selected to go to live with Odin.8 An afterlife in Valhalla, however, was not an easy retirement as a reward for having been a good warrior. This is apparent from the poem Eiriksmål, a memorial poem for Eirik Bloodaxe. Bragi the god of rhetoric and poetry, asks Odin, ‘Why did you not give the victory to Eirik, because you consider him so courageous?’ Odin replies, ‘One can never know – the grey wolf (Fenrir) is staring malevolently at the home of the gods.’ Odin’s choice was based on self-interest. He needed the best fighters to help in the final battle against the forces of chaos. It didn’t mean anything to the gods that Eirik’s conduct had been exemplary and that he had lived up to everything expected of a leader. c hap ter 1
People swore by Tyr when agreeing peace talks and contracts. This 7th-century helmet plate from Sweden probably represents Tyr.
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A spectacular ceremony When an important person died, he or she might be buried under a mound in a magnificent ship with a large supply of goods. The ship would carry the deceased to the kingdom of the dead, with every thing needed for the voyage. The picture is a reconstruction of the burial ceremony for the Oseberg ship burial. The burial ceremony was an elaborate, prolonged and theatrical performance. After the ship had been set in a specially dug hollow, a burial chamber was erected behind the mast. Then a half mound was built over the northern part of the ship, covering the roof of the burial chamber and the whole of the aft part of the ship. The stem and the foredeck were then used as the stage for a spectacular burial ceremony. The burial chamber was prepared, and the deceased laid in it. The south gable of the burial chamber was then sealed, and the foredeck became a stage for rituals including the slaughter of numerous different animals. Fifteen horses, four dogs and one ox were sacrificed, and the decks of the ship ran with their blood. Then the equipment was crushed with boulders and the ship covered over with earth until only the mast protruded above the mound.
This picture shows how the illustrator Anders Kvåle Rue and the historian Kim Hjardar have imagined the queen being buried in the ship in Oseberg in 843. 38
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The raven in Norse mythology The raven is an important creature in Norse mythology. Odin had two ravens called Hugin and Munin (Thought and Memory), who flew around in the world and brought news back to their master. One of Odin’s many names was ‘The Raven God’. Like their master, the ravens were closely associated with war. Odin had many of the fallen warriors brought to him in Valhalla, and the ravens were well known to like carrion. Ravens were among the forms adopted by the Valkyries when they attended battles to select fallen warriors. They feature in nearly all the skaldic poems about war; to wage war was ‘to feed and gladden the ravens’. Either despite or possibly because of their associations with death, ravens were held in high regard in the Viking Age. Many names included the word for raven – Ravn, Ravnkjell, Ravnhild and others.
This stylised raven was on one of the coins minted for King Olav Gudrødsson of York in 939.
This Valkyrie with horse and spear is on one of the pillars in Urnes stave church, an indication that many of the Viking Age concepts survived into Christian times.
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Whereas some deities require people to behave in accordance to certain norms which determine rewards and punishments in the next life, Odin (or any other Norse god) had little interest in how people behave. His own needs determined how he used his powers, and he gathered to himself the people he had need of. This reflects a society with a view of humanity which had little grounding in compassion and charity, such as we in the modern West are accustomed to. In selecting warriors to come to him in Valhalla, Odin had the help of the Valkyries. These were female spirits associated with death. Their name means ‘the choosers of the slain’, and the Valkyries seem to have been terrifying demons of carnage. Among their duties was observing warriors in battles which Odin was not present at, so that they could choose who would fall. The belief that the outcome of the battle lay beyond one’s control may have given the Vikings a psychological advantage over an enemy with a different view of life and death. Another of Odin’s attributes was his spear, Gungne. For the Vikings, the spear was a symbol of enlightenment and of power justly applied, and therefore a symbol of a ruler. The spear also represented age and death. A cultural expression of this is that a warrior would ritually be slashed or scarred with a spear. The warrior who has been scarred by a spear has understood that death will t h e vi k i ngs
come irrespective, and that therefore he can go fearlessly into battle. The cult of Odin was largely about overcoming one’s own fear of death. One of Odin’s many names, Yggr (‘Fear’), supports this interpretation. Many warriors carried scars made by spear points specifically to mark their status as warriors. The spear was also a very important symbol of war. In the struggle between the clans of gods, it was Odin who started the battle by throwing his spear over the Vanir. This was an important symbol for the Vikings. When they threw a spear onto the field to signal the start of a battle, they were at the same time dedicating the battlefield to Odin. Odin had in his entourage several animals with warlike connections: the wolves Freke and Gere, whose names signify bloodthirstiness, and the ravens Hugin and Munin, whose names mean ‘Thought’ and ‘Memory’. In the skaldic poems, the ravens are referred to as ‘The eagles of the battlefield’, because they gorge on corpses. The ravens are said to know the outcome beforehand and to follow the best fighters because they know that will guarantee them food. Odin also had an eight-legged horse, Sleipner, who knows the road to the kingdom of the dead and carries the dead warriors there. Odin was also the god of ecstasy. You could be said to be possessed by Odin if you were drunk, enraged, insane, madly in love or in the heat of battle. Under such ‘possession’, people could perform
extraordinary tasks, such as killing or heroic deeds. The berserkers were associated with Odin, because they appeared to be possessed by him when in battle and took no heed of pain, cold or heat. Odin is the same as Voden, Wotan or Wodin, the old German divinity of war fervour. Odin had as many as two hundred different names, of which several are connected to war. Among others he was called Valfader (‘Foster father to all who fall’); Seiersfader (‘Father of victory’) and Bolverk (‘Perpetrator of violence’). Many people have been betrayed by Odin. As the Odin cult died out in Scandinavia, many of his followers turned to Christianity. Christ was seen as one of Odin’s many disguises, and the hierarchic structure in Christendom fitted well with what Odin’s followers were used to.
The god of thunder Thor, who constantly fought with the Jotun and had extraordinary strength and courage, was also seen as a war god. Thor was a Germanic god of strength and the god of thunder and lightning, as the Greek Zeus and the Roman Jupiter had been in ancient times. Thor’s hallmark, the hammer, was popular in the late Viking Period as an amulet, worn by warriors and others, including women – perhaps as a contrast to the Christian cross? Thor had many human characteristics and was preferred by many as a more concrete and personal divinity, whereas a god such as Odin was seen as fickle and capricious. Maybe that was why Thor became popular among the Viking warriors. They could identify more easily with him than with Odin. Nor was Thor just a pure war god; he also had some features of a fertility god. He provided rain and was the watchman of the cosmos. Thor created life, whereas Odin took it away. Thor also had his fanatical followers, and the Thor cult was a rival to the Odin cult. One of the reasons for the disappearance of the Odin cult may be the enormous growth of the Thor cult at the beginning of the 9th century. In Uppåkra outside Lund in modern-day Sweden there are archaeological traces of this conflict. The great temple in Uppåkra was dedicated to Odin, but is thought to have been destroyed and burnt by the followers of Thor in the 9th century.
The god of oaths and war Tyr, like Thor, is a very ancient deity, and they have many features in common. The Germanic tribes whom the Romans came in contact with worshipped Tyr as a god of war, and so the Romans thought that Tyr was a reflection of their own god of war, Mars. Tyr is connected to the administration of law, the parliamentary work of the ting, and the conduct of war. Tyr was originally the leading god in the Germanic pantheon, but in the Viking Age Tyr was but a pale shadow of what he had once been. He had however preserved many of his roles, and he was the god men swore by when peace talks and contracts were being agreed. Tyr had lost one arm to Fenrir the wolf, which probably made him appear more human. Loss of a limb was a mishap which many warriors knew only too well. Like Frey, Tyr had the sword as his characteristic symbol, and he was believed to govern victory in battle. One of the skaldic poems says that one should carve victory runes with the sword and say Tyr’s name twice before going into war or battle. Like Thor and Odin, Tyr also served as a personal god. Many warriors had him as their patron deity and requested his protection before and during battle.
Christianity for w arriors The Old Norse religion did not have a message to be spread evangelically to others. The Norse gods have many features in common with the Greek and Roman gods, who likewise required nothing beyond reverence from the people. Moreover, the Norse religion accepted that one could have several gods, including the Christian God and Christ Jesus. If a god appeared particularly powerful or if there was personal benefit to be obtained, a person could adopt a new god. The same principle also applied to human leaders, who lost their following if they didn’t show themselves to be strong. The Vikings worshipped strength, both in their leaders and their gods. This was such a striking characteristic of the Scandinavians that in the early phase of missionary activity in Scandinavia, c hap ter 1
The spear was symbolic of Odin, and was used to dedicate the field of battle to him. Odin’s spear was called Gungne. This ornamental spear decorated in the Ringerike style is from Valsgärde in Sweden and has been dated to the first half of the 11th century.
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hristianity was presented as a form of religion for C warriors. Christ should stand out as a strong fighter, not unlike the Norse gods. The mission centres in Germany recommended that the missionaries in Scandinavia should focus on these aspects when they met with the Vikings. The details could come later. Christianity represented a new means of power. The political possibilities entailed by conversion to Christianity were alluring to many powerful men and chieftains. French and English princes nearly always required the Viking chieftains and their followers to convert as a condition of being awarded land rights and titles. Several Scandinavian claimants to thrones also used Christianity as a means to challenge existing centres of power, such as when Olav Tryggvason and Olav Haraldsson took power in Norway.
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For other kings, Christianity represented a means of holding onto their power, such as when the Danish Harald Bluetooth allowed himself to be converted under threat of invasion by the Holy Roman Emperor. Even though many warriors were converted for personal and political reasons, their basic view of life remained little changed. The warrior ideology lived on in a Christian context, and the attitude to death continued to focus on whether a person had died honourably. However, by the end of the Viking Age when Christianity had got a foothold and the church institutions were well established, it was difficult to distinguish the Scandinavian warriors’ attitude to death and the afterlife from the attitude of other Europeans.
2. the art of war
Viking troops There were few established military institutions in Scandinavia at the start of the Viking Age, but a number of such organisations gradually developed as society came i ncreasingly under the rule of a single king.
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Opposite: Viking from mid-Norway, 850–890. A well-equipped independent farmer from Trøndelag prepares to travel to the annual weapons inspection. The equipment in the illustration is drawn from several grave finds from mid-Norway. The sheath for the spear is a wooden frame covered with birch bark. He stands in an arched doorway decorated in Jelling style, copied from the doorway which now stands in the big reconstructed Viking hall at Stiklestad. 44
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n this chapter we shall look at the retinue and the levy organisation for conscription of war ships in some detail and consider other types of organisation briefly. First came the reti nue, who developed from warrior bands to become the Scandinavian princes’ most important means of gaining and holding power. The r etinue was the most important political instrument available to great princes. The retinue consisted of a loyal group of men, often elite fighters, whom the princes could deploy in various ways. The retinue was known as the hird, a word which had originally just signified a war band. It arose around the time of the early Viking voyages and came to refer to a more cohesive group of bodyguards. The first bands of Vikings who ravaged Europe consisted of smaller groups of men, possibly just one or two ships’ crews, each of 25–40 men depending on the size of the ship. These groups were led by one or more chieftains. The Latin source documents refer to such a retinue as a comitatus, which means a ‘war band’. The Old Norse sources use several terms to refer to the leader and the followers in such groups, which originally developed from the farm collective, with the independent farmer as leader of the group and the hired men as followers. The term ‘housecarls’, t h e a rt of wa r
which is also used to describe Canute the Great’s bodyguard, derives from this setting. Any free man could in principle assemble a hird if he could provide the retinue with gifts and booty, but this changed gradually until only the mightiest chieftains and kings had the means to maintain such groups. The word hird itself stems from the Anglo-Saxon word hîred, which means a ‘family’ or ‘household’. The followers and the leader literally shared both roof and board, and should be considered more as a family in our understanding of the word than as a looser household. The Germanic leaders had had warriors in their service since ancient times. The relationship between the leader and the warrior was one of mutual support, and the group was like a warrior brotherhood. The leader had to be the most distin guished f ighter in the group, and had to reward the members generously. The rewards could be material, such as gold and silver, clothes and weapons, but could also include hospitality in the form of food, drink, accommodation and protection. In battles, the leader fought for victory and the warriors fought for the leader. The warriors swore an oath to fight for the leader, to hand over booty to the leader and to avenge his death if necessary.
Professional soldiers in Birka Excavations at the Viking Age trading town of Birka, west of Stockholm, in 1934 gave evidence of what must have been a professional section of the army with its own officers, a garrison and standardised military equipment. The soldiers and the officers from time to time lived permanently in the garrison, which was a large hall surrounded by defence works, outside the town itself.
The garrison was Birka’s biggest building, measuring about 19 x 9 metres. They had their own forge and kitchen. They were granted the luxury of fresh meat on the menu all year round. The soldiers’ basic equipment consisted of spear, shield and leather helmet. The officers wore chainmail, sword and full helmet.
As a member of the retinue, the warrior was regarded as part of the leader’s household or exten ded family. Most of the members had already sworn the necessary oath of allegiance as young boys. There are many indications that the men in the prince’s following should preferably be young. Young men without families of their own had less to lose, and so it was mainly they who wanted to volunteer. In the Saga of Olav Haraldsson, the Swedish king receives the following advice from his council as he prepares for war: We have a big enough army, but the people assembled here are great men and chiefs. Young men are not worse in warfare; they want to win wealth and status. Also, when chieftains go into battle it is their custom to have many men going in front as a shield for themselves, but it is often the case that people who have little money fight better than those who have grown up in wealth.
The main candidates for such service were normally young men of good family. Guardsmen could only get permission to leave the service when they had reached the stage in life of starting their own family. When a man retired from the retinue in accordance with the relevant laws, he could assemble his own retinue if he had the means to do so, and become a player in the Vikings’ endless struggles for wealth and honour. The hird in Russia, the druzina, was grounded in the same Scandinavian hird system and worked in much the same way. Here, however, members could retire from the brotherhood without loss of honour when they wanted to, provided the contract with the prince was annulled in accordance with agreed rules. 46
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This system was mainly a Scandinavian pheno menon, but the use of cavalry within the retinue in Denmark suggests an influence from Frankish military ideas. During Viking times the retinues became more professional and developed into the most important power bases of chieftains and kings. They changed from being primarily agents of warfare in the Viking Age, to become a place for the cultural elite in the Middle Ages. A retinue could vary greatly in size, from a small ship’s crew to up to several thousand warriors for the mightiest princes. Olav Haraldsson was said to have had a troop of 100 when he came back to Norway in 1016, Jaroslav had 200 elite fighters in his druzina in Kiev, and Canute the Great is said to have had almost 3,000 housecarls with him. It is not certain that all the warriors in what the sources call a hird were bound to the prince as brothers-in-arms with the same rights. Most belonged to the exten ded troop, often called a lið. One of the reasons why so many Viking chieftains are perceived as biological brothers in the European sources is that they presented themselves as ‘brothers’. In reality many of these groups of ‘brothers’ were members of a warrior brotherhood, rather as the term ‘brother’ is used in some modern biker gangs. The leader’s first duty was to lead his warriors in battle. The ideal was for the leader, if he was young, to be the foremost warrior in the group. He was expected to show great skills and physical prowess in battle. The Roman historian Tacitus (c. 55–c. 120 AD) records that it was humiliating for a Germanic leader not to be the best warrior in the troop, and for his warriors not to be on a level with the leader. The idea that the leaders must be the best occurs in many of the accounts from Viking times. A brotherhood of this type was therefore very competitive.
The leader’s second duty was to show generosity. This aspect of the relationship was almost sacred in Viking times. A prince was expected to give from his wealth to those under him. This liberality was one of the signs of being a prince. We don’t know much about the internal orga nisation of the retinue in Viking times, except that the members, in addition to serving as bodyguards and soldiers, were also the leader’s advisers, and that they themselves passed judgement on internal disputes. However, 12th- and 13th-century sources describe the retinue as divided into three groups of troops, and it is reasonable to suppose that a similar system also applied in Viking times. Towards the end of the 12th century, Svend Aggesson wrote about the Danish Vederlov, the law regulating the management of the retinue, which appears to have been in force since the time of Canute the Great. It is clear from this that there were distinctions of rank inside the troop: The custom was for the warriors to sit at the places at table allocated to them on the basis of either their skill, their length of service or their
family relationship, so that the highest-ranking and senior members could occupy the most prestigious positions. It is evident that nobody could be moved from his place without incur ring derision and loss of honour.
According to this law, rankings within the troop depended on skill, years of service and family relationships. Even though the different levels do not appear to have had distinctive titles, the r etinue did include a number of officers, selected from among the high-ranking members. The senior officer and adviser was the marshal, who was also spokesman for the guard in relation to the leader. The marshal is mentioned in sources from around the year 1000. The standard-bearer was next in rank. He appears in sources as early as the middle of the 9th century, and the position is probably as old as the retinue itself. He carried the leader’s banner in war, an exposed but honourable position. In peace-time he probably served as a councillor. It was important always to be able to recruit new members into the service to replace those lost by death, illness or completion of service, and to
Oaths of loyalty In Viking times it was usual to swear loyalty to a chieftain over the hilt of a sword. The chieftain held the sword over his knees, and the recruit knelt in front of him and touched the sword hilt. The oath he would then recite is described in the Norwegian Hird Law from the 13th century. The oath would include information on who the man was, what family he was from and an account of all the deeds he had performed. This informed the chieftain of what he could expect from the warrior. The warrior would then go on to explain the punishments he would be subjected to if he failed to live up to the prince’s expectations. The oath would end by telling the witnesses that they should have no fear of him failing to fulfil his obligations. In reply, the prince would swear loyalty to his new guardsman and perhaps promise to reward him well for his service. The ceremony might end with the prince giving the new man a gift. Some of the sagas specify the gift as an arm-ring or a gold finger-ring. Such a gift symbolised the pact between them by locking the oath into an endless circle. The prince might also give the guardsman a gift of a sword. This symbolised the mutual pact between them. Sometimes the man would receive rights to land from the prince on taking up service. Whatever gift was given
The gold ring symbolised the pact between the chieftain and his r etainer by locking the oath into an endless circle. Rings from Stavlijordet at Eidsvoll in Norway. nderlined their mutual relationship. All gifts required a gift in u return, and the recipient stood in debt to the giver. The debt was repaid in loyal service.
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The Baldishol Tapestry, c. 1150, shows a Scandinavian cavalryman from shortly after Viking times. The classic round Viking shield has been changed for a drop-shaped shield which came into use in the middle of the 11th century. The original is in the Applied Art Museum in Oslo.
enlarge the troop as the prince’s seniority and status increased. The arrival of a new member would affect the whole group. It could cause some to rise in status and others to fall. So the members had to be able to adapt. It also involved a personal change for the new recruit. Joining a prince’s guard troop must have been a boost to self-esteem. A guardsman was often respected as a leader and a role model in his local community. Right up until the 11th century, a prince’s guard troop was disbanded when the leader died, but throughout the Viking Age the system became more institutionalised and at the beginning of the 11th century there are indications that the retinue was not disbanded when a king died, but was 48
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‘ inherited’ by his successor. Many guardsmen never left the brotherhood, and so in late Viking times the retinue could include men of all ages. This was also the period when the retinue was divided into resident and non-resident members. After completing a period of service, some were allowed to go back to their own farms, or to take over responsibility for one or more of the leader’s farms. These non-resident members of the retinue were called lendmenn (‘landed gentlemen’). In the late Middle Ages they came to be called barons. There were only 20–30 lendmenn in Norway at the end of the Viking Age. There must have been many more in Denmark. The regular, permanent members of the retinue made up the majority of the group.
Below the high-ranking guardsmen were the ‘guests’. They served as the leader’s police force with responsibility for sentry duty, executions, taxgathering and other functions not directly related to protecting the leader. The guest troops were probably instituted in the 10th century in Denmark and the start of the 11th century in Norway and Sweden. They seem to have been called ‘guests’ because nobody wanted to be visited by them. Below the guests were the ‘candle-bearers’, young men of good family who aspired to be guards men and who worked as the prince’s attendants. Lendmenn, guests and candle-bearers were all part of the courts of the more established princes, and probably did not exist in the smaller guard troops in Viking times.
The levy The conscripted fleet of warships (leidang) was probably the mainstay of the military defence of the Scandinavian countries in the second half of Viking times and in the Middle Ages. Independent farmers were required at their own expense to provide ships, crews and weapons for the king’s service if he needed forces to defend the kingdom. This arrangement was originally established for defence, but over time the ships also came to be engaged in offensive campaigns. The various Scandinavian kingdoms were divided into districts which were required to build, maintain, equip, man and provision ships. The surviving conscription laws from the middle of the 13th century required ships, weapons and crews to be inspected every third year at local reviews of the fleet. Ordinances such as these were part of the organisation of the kingdoms that had become established throughout Scandinavia in the second half of Viking times, which is probably when they originated. We don’t know exactly where and when this naval military system first developed, but the independent farmers in Denmark could have already been subject to conscription in King Gudrød’s time, around the year 800. We know that big building projects were undertaken both before and during his time, and that he regularly called out large fleets. We don’t
know whether Gudrød’s conscription was laid down in law, whether it could be used for overseas offensives or whether it was just for defence. Nor do we know how often the Danish kings could call up the independent farmers for such projects. The kings depended on the support of the farmers, and some sources say that major call-ups could only be implemented every fourth year, unless in the event of an external threat or attack. Denmark in the Viking Age was divided into skipen (‘ship-districts’), corresponding to admi nistrative districts or settlements, each of which was required to provide a ship. The ship-districts were divided into harbour-districts, each of which must provide one fully equipped man for the crew. Depending slightly on how you reckon the number of ship-districts, if they each provided one ship the Danish king could, at least in theory, call up a fleet of between 600 and 800 ships, each with 40–42 rowers and a coxswain. So in theory the Danish king could have up to 33,000 men available simultaneously, either for armed duties or for big building projects. However, there is no known case of all the ships being called up at the same time. Written sources from the first half of the 13th century, Skånske Ledingsret and Jyske Lov, describe the organisation of the conscripted Danish fleet in detail. At that time the conscription was on a rotation, so that each ship-district would only be required to provide a ship every fourth year. In the years when they were not required to provide a ship, each harbour-district paid a levy of one silver mark instead. A similar arrangement may also have existed in Viking times. We can however deduce that the system was well organised and that it sometimes involved the whole country, when we consider the enormous building projects which were undertaken from time to time, such as the digging of the canal across the island of Samsø, the building of the defensive ramparts on Jutland and not least the construction of the big round fortresses. In Norway there are many more sources of information about conscription of warships in Viking times. References both in sagas and in legal documents attribute the introduction of the system to King Håkon the Good in the middle of the 10th century. The Icelandic writer c hap ter 2
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When the fleet was mobilised, ships gathered from all around the country. Photograph of replica Viking ships under sail in Roskilde Fjord.
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Storre Snurluson wrote that it would apply to the whole country of Norway ‘from the coast and as high as the salmon travels’. It was probably after Håkon had defeated Eirik Bloodaxe’s sons and their Danish supporters in a battle at Avaldsnes in 954 that he set about reforming the tax system that had been set up by his father, Harald Fairhair. Part of this tax system developed into the system for conscripting warships. The pattern for the levy organisation in Norway may have come from Denmark, but it also had some elements from the Anglo-Saxon levy of freemen, known as the fyrd. Håkon would certainly have known about this, because he was raised in the court of the English King Ethelstan. The fyrd was originally a troop of locally conscripted freemen, t h e a rt of wa r
like the levy organisation in Norway, but in the middle of the 10th century it was divided into two parts, a standing army and a group staying at home. These divisions alternated in active service. Prior to this system of defence being established, defence in Norway and other parts of Scandinavia was organised by adjacent farmsteads coming together to help each other. These groups also had a responsibility to equip warriors in times of strife. In addition, there was a system based on kinship. A group of kinspeople combined to equip and crew a ship. Chieftains and wealthy men commonly built their own ships to resist attacks, and used them independently of the king for their own purposes, such as overseas expeditions or domestic raiding.
The combination of these arrangements enabled a defence to be mounted at relatively short notice. However, such locally controlled defence arrange ments obviously undermined the king’s power, because he did not have control of them. The king therefore had to compete politically with the inde pendent farmers, the chieftains and other great men to win the sole right to mobilise military forces. The levy organisation was originally introduced for the effective defence of the country, but it had the sideeffect, whether intended or not, of monopolising power in the hands of the king. The arrangements for warship conscription in Norway led to the counties being divided into coastal districts, each of which would provide one ship and crew. Each ship had about 40 rowers. In 1277 there were 270 of these coastal districts in Norway, and in the late Middle Ages the kings could mobilise almost 11,000 independent farmers in addition to their own professional forces. In Viking times, the number of coastal districts was not much smaller, but the political relationships were different. The kings of Norway did not control as much of the country and so did not have access to as many men, but even though the army available in the 10th century was less than half the size of the force available in the late Middle Ages, the number of fighting men was still significant. In the middle of the 10th century the dominant political forces around the North Sea were the kingdoms of Håkon the Good in western Norway and Harald Bluetooth in Denmark, who were com peting for overall power in Scandinavia. This gave Håkon a motive for establishing the fleet. His royal power was not strong enough for him to be able to impose such an obligation on the free farmers without their active consent, but the arrangement also served their interests. The king needed a means to curb the Danish king, and the farmers needed it to protect themselves from coastal raiders. Having started in western Norway, the system of warship conscription gradually spread round the whole country. Originally, the king could not use the fleet for overseas campaigns or just for any purpose. His objectives had to be in the farmers’ interests too. However, as royal power increased the king eventually acquired the right to call out the fleet at his own discretion, though restrictions
persisted for a long time on how long the fleet could be kept on stand-by for routine coastal defence. In the event of enemy threat, there was no limit on how long the fleet could be kept on active service. It was however not good to call out the fleet at sowing time and harvest time, as that could reduce food production and lead to famine. Later in Viking times the fleet came to be used overseas also. Harald Hardråde took the conscripted fleet on his expeditions both to Denmark and to England. This implies that the political power of the free farmers at that time was much weakened in relation to the increasing power of the king. There are records of laws from the end of Viking times about who was required to serve in the fleet. As there was close contact between the countries many of these laws probably applied throughout Scandinavia, but it is in the Norwegian material that we find most detail. Crews should be made up in the first instance of unmarried men, but if there were not enough of these, free farmers who had labourers to work for them could also be called up. If even that was not enough, recruitment could be extended to small farmers who didn’t have other people working for them. Only one out of three of these small farmers could be enlisted, while the other two worked his land in his absence. In extreme situations, two out of three could be called up, with the third left to work all three farms. It
From Samsø, which lies where the Lillebelt and Storebelt channels meet, it is easy to monitor ships sailing along the established routes and to intercept enemy ships quickly. This was probably also where the fleet assembled when Denmark was under threat. c hap ter 2
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was important not to neglect the farm work, as that could lead to a greater catastrophe than an enemy attack. The farmers who were responsible for providing a ship could either buy a used ship or contract to have one built. They were also required to provide a boat-house for the ship. A warrior crewman had to be equipped with either a broad-axe or a sword, together with spear and shield. For every second thwart in the ship there had to be one longbow and 24 arrows. All these requirements were laid down by the ting, and there were specified fines for those who didn’t comply. From Sweden, there are no surviving records of the regulations for warship conscription in Götaland. The arrangements in Svealand had much in common with those in both Denmark and Norway, but differed from the Danish in having a more developed coastguard organisation. An armed fleet was established which in summer could guard the home shores against surprise attacks and raids. Svealand in the Middle Ages was divided into six regions of different size. Five of these regions lay inland and were divided into hundreds. The sixth region, Roden, which included the whole of the Baltic coast of Svealand, was divided into ship-districts. Each hundred or ship-district was required to provide 100 men and four ships. As the five inland regions together comprised 96 hun dreds, they could in theory supply 384 ships. Roden comprised 18 ship-districts and could provide 72 ships. In Sweden the ships were somewhat smaller than in Norway and Denmark, and the usual ship’s complement was 24 rowers and a helmsman. Altogether, Svealand in the Middle Ages could mobilise 10,000 men. It seems unlikely that so many were ever called into service at any one time, and here too there was probably a rotation or a sys tem of exemption for large parts of the population. Svealand in the Middle Ages was geographically pretty much the same as in Viking times. Warship conscription developed in Scandinavia in a period when the king had to struggle to win the right to mobilise military forces. Prior to that, the usual system had been for chieftains and powerful men or groups of farmers to make local arrangements to counter an attacker.
Homeland defence The homeland defence system was basically the same as Stone Age people had used when they felt threatened, or as Germanic tribes had used when an enemy approached. The men assembled to face the intruders, while women, children and the elderly fled to the woods, mountains or hill forts. In the Viking Age some places certainly had a more organised system. In those parts of Scandinavia which were already divided into townships, shipdistricts, hundreds and the like, we can assume that people were more generally aware of what to do, where to assemble and how to behave in the face of enemy threat. Mobilisation for homeland defence differed from mobilisation of the fleet, in that it did not require to be ordered by central authority but had its own simple, local mechanism whereby people gathered when an enemy threatened. Since the Stone Age, the hill forts throughout Scandinavia had played a central role in the protec tion of local communities, providing safe refuges where the local population could gather. Many of them were still in use in the Viking Age. Before the levy organisation was established, family members or members of neighbouring farms came together to provide ships for defence. These alliances could also be proactive in setting up a félag9 for purposes of trade and plunder. In the Middle Ages, Denmark had a coastg uard system which must surely have been in use in the Viking Age too. A coastguard watched over a stretch of coast looking out for ships, and was also responsible for lighting a signal beacon. Chains of beacons situated on prominent heights within sight of each other were lit successively to transmit a warning over long distances. This system was in use throughout Scandinavia right up to the Napoleonic Wars in the 19th century. This use of large bonfires as a warning system is documented in sources from the Middle Ages from the whole of the North Sea and Baltic Sea areas, but there are fewer references to it in Viking times. Only in Norway can the setting up of such a warning system be attributed to a particular time, namely Håkon the Good’s establishment of warship conscription in the middle of the 10th century. In c hap ter 2
Opposite: A west Norwegian Viking from around 830. A wellequipped freeman peasant or farmer stands guard by a beacon. He is armed with a French spear in addition to weapons of more Scandinavian origin, namely a classic bearded axe, a single-edged sword with a simple hilt and a flat, round shield.
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Denmark the beacon system was probably based on arrangements which had existed along the European coast since Roman times. A similar system probably grew up in the Viking Age in Sweden, and particularly in Roden, but there are no sources to confirm this. In Denmark the coastguard was responsible for lighting the beacons. The signal fires were set up on prominent heights, including grave mounds. Norway with its many high mountain tops was particularly well suited to such a warning system. King Håkon’s beacon chains were first estab lished in Vestland, but the Earls of Lade may have extended it northward through Hålogaland in the last third of the 10th century. When the system was in place and well established, it took seven days to send a warning from Lindesnes in the south to Hålogaland in the north. However, the system was not popular at first. The farmers did not like being obliged to do guard duty. Sometimes the beacons were lit in a false alarm, when nervous watchmen lit them by mistake in response to the approach of a cargo ship. So strict penalties and large fines were established for the unnecessary lighting of a beacon. One result of this was that on several occasions, warnings were not sent when an enemy really was approaching. Later, it was decided that the beacon chain should not be lit for fewer than five ships. It was costly to mobilise a defence, and one had to be quite sure that it really was necessary. Similar rules probably applied along the Swedish coast and other places where this type of warning system was in use. The system was eventually a success, and was gradually implemented throughout the country. Coastguard duty at the beacon was a heavy responsibility, which could not be entrusted to just anybody. Only free farmers and their sons could do beacon duty. Slaves and other bonded labourers were not considered sufficiently reliable, and they could not be held responsible if the beacons were lit too early or lit when they should not have been. A large beacon, which could be seen over long distances, was made up of medium thick, dry stakes up to five metres long. These were built up in the shape of a cone, with a space in the middle to help the fire to draw. The beacon was lit from the inside, where the wood was always dry. It was important 54
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for it to catch fire quickly, and for the flames to be high enough to be visible from a long distance. The conical shape met these requirements. Many beacons stood on a stone foundation, or a ring of big stones which the stakes rested against. The beacons were normally staffed by two men working a 24-hour shift, from mid-day to mid-day, though sometimes a beacon was staffed by the same watch until the danger was past. There were small watch-huts nearby, where the men could seek shelter from the weather. Many of the beacons were not manned continually, but had a watch set when there was warning of an enemy army approaching. News of this sort was often sent by means of a baton. This was a short wooden stick (or later a rod of iron) used to send messages or to assemble people from the townships. This method was used in an organised relay system since the Viking times, and is also mentioned in relation to Håkon the Good’s defence reform around the year 950. The original batons were inscribed with marks and runes to convey the message, but some later ones were constructed with a cleft to carry written messages, or in the form of a hollow cylinder which could contain the message. They went from farm to farm to call people to a ting, a military gathering or some other assembly. A baton in the shape of a sword or an axe called people to a ting, and one in the shape of a cross called them to church in Christian times. An arrow shape bore news of military mobilisation and was called a ‘war-arrow’. A war-arrow could be set on its way by whoever first detected an enemy, but it was usually the king or his representative who initiated it. Then the beacons would be manned and the fleet assembled. A war-arrow was burnt at one end and had a piece of rope at the other. This was to remind the recipients that there were severe penalties – burning down of the farm and hanging – for failing to pass the baton on or to mobilise. The baton relay system was used mostly in country districts in Norway, but also in other parts of Scandinavia, especially Sweden. The system remained in use right up to the 18th and 19th centuries, when it was replaced by other means of sending messages such as round letters, official proclamations and public announcements from pulpits and churches.
Trial by combat and holm-going Before duels became forbidden in the 11th century, men who felt that their honour had been offended or who felt insulted in other ways could settle their grievances by prescribed forms of duelling. In Viking times there were two types of duel: einvigi (‘trial by combat’), where the rules were looser and the combatants fought to the death; and holmgang (‘holm-going’), where there were strict rules and the outcome for the loser was not necessarily death. A casual remark, slander and gossip or a word of abuse could lead to a challenge to a duel. It was socially unacceptable not to follow up a verbal insult with weapons if necessary. The duel often took place in the open air, at a busy crossroads or other well-frequented place. It could not take place in secret, and everybody should know who had won. If the originator of the insult failed to respond to the challenge to fight he was considered an unmanly, false and unreliable coward. The punish ment for that was to be outlawed, which meant that anybody could take his life without having to pay a fine. If the offended party declined to fight, the penalty was less severe, but he had lost the trust of society and could no longer speak at the ting or swear an oath. If it came to a duel and the originator of the insult won, the insult was deemed to have been justified. If the offended party won, the insult was deemed unjustified and was withdrawn. In most cases, if not all, the loser was also liable to pay economic compensation to the winner. Such a system meant that many people were an easy target for men who were good at fighting, and there are many stories of men who earned themselves enormous wealth by travelling round and challenging others to duels. Having the law on your side counted for little if you couldn’t defend your honour with weapons. Trial by combat, or ‘single combat’, was a type of duel where nobody else could intervene and which continued until one of the combatants died. Holm-going was a different type of single com bat, which was so regulated that it was also used for training purposes. In holm-going, where the fighters took it in turn to strike, warriors learned
to hold their ground and not to retreat in the face of a violent attack. Originally, such contests were fought on small islands (holms), but the same conditions could be achieved anywhere, provided the fight took place within a defined boundary. This probably applied to trial by combat also. The Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1200) tells that weapon training partners each stood within a square with sides one alen (about 60 cm) long and that whoever stepped outside his square had lost. In this way, warriors could learn to fight on small areas of ground, which would be useful in military formation on the battle-ground. In holm-going, each fighter was permitted two changes of shield, which allowed for up to three shields in all. He also had the right to call for rest periods. This gave holm-going the character more of a sporting contest than of a fight of life and death. Introductory comments in Kormak’s Saga say that it is more difficult to fight in holm-going than in trial by combat. Holm-going, with its special rules, was more suited to experienced warriors, who were better able to stay within the rules of the contest. The writers of the sagas clearly saw holm-going as a more honourable form of duel than trial by combat. To lift the opponent’s shield from the ground or to strike the shield-boss signalled acceptance of a challenge to duel. Before they could begin, the contestants had to go through a series of rituals, which imparted a religious element to the contest. In Kormak’s Saga a hide is laid down inside an area of 3 x 3 metres square. Specified rituals including a special sacrifice had to be performed in connection with the fastening of the phallus-shaped wooden pegs used to fasten down the hide. This was probably a form of exorcism to ensure against the ground having been bewitched to one party’s advantage. Both Kormak’s Saga and Egil’s Saga give detailed accounts of the rules and preparations for duels. Kormak’s Saga gives us the most detailed description of the rules of duelling: The holm-going laws required the hide to be five alen (three metres) between the ends and the corner loops; therein should be set wooden stakes with heads on the other end; these are called tjasner. The man making the preparations c hap ter 2
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In Viking times there were two types of duel: trial by combat, where the rules were looser and the combatants fought to the death; and holm-going, where strict rules had to be obeyed and the outcome for the loser was not necessarily death.
should walk to the tjasner so that he can see the sky between his legs and hold the ends of his ears while he recites the formula which is used later with the sacrifice which is called tjasner sacrifice. Beyond the hide, three strips the breadth of a foot shall be marked in the ground. Beyond the strips there shall be four poles, and these are called hazels; now it is ready, this is a marked-off combat area. Each man shall have three shields, and when they have been cut to pieces he shall go onto the hide, even if he has come beyond it previously; from now on he shall protect himself only with his weapons. The one who has been provoked shall strike first. If either man is wounded so that blood falls onto the hide, he is not obliged to fight on. If a man puts one foot beyond the hazels he may turn back in again, but if he oversteps the boundary with two feet he is deemed to have fled. For each of the combatants, another man shall hold the shield. The one who is most wounded shall pay the fee, three silver marks.
As this citation shows, there were strict rules about when the fight should be stopped: when one of the 56
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combatants was wounded or when one of them stepped beyond the prescribed area. in Egil’s Saga the combat area is not marked out by a hide but by a ring of stones. This can possibly be interpreted as an indication that the author of this report or the duellers themselves are in a Christianised society where heathen traditions concerning the combat era are no longer part of the rituals of duelling. The rules for holm-going were applied in con nection with a conflict which had been brought to the ting but which could not be resolved without a duel. The loser had to pay the winner three silver marks. This was a lot of money, equivalent to about the cost of ten cows. The winner was entitled to a fee from the loser. In many cases the law further required that he who summoned another to fight should, if he won, get what he had sued for, but that if he lost he had to pay the same amount for his life. If the challenger was killed, the winner inherited all his possessions. However, if the party who had been challenged was killed, the winner would just get what he had sued for, with the rest of the deceased loser’s estate going to his heirs. To complicate the rules further,
if the loser was a foreigner the king would inherit the residue. The law which required the loser to buy his freedom from the duel probably also applied if an unwounded man had left the field. Egil’s Saga gives us a slightly simpler formulation of the law: It was the holm-going law that any man could call another to a duel without being refused, and that the winner was entitled to all the loser’s possessions. Such a law encouraged aggressive exploitation by men who were skilled at arms. In these cases the outcome was certain death. The tone of this legislation is rougher, and it is less influenced by a central law-maker such as a king. It may have its origin in an older holm-going law. Even though all the accounts and descriptions we have were written in sources from the 13th century, they are relatively consistent. We also know that trial by combat was an ancient Germanic
way of resolving conflicts and that there was a religious aspect to this form of contest. There were complicated rituals, and the outcome of the contest was considered to be in the hands of the gods. Tacitus the Roman historian wrote that the Germanic tribes used trial by combat to predict the outcome of a war. A prisoner from the opposing tribe was given back his own weapons and required to fight against someone from the tribe who had captured him. A victory for one or the other was interpreted as a prediction of the outcome of the war, and so a battle could sometimes be avoided. Victory was decided according to who had won the individual combat. We know that such contests between warriors from opposing sides also took place in Viking times, often preliminary to a battle, and there are accounts of this being used to decide overall victory. Also, as we have noted, the religious aspect of duelling was still significant in the Viking Age.
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Viking military techniques A warrior had to be physically fit and skilful in the use of his weapons, but how he died was just as important as how he performed in battle. Only through victory and an honourable death could a warrior aspire to be remembered.
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Opposite: These two magnificent swords from Norway indicate high status. The sword symbolised power and was the weapon most sought after. The one on the left is from Steinsvik in Nordland and the other one was found on the old royal estate in Åsnes in Hedmark. 58
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he Vikings’ rules for how to behave in combat differed considerably from the European norms of warfare. Par ticipants in European conflicts had a shared, Christian system of values. They knew what rules applied when they were at war with each other, what tactics were accepted as honourable and what were not. These rules had to be followed for the glory of victory not to be tarnished. The Vikings were not part of Christian Europe, and were not bound by these rules. Instead, they could use them to their advantage. For example, many actions which the Europeans regarded as dishonourable were considered especially worthy by the Vikings. This is illustrated by an account of a raid carried out in Italy around 860, by a chief called Hallstein and his partner Bjørn Ironside. A later historian, Dudo, relates the story: When the Vikings failed to invade the town, they came up with a plan. Everyone would pretend their chief was dying. A message was sent to the leaders of the town that he was lying at death’s door and that his last wish was to convert to Christianity and be buried in sanctified ground. The Christians never missed t h e a rt of wa r
a chance to convert heathens, not even now. The town gate was opened and the churchmen processed with pomp and splendour out of the town to fulfil the Viking’s last wish. The Vikings stormed in through the open gate to plunder and burn the town.
Several accounts of this type, whether accurate or not, illustrate that the Vikings and the Europeans had different views of warfare. This chapter looks more closely at which tactics and strategies the Vikings made use of in war.
Discipline and weapon training For men to assert themselves as warriors, weapon training had to start at an early age. However, ‘sports’ in old Norse times also encompassed intel lectual and spiritual activities. In a poetic verse which is attributed to King Harald Hardråde, he tells that he has mastered several sports. Among these are composing poetry, riding, swimming, ski ing, shooting, rowing and playing the harp. Chess, carving runes, smithy work and book learning were also considered branches of sport in the Viking Age and the Middle Ages. The sources don’t say
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anything about the extent to which women took part in the sports. Life as a warrior required physical fitness and good weaponry skills. These were developed from childhood onwards, irrespective of social rank. Training began at the age of five or six years, and by the age of 10 a boy was expected to be able to take part in athletic competitions alongside adults. By the age of 12 he was expected to be a fully developed athlete. Children and young people played sports to harden the body and prepare themselves for the challenges of adult life, while the adults took part in sport for fun and to maintain their fitness and martial skills. The Heidarviga Saga tells us: ‘It was the custom among the Varangians and the Northmen to practise games by day and to come together for wrestling’. The Icelander Egil Skallagrimson (c. 910–c. 990) is said to have killed his first sports opponent at the age of seven. Men of all ages practised martial arts in Viking times, and the outcome could be hard. However, outcomes such as recorded in Egil’s Saga were exceptional, because a Viking warrior also had to learn self-control. Although the sports could appear brutal to outsiders, they were performed according to strict rules and with great respect for the opponent’s life and limbs. Deliberately trying to injure an opponent during a martial arts contest was considered to be a violation, and not a worthy way to behave. The main purpose of the sports was to develop, by relatively safe means, the skills which would be needed in real combat. So it was important that men should not wound each other and render themselves unfit for military duty. It was not only the warriors who had to master the military arts. A king or a chieftain was expected to surpass his men in such martial sports, and to display his strength in peaceful contest with others. The Edda poem Rigstula describes the origins of the different classes of society and names the weapon exercises forming part of the upbringing of an earl. The earls were of highest rank, second only to the king, but the poem gives quite a good insight into what a Viking warrior ought to master: There in the hall The earl grew up, Swung his shield,
Set strings on his bows, Hafted arrows, Threw javelin And French spear; Rode horses, Worked dogs, Learned to swim, And drew his sword. rigstula, verse 35
Training with the various types of weapons and methods of combat could take place at home under the supervision of more experienced warriors, or could take the form of a game between people of similar age. In Scandinavia there were many sports fields (leikvoller), where the local communities could gather for different activities. Such places were especially common in the south-eastern districts of Norway. It appears that every local community there had its own sports field. This is shown by many surviving place-names such as Leikvoll, Leikvin or Løken. The sports fields were usually situated right in the middle of the townships, but some were located at the boundary between two districts, which may be evidence of sports competitions between the communities. The sports fields gave young men the opportu nity to meet and show off their skills to each other, and also gave chieftains and men of substance a place to recruit crews for their ships and warriors for their retinues. It was important to get men who could distinguish themselves in battle. Sports such as running, throwing, weight-lifting, ball games, wrestling, archery and games of armed combat took place on the sports fields. Rigstula goes on to say that men trained with defensive weapons (shields), shooting weapons (bows and arrows), throwing weapons (javelins), distance weapons (spears) and close-combat weapons such as sword and axe. In addition to all this, riding, hunting and swim ming were part of the repertory. Rigstula also tells us that a warrior had to be able to maintain his equip ment, including twisting bowstrings and making arrows. Arrows were consumable goods which had to be continually replaced. We can also assume that sword, spear and axe blades had to be sharpened c hap ter 2
The ideal leader ‘I think it is much more worthy that he who would lead others should stand out in the crowd and be strong and more able with weapons than others, and that he should be easy to recognise when many people are together.’ (magnussønnens saga in snorre sturlasson ’s eimsk ringla) h
Opposite: A king or chieftain was expected to be superior to his men in martial arts and to demonstrate his strength in peaceful or real contest with others. This stately Viking face is from the wagon in the Oseberg burial, c. 834.
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Types of warrior Real fighting skills had to be learned on the battlefield, if one had the guts for that. Not all warriors did. Saxo Grammaticus described the various types of Scandinavian warrior of Viking times. The foremost warrior had the two important qualities of courage and imperturbability. He was brave and had much experience of war. He was not scared to fight with those who stood in his way, but had little enthusiasm for chasing an enemy who had already been driven to flight. His honour lay in fighting through to victory and holding onto it. The second category was the type who put some effort into his own strength and training but who had no compassion for the enemy. He would use every opportunity to kill and to pursue the enemy. Saxo says that this type of warrior was probably a young man who was doing everything possible to start his career with a promising war record. He lacked the experienced warrior’s talent for judging when it was time to fight, and when time to hold back to secure the victory. Warriors like this often lost their lives in careless actions. The third type of warrior was trapped by fear and shame, daring neither to risk death by going forward nor to risk loss of honour by turning back. Saxo describes many of these as ‘shining with empty greatness’. They were often members of princely families with goods and wealth to be protected at home; peacocks displaying smart
Real fighting skills had to be learned on the battlefield, if one had the guts for that. Various warriors as portrayed on a tapestry found in the Oseberg ship.
weapons and elegant clothes and swaggering with empty oaths and promises. The only reason they are included among the warriors is that they were to be seen in the front rows. Finally there was the fourth type, who went to war just for the sake of appearance and were always found in the rear ranks, the first to flee and the last to fight. All these types could be found in Viking times, but the last was certainly the most common in Saxo’s time, around 1200, when the conscripted free farmers comprised most of the men in an army.
and polished and that chainmail, shields and other equipment often needed repair. This practical aspect of the Viking warrior’s work was very important, because on a voyage or in the field of war a man had to rely first on himself and his own weapons. Effective weapon training required an instructor, and several sources tell that combat training was led by experienced warriors with extensive practical skills. The training included techniques of both attack and defence. It is said that the warriors in the retinue of the legendary king Harald Hildetann (early 9th century) entertained themselves by hack ing at each other’s eyebrows. Whoever blinked or showed fear was immediately cast out of the retinue and banished from the royal court. We do not know if this really took place, but what the account illustrates is that the readiness and courage of the warriors could be maintained only by realistic and dangerous weapon training. Another mythological account about the pre paration of young men for warrior life is the story 62
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of life in Valhalla with Odin. Here, dead warriors fought and cut each other down in training games every day. At noon, they stood up again and rode home. This was their daily training routine in anticipation of the great final war between the Gods and the Jotun. All the fallen warriors In Odin’s household Kill each other every day, Fall in battle, Ride home afresh And sit together as friends vavtrudnesmål, strofe 41
Life in the home of the gods is presented as a mirror image of real life, with a need for daily weapon practice and physical training. Although rank was important, it probably didn’t matter which social class a training partner came
from, provided he was a freeman. There were usually several training sessions in the course of the day. The first one, in the morning, was to be done on an empty stomach. When fighting ended the warriors ate together, which strengthened the bonds of fel lowship. Training was in the form of a game, but it was made as realistic as possible and was often done with sharp weapons and full protective gear. It was important to be familiar not only with the weapons but also with the protective armour. The author of a later source, Kongespeilet, from the 13th century, says that men trained for close-quarter encounters with cutting and stabbing weapons and for longer-range fighting with throwing and shooting weapons. He also points out the importance of taking plenty of fluids during the daily training bouts. A young man was expected to master the use of shield, sword (or axe), spear, sling and bow and arrow. He was also encouraged to learn to use the weapons with either hand. In a war situation, there was a high likelihood of being wounded in a weapon arm. Being able to change weapon arm in the course of a fight made a warrior more dangerous and gave a tactical advantage. Many sports have their origins in warfare. Archery and spear throwing were the most common weaponrelated sports. For spear-throwing practice, a shaft without a point was often used. Such training spears were well suited for practice in catching a spear in the air and throwing it back. In Njåls saga, Gunnar from Lidarende uses this skill in a battle when he throws a spear back so hard that it penetrates right through the opponent’s armour and body and down into the ground. A proficient spear-thrower could throw spears with both hands at the same time. The most famous archer in Norwegian history, Einar Tambarskjelve, could shoot with such power that an arrow without a point went through an outstretched raw ox-hide. These are both idealised characters, but their examples emphasise the importance of weapon skills. Another important skill was wrestling. There were two types: normal wrestling and glima. In normal wrestling the opponents grasped each other round the waist, each with his hands clasped behind his opponent’s back. The aim was to throw the opponent to the ground without using tricks. Glima wrestling developed in Iceland, and is still practised there today. Each opponent grasps the other’s trouser-band
with his right hand, leaving the left hand to be used freely. The aim is to put the opponent off-balance and throw him to the ground. This can be done with several rapid moves, using the legs or hands. It is said that Egil Skallagrimson was already taking part in glima wrestling at the age of seven, and that this was something one learned right from childhood. In a man-to-man fight, it was important to know how to throw an opponent to the ground if it came to hand-to-hand fighting. The sources also describe various balancing exerci ses. This was an important skill for fighting on board ship or on uneven ground. The most popular game was to walk or run on the oars of a ship as it was being rowed. Saxo Grammaticus says that the Norwegian King Harald Gille used to run across the oars from sternpost to bow stem along one side of the ship and back to the sternpost along the other, but the saga king who is most famous for this skill is Olav Tryggvason. Another balance exercise to be mastered was walking on one’s hands. King Magnus, son of St Olav, used to walk on his hands along the great table in Prince Jaroslav’s hall in Russia. Running was also a popular sport. It was impor tant for a warrior to be able to travel quickly over long distances, fully armed. Snorre Sturlason tells that Harald Gille could run as fast as a horse. Jumping was also useful, and is often described in accounts of battles. It was important to be able to jump out of range of an opponent’s weapons. There is mention of long-jump forward and backward, pole-vaulting, high-jump and jumping down from high places. Njåls saga tells that Gunnar from Lidarende could jump higher than his own height in full combat gear, and as far backward as forward. It also claims that Njål’s son Skarphedin jumped about 5.7 metres across a river, with winter clothing, axe and shield.Swimming com petitions could be for swimming farthest or fastest. Men could also compete to swim farthest under water and to dive and hold each other down under water. Odd Munk records that Olav Tryggvason could swim under water wearing chainmail, and even take his chainmail off under water. This was a useful skill for warriors in sea battles or when crossing rivers. Other kinds of sports took place in winter. Skiing and skating were common, and have been practised in Scandinavia for thousands of years. There are stone-carvings of skiers from the Bronze Age. Norse c hap ter 2
Håvamål Up at dawn And out must he Who would rob life and wealth; A sleeping wolf Seldom gets a thigh Or a sleeping man victory. Håvamål , verse 58
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Reconstruction of a tapestry from the Oseberg find. The pictures show a procession with wagons and with warriors on foot and on horseback. Note the warrior with the ritual horns and sword in the top left corner. This is probably a ceremonial helmet, and this figure may represent Odin.
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mythology has a god named Skade who is specially associated with skiing, and the ancient god Ull is reputed to have been both a good archer and an expert skier. Skates were made from the leg-bones of horse or cattle, and pointed staves were probably used to propel oneself forward. Another Viking sport still in existence is snow ball fighting. The Swedish writer Olaus Magnus mentions snowball fighting in his history of the Scandinavian peoples, written in 1555. Although this cannot be considered a source document for the Viking Age, many of the traditions and customs which he describes can be assumed to be much older. Olaus Magnus writes that snowball fighting could be considered a non-damaging way to teach youths to besiege and capture towns. Capturing fortresses was something the Vikings gradually became quite good at. There is a rune stone in Sweden which bears the following inscription: ‘Alrik, Sigrid’s son, raised this stone in memory of his father Spjut. He had been out West and broken and defeated towns. (On his) expedition he mastered all fortresses.’ t h e a rt of wa r
Viking warfare Even if a man trained hard and was skilled at making arrows and twisting bowstrings, respect as a warrior had to be earned on the battlefield. What size of force were the Vikings able to muster for their various warring raids? How many Scandinavians took part in ravages and attacks throughout Europe? These questions are difficult to answer, because there is great uncertainty about the numbers taking part in the various armies and raiding parties. The sources have a strong tendency to exaggerate the numbers. Attempts have been made to count the number of ships mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, for example, but reports of 100, 200 or even more ships have to be interpreted cautiously. The authors may have wanted to exaggerate the threat or to make the story more exciting for their readers. They may also have repeated exaggerated eye-witness accounts. Just a few Vikings could be enough to create an impression in the local
population that a district had been smitten with Vikings, and a small raid could be the basis for an exaggerated description in the written sources. However, we do know from more reliable late Viking Age sources that fleets of around 200 ships did sometimes appear. Sources giving a specific count of 33, 35 or 23 ships appear to be based on observations, and counts in this order of magnitude are probably more reliable. When we come to consider the number of warriors in the various raiding parties or armies, we have no definite numbers to go on. Neither the French annals nor the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle give numbers. Sometimes the number of slain is given, but here too fantasy creeps into the count. When we come to describing various attacks later in this book, we base our estimates on the sources which seem to be most realistic in their description of the numbers of ships. Knowing the size of various types of ships and how many men were required to crew them, we can calculate an approximate number of warriors.
Many factors influence the number of warriors in an operation. Resources of time, ships, food and available personnel vary. A large guard troop or raiding party with a camp following was a sign of strength, but too big a group can lead to loss of strength. Warriors have to be fed, and ships and weapons procured. The availability of resources sets a limit to the numbers. In Heimskringla a household of over 300, including women and children, was considered too big to defend. The number of war riors was seldom more than 100. Only in the royal armies are there musters of significant number. The authors of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle wrote that in addition to the raiding parties the Vikings also arrived in armies. It is important to be clear that the Anglo-Saxons’ concept of an army was quite dif ferent from ours, in terms both of organisation and of numbers. An Anglo-Saxon law of 694 laid down by King Ine (king of Wessex, 688–726) states that ‘When a group consists of more than 36 men, it may be called an army.’ If this definition also applied in Viking times, 150 years later, this implies that c hap ter 2
Is this perhaps a funeral procession? Or a representation of a lost mythical story? It has been suggested that it might show King Harald Hildetann and his warriors on their way to the battle at Bråvalla, a semi-mythological battle between the East Goths and the West Goths, which according to Saxo took place sometime in the 8th century.
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many of the encounters which historians through the ages have called ‘big battles’, may have just been small skirmishes involving a handful of people. The chronicles, however, often use words other than ‘army’ to describe the plundering parties, which were seldom bigger than one or two ships’ crews. The perception and terminology may have changed by the time the chronicle came to be written. To sum up, we can say that the number of people taking part in the different types of campaign in the Viking Age must have varied greatly. Numbers varying from handfuls of men on voyages of plunder to hundreds and thousands of soldiers in armies of invasion were active at the same time, and often in the same area.
Raids of plunder Attacks on France and Ireland increased greatly during the last ten years of the 8th century. England avoided the first big series of attacks. That changed suddenly in the 9th century, however, when for many people in northern Europe, Viking attacks became as regular as the cycle of summer and winter. The first raiding bands consisted of anything from a single ship’s crew of 30–40 men, up to groups of 400. There is no record of larger groups than that. Most of the participants in the early raids were relatively young men. Even though they had good weapon training, these men were not skilled in strategy and tactics. They operated as independent collective groups on the hunt for slaves or booty. Despite the lack of tactical know ledge and the apparently chaotic organisation, the raids gave good returns of wealth and honour. In fact, the lack of formal military training may have contributed to the Vikings’ initial successes. They used unorthodox and unpredictable strategies, especially in combining land and sea operations, which were difficult for more organised forces to contend with. At the start of the Viking Age, many of the bigger kingdoms in England and France had dis mantled their coastal defences. This had reduced their capacity to meet the Viking threat effectively. But even with a well-developed navy and coastal defence system, they would have had great difficulty
adapting to the Vikings’ strategies. While under sail, the Viking ships would normally stay out of sight from the land. When the time came to launch the attack, they would drop the mast and row quickly in towards the coast or up the rivers. Without their sails, the low and narrow Viking ships could be almost invisible until they were very close to the coast. Their shallow keels enabled them to land almost anywhere. The result of all this was that they often took sentries by surprise. It was difficult to organise any effective defence against Vikings arriving in this way. People lived far apart, villages and towns were small, and people would need to be called in from great distances if there were to be any chance of repelling an attack. That took time. To prevent the Vikings from landing in the first place, there would need to be soldiers stationed permanently in forts right along the coast. There were few of these. Fragmented leadership also played a part. Local defence was seldom controlled directly by the king, but was left to the local leaders, who were often ineffective and who lacked the resources necessary to confront the Vikings. The most important element for the Vikings’ success, however, was their basic strategy – outflank the enemy by approaching from the sea, and attack rapidly and forcefully, with yelling, screeching and clashing of weapons to paralyse the enemy with fear. A modern military expression, ‘shock and awe’, is a good description of what the Vikings tried to do in these raids: dominate the target zone with a rapid and overwhelming attack, accompanied with an appearance of great brutality. By these means they tried to paralyse their opponents and destroy their will to fight. As the raiding parties were usually small, it was important to prevent the population from organising a defence. Once the attack had been carried out, it was a matter of taking hold of the booty quickly and getting back to the ships. An attack on a larger monastery or a village often followed a fixed pattern. Prior to the attack, the Vikings reconnoitred the area and identified the target. This knowledge could come from previous raids; from traders or others who had visited the area before; or from a reconnaissance party shortly before the attack. The attack had to happen quickly, so as not to scare away the booty of slaves to sell and high-ranking people to ransom, and to thwart c hap ter 2
Opposite: Archery was an important skill for the Vikings, both for hunting and for war. Archery competitions were also important, and training was often led by experienced instructors.
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attempts to organise a defence. The attack would probably be launched from an overnight camp not far away and would preferably take place early in the morning, before the population had properly started their daily routine. The attack had to happen with sufficient forces and enough strength to immobilise the target. As the Vikings hoped to take prisoners who could be held to ransom or sold on the slave markets, it was important to prevent people from escaping. One group of warriors would try to take control of all potential escape routes, while another group would herd together the people they could find. If there was time, they would now separate the prisoners into different categories. Those who could be sold on the slave markets and those they thought could be held for ransom, were taken away. The others were often set free. An ideal slave was usually a young man or woman. Older men and women, infants, the lame, the sick and mature men (who could be a security risk) were not sought after in the slave markets. People taken for ransom were often priests, shop-keepers, local leaders or members of their families. These had to be kept in the vicinity,
Shallow keels enabled the Viking ships to land almost anywhere. The drawing shows how warriors could be put ashore quickly, out of range of the defenders. 68
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so that ransom transactions could take place. It was not unusual for people to be killed in the course of these raids, but outright executions of people who were unsuitable either for the slave trade or for ransom were not as frequent as the Christian sources would suggest. Why would the Vikings kill the prisoners they had no use for? They presented no military threat, and the Norse code of honour gave no credit for killing unarmed prisoners. Nor was there anything in their religion to promote killing for its own sake. Obviously, prisoners did sometimes lose their lives. The Vikings are not the only people who have committed atrocities when fired up for battle and under the effects of alcohol. It happens in all types of conflict. In several sources there are indications that the Vikings often went to great lengths to spare the lives of the monks in the monasteries they plundered. Moreover, the descriptions of these raids bear wit ness that many survived. It was often in the writers’ interest to portray the Vikings as bloodthirsty as possible. The attacks were often understood as a punishment from God, a lesson to be promulgated and remembered.
After the Vikings had established control over the area and secured their human prisoners, they would start an organised search for valuables, livestock and other transportable goods. There are reports that they tried to dig up floors and ground in search of buried valuables. When they reckoned they were ready, they set fire to the place and withdrew. There was good reason for the fire. The Vikings believed in all sorts of ghosts and revenants. If you burnt down the buildings you plundered, you could feel confident that spirits would not follow you home to wreak revenge. Fire was considered the best defence against sorcery and dark forces. The whole operation would only take a few hours. The danger to the monastery or village was not over, however. We know from the sources that the same target was often attacked repeatedly over a relatively short period of time. This suggests that the attacks were not centrally coordinated, but were
probably carried out by small, independent groups who did not know where other groups had already raided. In some cases, places were attacked again after only a short time by the same Vikings, who hoped to take the population by surprise after they had taken their valuables out of hiding. The Vikings rarely sailed by night.10 They depen ded on being able to reach land and set up a camp that they could evacuate quickly if they had to. Their preference was to set up camp on an island which would be difficult for an enemy to approach. If they stopped for the night on the mainland, they had to be able to strike camp quickly if necessary. Findings of tents and equipment, in the Oseberg and Gokstad ship-burials and elsewhere, show evidence of a highly developed capacity for mobility. The Vikings often met tough opposition on their raids. When that happened, they would often react by scattering in all directions instead of c hap ter 2
While under sail, the Viking ships would normally stay out of sight from the land. When the time came to launch the attack, they would drop the mast and row quickly in towards the coast or up the rivers. Without their sails, the low and narrow Viking ships could be almost invisible until they were right in at the coast. ‘Sea stallion from Glendalough’ with the white cliffs of Dover in the background.
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fighting. This made it difficult for an enemy to concentrate his forces, but dangerous for him to split his forces and leave men vulnerable in isolated pursuit of individuals. The Vikings’ deployment of troops differed from the methods of the English and French, who usually advanced in large forma tions that provided some mutual protection for each individual. The Vikings’ main aim, on the other hand, was often to demonstrate personal courage and strength. An enemy who chose to let his soldiers engage the Vikings man to man risked defeat. So the Vikings often escaped by using the tactic of dispersal, retiring in smaller groups and in different directions, forcing the enemy either to split up or to withdraw. The Vikings would then reassemble at a previously decided location when the peril was past, and sail away.
Assembling armies In this book, the term ‘army’ refers to a group of more than 300–400 warriors, as distinct from the smaller bands of raiders. A Viking army was nearly always assembled from smaller units, known as lið, which we shall call ‘companies’, each with its own leadership. A company consisted of a chieftain, his personal reti nue and a group of support troops, men who were dependent on the chieftain’s protection and united by their loyalty to him. The size of a company could be anything from an average ship’s crew of 30–40 men, up to several hundred men. We must suppose that many of these were landless freemen who made their permanent living as warriors. Many such groups remained in the same areas for years, not even returning home in winter. When several companies came together and agreed to appoint an overall leader, often a member of one of the many princely families in Scandinavia, the grouping became an army in our present under standing of the word. The leaders of the various companies constituted an extended war council, while a little group of three or four of the most prominent of them, led by a charismatic leader, provided the central, operative leadership. If a leader wished, he and his men could leave the army when they saw no further benefit to being 70
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part of it. Correspondingly, new companies could join an existing army. ‘The Great Heathen Army’, as the first Viking invasion army in England from the 860s onwards was called, was probably an army of this type. This army was able to continue the struggles against the English kingdoms for over 40 years because it was constantly being reinforced by new companies joining. Throughout the first part of the Viking Age, such an assembly of companies was the most usual type of Viking army. However, by the early 11th century, armies made up in this way probably no longer existed within Scandinavia and were very rare beyond. The organisation of armies changed in the second half of the Viking Age. From being made up of groups of warrior brotherhoods, they became more homogeneous agents of centralised power. This change happened first in Scandinavia, where the dominant kings took power from the minor kings to establish a system of loyal lords and earls. This centralisation of power caused many of the independent chieftains with their companies to leave Scandinavia, either of their own will or under compulsion, to operate abroad. So the old system of armies assembled from companies lasted much longer in Viking-occupied territories outside Scandinavia. In the late Viking Age the kings’ armies were made up of the prince’s personal guard troop and the professional soldiers in the service of the lords, earls and chieftains who were loyal to the king. There could be several different armies operating in the same area, but what they had in common was that to be considered legitimate they had to be led by a king or a member of a king’s family. The army became the king’s personal instrument, and the earls, chieftains and soldiers had no vested interests of their own beyond the interests of the king. The introduction of the system of warship conscription in Scandinavia also made it possible to mobilise large numbers of non-professional warriors for the defence of the territories. In Denmark, where such conscription was also used from early times for offensive operations, a series of big military training camps was built in the 980s. Thousands of warriors were trained there. None of the other Nordic countries had centralised military training centres like these.
Spring viking and autumn viking Enterprising Vikings often divided their raiding and trading seasons into two parts, one in spring and the other in autumn. During the winter they stayed on their own or their leaders’ farms, or in winter quarters if they were abroad. We very rarely hear about Viking raids in winter. To sail over the North Sea in an open boat in winter could be suicidal. The first ‘Viking season’ started as soon as the spring work had been done on the farm, and lasted until the middle of July. After the fields had been harvested, many of the men set out again. The Orkneyinga Saga tells us about Svein Åsleivson in the 12th century, He still followed the old tradition, and has therefore been called ‘The World’s Last Viking’. In winter he stayed on his farm on Gåreksøy (Gairsay) in the Orkney Islands with 80 men. Every spring, after the sowing was over, he set out on expeditions to ravage in the Hebrides and Ireland. He called this ‘Spring viking’. After midsummer he was home again to take part in the harvest. Then he went off again and did not come home ‘until one month of the winter had passed’, i.e. at the end of November. He called this ‘Autumn viking’. We can assume that Svein was maintaining an old Scandinavian tradition, and that a schedule like this was normal for the Viking chieftains.
During the 11th century, raiding for plunder and invasion diminished, at the same time as the kings were strengthening their monopoly on power at home. This led to the loss of many of the traditional sources for recruitment of warriors. Military service for the kings and their allies gradually became the only way one could make a career as a warrior. There was a limit to the number of men who could be taken on for military service. Individual skills and personal courage had to give way to other criteria such as bonds of family and friendship. Boys from respected or powerful families gradually acquired the first right to these positions. The kings became more and more dependent on conscription of free farmers. The conscripted fleet, which had originally been a purely defensive organi sation, gradually came to be used more in offensive operations. The army which the Norwegian king
The Vikings went ‘Spring viking’ and ‘Autumn viking’. Scene from a picture stone from Gotland showing a Viking ship under sail.
Harald Hardråde took to England in 1066 consi sted primarily of Harald’s own professional troops which he had called up through his nobles, but he also had a large proportion of warriors called up through warship conscription. These, however, turned out to have little talent for offensive warfare. Despite their obvious weaknesses, non-professional troops such as these continued to make up increas ing proportions within the armies throughout the 11th century. When the Danish king Knut Sveinson prepared for his invasion of England in 1085 (which came to nothing), he depended mainly on troops from warship conscription. By the Middle Ages, the conscripted troops made up nearly the whole army, apart from a small elite of professional soldiers recruited from the nobility and leading families to surround the king. c hap ter 2
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War cries The Vikings and other warriors used war cries for mutual encouragement. Some of these are known to us: ‘Odin owns you all’ – The battle at Fyrisvollene ‘Onward, onward, men of Christ and cross’ – The battle at Stiklestad ‘Onward, onward, freemen’ – The battle at Stiklestad, Tore Hund ‘Fight, fight, servants of the king, hard, hard, the freemen’ – The battle at Stiklestad ‘Out! Out! Out!’ – the Englishmen at Hastings
Armies in action Only in the British Isles were as many as 60 battles recorded from the Viking Age. The Vikings did not always choose to risk all in open battle, they also used other methods. One of the main reasons for the success of the Great Heathen Army in England was its talent for cropping up where least expected. For half of the year, the army could lie in winter quarters, lulling their opponents into a false sense of security, only to break out suddenly with a quick march and attack a strategic target before the enemy could mount a defence. An effective surprise assault could avoid the need for a regular battle. Even though it was honourable to fight, it was also desirable to avoid fighting if the same objective could be achieved by other tactical means, trickery or talks. This avoided gambling everything on one card. If there was one thing that experienced warriors knew, it was that victory or defeat in war is often a matter of chance. If fighting became inevitable, one of the Viking army’s main aims was a quick result. Prolonged stalking, manoeuvring and positioning between armies, such as was common in Antiquity, was unusual among the Vikings. Remaining in one place for a long time carried the risks of famine and disintegration of the army. Instead, the Vikings went in for quick outcomes where they saw a possibility. When they judged themselves to be the underdogs, they would attempt to withdraw from the enemy, preferably to a previously chosen loca tion where supplies had been laid in, to barricade themselves in and wait for the enemy to go away. If it did come to open fighting, one always tried to take out the opponent’s leadership early in the 72
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battle. If you could break through and kill the leaders, the battle could be settled quickly. This happened for example at Stiklestad in 1030, where King Olav fell soon after the start, and the battle was then effectively over. The political positions of all participants were dependent on the leader. Without him, there was no longer anything to fight for or about. The usual position throughout much of the Viking Age was that all bonds of loyalty between the leader and his men were broken immediately if the leader died. The Rus Prince Svjatoslav of Kiev was notorious for his direct attacks on the opposing leadership. He even informed the enemy of his intentions, thereby giving them the opportunity to prepare themselves for such a scenario. This approach often had a demoralising effect on the enemy, but it could be very costly if the enemy decided to fight and concentrated all their resources on resisting such an attack. The leader’s prominent position was the Viking armies’ greatest strength, because the leader inspi red the efforts of others by his own example, but it was also their Achilles’ heel. Therefore the first duty of the personal guard troops was to protect the leader in battle. However, the death of a leader didn’t always automatically mean the end of the struggle. As royal power gradually became institutionalised, the death of the leader no longer signified the automatic release of his followers from their obligations. Harald Hardråde fell early in the battle of Stamford Bridge, but the army continued fighting for a long time and several times came near to winning, even without Harald’s leadership. Harald’s death was not the cause of his army’s ultimate defeat. A victory without Harald, however bitter it might have felt, would have led to one of his sons becoming the participants’ political sponsor. The Vikings’ opponents outside Scandinavia had had such a system for centuries, which may be why they gradually managed to build themselves up to expel the Vikings. The Vikings over-estimated the consequences of killing their opponents’ leaders. They won in the short term, but they didn’t manage to break the kingdoms where loyalty was not to one person but to the institution. In some cases, such as at Fyrisvollene in Sweden in 985, the battle lasted several days because
neither party managed to kill the opposing leaders. Then when one of them fell on the third day, the battle was over. Prolonged struggles such as this were very rare. Usually a battle was over relatively quickly, perhaps after just a few hours. A conclusion was nearly always reached before nightfall. The Vikings did not like fighting at night, because they were afraid that spirits and the forces of the underworld would intervene. If a line under pressure could manage to hold out until the evening, they could often withdraw or regroup without much loss of honour. Defeat or victory did not depend only on managing to kill the opposition’s leader. Killing or wounding enough men would achieve the same result. Modern war theories suggest that an army has been defeated if it has lost 30% of its troops. Such losses make it difficult either to carry out effective offensive manoeuvres or to prevent an enemy from outflanking a defensive position. The reserves and parts of the wings will have to move in to protect the central front, leaving the flanks weakened. Such overwhelming losses will also destroy morale. The aim was not necessarily to kill as many as possible of the opposition. It could often be more profitable to wound an opponent so that he had to be helped off the battlefield by his comrades, thus taking several additional men out of the action. In situations where direct confrontation was undesirable, other tactics could be used, involving more indirect forms of warfare. Vulnerable districts could be attacked and plundered while the enemy army was occupied elsewhere. This tactic was often used as a negotiating card to ensure favourable peace negotiations and preferably a tidy sum of ransom money too. Prince Helge of Kiev achieved this from the Byzantines in 907, as did Svein Tjugeskjegg and Olav Tryggvason in England in the 990s. When the Vikings met an enemy army, their preference was to use stratagem and relatively sop histicated strategy. They often divided their army up shortly before a confrontation. One stratagem was to hide part of their army to make their forces appear weaker than they really were, thereby luring the enemy into making himself vulnerable one way or another. Another was to divide up to carry out a pincer manoeuvre, with one of the groups trying to outflank the enemy and attack the flank or the
The first duty of the personal guard troops was to protect the leader. If someone managed to break through and kill the leaders, the battle could be over quickly.
rear. This presupposed good intelligence about the enemy and knowledge of the terrain and the deployments. When these requirements were met, the result was usually a violent confrontation. The most common outcome, however, was that the confrontation did not lead to a battle, even though the armies were in position and everything was ready. Comparative strength, diplomacy, terrain and weather were all important factors influencing whether a battle would be launched. Usually, the leaders came forward for talks and one party withdrew. It was preferable to use diplo macy and displays of strength rather than avoid risking everything in a battle. The free farmers especially, who were often there against their will, saw little benefit in fighting a battle. Moreover, military defeat could lead to loss of honour and to the leaders losing their political positions, or even their lives. Death was often preferable to loss of honour, but it was possible to withdraw from a battle without losing honour, if one had managed to negotiate favourable terms. Sometimes negotiations did give a strong boost to the leaders’ honour, but winning a battle was always the surest and most prestigious way to gain honour. Most of these confrontations, however, led to little change other than control of a limited area changing hands for a while. The armies could withdraw, lick their wounds and prepare to fight c hap ter 2
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A dense phalanx could have between five and eight rows of men.
another day. Only by managing to kill or capture irreplaceable leaders could more lasting results be achieved. Few battles in the Viking Age can be said to have been really decisive for a region’s future.
Battle formations We don’t know much about what types of formation the Viking armies used in their early battles, but they preferred battle lines to the big, open formations we read about in accounts of the battles the Celts and the Germans waged against the Romans. There are probably several reasons for this. Men who had lived together on board ship knew each other well and would have gained tactical advantage from sticking close together. They adopted the European method of warfare, using tightly formed lines that were difficult to overcome with an unorganised attack. This was part of the collective consciousness of the northern Europeans. The Vikings preferred to fight in relatively tight formations stretched out in a line. The benefits of such a formation included being able to communicate with the man at your side, and the extra protection offered by overlapping shields. A line could be dense or 74
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sparse, depending on how long it had to be and how many men were available. An effective line with overlapping shields required three men every two metres. The depth of the line was usually between five and eight men. Anything less than that was considered too thin. At Stiklestad in 1030, Olav Haraldsson had a line of 400 metres, consisting of 1,500 men in total. Olav’s army was small, and he had to deploy his men thinly. Perhaps he had just two ranks, with one man per metre, some extra troops in front of the leaders and the royal guard and a small reserve for plugging gaps. For a line of that length there should ideally have been 1,200 men just in the front rank. The terms ‘phalanx’ and ‘line’ are often con fused, but one distinction between them is that a battle line can be made up of several phalanges. When an army had several seconds-in-command, as was normal, each of these would be responsible for his own phalanx. Contiguous phalanges would constitute a full battle line, but the phalanges could also be deployed independently. A detached phalanx had both strengths and weaknesses. As it was mobile, it could change position relatively quickly and be used either for attack or defence. As it was small, however, if it came under attack in
A thin phalanx could have as few as two rows of men.
an isolated position it could often be outnumbered and vulnerable. The rank facing the enemy clearly needed shield protection, but there would not be much purpose in equipping the ranks behind them with shields. The main duty of the men in the back ranks was to plug gaps in the front rank when warriors fell or were wounded or needed to be replaced by fresh troops. When a tight formation was attacked, the men in the back ranks could use their spears or wield their long-shafted axes effectively, protected by the shield wall in front. The Byzantine historian Leo Diaconus (‘Leo the Deacon’) described the Viking phalanx or line as a ‘wall’. It had almost the same form as a Greek-Macedonian phalanx, five or more men deep and several hundred men in length, with a close wall of shields in front. When attacking an enemy that was holding firm in position, the most effective method was for the attackers to hold up their shields in front, attacking along the whole length of the battle line. However, it was not usual to attack with a whole line in close formation. It would be difficult to maintain the formation, and the protection of fighting side by side, shoulder to shoulder, would soon be lost. So the Vikings used different types of formation for attack.
One offensive formation was the column. A column could consist of 30 men – six men long and five men deep. This number corresponds to the usual size of a ship’s crew, but it could vary according to the size of the crew. The benefit was that men from the same ship knew each other well, were used to fighting together and were relatively similarly equipped. Bigger crews could provide several columns. A long, deep phalanx was often made up of several such columns drawn up side by side in close formation. An isolated column was protected by walls of shields on all sides, creating a ‘shield fortress’. This made it suitable for defence, but at the same time capable of operating independently. One of the first duties of this type of formation was to protect the leader against direct attack. The Vikings’ own tactics were often used against them, and in internecine Scandinavian conflicts, which were many, one could be sure that the enemy would try to eliminate the leader quickly. In battle, the main duty of the royal guard would be to provide a wall of shields round the leader and the standard-bearer. Harald Hardråde used a variant of this formation at Stamford Bridge, when he curled his flanks back until they met, to create a complete line of protective shields. c hap ter 2
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An isolated column was protected by a wall of shields on all sides. It was suited for both defence and attack.
A shield column was made up by the men in the outer ranks overlapping their shields as a wall round the whole column. The men at the rear would either hang their shields on their backs, or walk backwards when the column moved forward. When a phalanx halted, either on encountering the enemy or in reaction to a missile attack, the front rank would squat down to hold their shields upright on the ground. The second rank would hold their shields above the first, and the inside ranks would cover the top. Such a formation, detached from the phalanx, resembles the Roman testudo, or tortoise forma tion, but was probably much less disciplined and less capable of carrying out offensive operations. However, a column or several columns could relati vely quickly be changed into an offensive formation called a svinefylking or ‘boar’s snout’, able to probe forwards. If we are to believe the sagas, the wedge was the Vikings’ most popular offensive formation. The wedge shape was designed to split the enemy’s phalanx. It probably derived from the late Roman ‘pig’s head’ formation, but the wedge formation is also known from Greek, Scythian and Thracian sources. This attack formation has long traditions 76
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in northern Europe and Scandinavia, and was the principal method of attack used by the German and Frankish tribes. According to Saxo, the legendary King Harald Hildetann learned the formation from Odin himself, when Odin told him how to arrange his army for best possible effect. The army should be divided into three phalanges, drawn up in 20 ranks. The middle phalanx should project further forwards than the other two, and should have 20 men in five ranks. Each of the phalanges should form into a poin ted cone, with two men in the front rank and the number in each succeeding rank increased by one, until the phalanges met. Then each point should be followed by ten ranks of fixed length. Once these three cone-shaped attacking points were drawn up, they should be followed by young men with throwing spears, and behind them fresh ranks of older, experienced warriors who could step in as reinforcements. Behind them there should be sling throwers who could bombard the enemy. Next there should be ranks of mixed troops to be used as reserves, and at the very rear, three phalanges in cone formation as a mirror-image of the front, standing with their backs towards the others.
A tortoise formation was well suited to resist a missile attack.
That is how the chroniclers imagined the pig’s head formation when this description was written in the 13th century, but it would hardly have worked on a real battlefield. Such a formation would have been slow to move and would have been squashed flat against an enemy’s wall of shields. It would have been almost impossible to achieve a break-through. This is probably more a version of the tactical formation of the conscripted troop in the Middle Ages than of the pig’s head phalanx of Viking Times. One of the few sources we have from the tribal migration times was the 5th-century Roman histo rian Vegetius, who records that the Franks attacked in a ‘forward-facing triangle’, with one man at the point. It would have been almost impossible to break through a tight defence in this way. However, another Roman historian, Tacitus, gives a more realistic description of what could be a pig’s head phalanx. He describes it as a tightly gathered formation, equally strong on all sides. Basically this would be an almost square formation. With 400 men, for example, it would be 20 men long and 20 men deep. Such a formation would provide a squareangled wedge for a rapid attack. In movement,
the distance between the men would always be at least double that in stationary formation. During a charge, the flanks would inevitably be held back as they contend with opponents both in front and to the side. This would lead to the attack taking the shape of a wedge. Somebody observing the battle from a distance could easily interpret the wedge as the formal order of battle. It is most likely that the Vikings used just such a form of attack formation, which in later
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Part of a phalanx. A perfect phalanx should include several different types of fighters, with a wall of s hields in front and throwing and shooting weapons at the back.
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A Viking pig’s head phalanx in action: 1. A column prepares to attack. 2. The men at the side hold back while the men in the centre speed up, so that the attacking column forms a point. 3. The point of the column meets the enemy lines and breaks through. 4. The column passes through the enemy lines, splits and attacks the enemy from behind.
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times came to be referred to as a pig’s head phalanx. One of the main advantages of the pig’s head phalanx was that the steady forward movement against a limited part of the enemy’s line often led to a breakthrough, whereupon one could quickly turn round to attack the enemy from the rear. A phalanx like this could be made up of anything from a few hundred to several thousand men. This made the use of motivated and ruthless warriors an effective means of breaking and splitting an opposing formation. This type of formation also had its weaknesses. If the attack was not carried through with sufficient strength and ruthlessness, the wedge could quickly be pushed back on itself and the attack repelled. 78
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So not everybody found this method of attack appropriate. In particular, the conscripted troops, who were not professional warriors, were not well suited to this method. If there were elite troops such as berserkers and wolfskins (see page 97) available, they were put in the front of the phalanx to resist the main weight of an attack, or at the front of the pig’s head when launching an attack. Berserker troops could be a two-edged sword, however; they were difficult to control in a battle and were often little suited to formation warfare. Olav Haraldsson put the berserkers in front of his own phalanx, but instead of holding the line they attacked and thereby contributed to the king’s downfall.
The battle begins A battle could start in several different ways. It could be planned beforehand, allowing time for preparation, or could start spontaneously when two groups just ‘ran into each other’. The Vikings did not march in columns or close formations as the Romans did, but would arrive at the battlefield in loose order, preferably on horseback if horses were available. If the battle was planned or expected, warriors would try to arrive in good time to get organised into defensive or offensive formations. In either case, it was important to find the best possible assembly point. It was preferable to take up position on a relatively confined space, higher than the enemy position and with the flanks protected by natural features of the terrain. The ideal battlefield was therefore a relatively open and broad expanse, with a slight slope down from the army’s position. It was even better if there was a small obstacle at the bottom of the slope – such as a stream, a ditch or a bog – which the enemy would have to cross. If the flanks of your position were also protected by a river, a thicket of trees, a steep hillside, a ravine or a bog which would make an outflanking movement difficult or impossible, the position was ideal if the army had to defend against a superior force. On the other hand, if an army really wanted a confrontation it was important not to choose a position so good that the enemy would refuse to attack it. A good position on optimal terrain was of course no guarantee against defeat. Olav Haraldsson found such a position, perfect in all respects, at Stiklestad in 1030, but lost just the same. There are many examples of an army in an impregnable position exposing itself to provoke an attack and a decisive battle. At Maldon in 990 the English had such a position but still allowed the Vikings to get the upper hand, just to provoke a fight. Unfortunately, the English gave way a little too much, and the Vikings won. Once a site had been chosen for the battle, there followed a long period of preparation. Battle lines were set up, leaders coordinated strategy, and diplomatic discussions continued between the armies. Warriors had to be fed so that they had energy to fight, equipment had to be checked and weapons sharpened.
The warriors on each side provoked the enemy with shouts of abuse. In the hours leading up to the battle, it was not unusual for duels to be fought between warriors from each army, watched eagerly by both sides. Then the leaders addressed their men to exhort and inspire them, and religious rituals were performed to strengthen morale. Small detachments might be sent out to go into hiding with the intention of attacking the enemy in the flanks, or to secure strategic positions such as high points, buildings, bridges and fords which could be important in the later stages of the battle. The battle line had to be arranged either with the intention of launching an attack, or of standing firm to resist an attack. Each warrior had to know his position, and which banner he was fighting under. Each army had an array of banners belonging to different companies, leaders or divisions. The warrior also had to know who he was fighting alongside, so that he could find his way quickly back into his position in the phalanx in the event of a sally or a withdrawal. Once the battle was under way, it was more or less impossible for the leaders to give orders. So everybody had to know his own role. Discipline was often decisive in determining out come. Olav Haraldsson lost the battle of Stiklestad because the undisciplined troops in the front rank attacked when they should have stood fast. Nearly all battles were preceded by talks with the enemy. As a rule, the opponent was invited to surrender in return for favourable terms, or terms of surrender were discussed. The parties would discuss the battle positions and agree rules of engagement and other matters. If all the diplomatic discussions came to an end and neither side was prepared to surrender, the battle could begin. In other circumstances it was not useful to hold talks beforehand. Before the battle of Stamford Bridge, Harold Godwinsson went to talk with his brother Tostig, who was fighting for Harald Hardråde. When Harald Hardråde later learned about this, he was furious. Had he known before hand, he would have taken the opportunity to kill Harold Godwinsson. Before the lines clash, all the combatants would have been stricken with ner vousness. They would have mumbled protective incantations and prayers, checked their weapons one last time, checked that their neighbours were c hap ter 2
The war begins. Odin threw his spear over the enemy; That was the start of war among mortals; The wall around the home of the gods was broken And warlike spirits trampled the meadows.
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as focused as they were. Then there would be loud blasts from horns and lures, voices would be raised to the height of excitement, the warriors would beat their shields to show that they accepted the enemy’s challenge, and they hurled war cries, pent-up yells of anger and curses at the enemy. A deafening uproar would rise from the ranks. Then the order would be given either to charge or to shoot. In the first phase of the battle, missiles of various sorts were shot or thrown: slings and arrows, javelins and stones. In a heathen army this would be initiated by throwing a spear, Odin’s weapon, out over the enemy army as a sign that the dead who were about to populate the battlefield would belong to Odin. In Christian times, the spear was often replaced by an arrow shot from a bow. Then all who had such weapons threw and shot whatever they could at the enemy. It takes discipline and will-power to stand firm against a missile attack, and there are many examples of a successful bombardment forcing an enemy to draw back. When a warrior’s comrades started to fall around him, drawing back would be a quick and natural reaction. The leaders were also exposed in this phase of the battle. Even though sling, arrow and javelin were never be as effective as sword, axe and spear, there are many instances of important leaders being killed by a random arrow. Håkon the Good, Harald Bluetooth, Harald Hardråde and Harold Godwinsson were all killed in this way. The Vikings had great respect for these types of weapon, and saw nothing unmanly or less honou rable in using them, as some of their continental opponents did. Indeed, some Viking leaders prefer red to use the bow and arrow as their main weapon. At the battle of Svolder in 1000 Olav Tryggvason paused from shooting arrows only long enough to throw a spear, and Harald Hardråde made great use of his bow at the battle of Nisså in 1062. How long a man could continue to shoot depen ded on the number of arrows and missiles available. Each man usually had between 24 and 30 arrows, and could potentially double this number by pick ing up the enemy’s arrows and shooting them back. This phase of the battle could last anything from a few minutes up to an hour. In the meantime every 80
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man, whether highly excited or stricken with fear, had to hold his position. If he needed to relieve him self, the only thing he could do was to squat down and defecate right there. Many nervous bowels were emptied in the few minutes before hell broke loose. When the enemy finally attacked and close-quarter fighting began, it became impossible to use missiles without risking hitting one’s comrades. The battle had now entered its next phase, where anything could happen.
Sea battles Even though the Vikings preferred to fight on land, many of their battles took place at sea, usually in fjords or bays or inlets or close to land – never on the open sea. Ships were more difficult to control out at sea, and there would be no opportunity to use land or islands as part of a strategy. Many of the same rules applied to sea battles as to land battles, with the intention of carrying out a battle at sea using the same, well-known formulae. Ships were deployed for attack or defence just as one would deploy an army on land. A defender would try to strengthen his position as much as possible and would use a mainland or islands to protect against outflanking. Although a military leader was in overall com mand, the steersman was the person in charge of each individual ship and was responsible for positio ning it as well as possible. In addition to positioning in relation to enemy ships, it was important to know the size and number of the enemy ships and also to know the local winds, tides and shallows. If a steersman wasn’t familiar with the local sea conditions, it was important to have somebody with local knowledge on board. The leaders were often more protected in a formation of ships than in a troop formation on land. Attackers had to overcome more obstacles, such as barrier ships or ships with higher gunwales, before they could fight their way through the defending crews to reach the leaders. At the battle of Nesjar outside Tønsberg in 1016, Earl Svein’s ship was held fast with grappling hooks and the defenders had to cut the stem off the ship to get away. At the battle of Hafrsfjord, Harald Fairhair had stationed berserkers at the front of his flagship
Loose ships were often stationed at the flanks, to be mobilised quickly if an enemy ship tried to out flank the formation.
as an extra precaution. These were formidable opponents to be overcome before an attacker could reach the king himself. Before a battle, the sails were always struck and the masts unstepped. Then the ships were rowed into position. In many situations, but especially in defence, ships were often rafted together. This made them more difficult to eliminate than a single ship, and it provided a combined platform on which men could move about and fight. A barrier could be made from oars and masts, and the enemy’s opportunity to benefit from superior numbers by attacking from both sides could be greatly reduced. The ships would only be tied together when the enemy was less than a spear’s throw away; prior to that they were manoeuvred and positioned in relation to the manoeuvring of the enemy ships. In many situations, especially when attacking, the ships would not be tied together at all. This meant that ships could operate more freely and outmanoeuvre a static enemy, but put them in a weaker situation when facing with bigger or more numerous ships. Often, a few vessels were not tied into the defensive raft of ships, but were left free to be
mobilised quickly if an enemy ship tried to out flank the formation. Loose ships often had other special missions, such as attacking the enemy’s flagship or other selected targets. On sea as on land, the battle was often won if the enemy’s leader was taken out. Because the fighting was often hardest around the flagships, they were stationed in the best defensive position, preferably in the middle of a raft of ships. But it was also important to have big ships on the flanks. If the ships there were small or had low gunwales, they were more easily overcome. The sides of a ship could be heightened artificially with a rampart of planks or shields, but only up to a certain point. So ships with inherently high gunwales were often stationed at the edges of the formation. Just like a land army, the naval fleet had one overall commander, with several other officers placed strategically throughout the formations, deployed according to whether the strategy was to attack or to defend and according to what tactics were planned. At Nesjar, Earl Svein had his two main allies at each side of his ships, to benefit from their fighting strength if the enemy focused its attack on him. In other circumstances it would c hap ter 2
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The battle of Nesjar The battle of Nesjar in 1016, between the Viking King Olav Haraldsson and the Earl of Lade, Svein Håkonsson, would come to be seen as the biggest and most decisive sea battle in Norwegian history. During the 11 or 12 years following his victory, King Olav worked to strengthen the king’s power at the expense of the local chieftains and – most important for his subsequent reputation – establish Christianity as the only permitted religion in the country. Olav directed the battle from his own longship, Karlhode, named for the carving of a king’s head that adorned the bow-stem. According to Snorre, Olav’s tactic was to hold his fleet in tight formation and let the enemy attack first. When the enemy had cast their spears and other missiles against the king’s men’s shields, his men would attack more or less independently wherever they saw the possibility of capturing an enemy ship. Earl Svein had a significantly bigger army than Olav, and his personal guard possibly numbered up to 200 heavily armed warriors. Olav had 100 men in chainmail on his ship, and he had hand-picked the troops to stand in the front ranks of the leading ships. Olav’s men were battlehardened by their experience of wars in England, and they easily captured Svein’s ships, whose crews were mostly inexperienced in warfare. Olav’s own ship headed straight for the earl’s ship, and his men held it fast with grappling hooks. Svein responded by having the whole of his ship’s stem cut off, enabling him to flee.
The battle of Nesjar between Olav Haraldsson and Earl Svein. This was the biggest sea-battle in Scandinavia in Viking times. 82
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have been beneficial to have deployed them further out, to concentrate their power against one of the enemy’s flanks. The bow of a Viking ship was the part least vulnerable to attack. The bow-stem was higher and more difficult to break through, forming a good barrier to forced boarding. Only a few men could fight at the same time in this limited space, and if the ship was higher than the enemy’s, the defenders had the benefit of fighting from above. A big, high-sided ship could be suitable to use not tied with other ships but as a mobile floating fortress to attack the enemy from above. King Sverre’s battle of Fimreite in 1177 is a good example of this. He had built a monster ship called Mariasuden, whose only function was to serve as a floating fortress, providing a higher and safer position from which to attack the enemy. A sea battle began in the same way as a land battle, with a missile phase where missiles were shot and thrown at the enemy before closing in to board them. As the distance between the boats diminished, the warriors lined up closely along the sides of the ships, locking their shields together to form a close defensive rampart. Grappling hooks were usually used to catch hold of the enemy’s ship, pull it in and hold it close, to prevent it from escaping. We do not have accounts of incendiary arrows or of ships being set on fire during a battle. A burning enemy ship colliding with one’s own fleet would be a serious threat. Also, it was preferable to capture the enemy’s ships as intact as possible. Building warships required a lot of resources, and the aim was to capture them rather than to sink them. Capturing them was also honourable and prestigious. To capture a ship, the attackers would need to kill or drive away the crew, while avoiding too much damage to the ship. Ships captured with the cargo intact were especially lucrative. It was correspondingly humiliating to lose an intact ship, and therefore many were set on fire or sunk to prevent the enemy getting hold of them. The winner also sometimes burned captured ships he couldn’t manage to take with him, to prevent them falling into the enemy’s hands again.
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Cavalry Horses were very important status symbols for the Vikings. Many graves from the Viking Age contain horses or equestrian equipment together with decorative weapons. Odin’s main attribute in addition to his spear, Gungne, was Sleipner, a horse with eight legs. Alongside humans, horses were perhaps the most important sacrifice the Vikings could offer to their gods. Horsemeat was often offered and eaten during sacrifice ceremonies. Unlike many of their opponents, the Vikings did not develop professional cavalry forces until late in the Viking Age. The horse was mainly a status symbol and a means of transport for the individual warrior, carrying him to and from battle. Some of the Viking ships, the knarrs or freight ships, were suitable for carrying horses. However, horses easily became seasick, just like people, and they needed time to settle after a sea voyage. After landing from a ship, horses preferably needed a recovery period of at least 24 hours before they could be used. They were therefore not suitable for the type of raiding warfare that characterised the first phases of the Viking Age. Horses would also have occupied space on the ships which could have been used to carry men. However, the Vikings were good at acquiring horses wherever they went, for use more as transport and pack animals than as part of a cavalry force. The Great Army that operated in England and France in the second half of the 9th century owed much of its success to the use of horses. Horses carried the army rapidly around the country, using the old Roman network, and enabled the Vikings to be nearly always one step ahead of their opponents. The Bayeux Tapestry, created soon after William of Normandy’s conquest of England, is considered to be a reliable historical document. It includes several scenes of the crossing of the English Channel. The biggest number of horses on board any one ship is ten. With ten horses on board plus fodder, attendants and the ship’s crew, there would hardly be space for extra warriors. So for longer distances the number of horses on board would have to be considerably fewer. There are reports that the Vikings sometimes used cavalry in battle, but in only a few cases was
Viking cavalry decisive in a conflict. The Vikings did use cavalry actively in combat in Saxony at the end of the 9th century. Several contemporary reports tell that in 891 the Vikings attacked with cavalry near the little River Geule near Elsloo on today’s Dutch-Belgian border and defeated an army from eastern France. Viking cavalry was usually inferior to the French and avoided direct engagement. In Scotland, Earl Sigurd of Orkney used cavalry to confuse and break up an enemy formation. In the right circumstances this was a good strategy. In this case there were said to be only 40 defenders facing 40 mounted warriors. The odds were clearly in the cavalry’s favour, even though they were inexperi enced in this type of fighting. The main function of the cavalry in the early Viking campaigns was probably to frighten the enemy and prepare the way for an infantry attack. The cavalry did gradually develop into a more independent fighting force, but only in Ireland did the Vikings seem to master its use. In the 11th century the Vikings in Dublin had their
own cavalry troops which hired themselves out to different Irish factions. When the Irish Supreme King Brian Boru waged a war of conquest in 1006 and 1007 the Dublin Viking cavalry was one of his strongest weapons. On several occasions it contributed to changing an underdog position into a victory for Brian. Cavalry was not used in any of the major inva sions of England in the 11th century, nor did it play a significant part in the Viking raids on France. Part of the reason for this may be that the French, and to some extent the Anglo-Saxons, had developed the cavalry into such an important part of their forces that the Vikings would not have gained any benefit from having their own cavalry. The French heavy cavalry was especially feared throughout Europe. In Ireland, on the other hand, cavalry had not been an important element in local warfare, and the Vikings were able to develop their own mounted forces to dominate the battlefield. Nor are horses thought to have played a big part in Viking Age warfare in Scandinavia, other than as status symbols and means of transport. In the c hap ter 2
Unlike many of their opponents, the Vikings did not develop professional cavalry forces until late in the Viking Age. The horse was mainly a personal status symbol for the individual warrior. Jewellery from Sweden showing a horse and rider.
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The Vikings win on horseback The Vikings defeated an army from eastern France near the little River Geule near Elsloo on today’s Dutch-Belgian border. In Regino of Prüm’s Chronicle we can read: When the whole mass pursue them in disordered units without first asking their commanders, they come to a little village where they come upon groups of infantry who now muster together and easily repel the scattered attackers, forcing them to retreat. When the Northmen follow their shrieks by rattling their arrow quivers, their battle-cry resounds to heaven and the battle begins. The Northmen’s cavalry hear the battlecries and hasten thither and when the fighting becomes hot the Christian army turns – alas! – to flee because of its sins. The arrival of the Viking cavalry contributed to turning an underdog position into a victory. Viking cavalry was usually inferior to French, but this time the Vikings won. The Vikings were not able to hold onto the victory for long. At the River Dyle they met the East Frankish King Arnulf and were put to flight. As an aside, Adam of Bremen wrote that 100,000 Vikings were killed in this battle – an exaggeration of Biblical proportions.
Vendel Age (c. 550–750) in Sweden, however, there are thought to have been professional mounted warriors who fought together as a group. The Gothic historian Jordanes wrote in the 6th century that the Svea and the Germans from Thuringen had the best horses. Finds of several spectacular graves of horsemen in Sweden support the idea that a professional cavalry existed at that time. Further evidence comes from Snorre Sturlason who writes in the Yngling Saga, which is based on a poem about the Swedish kings, that King Adils at Uppsala was famous for his horses. But there are no indications that Scandinavians fought as bands of mounted warriors in Viking times. A series of spectacular graves of horsemen from the 10th century has been found in the Swedish trading town of Birka, but this was probably a group of professional warriors who were serving as mercenaries in Birka. They may have been Khazar cavalrymen. Denmark, however, was more influenced by French military thinking and had a flatter lands cape more suitable for cavalry. Here, mounted units developed within the royal guard. Their members are thought to have been a small group who operated in the same way as the classic knights 86
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The Vikings used horses for hunting. This medallion of a horseman in a hunting scene was found in the Gokstad chief ’s grave.
in the Middle Ages. They did not play decisive parts in the wars the Danes fought in Saxony, Friesland or England. These mounted units were probably more for status than for use.
Emblems and banners All chiefs of a certain social status fought under their own emblem or banner. The banner showed their position on the battlefield, and functioned both as a rallying point and as a means of sending various signals to the troops. The banners were individual to each leader and were often ascri bed magic properties in addition to their purely practical use. It was considered a great honour to carry the banner, and a correspondingly great disgrace to lose it in battle. Likewise, capturing an enemy’s banner conferred great honour. Great efforts were made to protect one’s own banner and capture the enemy’s. The banners symbolised the strength and vitality of the army, without which morale died. So long as the banner could be seen the warriors would fight, but if it disappeared from view the battle was often lost. The banners were carried by specially selected
standard-bearers. The standard-bearer had high status in the guard troop and was often one of the leader’s closest advisers. To achieve such a favour he needed to have distinguished himself in battle and been highly respected as a warrior. Appointment as standard-bearer was often a reward for distinguished service in battle. The job was very prestigious but also extremely dangerous. The banner was nearly always an enemy’s first target, because it represented the leader and therefore the army’s capacity to fight. Along with the leader, the standard-bearer was the warrior who had the best protection and the best equipment. There was often another warrior deployed nearby whose only duty was to take over the banner if the standard-bearer fell, and the guard troops also had a primary duty to protect the banner and the standard-bearer in addition to the leader. Rather as armies have used semaphore in more recent times, the banner was used to send orders by using various movements. The banner could be raised or lowered, waved to right or left or dipped, according to the order being given. This was especially important in sea battles, where the troops could be far apart. Raising the banner gave the order to attack, and dipping it aslant gave the order to halt. So it was important for each warrior to keep an eye on his banner and always know where it was in the formation. Many of the motifs on the banners were directly connected with Norse religion. Popular animal motifs from the world of the gods include ravens, wolves, serpents, goats and horses. A range of perso nal motifs was also used including animals such as lions, dogs, wild boar and oxen, but also pictures of trees, runic patterns and more abstract symbols such as suns, circles, crosses and so on. We know from the sources that one of the most popular motifs was the raven. This symbolised Odin’s ravens, who knew and saw everything, and it was the animal with the closest connection to the outcome of the battle. Ravens often landed on the battlefield very soon after a battle, to gorge on the corpses. Many different chiefs carried the raven motif, expressed in many different forms. Many of the Vikings’ enemies, especially the Anglo-Saxons in England, saw the raven emblems as a potent symbol of power shrouded in evil heathen
magic, which frightened them when they appeared on the battlefield. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle the raven emblem is mentioned for the first time in 878 (879) as one of the main symbols of the Great Army that was terrorising the country at that time. When one of the Viking chieftains, Ulf (Ubba) was defeated in Devonshire, the Englishmen took a raven banner as one of their war trophies. The capture of the banner was a propaganda coup for King Alfred, and it is mentioned in many sources. It is not known whether it was Ulf ’s personal banner or whether it represented the whole of the Great Army, but as Ulf was in a quite different part of the country and had been cut off from the main army for a long time when he was killed, it is most likely that it was his personal banner. The raven emblem is also found on coins issued by several Viking kings in York. A coin minted in the reign of Olav Sigtryggson in 942 can serve as an example of this. On the coin we see a typical Viking motif of a triangular banner shape with one of the sides rounded, a characteristic decoration occasionally found preserved on wind-vanes and ships’ stems from Viking times. Inside the triangle on the coin is a shape which perhaps represents a bird. On a coin minted by Olav’s predecessor Olav Gudrødsson in 939 we see just a raven, not depicted within a banner. This may represent the raven which adorned the banner of the kings of York and may have been carried by some of the leaders in the Great Army. The raven was probably quite a common emblem among princes. Canute the Great fought under a raven banner at the battle of Ashingdon in 1016. This is mentioned in a commemorative book written in his honour in 1043, with a fanciful account that in peacetime the banner was just plain white silk but that when war approached a black raven appeared on it. After a victory the raven opened its beak, flapped its wings and stamped its feet. After a defeat the banner hung limp and dejected. It is not known whether this was a family banner for the Danish kings or Canute’s own personal banner. Two years before the battle of Ashingdon, at the battle of Clontarf in Ireland in 1014, another raven banner appeared. This belonged to Sigurd the Strong, Earl of Orkney. Posterity has ascribed magic properties to this banner too. It was said to have been woven by Sigurd’s mother, who was skilled c hap ter 2
A coin with a raven motif, minted in York by Olav Gudrødsson around 939. It may have been a raven like this which was pictured on the banners of the Kings of York.
Olav Kvåran minted a coin in 942 which featured the banner itself.
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Wind vanes like this one from Hegge Church in Valdres were common on the stems of ships from the late Viking Age and probably resemble Viking banners.
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in the dark arts of the trolls. Whoever carried the banner would be killed, but those who fought under it would have victory. The factual basis for this story is that three standard-bearers were killed in the battle, before the earl himself took the banner and was killed. A skaldic lay composed relatively soon after the battle by a court minstrel describes the ritual destruction of Earl Sigurd’s raven banner. Twelve women, who surely represent the Valkyries, tear the banner into strips following the defeat. Viking chiefs’ banners, which were so closely related to their owners, probably were ritually destroyed after their death, irrespective of the circumstances. This would prevent the banner from falling into enemy hands or being inherited. Another motif which occurs frequently, and which probably was mainly associated with the rus, the Vikings in the East, was the dragon. This emblem originated in the Roman army, and came to the Vikings through their contact with the Byzantine Empire. The emblem consisted of a dragon’s head t h e a rt of wa r
in metal or some other stiff material, to which was fastened a tube or cone in textile. When it filled with wind, this would resemble a snake moving. It is found in many sources, but the best known is the dragon banner used by Olav Haraldsson. This is described as white, in the shape of a serpent, which corresponds well with the description of the East Viking dragon banners. The garrisons in Birka probably had banners like this too. Dragon brooches, which are thought to have belonged to the standard-bearers, have been found in excavations in the town. Similar dragon brooches are found in Hedeby in Denmark and Novgorod in Russia, indicating that the motif was used over a wide area. The banners also had their own names, a few of which have survived to be known today. Sigurd the Strong, Earl of Orkney in the 11th century, carried a banner with the Old English name of Ravenlandeye, which means something like ‘The raven who lays waste to the land’. The banner which Harald Hardråde fought under at Stamford Bridge
and elsewhere was called Landøyda – ‘That which lays waste to the land’. It was described as Harald’s dearest possession, and he boasted that it had magic qualities, giving victory to whoever carried it. Harald had the banner with him when he invaded England in 1066, but on this occasion it obviously lost its magic. Because the name of Harald’s banner – Landøyda – so closely resembles the name Ravenlandeye, it is thought to have been a raven banner too. In that case it could have been the same emblem as carried by Sigurd the Strong. However, one fact suggests that the emblem on Harald’s banner was not a raven but a dragon. Harald had served in the Byzantine Empire and for Prince Jaroslav of Kiev, and it is probable that he had a dragon banner with him when he came back from the East. The fact that Harald was a Christian king would not prevent him from being concerned about the effects of superstitious magic in warfare, but he would probably not have chosen a raven emblem, which was strongly connected with the heathen cult of Odin and with the Danish kings. A few contemporary pictures of Viking banners have survived, giving us indications of what they loo ked like. Several of these are on the Bayeux Tapestry, which was made after the Norman invasion of England in 1066. There is a dragon banner here too. It is being held by one of King Harold Godwinsson’s standard-bearers, in the scene which also shows Harold being killed by an arrow. Perhaps it had been captured from one of Harald Hardråde’s Vikings in the battle of Stamford Bridge? We can speculate even further by wondering whether the dragon banner pictured on the Bayeux Tapestry might be Harald’s Landøyda, which had disappeared after the battle of Stamford Bridge. Might it have been captured there and carried by Harold Godwinsson’s army in the battle of Hastings? On the other hand, dragon ban ners were also used in the French army, and it might have been such a one that Harold Godwinsson used. On the Bayeux Tapestry we also find what could be a raven banner. One of the horsemen attacking Harold’s army is carrying a lance with a banner which looks like an oval half-circle with a bird standing, framed in a golden border surrounded with flames. This could be a raven. Although the Normans at that time were Christianised and ‘Europeanised’, they still had regular contact with Scandinavia and were influenced by cultural movements and traditions from
there through contact with Scandinavian courts and extensive use of Scandinavian mercenary soldiers. Considering the importance of such banners, it is not unthinkable that William the Conqueror or one of his close band may also have carried a raven banner or other types of banner which were common in Scandinavia in Viking times. In another scene from the tapestry, which shows Harold Godwinsson’s brother being killed, one of the horses is trampling on a banner which resembles the one we see on the coin from York, except that it doesn’t have any illustration within the triangle. This shows that typical Viking banners were carried at the battle of Hastings, whether by Englishmen who had captured them, by Scandinavian mercena ries or by the Normans.
Intelligence and logistics Fighting without knowledge of the enemy and of the local terrain is like fighting in the dark. Good intelligence was often decisive for the outcome of a conflict. The Vikings seem to have obtained special benefit from knowledge of what was going on among their enemies. They usually had spies placed with their opponents, competitors or allies who could send a message when something was afoot. The chieftains in Trøndelag in Norway got reports from their spies in Denmark and Sweden that King Olav Haraldsson had returned from Kiev in 1030. This enabled them to be prepared and form an alliance, which ultimately led to the downfall of the king. The Great Army’s brutal and coordinated attack was supported by careful intelligence. On its travels throughout England it made use of the old Roman road network, which connected all the parts of the country. The use of this road system shows that in addition to understanding the local political situa tion, the leaders also had access to good knowledge of the local geography. For years the Roman road system had been used by raiding parties wishing to penetrate far into the land, and many of the warriors who had taken part in the earlier raids of plunder were participants in the new offensive, able to share their knowledge of the terrain. c hap ter 2
This dragon emblem is on the Bayeux Tapestry. It is being carried by one of King Harold Godwinsson’s standard-bearers, as part of the scene in which Harold is killed by an arrow. Was this the capture of Harald’s banner?
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When the Normans invaded England in 1066, they brought cooking equipment such as pots and baking ovens. This picture shows cooks preparing food in a big cauldron and another baking bread on a big portable oven.
Information from traders was also important, and further use could be made of the knowledge of the local population and especially of potential allies. Another vital consideration for every army was logistics, the capacity to obtain supplies, as immor talised in the famous saying attributed both to Napoleon and to the Duke of Wellington: ‘An army marches on its stomach’. Nobody can wage war effectively if soldiers’ basic needs are not met. This applied just as much to the Vikings as it did to the soldiers in the Napoleonic wars. Hungry people do not think rationally, and throughout history there are many examples of armies which have gone under because they didn’t manage to acquire supplies. The art of supplying an army’s needs has therefore been a matter of concern to all who have set out to wage war in a foreign land. In Antiquity the Roman legions developed logistics as a branch of science, and much of the rea son for the Roman military machine’s astounding success lies in logistics. The knowledge they left behind was inherited by new generations of military 90
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leaders and spread throughout Europe. The Vikings were also influenced by Roman ideas about logistics. Just like the Roman legions, the Viking armies included some civilians, including craftsmen such as smiths and carpenters, traders, stockmen and porters, together with women and other family members. It was important to have mobile forges and smiths who could repair damaged or captured weapons after battles. These civilian elements were part of the army’s supplies and maintenance system. An army needed about one ton of food per 500 men, plus animal fodder, every day. This had to be brought and regularly topped up over great distances, which required many people and good organisation. As we have seen, the Vikings were good at acquiring horses wherever they went, and these were used as pack animals. The civilian section of the Viking army had most of the responsibility for ensuring supplies of equipment and food. The warriors also had their own field packs, but these were far from enough if they were to be in an area
When an army was in the field, it was important to acquire enough food for the troops. Remains of big iron cooking vessels and a range of cooking implements were found in both the Oseberg and the Gokstad ships, demonstrating how important it was for the Vikings to take good kitchen equipment with them. c hap ter 2
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for any length of time. The little that the troops had with them on board the ships would be used up within a few days of landing. It was quite impossible for an army of any size to operate in enemy territory without taking what could be found in the country. Large parts of the army, the military as well as the civilian sections, were therefore constantly occupied in foraging for supplies. Everybody knew that food is every army’s Achilles’ heel, and many of the measures taken to oppose the Vikings were designed to cut them off from acquiring foodstuffs. The fact that the Great Army, for example, could sustain itself in England over so many decades was completely dependent on its capacity to acquire provisions. When an army was camped in the field, it always had groups of foragers spread out in all directions. The main aim was to acquire live animals – cows, hens, sheep and goats. These could then be kept alive until they were needed. Other foodstuffs sought were vegetables, fruit and grain. Grain was especially important, because it could be used to make flatbread, porridge and, perhaps most important, alcoholic drinks. In France the best thing of all was to come across a wine cellar. Wine was the most desirable thing a Viking could get his hands on. The most important sources of foodstuffs were local farms and villages. According to the Vikings’ intentions for the invasion and their level of desperation, food could either be bought or taken by force. If good relationships with the local population were desired, buying was better. The raiding parties where several hundred Vikings quickly overran an area had few scruples about how they treated the local population. The farmers often had large quantities of provisions in storage, and it was important to take them by surprise before they could remove or hide their supplies. Other invaders would certainly have had to consider their logistics strategy better. The big groups of Vikings in England, Ireland and France must have used both carrot and stick in their hunt for food. In the planning of a large-scale invasion of a foreign land, it was not always clear how food would be acquired along the way. If a long stay was planned, and especially if overwintering was anticipated, the army would need to prepare in 92
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advance, or else risk local famine and revolt. The army could either take all that the local farmers had and leave them destitute, or impose a levy on them for a proportion of their supplies. The latter course of action would ensure that they could be exploited again later. Another option was to buy things from the farmers, which would ensure good relationships between them and the army. Also, many of the armies were very mobile, moving regularly to new areas which could be exploited. Mobility was the key to a successful campaign if an army wanted to gamble on taking whatever all necessary supplies from the local population. But as time went by and an army remained in the same area over winter, or if it settled in the same place for years, it could not deal as harshly with food producers. The invaders were totally dependent on trading with the local population, or on growing food themselves. This led to many leaving the army to become farming settlers. Sickness often afflicted the Viking armies, and more people died from illness than from actual fighting. Beside the church where the kings of Mercia are buried, in Repton where the Great Army overwintered in 874, several graves have been found of warriors with evidence of battle wounds, in addition to a mass grave containing both men and women. These were probably victims of an epidemic, probably brought about by poor diet and hunger. Many of the skeletons showed signs of exposure to great physical stresses. Even though the importance of logistics was recognised, it was not easy to do anything about the situation. When the Danes invaded England in 1014, with the intention of staying, they were totally dependent on the local populace of Scandinavian descent. The army could not commandeer what they needed without losing that support. So they bought food and other goods or obtained them by taxation. On this occasion the local chiefs supported the invasion and supplied the army’s needs. But Viking invaders could not always reckon on sympathy or support from Scandinavian settlers. Svein Estridson discovered this when he tried to invade England in 1069. Unable to sustain his army, he could only hope for a favourable truce and make his way home again.
Strategy and s tratagems The Vikings had no hesitation about using stra tagems. Winning by trickery was acceptable and respected. It almost seems that successful trickery was a good way to gain prestige. They used many different methods and tricks. On several occasions they dug pits and simulated a retreat so that the opponents pursued them and fell into the pits. When Rollo (Rolf) attacked Rouen, he had his men dig deep ditches and cover them with twigs and turf. Meantime, he had hidden his fleet in a tributary of the Seine. Rolf and some of his men positioned themselves in battle order in front of the ditches, and when the town’s defenders rode out to confront them, they took to flight. The riders spurred their horses on to pursue Rolf and fell into the traps. The Vikings then turned round and killed them as they lay on the ground. This is rather like similar to the battle outside Paris in 886, when the Vikings lured Count Henrik and his mounted troops into a similar trap. Here too they had dug pits and covered them with grass and reeds. After simulating a flight and luring the horsemen into the pits, they killed the horsemen, the count included. On several occasions the Vikings tried to get the better of an enemy by appearing to agree to peace talks. In the 880s Sigurd the Strong, Earl of Orkney, invaded Scotland but met his match in Melbridge Tooth the Scottish king and had to agree to a settlement. They agreed to meet for talks with only 40 men from each side present, but Sigurd put two men on each horse to bring a stronger force to the meeting. At other times we hear of the Vikings offering the inhabitants of a beleaguered town safe passage, only to attack and kill or take them prisoner as soon as the town gate was opened. On several other occasions when they had not succeeded in taking a town or when they themselves were surrounded, they sent out false reports that their leaders were dead and that they wished to withdraw, or that they wanted to bury the leader within the town walls. People at that time were well aware of the importance of the personal bonds between a leader
and his warriors, and knew that the death of a leader often changed the political situation entirely. Probably the most famous instance of Viking trickery was when Hallstein faked his own death outside the Italian town of Luna in 860, with subsequent resurrection and a massacre of the inhabitants. This story resembles many other acco unts, and there are suspicions that it is a literary invention. Among other instances, a similar tactic was ascribed to Harald Hardråde when he was in service in Byzantium. However it is possible that these stories were based on some real event. Harald is the subject of another famous story which is probably a fabrication, when he is said to have fastened burning twigs under the wings of swallows to capture a fortress in Sicily. This story has a clear parallel in Saxo’s account of how the Danish King Fridlev is said to have attacked and taken Dublin by hanging burning mushrooms under the wings of swallows. Both stories probably have the same origin, and it is quite possible that somebody once carried out such a trick, but probably with doves, which live in towns and are accustomed to people. The Vikings made use of stratagems on the battlefield too. They often split their army in two before an engagement. One part hid, while the other presented itself as a weakened force. Once the fighting was under way, the hidden section attacked the enemy in the flanks or the rear. This stratagem could also be combined with simulated flight, as at Merantun in 870 when the Vikings defeated the army of the King of Wessex. The Vikings simulated a retreat and when the enemy gave chase the hidden section attacked from the rear at the same time as the retreating troops halted and turned back to face the enemy, catching them in a pincer movement. Simulated withdrawal was a favourite tactic, often used to try to draw an enemy who was better positioned into launching an attack and losing his strategic advantage. At Stikklestad in 1030, Olav Haraldsson had the best position but a simulated flight by his opponents induced his men to chase after them. Olav himself was killed when the enemy stopped, turned and attacked. Saxo tells of another stratagem used by King Fridlev. After a defeat against the Englishmen c hap ter 2
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A hoard of gold from Eidsvoll in Norway is evidence that much treasure was brought home. It includes French jewellery, gold rings and gold bars; a princely hoard, which surely was war booty from plundering, Danegeld or ransom. It is not known why it was buried; perhaps the hoard was security for the afterlife.
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he made his army appear intact by driving stakes into the ground and hanging the corpses of his men on them. From a distance this looked like a battle formation. This frightened the enemy long enough for the survivors to get away. Considering the improbability of some of Fridlev’s other tricks we must question whether this too is a literary fabrication, but unlike the stories involving birds this type of trick is more in the spirit of the Vikings and this story may have roots in a real event. King Håkon the Good also used a stratagem to appear stronger than he really was. During the battle with Eirik Bloodaxe’s sons he had many banners waved behind a hilltop, to simulate reinfor cements. This worked, and changed the outcome of the battle. Although there are many examples in the sources of the Vikings using tricks, it is often dif ficult to distinguish between what has been added by later writers and what they actually did. What is certain is that by studying the Vikings’ poetry and t h e a rt of wa r
mythology we can say that they did not hesitate to trick their opponents when opportunity arose.
Sharing the booty Both in raids of plunder and in bigger invasions, the Vikings took plentiful and varied booty. This could be anything from prisoners to be used as slaves or sold for ransom, to items of gold or silver, coins and luxury goods such as weapons, clothes, wine and beer. They took everything valuable they could find from churches and monasteries. Altar books were robbed for gemstones and the ornamental fittings of the books were torn off. Gold and silver crucifixes, censers for holding incense, candle snuffers, saintly relics, monstran ces and candelabra were heaped together and carried away. There were clear rules for how the booty
should be shared, with rank and age as the most important criteria. Young, inexperienced warriors got less than more established men, and the chiefs and kings always got the most and the best. Each member of a fighting unit was required to hand over all plundered goods to the chief, who then was responsible for sharing it out. In the ‘Hird law’ which applied to guard troops in the Middle Ages, there is a whole chapter devoted to how the booty of war was to be shared. This law was written down in the second half of the 13th century, but it is based on a law which is thought to date from early in the 11th century. The law states that a horn shall be blown to call all military members of the household to gather at a husting, a house assembly, before any distribution takes place. The king’s banner was brought forward. Sometimes the site of the assembly was cordoned off to be consecrated and protected as a holy place, with the leader’s banner placed in the middle. The members of the guard and others, including the king, then brought all the booty they had taken and placed it in front of the banner. The legal text tells that at that time there was an old saying: All men shall bring to the flagpole such as each of them has of war booty and swear an oath that he has not hidden anything away and that he doesn’t know of anybody who has concealed anything.
The fact that the legal text makes a point of this being an old saying may suggest that cheating in the sharing of booty was not a particular problem in the 1270s, but that it had been in earlier times. The king nominated twelve men to be respon sible for the sharing of the booty. Everything was first divided into two, and then into four. A sort of taxing of the booty accompanied this system. At the same time, the skippers and the officers of the guard troops divided the warriors in the same way, first into two and then into four. Then four plumb weights were placed in a piece of cloth, about the size of a woman’s head-scarf.12 One of the officers or one of the skippers or one of the chosen twelve selected one of the plumb weights, and the quarter
of the company that it pointed to got first choice of one of the quarters of the booty, and so on. We have to assume that the king and the leaders got their shares before the men’s share was divided in four. Behind this rigid and strictly controlled system which we find in late Viking times for sharing the spoils of war, there must surely have been bitter experiences of the process ending in tragedy. But even in late Viking times, the sharing sometimes got out of control despite the strict rules. A French prisoner in the Viking base on the island of Noirmoutier in the 9th century gave an eye-witness account of a sharing going wrong when the Vikings came back to the base with all their plunder, as reported in The Annals of St Bertin: Many of the young warriors who had been on the raid were beside themselves with greed when they saw all the booty which was to be shared out. They lost all respect for the senior officers and violent fighting broke out among the Vikings on the island.
The Vikings on Noirmoutier and in many other places introduced the death penalty for those who took the law into their own hands when booty was being distributed, precisely because of such incidents. In Christian times it was also usual to give the church one tenth of the war booty, because victory in battle was interpreted as divine intervention.
Mercenaries Two particular types of professional warrior bands were prominent in Viking times: the guard troops and the bands of mercenaries. The rules for the mercenaries were slightly different from those for the guards. The members of a guard troop often swore lifelong loyalty to their leader. The mercenary soldier’s oath of loyalty was time-limited, or con fined to specific duties. The typical mercenary was already a member of a warrior brotherhood, which hired out its services collectively. Vikings were commonly used as mercenaries throughout the Viking Age. Heathen, Christian and Muslim princes all employed them. c hap ter 2
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to Gardarike (Russia) as leader of about 600 Vikings to offer his services. They met Jaroslav in Novgorod. We have heard, sir, that you risk losing your kingdom because of your brother. And we ourselves have been thrown out of our country (…) Now we offer to become defenders of this country and go into your service in exchange for payment in gold and silver and good clothes.
Jaroslav agreed to this, but he wanted to know how much they requested for going into his service. Edmund replied: First, that you set up a hall for us and all our peo ple, and that you don’t allow us to lack anything of the best from your provisions when we need it.
Jaroslav agreed to this too. Once the appropriate quarters had been arranged, they could negotiate about price. When this company stands ready for your service, to give you protection and success for your army and your kingdom, for this you shall give each and every one of our men an ounce of silver, and every ship’s captain half an ounce extra (per month).
The Vikings used many different strategies, and they often came on their prey by surprise. On the remains of this stone cross from Weston Church in north Yorkshire, someone has carved a picture of a Viking warrior with sword and axe. On the back, the Viking is shown with a female captive. This stone accurately sums up contemporary experience of the Viking, as a violent plunderer.
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‘We can’t do that,’ replied the king.
A band of mercenaries could comprise anything from a handful of warriors as personal body guards, to a large army. Vikings were often hired in and used against other Vikings, but they also fought as special units in wars against Muslims, Christians, nomadic tribes, the French, the Irish and the English. On other occasions they had shared interests with their employers, and became something between a mercenary and an ally. Because their use as mercenaries was so extensive, the Vikings must have seen this as a particularly honourable and profitable business. There is a report preserved of what the nego tiations between the Vikings and an employer could be like. In Edmund’s Saga from the Icelandic Flateyjarbok there is an account of the Northman Edmund Ringson and his visit to Prince Jaroslav. Exiled from home around 1016, Edmund travelled t h e a rt of wa r
‘Yes you can sir,’ said Edmund, ‘for we shall accept beaver and sable furs which are easy to obtain in your country and these we (Edmund) shall value, not our men. And if there is any war booty, the payment will be increased but if we sit idle it will be reduced.’ In this way a 12-month agreement was made between Edmund and Jaroslav.
Here we see the Vikings accepting furs instead of cash payment for their services as mercenaries. We see also that it is the chiefs and not the individual warriors who accepted the furs on behalf of the men and who calculated the value of the fur in relation to the price per head per month. An ‘ounce’ of silver is around 26.5 grams. So a
year’s basic salary for a warrior was about 320 grams of silver, with bonus in the form of war booty. For Edmund’s 600 warriors and leaders Jaroslav would have had to pay about 200 kg of silver, or an equi valent value in furs. These were not insignificant sums at a time when one could buy a slave or a cow for about 2 grams of silver.
Berserkers and wolfskins The berserkers and the ‘wolfskins’ were a special group of warriors associated with the god Odin. Their description in the sources is on the boundary between fantasy and reality, and it is difficult for us to imagine that such people can ever have existed, possessed of incontrollable destructive power. The berserkers and the wolfskins are distinguished by their ecstatic battle fury. Odin was the god who gave warriors courage in battle. Aggression was seen as a god-given gift, but these warriors took this a step further. According to the sources they could muster inhuman strength, and when they attacked they howled like mad dogs or wolves. It was said that neither iron nor fire could injure them, and they didn’t know pain. After a battle they were as weak as infants, totally spent both physically and psychologically. It is difficult to find any clear difference between a berserker and a wolfskin. Sometimes they appear to be the same, under the general description of berserker, and at other times they are portrayed as two different types of warrior. In some contexts, the wolfskins are even more closely connected with the Odin cult than the berserkers seem to be. Originally they developed their own brother hood of professional warriors who travelled round and took service with different chiefs. What distinguished them was that they had bears and wolves as sacred animals, and clad themselves in their skins. Irrespective of whether it was a bear or a wolf, the animal served as a sort of totem animal and the warriors believed they were endowed with the spirit of the animal. Designs showing warriors clad in what could be bearskins occur, among other places, on the Torslund plates from Öland, thought to be from the 7th century.
In the Fornalder sagas (‘Sagas of Earlier Times’) and in several other sagas, the king’s or the chieftain’s guard is described as made up of berserkers, usually twelve in number. The berser kers often comprised an elite troop in addition to the guard or the army in general. In sea battles they were usually stationed at the prow, to take the leading point of an attack. In the battle of Hafrsfjord they appear as shock troops for Harald Fairhair, in groups of twelve. The berserkers are spoken of as fearsome ene mies to meet. They were often so intoxicated by battle-lust that they bit their shields, attacked boulders and trees and even killed each other while waiting for battles to begin. A set of chessmen from the 12th century, found on the Isle of Lewis in the Scottish Hebrides, includes a chess piece depicting a warrior biting his shield. The title of berserker is thought sometimes to have descended from father to son, and sometimes whole families of berserkers are mentioned. An example of a berserker family known from the sagas is Egil Skallagrimson. Egil’s father Skallagrim and his grandfather Kveldulv (‘Nightwolf ’) were also berserkers. The concept of ‘berserk’ also turns up independently of ‘berserker’. The idea of ‘going berserk’ can apply to many others than just the members of a warrior brotherhood. Harald Hardråde went berserk at the battle of Stamford Bridge. The expression is also used about warriors who are not thought to have been wearing any dis tinctive uniform of animal skins. Olav Haraldsson’s berserkers, who wrecked the battle of Stiklestad for him, are an example of this. The earliest written sources of what might be berserkers are in Roman writings from the 1st century AD. In his book, Germania, the historian Tacitus describes correspondingly fantastic elite warriors among the German tribes in northern Europe. In the 6th century the East Roman histo rian Procopius wrote of ‘the wild and lawless heruli’ from the north that they went naked into battle, clad only in loincloths. This was to show disdain for their wounds. They wore neither helmet nor coat of mail, and used only a light shield to protect themselves. The people who were described as heruli probably had their origin on Sjæland or Fyn in today’s Denmark, but they can also be traced to c hap ter 2
This picture of a ‘wolf warrior’ was found in Gutenstein in Germany on a sword scabbard from tribal migration times.
This image from the Oseberg tapestry shows a warrior with what might be the skin of a bear or wolf.
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Portrayal of the berserkers as shield-biters persisted long after the Viking Age and was a favoured motif in art. These beautiful chessmen made from walrus tusk are part of a large find from the Isle of Lewis in the Scottish Hebrides. They are thought to have been made in Trondheim at the beginning of the 12th century.
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other parts of Scandinavia, including Norway. The heruli are said to have had a kingdom on Fyn. This may have survived until the 6th century, but many of them had previously been driven out of Scandinavia by the Danes. Herul was probably a military title (of the same origin as the word earl) rather than the name of a race of people, even though they were presented as such by the historians. The heruli often took service as warrior bands in the Roman army. They appeared in the same way as the berserkers, in small groups in the service of chieftains or kings, and there is a slight possibility that the origins of the berserkers may be found among the mysterious heruli. The berserkers are often mentioned in sagas, skaldic poems and other literature from the Middle Ages. In the sagas, which were written in a Christian context, the memory of these warriors had been exten ded to become a label for those who stand outside the norms of society: thugs and freebooters, pirates and so on. In the earliest Icelandic compendium of law, Grågås, it is said that a raging berserker can either t h e a rt of wa r
be bound or condemned to exile. The oldest known written source about berserkers is Haraldskvadet, a 9th-century skaldic poem honouring King Harald, attributed to the skaldic poet Torbjørn Hornklove. Writing about the battle of Hafrsfjord, he records: Berserkers roared where the battle raged, wolfskins howled and iron weapons trembled.
In Grette’s Saga it is said of the warriors in that same battle: (…) such berserkers as were called wolfskins; they had wolf-coverings as mail (…) and iron didn’t bite them; one of them (…) started roaring and bit the edge of his shield (…) and growled viciously.
In the Volsung Saga, describing events in the 6th century, it is said that the berserkers were in Odin’s lifeguard and that they ‘went without armour, were as mad as dogs and wolves, they bit their
shields, were as strong as bears or oxen, they killed everybody, and neither fire nor iron bit them; this is called going berserk.’ The descriptions in the sagas of violent men and killers cannot all be linked to the berserkers. Distinctions are made for example between ‘ber serkers’ and ‘warriors’, and between ‘normal’ killers and men who fought duels. The Old Norse saga texts never call the berserkers mad or insane. They regard the berserkers as something more than just socially problematic and unusually aggressive. The sagas distinguish them from other men by ascribing to them a particular ‘nature’ which made one scornful and fearful of them at the same time. In 1784 a priest called Ödmann started a theory that going berserk was the result of eating fly agaric mushrooms (Amanita muscaria). That explanation gradually became popular, and remained so right up to the present day. Ödmann based his hypothesis on reports about Siberian shamans. He had no personal observations of the effects of eating fly agaric. White agaric has also been suggested as a cause of the berserk fury, but considering how poisonous this is, it is quite unthinkable that it would be eaten. Eating agaric mushrooms leads to depression and can make the user apathetic, in addition to its hallucinogenic effects. Berserkers are certainly never described as apathetic! Poisoning with the ergot fungus, Claviceps purpurea, has also been suggested, as the hal lucinogen LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) can be extracted from it. However, if mushrooms had been so important for the berserkers, it would surely have been mentioned in the sagas – it is not. The most probable explanation for going berserk comes from psychiatry. The theory is that the groups of warriors, through ritual processes carried out before a battle (such as biting the edges of their shields), go into a self-induced hypnotic trance. In this dissociative state, they lose conscious control of their actions, which are then directed subconsciously. People in this state seem remote, have little awareness of their surroundings, and have reduced awareness of pain and increased muscle strength. Critical thinking and normal social inhibitions are weakened, but the people affected are not unconscious – they act on direction; they kill enemies.
This condition of psychomotor automatism possibly resembles what in forensic psychiatry is described as diminished responsibility. The condi tion is followed by a major emotional catharsis in the form of tiredness and exhaustion, sometimes followed by sleep. Researchers think that the shortterm aim of the trance may have been to achieve an abreaction of strong aggressive, destructive and sadistic impulses in a socially defined role. The Old Norse social order and religion were able to accommodate this type of behaviour, and it is understandable that the phenomenon dis appeared after the introduction of Christianity. A Christian society considered such rituals and actions as demonic and thought that they must have resulted from supernatural influences.
Warrior women Warrior women appear frequently in Scandinavian folklore, whether as pirates, fighters, leaders of armies or avengers. In sagas and poetry, women who chose to live as warriors were called ‘warrior women’. These were women who had chosen to stand outside the traditional gender role, and they seem to have been an accepted part of Old Norse society. In many of the stories and the poems they are referred to a ‘shield maidens’, meaning young women who had chosen to work as warriors. This expression is often used in the texts without further explanation, which suggests that the readers and listeners were well acquainted with the phenomenon The shield maidens must not be confused with the Valkyries, who were divine beings associated with the battlefield. The question is whether warrior women are literary fantasies, myths, or a historical reality. Warrior women are not mentioned in any contem porary Nordic rune inscriptions, but that is perhaps not so surprising if they comprised only a small part of the Scandinavian warrior groups. Also, we know that rune stones often functioned as documentary records of inheritance and were usually raised by widows or mothers of fallen husbands and sons. Nor are warrior women named in French and Anglo-Saxon annals and chronicles.13 They are not mentioned either in the Irish chronicles in c hap ter 2
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connection with the Vikings, but the phenomenon was not unfamiliar to the Irish themselves. The most famous were the protagonists Scáthach and Aífe, who probably had Scottish-Celtic origins and lived in the 5th or 6th century. Several older sources claim that warrior women were found in northern Europe and Scandinavia around the time of Christ’s birth. Historians such as Strabo and Plutarch (1st century BC), Dio Cassius (49 AD) and Tacitus (100 AD) all say that there were warrior women among the tribes in northern and eastern Europe. In the 1st century AD, Saxon men and women were regarded by the Romans as of equal value. According to Tacitus, when a man married he gave to the woman oxen and a horse with its bridle, together with shield, spear and sword. She gave him the weapons back. Such reports, probably based on witness observation, surely contributed to reinforcing the Romans’ view of Germanic women as warlike. Such a ritual does not automatically imply that all women fought in war, or that all women bore weapons, but it can mean that Saxon men and women had shared responsibility for defending their nearest and dearest if necessary, and that fighting was part of life. Two particular features recur in all Roman descriptions of the Germans: their appearance, with powerful bodies and reddish-blond hair and beard; and their women. According to the sources, the women supported their men in war and sometimes took part in the battles themselves. Roman war reports regularly told of warrior women being found among the enemy’s dead. This can mean that some of the women fought in war, especially if the reports are from conflicts where the Romans were attacked, but it can also mean that women defended themselves with weapons when the tribe was attacked, just as Saxon women apparently did. As we do not know what types of conflict were being described, it is difficult to distinguish if these were warrior women who attacked the Romans, or whether they were taking part in a defence, or if they did both. At the end of the 3rd century AD, 30 captured ‘Gothic warrior women’ were paraded in front of the populace when Emperor Aurelian (emperor 270–275 AD) held a triumphal procession in 100
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Rome. It is quite possible that these women really were warrior women, but the Roman triumphal processions were theatre and these ‘Gothic warrior women’ may also have just been the result of the Romans wishing that such women did exist. The Romans, with their severe and puritanical view of women and their double moral standards regar ding sex, must have been terrified and aroused at the same time by the thought that they could be attacked by women. Such emotions certainly led to many stories and fantasies being played out in the gladiatorial arenas and the triumphal processions. Eastern Roman historians also mention war rior women among their European enemies. In Procopius’ account of the war against the Goths (535–552) there is a story about an English princess who led an invasion of Jutland and captured the young king, Radigis, because he had deceived her. This story is characteristic of Saga material, and it can hardly be used as a reliable source to prove the existence of the warrior woman. On the other hand, another Byzantine historian, Johannes Skylitzes, tells in his historical writing from the 12th century that warrior women took part in the fighting when Prince Svjatoslav of Kiev lost a battle against the Byzantines in Bulgaria in 971. He says that the Byzantines were amazed when they found armed women among the fallen warriors. Even though Skylitzes was writing 200 years after the events, it is possible that he had access to contemporary archives. Just like the West Romans, the East Romans were prolific writers of reports. In this context, we must also consider the social structures among the rus. Svjatoslav and his warriors were almost nomadic. They could be absent from Kiev for years, and therefore would have their women, female slaves and children with them when they went raiding. It may have been these women who were killed in the battles, as they tried to defend themselves and their families. Nearly all the descriptions of warrior women are in texts from the Middle Ages. They were written several centuries after the events they describe. Some of these reports are of events said to have taken place in the time of tribal migrations, which was even more remote. The Fornalder sagas (‘Sagas of Earlier Times’)
comprise a collection of legendary sagas which were gathered together at the end of the 14th century. Among others, they include Hervor’s and Hedrek’s Saga, which is about the magic sword, Tyrfing, with the action taking place in the 5th century. Hervor, Angantyr’s daughter, dressed like a man and learned to use weapons in her youth, and went on plundering raids in search of valuables. In Rolf Gautreksons Saga, which was written down in the 13th century, we find Torbjørg the shield-maiden. She was daughter of a King Erik in Uppsala and preferred to spend her days in fighting and athletic activities than in womanly activities. She even had her own guard troops. In oral tradition she was known as ‘King Torberg’. A number of women warriors also appear in Saxo’s 13th-century Gesta Danorum (‘Chronicle of the Danes’). It is important to note that all the warrior women in the Fornalder sagas and in Saxo’s
writings are upper-class women. In fact, this makes the stories appear more authentic. Even if they had wanted to do so, women from other layers of society would not have had the same opportunity to distinguish themselves in masculine arenas. In theory, upper-class women had the time and the authority to be able to assert themselves outside the wholly traditional role model. According to Saxo, the warrior women were so numerous that he needed to explain to the reader why this was so. In Book Seven, which mainly deals with events at the end of the 8th century and beginning of the 9th, he says that he will explain how some women behaved in older times:
The shield-maiden is usually portrayed as a Valkyrie, a female divine being associated with the battlefield. In Peter N icolai Arbo’s 1872 painting ‘Åsgårdsreia’ (‘The Cavalry of the Gods’), they are placed at the front of the company of ghostly, dead heroes and of gods who roamed through the sky at Yuletide and scared the living.
In olden days there were among the Danes, women who dressed like men and used nearly every moment of their time in battle-training so as not to run the risk that the sickness of luxurious life would drain away their courage. c hap ter 2
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They hated luxury, preferring to harden both body and soul with toil and endurance (…) they forced their womanly nature to act with manly ruthlessness. And they absorbed the art of warfare with such zeal that one would not believe they were women any longer. It was especially those with a strong personality or a tall, handsome body who chose such a life.
This female figure depicted wearing a boar’s hide and carrying a shield is one of the many creatures pictured on the textiles from the Oseberg find.
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After his introduction, Saxo turns back to the story itself, which is an account of the line of Danish kings. Warrior women appear again in Book Eight. In the battle of Brävall, between the Danish King Harald Hildetann and the Swedish King Ring, there are among the leaders of the Danish army two woman warriors, Hede and Visna, ‘to whom nature has given manly courage in women’s bodies’. These two women led a force from Slesvig in the battle. Visna carried the unit’s banner and is described by Saxo as ‘a tough woman with good knowledge of the arts of warfare’. Hede led Harald’s right flank. Vebjørg was another woman warrior who took part on the Danish side. She led a group of ‘battlethirsty men’ and was herself a feared warrior. She felled a giant called Sote during the battle, but when she began to challenge further warriors to individual combat she was killed by a well-aimed arrow. The other women were all killed in the battle too. Among other wounds, Visna had her hand chopped off. On King Ring’s side, it is mentioned briefly among other things that Gerd den glade (‘Gerd the Happy’) fought for him together with a group of warriors from Värmland. There is nothing in the reports to indicate that a warrior woman lost her femininity in the eyes of men. In the written sources it appears that the warrior women were desired by men and that they married and had children. Saxo’s histories are exciting reading and good entertainment, but most people agree that his presentation of historic facts cannot be relied upon as accurate. He wrote in ponderous Latin and was inspired by classical texts, and many of his female characters have classic precedents, such as the Amazons and Camilla in The Aeneid. However, Saxo’s warrior women are not just classic models transferred to a Scandinavian scene. Saxo based his material on Scandinavian sources, mainly Icelandic. t h e a rt of wa r
He himself says that he had copied much of this material in his presentation, especially from the heroic poetry. Many of Saxo’s stories about the warrior women have literary parallels in the heroic poems in The Older Edda and elsewhere. The events in these lays are mostly supposed to have taken place in the time of the tribal migrations, and they are preserved in Icelandic parchment manuscripts from the 13th and 14th centuries. A good example of such parallel stories is Saxo’s account of Hagbart, who in his struggle to win Signe pretended to be a woman warrior, and the story of Helge in Det andre kvadet om Helge Hundingsbane (‘The second poem about Helge Hundingsbane’). In Saxo’s account, Hagbart is asked why he is so masculine. ‘She’ replies that it is not usual for warrior women to concern themselves with feminine arts. In The Older Edda, Helge is asked the same question when he pretends to be a slave girl. His patron explains that the slave girl is so masculine because she was previously a warrior woman from a noble family: The grinding-stone groans On the grinding-bench When a prince’s daughter Turns the quern. Once she rode Above the clouds; Ventured to fight Like a Viking; Until Helge Captured her; Sister is she To Sigar and Hognes; Quick and sharp-eyed, Our quern-girl.
We don’t know who wrote these poems, but they are thought to be survivals from an oral folk tradition that existed for hundreds of years before the Viking Age. We know them from early written sources including excavations at Bryggen in Bergen where a number of runic inscriptions from the 12th century have been found, containing verses from the Edda poems. They are also found in fragments of the German Hildebrandslied (‘Song of Hildebrand’) from the 9th century.
Do the Roman and Norse stories reflect an actual reality, namely that warrior women existed in Germanic tribal culture in northern Europe and Scandinavia until well into the Viking Age? Alternatively, are the stories of warrior women just based on misunderstanding, or are they pure literary fantasy? Women also feature outside their established roles in the Old Norse sagas about events in Iceland; not directly as warrior women, but as women who take up arms. Here, however, they are often punis hed for this, or have to tolerate social criticism. In the Laksdøla Saga we hear about Aud, who attacked her husband, Tord, with a sword. She was called Broka-Aud (‘Trousered Aud’) because she preferred to wear men’s clothes rather than skirts. This led to Tord divorcing her, because her lack of femininity offended his manly honour. She herself didn’t think there was anything noteworthy or dishonourable in wearing trousers. When Tord found himself a new woman, Aud took the sword and wounded him as an act of revenge. In Gisle Surson’s Saga, Tordis took upon herself the role of avenger when her family was offended. She wielded a sword against Øyolv and injured him to avenge the killing of her brother. In The Greenland Saga and Eirik Raude’s Saga we meet Frøydis, who was Eirik Raude’s daughter. She was a very determined woman who didn’t hesitate to take up a weapon. She killed five women with an axe after first having their men killed. In Vinland she grasped a sword and displayed her breasts and pregnant abdomen to show the Indian warriors that she was a woman. She hit herself on the breasts with the flat of a sword when they attacked the new settlements. Frøydis’s aim in doing this was probably not to fight with the Indians, but first and foremost to demonstrate that she was a woman and pregnant, and that she was prepared to defend herself and her child. Neither Aud, Tordis nor Frøydis were warrior women, but as participants in these dramas they were in a theatre where it was considered legitimate for women to handle weapons. These women were also to a certain extent upper-class women. They were married to independent farmers. In Iceland, where there was no king, the free farmers constituted the upper class and the landless, the
tenant farmers, the freed serfs and the slaves made up the lower classes. It is possible that the Icelandic family sagas are pure fiction and should really be regarded as intended to combine the telling of good stories with imparting to the readers the kind of behaviour that was accepted in Icelandic society in the Middle Ages. Gender roles in Viking times were clearly defined and separated. Men and women each related to their symbolic world of rights, values and attributes. A free man had weapons as his symbol, with which to defend himself and his family. The woman held the keys to the rooms and storage chests on the farm. Another symbolic distinction of both sex and status was clothing and appearance. One Icelandic legal decision specified that women who wore men’s clothing, cut their hair or carried weapons could be condemned as outlaws, and the same applied to men who wore women’s clothes. The distinction was most acute in the social milieu of the warriors, which promoted a purely masculine culture. In the daily toil on the farm, by contrast, many of the areas of responsibility overlapped. The gender distinctions were manifested instead in cultural practices and symbolism. Marriage between a man and a woman was one of the most important social institutions of the Viking Age. Getting married was a symbolically important decision which affected the whole exten ded family, and a man had to consult his friends and relatives before he could choose a bride. In theory the woman had no say in the matter but in practice it was probably usual for both bride and groom to give their consent. Women in the aristocratic classes, though, differed from farming-class women in being largely pawns in the game of politics. A description of a marriage ceremony tells us that the man gave the family sword to the woman as a wedding present, to be passed on thereafter to a male heir. She also received and gave to the man gifts of weapons, as the Germanic women had done in Tacitus’s time.
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If a woman served as head of the household in a family which lacked a man to fulfil this role, she could be buried with symbols of manhood. In Sountaka (Hämne) in Finland two decorative swords have been found in a female burial dated to the 11th century. This one has the blade and the hilt made in bronze, decorated in Jelling style.
migration and Viking times. In some instances, where there is evidence of more than one weapon, this could be interpreted as indicating that the weapons were actually used by the women. There are several female burials in northern Germany which contain evidence of military gear, shields, spears and swords. Two of these are dated between 450 and 650 AD. More usually, however, the graves contain a single weapon rather than the whole equipment. Moreover, it is often difficult to be certain that the surviving artefacts really are the remains of a weapon. In 1867 a Scandinavian female burial from the Viking Age was found in Norfolk, England. In addition to a pair of oval brooches this contained an object resembling a sword. This obviously made headlines, but it is equally likely that it was a weaving shuttle. Weapons have been found with greater certainty in other burials from Viking times. In 1981, during 104
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an excavation in the neighbourhood of the village of Gerdrup in Denmark, a female skeleton was found buried with a needle-case, an iron knife and a spear. This grave dates from the beginning of the 9th century. It has been suggested that she was either a warrior woman or a woman with ‘man-status’, serving as head of a household which lacked a man to fulfil this role. In such circumstances it was legitimate for a woman to be buried with symbols of manhood. But this does not tell us anything about whether she actually fought with the spear. In Sountaka (Hämne) in Finland a decorated sword has been found associated with a female burial dated to the 10th century. Perhaps here too we have a woman carrying out a manly role? However, later investigations seem to connect the sword to a secondary grave and not the female burial. Weapons have also been found in two female burials from Kaupang in Norway. In a boat burial from the last quarter of the 9th century, an axe, eight knives, a
quiver for holding arrows and a whetstone were found in addition to a pair of oval brooches and other feminine accessories. In addition to these two, nearly 20 burials have been found in Norway contai ning both women’s and men’s equipment. Many of these were excavated during the 19th and early 20th centuries and are therefore not so well documented as the Gerdrup and Kaupang graves. As documentation is scantly or entirely lacking, we cannot be sure whether there was more than one skeleton in each of these graves. So they cannot be used as a source. In the light of corresponding finds, it is not unthinkable that many of these Norwegian ‘undo cumented’ burials were single female burials with a weapon. The finds are obviously not evidence that these women were warrior women, but they are evidence that women and weaponry were not incompatible in the Viking Age. Was it possible for women in the Viking Age to appear as warriors in the battle line alongside men? Even though the Edda poems and many sagas should perhaps be interpreted as allegories conveying moral values in the form of parables rather than as factual accounts, and the warrior women should be seen as fictitious, there are many archaeological finds which associate women with weapons. As we have seen, such finds of weapons can be explained other than as weapons for use by women in battle. We have also seen that the gender roles in Viking society were normally kept strictly separate, and that it was associated with shame and dishonour to break those boundaries, though it was still possible for men and woman to break out of such bonds if the conditions were right. It is however difficult to say anything about why some women in Viking society wanted to appear as warriors and about how some of them seem to have acquired the right to do so. There is much research still to be done in this area, but the preliminary conclusion is that women warriors would probably have represented too big a deviation from the gender roles of the Viking Age.
Treating the sick and wounded Seagoing people in Viking times had experience of long sea voyages and their associated afflictions.
Weeks, possibly months on board ship were no joke. You could go for days without dry clothes, and with a plain and restricted diet it was only to be expected that people could easily fall sick during or after the voyage. In addition to all the possible injuries which could happen on board, far from land, what people feared most was scurvy. The first symptoms were usually swollen and bleeding gums, followed by teeth falling out, blue spots on the skin and eventually death from internal bleeding. Fruit and vegetables to help prevent the illness could not be preserved on board for the duration of a long voyage. If you caught scurvy and survived, you were scarred for life. But for men who made their living from war, injuries on land were the most common hazard. Cutting and penetrating weapons such as swords, spears and axes could cut an arm or a leg clean off with a single stroke. Even though a man was protected by chainmail, helmet and padded clothes, he could easily get crush injuries from axes and clubs. Arrows and spears could penetrate deep into the body and sever tendons, blood vessels and muscle tissue. Those who were wounded must have suffered terribly. Even small wounds could become infected and fatal if they were not cleaned and dressed quickly. Fractures could lead to limb deformities if they were not splinted. Broken and crushed bone could lead to fatal blood poisoning. In Snorre Sturluson’s Saga of Olav the Holy, we find the story of Tormod Kolbrunarskald. He was attended to by a skilful female doctor after the battle of Stiklestad in 1030, but he could not be saved. This was a fate he shared with many others. If you were not killed on the battlefield, you risked being wounded and later dying of what would today be considered trivial, minor cuts and bruises. It was also possible to be injured during training, or on a slippery boat deck or in almost any other situation. We know very little about how the Vikings dealt with their sick and injured. The few sources available indicate that it was mainly the women who attended to this, but that men could also function as medics on the battlefield. In Christian Europe, and in Scandinavia after the introduction of Christianity, medical work was mainly done by men, but the women were still responsible for everyday healthcare at home. The c hap ter 2
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medicinal knowledge from Antiquity was main tained in the monasteries throughout Europe, but the situation was different in heathen Scandinavia. Here there were no corresponding institutions where knowledge about medical treatment and combatting illness was preserved and practised. Unlike Christian Europe, in Scandinavian society it was the women who are thought to have performed the main role as healers and as carers for the wounded. Such knowledge as did exist, was often blended with religious concepts and handed down from parents to children for generations.
Olav Trygvasson bought large stalks of angelica to mollify his queen.
Moss has been used for many hundreds of years.
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In the sagas we meet several women who tended and bound up wounds after battles. The woman doctor who tended Tormod after the battle of Stiklestad also cooked up a soup of onions and other herbs, which she got Tormod to drink. Then she smelled his wounds to check for the smell of onions. That would tell her whether there was a perforation right into the stomach or intestines. In such a case there was little she could do. She also heated water to wash the wounds before she dressed them, she removed arrowheads with pincers and she opened up wounds which had gone septic. She had a number of assistants to help her. It almost looks as if she administered a whole field hospital. It is probable that such female medics with their own teams followed the armies in their travels, with the primary duty of attending to the sick and wounded. Several other sagas also tell of women doctors being called upon to tend the wounded. Usually the story is of minor injuries, but some of the cases described involve more serious injuries. When arms and legs were amputated, glowing tongs were used to stem bleeding and hinder infection. Tar and pitch, which also have antiseptic properties, could be used in the intermediate care of wounds. Medicine and religion were closely connected. These women doctors also served in other contexts as midwives and as fortune tellers and sibyls, and the treatment of illness was often followed by healing exorcisms and formulae. Men were also involved in medical practice, but usually in war situations. In the Icelandic Øyrbryggja Saga there is a chieftain priest by the name of Snorre who apparently had good know ledge of injuries. He cleaned and dressed wounds, and he also tasted the blood from one of the wounds. If the blood tasted of stomach acid, this established that the blood was coming from the stomach and that the man’s injuries were such that he could do nothing for him. Snorre must have had good knowledge about wounds and injuries to be able to make such an assessment. Men are also described in other sagas as good healers, but without indications of such impressive knowledge as Snorre’s. Unlike the women, the men seem to have little formal knowledge of medicine. They were picked
out from other warriors to function as medics. Magnus the Good had no skilled women medics with him when his army was fighting in Denmark. So he appointed 12 men to take the job. He selected them by going round feeling the hands of his men and picking out those who had the softest and warmest hands. It was generally accepted that some people had hands with healing properties, and that even some kings had this gift.
Herbal medicines To practise effective treatment of wounds and sickness, just having warm hands was not enough. Knowledge of healing herbs and plants was also needed. Some plants were known to have medici nal effects, while others were used because people thought they had magical properties. One plant which has always been used in Scandinavia for cooking and as a common medicine is angelica, as it came to be known in Christian times. Angelica is a mountain plant of the umbelliferous family,
found throughout the whole of Scandinavia and on Greenland and Iceland. Stalks of angelica were common produce in Viking times. In Snorre Sturluson’s sagas of the kings, we are told that Olav Trygvasson bought large stalks of angelica in the market place in Trondheim to mol lify his queen, Tyra. The plant was so important that from time to time farmers were obliged to cultivate it, and the Gulatingsloven, the law established by the ting at Gulen, included penalties for anyone who trespassed on someone else’s field of angelica. In folk medicine there was hardly any illness which could not be cured with angelica. This belief has a certain basis in reality, as angelica contains substances (especially angelicin) which have a stimulant effect on the digestive system, and furanocoumarin which has an anxiolytic effect. Angelica roots are diuretic and were used to treat loss of appetite and abdominal swelling. Angelica was also used in wound dressings, because of its antibacterial properties. Moss has been gathered up and used as a wound
This fragment of a skull bone from the 8th century carries a runic inscription for healing. It has been worn as an amulet. The inscription reads something like: ‘Ulf and Odin and Hå-tiuR (The name has not been interpreted). The bored hole (possible interpretation) is a help against this pain. And the dwarf is defeated. Bour.’ The rune-carver probably thought that a supernatural dwarf was causing a pain and that he would disappear if a hole was made in the skull.
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An amber amulet in the shape of a bear. Amber is considered to give protection and health, and the finest amulets are generally shaped as here, a creature coiled into a circle and holding its hindquarters firmly. The material and the shape may both be r eferences to the cycle of life, turning in and renewing itself. 108
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dressing for centuries, because of its antibacterial properties. It is also good at absorbing blood and accelerating healing. Goldenrod (Solidago) is another plant that has been used medicinally, both externally and inter nally. Among other uses, it was used as a poultice or ground to an ointment and applied to infected sores, wounds, boils and chronic skin diseases. St John’s wort (Hypericum) was highly esteemed in popular belief and was widely used in magic rituals for protection. People believed that wearing St John’s wort on their person protected against fever and chills, made soldiers invisible and attrac ted love. It was also supposed to protect against lightning bolts, fire and evil spirits. Treatment of illness and injury was generally considered to be ineffective if it was not followed up with religious formulae and incantations. The goddess responsible for healing in Norse mythology was Eir. She was also named among the ranks of the Valkyries who selected out the warriors to die in battle, and it was good to invoke her when dealing with injuries on the battlefield. The fact that she was also a Valkyrie probably made it easier for both the wounded and their attendants to accept that many died during and after treatment. Other gods could also be called upon for hea ling, through the use of amulets, incantations and formulas. In one formula which has been preserved, the Second Merseburg Formula from the 10th century, Odin, Balder and Frigg are invoked for help against a range of injuries, including broken bones and bleeding. The sagas also mention the use of runes in the care of the sick. We know from The Saga of Egil Skallagrimsson that runes were considered an exceptionally potent means of either healing or causing illness. Faulty use or unskilled carving of
the runes was thought to cause the opposite effect. Egil found a whalebone with badly carved runes in the bed of a sick woman. When he destroyed the bone and carved new runes, the woman recovered. Runic inscriptions of magic formulae have been found throughout Scandinavia. One such find is a 8th-century piece of skull found at Ribe in Denmark. This was worn as an amulet, and it is inscribed with a healing formula which invokes Odin, among others, for help to combat an infec tion. Similar healing amulets have been found at Sigtuna in Sweden. One of these is an inscription on a rib, and another is on a little copper plate. Both are pleas for help to combat a sickness demon. A similar amulet has been found in Canterbury in England. The incantations can be seen as parallel texts of one and the same formula, and they all have a heathen origin. In Norway, other examples of magic formulae have been found in Bergen. These date from the Middle Ages, but they too must have been in use in Viking times. There is also an example from Dublin, the Vikings’ capital in Ireland. With the introduction of Christianity the monastic system came to Scandinavia, bringing with it a classical understanding of illness and knowledge of herbal remedies. Hospitals were established, where the sick could come for help. We must suppose that the monks learned and made use of knowledge about local medicinal plants. However, old superstitions did not die out with the coming of Christianity. The magic formulae were directed instead at new figures, such as Mary, Our Father and St Olav. Another consequence of Christianisation was that women lost their special position in society as healers and doctors. In the home, however, they continued to practise their time-honoured therapeutic traditions well into modern times.
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3. viking fortifications
Viking fortifications The Vikings were expert at building fortifications. Over a thousand years later, there are still remains of many town walls, fortresses and other military buildings that the Vikings built both at home in Scandinavia and in the lands they invaded.
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Opposite: It was important for the Vikings to be able to build fortresses. From the fortresses they could explore the surrounding country and invade further, or they could consolidate their position. Fyrkat is near Hobro, at the inner end of the Mariager Fjord on Jutland in Denmark. The circular fortress was built by Harald Bluetooth around 980. 112
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he ability to build fortifications was crucial as it enabled the Vikings to control a territory or remain in an area for any length of time. With a fortress as a base, they could explore the surrounding country and invade further, or they could establish themselves in an area. The Vikings’ fortifications and military bases can be divided into two main groups: the permanent and the temporary. Among the permanent establishments are the great boundary wall, the ‘Danewall’, between the Denmark of Viking times and the expanding French kingdom, and the fortifications of various towns. The temporary structures include the seasonal raiding bases along the coasts and the winter camps. Military fortresses were often situated in boundary regions where tax income and booty from raiding expeditions formed the basis of the economy. Viking fortresses at home and abroad were primarily military bases from which attack could be launched. However, the Vikings also needed fortresses and walls to protect their own towns and ports from assault and plunder. They also had to protect their seasonal raiding bases and winter encampments from attack. The winter encampments especially had to be secure enough vi k i ng f ort i fic ations
to enable them to overwinter without being at risk of being overwhelmed. Fortresses were used for both attack and defence. They could be used to stop an enemy, or to lure an opponent into making an unwise tactical choice. They could also be launch points for counterattack. Sometimes they were used for pure trickery. In 867 the Englishmen were lured inside the fortifications in York, only to be surrounded and killed. Churches, with their strong walls, were also used as fortresses for both defence and attack. The Vikings ensconced themselves in a church, only to break out and attack when the enemy least expected it. All the various types of fortresses and fortifications of Viking origin that are known or of which remains have been found, seem to have one common feature: a raised embankment of earth and turf. The embankment was often further protected by a defensive moat around the outside and a wooden breastwork on top. This system was used for the fortresses in the trading towns of Hedeby in Denmark and Birka in Sweden, and for the Danish circular forts and winter encampments in England. The embankment was often buttressed with oak logs, and sometimes filled with stone. The breastwork often consisted of a palisade of posts or oak planks along the top of the earth
The Vikings’ largest trading town, Hedeby, was in Slesvig, south of Denmark’s modern border with Germany. The Danish King Godfred founded the town in 808. This region passed from Denmark to Germany after the war of 1864.
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embankment. There are no records or evidence of stone breastworks. The Vikings do not appear to have commonly used either hewn or natural stone as a building material for fortifications, even though such building methods are found in Scandinavia both before and after the Viking Age. This is mainly because the fortifications were often intended just for short-term use and building them in stone would require too many resources. Also, it really wasn’t necessary to use stone, because most of the Vikings’ opponents had neither the technology nor the equipment to break down the earth embankments. Nor was stone used in more permanent structures, such as town walls and frontier defences, other than as a filling material for earth embankments. Even though stone was a strong material and readily available, the craft of stone-building seems to be unknown in Scandinavia in the Viking Age, only coming in during the Middle Ages, when stone churches became popular. vi k i ng f ort i fic ations
Some town walls and boundary walls had towers or turrets as part of their defences. These are often described as built of wood. We have found traces of a few towers over gates in walls, and also indications that they were used along the wall. The town wall in Birka had many turrets, which were important in the defence of the town. These served both as look-out posts and as strategic locations from which to shoot arrows and throw stones at the enemy. Apart from the big frontier embankments, such as Kovirke and the Danewall in Denmark, fortifications were usually laid out in a circle or a semi-circle, often backed against water or bog. This also applied to the big town walls around the trading towns of Hedeby, Ribe and Birka. Some of the big circular forts in modern-day Denmark and Sweden, and a few naval bases in enemy territory, may originally have been built with the intention of being permanent, but then only used for a short period.
An Arab in Hedeby The Arab trader Al-Tartushi from Cordoba in Muslim Spain visited Hedeby around 950. ‘Salsawiq (Sleswig, as Hedeby was called by people south of Denmark) is a very big town by the coast of the ocean. Inside it there are wells of fresh water. The people there are Siriusworshippers (pagans), apart from a few who are Christians and have a church there.’ He also mentions the use of make-up among the Viking men and women and their terrible singing and music.
Hedeby was Scandinavia’s b iggest town in the Viking Age.
Fortified towns The Vikings’ Scandinavian towns show all the features of the changing times they were built to survive. During the 9th and 10th centuries the towns and villages needed to be able to protect themselves. In Denmark, people began to fortify towns such as Hedeby and Århus with earthworks and palisades as a protection against plundering by other Vikings. In Sweden, the first known professional army in Scandinavia protected Birka against pirates from the Baltic and others who wanted to take control of the lucrative trading town. Kaupang in Norway had a different fate – it fell before defensive fortifications could be developed to protect it. Written sources and archaeological evidence both show that other towns in Norway were protected by earthworks, such as Borg (now Sarpsborg) and parts of Nidaros (now Trondheim). In Oslo, which is thought to have been founded by King Harald Bluetooth at the end of the 10th century as a centre for control and collection of taxes, there are traces of what might have been a small round fort where the king’s estate was later established. Was this a fortified castle? There is not thought to have been any town wall. Hedeby, the Vikings’ biggest trading town, was in Slesvig, south of the modern Danish-German
border. According to the French annals, the town was founded in 808 by the Danish King Gudrød. The annals say that he plundered the northern German town of Rerik and took the whole population away with him. There had already been a small settlement here since the 730s, which may have been why Gudrød chose this particular site. He was probably aware of how lucrative it would be to gain control over manufacture and trade in this area, and Hedeby quickly grew to become the biggest town in Scandinavia, with up to 4,000 to 5,000 inhabitants at its peak. Such a town needs protection, and so a big defensive work was built around it. Within the earthwork, which at its biggest was 9 metres high, there was a built-up area of about 100 acres. The earth wall had two gates, one in the south and one in the north. In the south-west there is an outer wall with a collapsed section known as ‘The Storm Hole’. This may have been a third gate, but it may also have been a break in the earthwork from Svein Forkbeard’s siege and capture of the town in 995/6. Around the earth wall there was a dry moat, and along the top were palisades and turrets. Across the bay, beyond the entrance to the harbour, there was an underwater barrier, probably made with wooden stakes and with an opening to allow passage. The town also had its own fortress on an area of high c hap ter 3
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ground to the north. This area appears to have been surrounded by a low earthwork, but there is no evidence of regular occupation. The fortress dates from before the town got its own town wall, and it may have served as a place of refuge for the population in time of war. Hedeby was an important centre for trade between Scandinavia and the rest of Europe. Because this brought great wealth to whoever controlled the town, it changed hands several times. For a time in the first half of the 10th century Hedeby was colonised by Swedish-Danish chiefs. One of these, Sigtrygg, is named on a local rune-stone. Harald Bluetooth retook the town and reinforced the defensive works around it; those are the earthworks that can be seen today. In the 980s the town fell to the Swedish King Erik the Victorious, but it was later recaptured by Harald’s son, Svein Forkbeard. The earthwork he probably constructed when laying siege to the town can still be seen in the area in front of the town wall. In the 1050s the Norwegian King Harald Hardråde and the Danish King Svein Estridson went to war, and Hedeby was stormed, plundered and burnt to the ground. A skaldic poet in Harald Hardråde’s court composed a poem about Harald’s destruction of Hedeby: Burnt up, from end to end, all Hedeby Powerful work can this be called, I think. I expect our deed stirs hard in Svein, – I was in a wing of the fort before dawn, – Fierce fire rose high from the houses. from snorre sturluson’s heimskringla, the saga of harald hardråde
This is how the earthwork round Birka may have been constructed. A row of turrets protected the many gates, and a fenced walkway along the top gave the warriors protection against attack from either side. 116
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After this destruction the town lost its importance, and after the Slavs plundered the remains in 1066 it was abandoned. The population fled north to the new town, Slesvig. The defence works around Hedeby, however, retained their military importance as part of the boundary Danewall for a long time. The Swedish town of Birka was founded on the Island of Björkö in Mälaren sometime in the 8th century, and was abandoned for unknown reasons just before the year 1000. One of the main reasons for the town being abandoned may have been the fall of the mighty Khazar Empire, which ended the silk trade with the East. The town was an important centre for Baltic trade in the 10th century and could supply a variety of goods including Arab silver, Baltic amber, Chinese silk, Frisian textiles and French weapons. The population probably varied between approximately 800 and 1,000 people. The town was surrounded by a semi-circular earthwork similar to but slightly smaller than the
one at Hedeby, enclosing an area of about 500 acres. The earth wall was covered with stone and gravel, and was between 7 and 12 metres thick and up to 2 metres high. This is relatively low, compared with, for example, Hedeby. Today, only around 450 metres of the northern part of the wall is preserved. Originally it was about 700 metres long and penetrated by at least ten gates. Along the top was a palisade of hewn planks fastened with iron nails to a framework. Behind the palisade was a platform from which arrows and other projectiles could be shot. The wall was also equipped with a row of rectangular wooden turrets and a double wooden breastwork. There may have been a tower over each gate. Towards the sea, Birka was protected by a marine barrier, a half-circle of stakes driven into the sea-bed, with an opening for access. Birka’s defences were sometimes manned by its own garrison, possibly the first professional army in Scandinavia. This garrison was quartered in its own fortress just south of the town. Here, remains
have been found of a longhouse outside an earth wall 8–15 metres thick. The wall was oval, lay in a north-south direction and had three gates, one of which led directly into the town. The longhouse was 19 metres long and 9 metres broad. The size indicates that it could house about 40 warriors. This could correspond to the number who were on watch to patrol and guard the town at any one time. We must suppose that the company was bigger than this and that some of the men lived inside the town with their families when they were not on duty. The length of the wall and the many openings in it must have made the town very difficult to defend. So it is conceivable that Birka and its garrison, rather than being a defensive establishment, may have been a centre from which to launch military offensives. Excavations have shown that the site was inhabited long before the town was built, and a variety of peoples may have had interests here. There has been speculation about who originally founded Birka as a trading centre. Was it the Svea, wanting c hap ter 3
The Swedish town of Birka was founded on the Island of Björkö in Mälaren sometime in the 8th century, and was abandoned just before the year 1000. The town was an important centre for Baltic trade in the 10th century and could supply a variety of goods including Arab silver, Baltic amber, Chinese silk, Frisian textiles and French weapons. The population probably varied from around 800 to around 1,000 people at the most. The town, which stood on the open ground in the right of the picture, was surrounded by a semi-circular earthwork enclosing an area of about 500 acres.
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to break the Danish trade monopoly in Mälardalen after their victory at the battle of Bråvalla? Was it craftsmen and traders from Denmark and western Europe, wanting access to the resources of Sweden and the Baltic? Or was Birka, as some have suggested, first founded as a trading outpost by the Khazars, who at that time controlled parts of the Silk Road from China and governed the flow of Arab silver to Scandinavia? Whatever its origin, Birka soon became a hub for long-distance trade with both Russia and Europe. The well-organised street layout indicates that a strong hand controlled either its foundation or its re-establishment. A stone’s throw away from Birka is Hovgården on the island of Adelsö, the ancient seat of the kings who controlled Birka. It has previously been suggested that Birka disappeared after being attacked, plundered and burnt by the Danes. This may have happened, but the most likely reason for its decline is that a rise in the level of the land led to Birka being cut off when ships from the Baltic could no longer travel to Birka through the inlet at today’s Södertälje. Århus in Jutland was first set up at the beginning of the 10th century as an open trading centre, but after a short time it was furnished with a wall for protection against pirates. Written sources tell us that the town was threatened by invasion several times, and archaeological investigations have shown that the fortifications were extended and streng thened both in the 11th century and later. The wall was in the form of a horseshoe, with its open side towards the sea. Remains of a marine barrier show that the town had a protected harbour. The
Section through the town wall in Århus. 118
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defensive earthwork was about 20 metres thick and a good 4 metres high, enclosing an area of about 240 acres. It was further protected by the mouth of a river to the south and ditches to the north forming a stream running out into the sea. Borg was in modern-day Sarpsborg in Østfold in Norway, and according to Snorre Sturluson it was founded by King Olav Haraldsson in 1016. Olav founded the town in an attempt to weaken the Swedish and more especially the Danish influence over the region. From here he could also control trade on the Glomma and at the same time have a strategic stronghold in the wars he was fighting against the Swedish king.
Olav founds Borg When summer came, he turned northwards in Viken (Oslo Fjord) and sailed up the River Glomma. There is a big waterfall there which is called Sarpen. Beside the falls on the river there is a headland and there King Olav had a barrier of stone, turf and timber made across the headland and had a trench dug outside it and built a big earth fortress there. (…) In the fortress he established a trading town. the saga of saint olav
Earth wall
The town was protected by an earth wall, of which some still remains. Most of the wall and all the remains of the town slid into the Glomma in a landslide in 1702. The wall was about 2 metres high and 8–10 metres thick, and may have had a defensive palisade on top and a gate. It was in the form of a half-circle, the back of the town being protected by the Sarp waterfall and the high banks of the River Glomma. To the east, in Russia, fortified towns were either founded or taken over by the Vikings to control trade along the Russian rivers. Staraja Ladoga, in Old Norse times called Aldeigjuborg, was founded as early as about 750 by Vikings from today’s Sweden, and is one of Russia’s oldest cities. The town was built along the River Volkhov, and a fortress was built on the site. In 977 Earl Eirik from Norway attacked the site and burnt it down. It is said that a stone fortress was then built, but archaeological research dates the stone fortress as late as the 13th century. Traces of an older fortification were found underneath that. We must assume that both before and after Eirik’s attack,
the town was protected by a traditional earthwork, which was broadened and reinforced in the 10th and 11th centuries. The trading centre of Novgorod, or Holmgard as the Vikings called the town, was founded on an island in the River Volkhov. Around 860 it was the dominant settlement in the area. The town was secured by a wall enclosing more than 160 acres. There was already a smaller settlement on an island (‘a holm’) in the river when the Vikings arrived, and it was this that originally got the name of Holmgard (‘The town on the holm’). Excavations have indicated a defended market town which expanded at the beginning of the 10th century. Population growth led to the town being moved two kilometres south in 930, to today’s Novgorod. ‘Old Holmgard’ continued as a military and administrative centre and also eventually became a prince’s residence. Novgorod (‘The New Town’) was divided in two by the River Volkhov. On the west side, a fortress was established, protected by a system of
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In the Viking Age, the biggest fortification in northern Europe was in Denmark. ‘The Danewall’ is a collective term for a line of military embankments in modernday Sleswig, which was part of Denmark until 1864. The Danewall is Scandinavia’s most impressive Iron Age fortification, stretching along the old frontier between Denmark and the Continent.
earthworks. On the east side of the river lay the trading town, also protected by an earth wall. Further south, in modern-day Ukraine, was the trading town of Kiev. This was originally one of the Kazakhs’ major towns, on the west side of the River Dnieper, with a fortress on top of a area of high ground. Kiev took over from Novgorod as the Rus-Vikings’ capital in 862. Kiev gradually became the most important town in what has been called ‘Kievan Rus’, and it may have been protected by big earthworks.
Frontier walls Only a few military frontier walls have been found
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in Scandinavia. Nevertheless, one of northern Europe’s biggest military structures is found in Viking Denmark. The Danewall is the collective description of a line of earthworks in modern-day Schleswig, which until 1864 was a part of Denmark. This is Scandinavia’s most impressive Iron Age fortification, extending along the frontier between Denmark and the Continent. The Danewall, which was perhaps Europe’s biggest military structure since Roman times, is about 14 km long. We know little about who built the various parts of the wall. The French annals give the biggest share of the credit to the same King Gudrød who founded the trading town of Hedeby in 808. Saxo, on the other hand, credits Thyra, wife of King Gorm the Old, with building the wall in the 950s. Her name was connected to the Danewall in various sagas, which later historians got hold of and developed further. Archaeological research in the 1970s showed, however, that this structure is much too old to be attributed to Queen Thyra or King Gudrød. Dendrochronological dating, using the annual growth rings in the timber, shows that the oak timber in what is thought to be the oldest part of the work was felled in the year 737. So parts of the work may have been constructed that year. Other researchers think that parts of the structure should be dated right back to the middle of the 7th century. Either way, we are talking of a construction that was started before the Viking Age. It was however during the Viking Age that the earthworks reached their full extent. The parts of the Danewall which have been dated to the first half of the 8th century are called the Main Work, the North Work and the East Work. Their combined length is about 14 km. This original part of the wall may have been 2–3 metres high and 12–22 metres thick, without a moat but with a single palisade. It is built of earth and turf, thrown up and then strengthened with oak timbers. The Main Work, which stretches from the River Eider in the west to the (now dried up) Danewall Lake in the east, was about 2 metres high and 12 metres thick. The North Work extended northwards from the Danewall Lake. The East Work was about 3.3 km long and protected the Svansen Peninsula.
We know from written sources that the Danish border with the Continent followed the River Eider, not far from where the earthwork was built. This area was an important hub for trade within the region and between Denmark and the Continent. There is no doubt therefore that the earthwork fortification was built both to protect Denmark against attack from the south and to regulate and control trade throughout the region. It was built originally as a defence against the Saxons, but it would come to be used to keep out both Wendish and French invaders. The French annals tell that in 808, at the same time as he was building the trading town of Hedeby, Gudrød built an earthwork in the region. As this cannot have been either the Main Work or the North Work, both of which are much older, people have speculated that it may have been a straight, 6.5 km long earthwork known as the kovirke (‘Cow Work’), located slightly to the south. This extended from the southern end of the Slien inlet in the east, to the River Eider in the west. It was not more than 2 metres high and 7–8 metres thick, with a moat on the south side, 4 metres wide and 3 metres deep, plus a palisade on top of the wall. As the Cow Work is not particularly high, was it perhaps a boundary wall rather than a regular defensive wall? The conflicts between the Danish kings and the Franks escalated during the 10th century, and there were several attempts to capture the now lucrative trading town beside the wall. Ownership of the Danewall changed several times in the following
years and it was regularly extended and reinforced. In the 950s and 960s, King Harald Bluetooth built a connecting work joining the semi-circular town wall around Hedeby to the Main Work. It was also at this time that parts of the new structure towards the Main Work came to be known as ‘Thyra Danebot’s Work’. The written sources from the Middle Ages which name Thyra as the founder of the Danewall may have based this notion on memories and accounts of the work done in Harald Bluetooth’s time. Harald also gets the credit for completing the works to the west, the Curved Work often called
Archaeological investigations in the 1970s showed that the oak timber in what is thought to be oldest part of the Danewall was felled as early as 737. c hap ter 3
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Section through the Main Work.
Section through the Cow Work (Kovirke).
Section through the C onnecting Work. 122
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Earl Håkon wages battle at the D anewall The ships’ keels dashed In battle order from the North, South to Denmark ran The stallions of the sea. Thus it happened. On his head the terrible helmet, The king of the Dovre mountains Sought the leader of the horde, Met the Danish kings. The generous king Tempted to dark battlefields, The Earl from the frosty North;
The prince bade the strong Mail-clad warrior Defend the Danevirke against the Mighty shield-champions. Then the mighty spear-thrower King of the Franks Battled boldly against them. There was no real advance To be made against their army, When the Frankish king from the South Following Frisians and Wends Came to do battle and asked A fight of the leader of the fleet.
‘The Little Danewall’, which extended along the River Eider to Hollingstad. This had no moat, but was well protected by an area of bog bordering the river. The Hedeby town wall, the Connecting Work, the Main Work and the Curved Work together made up a new, continuous line of protection. In 975 the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II captured the Danewall and built a fort where the Main Work and the Connecting Work met. According to historians writing in the Middle Ages, when the Danes recaptured the wall soon after, this fort came to be known as Thyraborg. In the 1050s, Svein Estridsson (king 1047–1076) built an earthwork parallel to the Connecting Work. Canute the Holy (king 1080–1086) quarrelled with the Holy Roman Emperor and had to make further reinforcements. These mainly consisted of making the moats deeper and the walls higher. The section which had come to be known as ‘Thyra Danebot’s Work’ was strengthened with a wall of boulders 3 metres high and 3.5 metres thick, plus palisades and wooden turrets. Slightly north of this there are further remains, of a curved earthwork built around the start of the 12th century. The last major builder of the Danewall was Valdemar the Great (king 1157–1182), who built a 3.7 km long brick wall in the 12th century. The Götavirke is the name given to two parallel defensive earthworks laid north–south about
Blazing swords clanged Where Odin’s game youths Clashed their shields; The friend of eagles Faced swords; The hero of the sea drove The Saxons to flight, When the prince and his followers Defended the Danevirke Against the enemy. from einar skålaglam ’ s vellekla , ( c . 986)
10 km west of Söderköping in Östergotland. The structure extends between two lakes, Asplången and Lillsjön and two villages, Västra Husby and Hylinge. The western wall is built of stone and includes a fortress building. Finds made here dating from the 5th and 6th centuries indicate that the fortress is an earlier construction than the wall itself. There are remains of several similar fortresses at the north end of the wall. East of the stone wall there is a 3.5 km long earth wall. This has a moat, of which the northern kilometre or so is formed by a small river. The wall crosses an old military road from the 6th century, and has an opening beside a ford. Parts of this earthwork have been dated to the early 9th century.
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Remains of the Götavirke, about 10 km west of S öderköping in Ö stergotland, Sweden.
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On top of the earthwork, remains of a palisade have been found, facing towards the east. The earthwork was probably modelled on the Danewall and built to defend Östergotland from the Svea in the north. It can be seen as part of a complex of marine barriers, fortresses and signal beacons laid out along the 20 km Slätbaken Fjord, similar to other defensive systems further north near Stäkängen.
Viking forts Few remains of Viking Age forts have been found in Scandinavia, other than in Denmark. Many traces and occasional remains of such structures have however been found in England and Ireland. During the 980s, King Harald Bluetooth established a row of big, circular forts in Denmark. We know of six forts of what is called the ‘Trelleborg type’ in Scandinavia today, and there is uncertainty about another site. The pattern is named after the first of these, which was discovered in Trelleborg in Sjæland. These are all within the region which was known as Denmark in the Viking Age. Five of them are in modern-day Denmark, and one in Skåne in modern-day Sweden. Since the first of these forts was ‘discovered’ in the 1930s, there have been numerous theories about their function and appearance.
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They all have a common basic design, with a precisely shaped defensive earthwork, and the enclosed area divided into squares which are each surrounded by four longhouses. The entrances, facing north, south, east and west, are connected by streets which cross in the centre of the fort. The entrances are built into the walls as tunnels and furnished with strong gates. A street runs round the inside of the circular wall. These round forts were all established at the same time, in 980/981. There is speculation about whether Trelleborg in Denmark may have had a predecessor on the same site, stretching further back in time to the big project of building the Danewall in the beginning of the 8th century. Among other things, some common features in the construction methods suggest this. Trelleborg was developed in at least three phases, coming to its final shape simultaneously with the other circular forts. It must have taken around two years to complete the building of the forts, which only remained in use for 5–20 years until they were all abandoned. The circular outer walls were built of earth and turf, reinforced with timber and uncut stone and clad with an oak panel on the front. On the top there was a wooden breastwork. The walls of the smallest forts required over 20,000 cubic metres of earth, stone and timber, while the biggest, Aggersborg, needed four times as much. The longhouses had curved roof ridges and curved long sides, and consisted of a hall in the middle with small rooms in the gable ends. About 300 cubic metres of uncut oak timber was used for each house, plus about 25,000 cut oak shingles on the roof. The precise and uniform ground plans of the forts show that they must have been designed and constructed by people with considerable architectural knowledge. The architect had the skill to stake out the quarters of the compass with great precision so that the four entrances are orientated east–west and north–south, and the construction workers must have understood geometry and measurement. It is difficult to be sure what unit of measurement was used, but both the Roman foot (c. 29 cm) and what has come to be called the ‘Trelleborg-alen’ (49.3 cm) match the forts’ dimensions. The ground plans also indicate that the architect had mastered the use of geometric
Sections through the circular earthworks of the round fortresses in Denmark, showing how they were reinforced with stakes of timber.
methods using circles and right angles, so that all the parts of the fort follow the same design. The Vikings often built semi-circular forts with the open part facing water or a swamp, but where did the idea of round forts come from? We know of circular refuge forts in Scandinavia from the period before the Viking Age. One example of these is Ismantorp on Öland in the Baltic Sea, which was in use between 300 and 500, but this has houses built parallel to each other, has many more entrances than the circular forts and is built mostly in stone. Nor do the circular forts in Denmark seem to have any architectural features in common with the Middle Age German and English round stone forts. In Frisia in modern-day Netherlands there are a number of circular forts somewhat older than the Danish ones. During excavations in Souburg in the
Netherlands, a circular fort was discovered of about the same dimensions as Trelleborg, and with four entrances and two main streets at right angles to each other. This fort did not have the characteristic houses set at right angles to each other around squares, but we may suppose that the Vikings knew of these forts and added their own design features. There is also great uncertainty about what the forts were used for. Were they centres of power for the control of trade? Were they built because of internal conflicts in Denmark, or were they barracks and training camps for an army of invasion? What is certain is that these forts could house a formidable military force ready for mobilisation and capable of confronting most of what the major European powers of the time could muster. The forts also had important maritime functions. It was the Viking ships that made attacks possible, and finds show that several of the forts were closely involved in shipbuilding and maintenance. Large quantities of iron nails and woodwork from shipbuilding were found in Trelleborg, and at Fyrkat there were also the remains of a ship canal which had been dug from the navigable river right into the fort. There is greater certainty about who was behind the building of the forts. Even though it is thought that Denmark was already united at the start of the Viking Age, events at the end of the 10th century required the kingdom to be recaptured. Evidence of this new unification is on the rune stone King Harald Bluetooth had raised in Jelling, on which c hap ter 3
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Each house required about 300 cubic metres of rough oak timber. This reconstruction is at Fyrkat in Jutland.
Aggersborg is the biggest of all the circular forts which have been found. It was established at the Agger Sound on the Lim Fjord in northern Jutland. The site was obviously a s trategic choice.
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he says that he ‘won himself the whole of Denmark’. The Trelleborg-style forts should probably be seen in the light of the unstable political situation which prevailed after this recapture. The threats against Harald came from many places. In the south, the Holy Roman Emperor was constantly striving to invade the frontier defences. In the north, Norwegian and Swedish magnates sat waiting for an opportunity to break free or to hit back against the expansionist Danish king. In Denmark, local
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chiefs had little inclination to cede power to a central king. A line of strategically placed military strong-points would help against these threats. It is conceivable that the forts also sometimes functioned as trading centres. But even with these precautions, open rebellion eventually broke out against Harald Bluetooth, led by his son Svein Forkbeard. Several of the battles between father and son are thought to have taken place near and on some of these forts, and Svein probably needed to capture some of them to gain control over the territory. The circular forts seem to have lost their usefulness immediately after Svein took over power. Trelleborg and Fyrkat were damaged in the war and never rebuilt, and the other forts are thought to have been abandoned within the next ten years. Aggersborg is the biggest of all the circular forts which have been found. It was established at the Agger Sound on the Lim Fjord in northern Jutland. The site was obviously a strategic choice. It is situated at one of the crossing points of the ancient Ox Road, or Army Road as it is called today. This road stretched through the whole length of Jutland, from the Danewall in the south to Skagen in the north, and it was one of the most important inland lines of communication in Denmark long before the Viking Age. The fort controlled travel over the
sound and all sea travel through the Lim Fjord. Aggersborg has an inner diameter of 240 metres and an outer diameter of 288 metres. The earthwork is 4 metres high, and between the outer edge of the earthwork and the moat there is a flat area about 8 metres wide. The moat is 1.3 metres deep and between 10 and 20 metres wide. The fort enclosed 48 longhouses and could accommodate about 5,000 men. It has been calculated that 66 large oak trees were needed for the construction of each house. About 5,000 large oak trees were probably used in the whole construction. Fyrkat is further south in Denmark, near Hobro at the inner end of the Mariagerfjord. It too is incorporated into the Army Road. The site has good natural protection, surrounded by boggy
terrain and the River Onsild. Unlike the other circular forts, Fyrkat could not be reached directly by sea in Viking times, but there was access to the fjord by a canal that had been dug out. The fort had an internal diameter of 120 metres and enclosed 16 longhouses laid out four around each square, plus several smaller, square houses. The longhouses were 28.4 metres long, 7.4 metres wide and 7.5 metres high, with a floor area of about 210 square metres. The main rooms were 16 metres long and flanked by two smaller rooms in the gable-ends. Between 1982 and 1984, one of the longhouses at Fyrkat was reconstructed using traditional tools and oak timber. The work took 24,192 man-hours, which indicates that in Viking times it would have taken 50 men 2½ years to complete one longhouse. Archaeological investigations have shown that craftsmen, women and children all lived in the fort. Trelleborg is on Sjæland, about 6 km from the town of Slagelse. With an outer diameter of c. 153 metres and inner diameter of c. 136 metres, this is the second biggest of the circular forts. Trelleborg enclosed 16 longhouses, and it differed from the other circular forts in that it had an outer front section with a further 15 longhouses. This outer section had its own smaller protective earthwork running parallel to the main wall for about a quarter of the circumference, across the loop formed by a river-bed which gave additional protection to the other three-quarters. The inner moat was about 17 metres wide and 3–4 metres deep. A burial ground has also been found. This contained the remains of 157 people, mostly men. Trelleborg was the first of the circular forts to be investigated, in 1934. The 16 houses inside the circular wall were about 29.5 metres long, and those in the outer section were slightly smaller, about 26.6 metres. It is estimated that the whole complex could house about 500 people. Nonnebaken, situated in the middle of the modern town of Odense on the Island of Fyn in Denmark, was one of the smaller circular forts, with a diameter of just 120 metres. Very few remains survive, but archaeological investigations have dated it to about 980, like the other circular forts. Borgby was rediscovered as recently as 1998, beside Borgby Castle, north of Lund in Skåne, Sweden. The diameter has been measured as about c hap ter 3
Sketch from the excavations at Trelleborg, showing how the long houses were arranged around squares.
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150 metres, and the width of the wall to about 15 metres. If confirmed, that would make it equivalent to Trelleborg in Denmark. Just outside the fort, Harald Bluetooth built a wooden church which was later rebuilt in brick. Finds from inside the fort include a cloak pin similar to one found in Nonnebakken in Fyn, coins dating from the eleventh century and scales for weighing them. Unlike the other circular forts, with the possible exception of Nonnebaken, Borgby was still occupied after Harald’s time. At the start of the twelfth century a strong defensive stone tower was built in the middle of the circular fort. In the Middle Ages, the whole complex was gradually built up into a castle which survived until 1452, when it was burnt down. Borrering, also known as Vallø Borgring, is the fifth circular fort in today’s Denmark, and was discovered in 2014, near the town of Køge. The outer diameter of the fort at Vallø has been measured as 145 metres, making it similar in size to Fyrkat. It featured a 10–11-metre-wide rampart and was shielded by a palisade made of pointed wooden stakes. No moat has been uncovered, but the Ellebækken stream running due west of the fortification might have offered a natural defence, as might a small lake to the north/north-east. During the Viking Age the fortress would have enjoyed a strategic, geographical advantage overlooking the intersection of the old high roads from Roskilde and Ringsted and the countryside as far as the two streams in Køge Ådal, which at that time was a navigable fjord and one of the best natural ports on Sjælland, offering easy
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access to Køge Bay. The remains have so far been dated to Harald Bluetooth’s time. The forts were widely spread out so that each dominated a part of Harald Bluetooth’s kingdom. With strongholds such as these he could control his territories effectively and suppress any uprisings quickly. In the town of Trelleborg in southern Sweden, traces have been found of a fortification with an outer diameter of c. 125 metres and an inner diameter of 112 metres. Within this, there may have been 16 longhouses laid out in four squares. However, the traces of buildings within the fortifications are so scanty that despite the shared name of Trelleborg, this cannot be identified confidently as a ring fort of Trelleborg type. As at Nonnebakken, the fort is today partly hidden below street level, though a part of it has been reconstructed. Today’s town probably developed from the old trading and military centre.
Raiding bases Anglo-Saxon, French and Irish annals relate that from the 8th century onwards and throughout the Viking Age, monasteries and religious centres along the English, Irish, Frisian and French coasts were repeatedly attacked. The fjords of western Norway were probably the source of more of the raids on England and Ireland, whereas France and modern-day Netherlands were attacked from Denmark. As the attacks on England, Ireland and Scotland became more frequent, we can assume that they were being launched from strategic bases nearer the target areas. In 866, for example, it is said that the Irish king was on the offensive against pirate bases on the north coast of Ireland between Donegal and Antrim. Similar bases may have been established in other places earlier. We can assume that such bases were set up on the mainland, on coastal islands and on islands in the great rivers. Originally, they were seasonal establishments, to provide a secure launching point for raids along the coasts and up the rivers. There is evidence that several of the bases eventually became more permanent settlements. The written sources often call a base such as
this a longphort (‘longship port’). This probably describes a fortified harbour for the protection of big assemblies of ships, crews and materials; a naval base from which to launch attacks. Irish written sources mention more than 20 such bases, spread around the whole country. So far, only the naval bases at Waterford, Limerick and Annagassan have been identified archaeologically. In the years between 835 and 840, a line of longphorts was established along the east coast of Ireland. The best known is probably the Irish capital, Dublin, which was founded about 838. Large bases were also set up along the coast of England. Of these, the naval bases in Kent and on the Isle of Wight in the English Channel are the ones most documented in the written sources. From France, there are records of big naval bases on offshore islands and along the great rivers Seine, Rhine, Loire and Somme. These provided launching areas for inland expeditions and ravaging. On the Oissel Island in the Seine there was a base which regularly threatened Paris, among other places. These naval bases often continued in use for many years and eventually became important centres of local trade. Some, such as Dublin, developed into towns and royal seats, and many of them were fortified with big, solid earthworks. It is thought that the longphorts gradually evolved from being seasonal enclaves in enemy territory, to become permanent, bigger and better protected establishments along the coasts of the target countries. In 839 the Vikings overwintered for the first time in the newly established longphort in Dublin. The base was set up on a tidal promontory at the mouth of the River Liffey. The harbour is thought to have been fortified with an earthwork surrounding the area where Dublin Castle was later built. No remains of this earthwork survive, but archaeological evidence shows that Dublin was regularly subject to attacks, both from the Irish and from other Vikings. So it must have been strongly built. There are however traces of the Viking base at Waterford. This was strategically situated along 500 metres of the River Suir and was enclosed by a double, semi-circular barricade with two moats and earthworks, one inside the other. The fortifications had one entrance. Swords, spears and shields of
Scandinavian type have been found directly inside this. Remains of houses have been found on the site, along with ships’ nails and remains of weights and hack-silver, all of which indicate trade and manufacture. Many fragments of ornamental fittings from religious books and reliquaries were also found, which suggests that booty from the plundering of monasteries and religious centres was collected here. In Limerick, archaeological excavations around the medieval ‘King John’s Castle’ have revealed remains of a pre-Norman defence-work and house, dated to the 11th century. The excavated remains of a stone wall are not typical of the Vikings, and it is uncertain when and by whom it was built.
Winter camps Even though a few bases became permanent, seasonal raids on England were still the norm until the middle of the 9th century. From 850 onwards, increasing numbers of Viking raiders began overwintering in fortified camps. The first overwintering was on the Isle of Thanet in Kent in 850, and in 854 a new overwintering camp was set up on the Isle of Sheppey, also in Kent. In 865 England was invaded by what has come to be known as the Great Army. This army used a number of different winter camps in the course of its first 14-year campaign in England. Some of the camps, such as London and Exeter, were old
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Camp de Peran was on a hill 160 metres high, from which the Vikings could control all traffic along the valley of the River Urne.
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Roman forts. Others, such as Nottingham and Repton in Derbyshire, had previously been secular and religious centres for the Saxons. Others have no known previous history. These were all rather rough structures, consisting of a ditch and an earth wall, probably with a breastwork on top. Only in Repton, where the Vikings overwintered in 873/74, has the camp itself been identified archaeologically. Here, there are traces of a D-shaped fortification with its straight side along the River Trent. Similar D-shaped structures, which may have been winter camps, have been found in Dunrally, Wimblington, Lisnarann, and Shillington but have not yet been excavated. The moat at Repton was up to 4 metres deep and 4 metres wide, and the earth wall up to 6 metres high, with a breastwork along the top. It would have taken 200 men five weeks to build such a fortification. This camp is relatively small, with a diameter of about 100 metres. Another presumed winter camp, near Shoebury in Essex, is about 460 metres in diameter. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us that the Vikings preferred to have a river or a swamp behind their chosen campsite. Where there was no such access to water, we must suppose that the forts would have been round, like the circular forts in Denmark and Sweden. Traces of circular structures have been found in several places in England, but without thorough investigations it is difficult to work out their age.
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In France too, we know of winter camps established on islands in the rivers. Several of these were protected with earthworks and palisades. Excavations in Normandy in 1951/52 found traces of what might be a defensive earthwork around the north end of the Cotentin (Cherbourg) Peninsula. The wall is known as the ‘Hague Dyke’, which has been interpreted as meaning a wall overlooking a barren area. Evidence of major fire has been found up on the wall itself. This may indicate that flaming bonfires in long ditches were used as a defensive technique. The earthwork itself is very ancient, dating from the Celtic period, but it may have been used again in Viking times. We know for sure, however, that the Vikings made use of and further fortified another Celtic defensive work. This was the Peran camp about 9 km south-west from the district of Côtes d’Armor in modern Brittany. This was on a hill 160 metres high, from which the Vikings could control all traffic along the valley of the river Urne. This camp differs from others in being oval in shape. Parts of the earthwork incorporate a stone wall, which probably dates from Celtic times. The camp is about 150 metres in diameter and has an inner area of about 6 hectares. Archaeological finds indicate that the camp was used by the Vikings from around 900 until they were expelled in 936. The finds include weapons and tools of Scandinavian type, and traces of considerable building and other activity.
Sea barriers
Remains of a number of sea barriers have been found in Scandinavia. Harderslev Fjord in south Jutland has two barriers: the inner one was built around 290 and extended in 403 and 1030; the outer one is dated to between 240 and 260. Gudsø Bay in Kolding Fjord is dated to 180 BC through to between 640 and 990. The Hominde Barrier on Lolland was in use in the 10th–12th centuries. Helnæs on Fyn has barriers from the 11th century. Vordingborg has barriers dating from the 10th–12th centuries. In Roskilde Fjord near Fredriksund there are stakes dated to the 11th century. At Skuldelev in Roskilde Fjord in Denmark the five stone-filled wrecks have been reinforced with stakes dated to 950–1050. The Lödde pier in Skåne has barriers from the 10th century. Foteviken in Skåne has palisade barriers from the 11th and 12th centuries. At Hjortahammar in Karlskrona in Sweden there is a line of half a dozen stakes between the islands. These are all dated to the 11th and 12th centuries.
Sea defences We have already mentioned the longphorts in Ireland which appear to have been built to protect Viking ships against attack from the land. We shall now consider homeland naval bases and sea defences. In several areas, remains of boathouses or other structures have been found, where boats could be laid up safely when not in use. Foundations of boathouses have been found grouped together in several places in various fjords round the Norwegian coast. These could have been naval bases. In Hafrsfjord outside Stavanger there was a well-equipped naval base, where foundations of several boathouses have been discovered. The entrance to the fjord was not more than about 150 metres across, and could have been barricaded with floating booms to give extra protection. Throughout Scandinavia, we find evidence of many structures deployed to hinder ships from invading land installations, harbours, naval bases or sea routes. These barriers could be either fixed or moveable. The fixed barriers were installed to protect coasts, fjords, towns and narrow sea sounds against the passage of enemy ships. The main aim was to delay an enemy long enough to be able either to flee or to muster a defence. The mobile barriers were used to block off sounds and fjords and as a protection round harbours.
A palisade barrier usually consisted of several rows of stakes or logs driven into the seabed, like this one from Helnæs on Fyn.
The design of the fixed barriers depended on the local topography. They were mainly devised as a means of defence, to hinder an enemy’s advance. From a tactical point of view they could also have an offensive function, either by locating them so that an enemy was forced to land at a site which was militarily advantageous to the defenders, or by building them in such a way that they caused ships to sink. In that way, attackers could be disarmed even before they set foot on land. Several Icelandic sagas tell of palisade barriers. Once, towards the end of the 9th century, Harald Fairhair was prevented from sailing up the River Göta by a palisade barrier, and in The Saga of St Olav a palisade barrier is mentioned as a defensive installation in the (presently unidentified) Lake Lagen in Sweden. Saxo relates that in the 1150s the Danes blocked bays and fjords with long poles or stakes. Barriers like this had been used in Scandinavia since the 3rd century, and many of them remained in continuous use for the next 800 years. A palisade barrier usually consisted of several rows of stakes driven into the seabed. Together, they formed a broad barrier. In some instances, such as at Helnæs on Fyn in Denmark, the stakes had barbed points to prevent them being drawn up again. These barriers could be further strengthened with poles placed horizontally between the uprights, free to rise and fall with the tides. Sometimes, as at Hominde c hap ter 3
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Sunken ships have been found as parts of barriers in several places, for example at Skuldelev in Roskilde Fjord.
Floating booms could be installed quickly at the approach of an enemy and fastened to big stones or trees along the shores.
on Lolland in Denmark, the horizontal bars had holes to fit onto the verticals, creating an effective obstacle which was more difficult to break down and destroy. This type of barrier probably had some type of gate or concealed opening to allow local boats to pass through. Harbours and entrances had been reinforced with barriers since before Roman times. This is demonstrated for example by the installation in Gudsø Bay on Jutland, where the dating stretches from about 170 BC to the 14th century AD. It is still uncertain whether such barriers were used at Kaupang in Vestfold, Norway, but it seems unlikely, because the rest of the town lacked defensive works. In several places, sunken ships have been found to form parts of barriers, for example at Skuldelev in Roskilde Fjord and Foteviken in modern-day Sweden. The ships were loaded with stone, then manoeuvred into position and held in place with stakes. At Skuldelev three ships were sunk around the year 1,000, and a further two fifty years later. This is evidence of a permanent barrier. At other places, we can suppose that ships were sunk in haste to hinder an advancing enemy. Floating booms could be used where the water was too deep to drive in stakes, or where the seabed was not suitable. This type of barrier was particularly suited to Norway, where the deep fjords make palisade barriers impossible. The main benefit of a floating boom is that it can be installed quickly at the approach of an enemy. The boom would almost certainly be fastened to big stones or trees along the shores. In Denmark, caissons have also been found, in the form of wooden boxes filled with stones and placed as anchorage points for the floating booms.
Where one log was not long enough, several logs could be linked together to form a chain. No traces have been found of such timber structures, but a barrier of this type is mentioned for example in The Saga of Magnus the Blind, where it was used in the defence of Bergen. Several place names may also be evidence of the use of such barriers. From Norway we have Stokkesund and Stokkeneset (‘Log Sound’ and ‘Log Point’), among others, and from Sweden, Stockholm (‘Log Islet’) and others. The use of iron chains as barriers is known from the saga story of how the Byzantine emperor tried to hinder Harald Hardråde from leaving Constantinople, but there is no indication that iron chains were used as barriers in Scandinavia in the Viking Age. It would have been almost impossibly expensive to have such things made in Scandinavia. Stone was the main material in several barriers, but was seldom the only one. Stone is thought always to have been used in combination with other materials, either sunken ships or floating booms. In fact, seldom was only one type of material used in barriers. The inset summary on page 131 can be regarded as a presentation of the most important types of barrier. Bridges over larger sounds and rivers could effectively stop advancing ships. There are many examples of this in the sources. The Thames was blocked at London and the Seine at Rouen and Paris and elsewhere. There are a few examples from Norway. One of these is from Lofoten, where in 1978 remains of a bridge dated to the 11th century were found near Borgepollen. This bridge would have effectively blocked all passage into the bay, in either peace or war – perhaps it was built with defence in mind.
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4. viking ships
The Viking ship In the Viking Age, ships were both the main means of transport and an important symbol of power. Ships were one of the basic requirements for political power and status, which often depended on control of sea routes.
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Opposite: ‘Sea-stallion from Glendalough’ is a reconstruction of Skuldelev 2, one of five Viking ships found at Skuldelev near Roskilde in Denmark, where it is now in the Viking Ship Museum. Building of the reconstruction started in 2000 at the museum and was completed on 4 September 2004 when it was launched by Queen M argrethe II. 136
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e use the term ‘Viking ship’ to refer to larger (seagoing), clinker-built wooden ships with keel, oars and sail, built shortly before, during or after the Viking Age. Trials with a copy of a Viking ship show that it can maintain an average speed of 4–5 knots under oars, but can double this to 9 knots for short periods. Under sail, the speed can probably be increased up to 20 knots (1 knot = 1.15 miles per hour/1.85 km per hour). Being able to increase speed quickly is important in several situations, such as in pursuing or fleeing an enemy. The Viking ships had important tactical advantages in being able to operate in very shallow water, and even big ships could be landed on gently sloping beaches. The rudder, which reached far below the keel, could be pulled up to avoid damaging it on the seabed. In this way, the ships could be moved out of reach of enemy ships which were unable to follow them into shallow water. The ships were also fitted with a shock-absorbing inlay between the bow and the keel. This was situated at the point which would hit the seabed first when landing, and it could be removed relatively easily if it was damaged. The ships were well suited to being pulled up onto beaches, which is why the board (strake) next to the keel is vi k i ng s h i p s
called the ‘gravel plank.’ The keel and the bottom boards of the ships found at Skuldelev in Denmark show signs of having been dragged on or over land, and this is also shown on the Bayeux Tapestry. The earlier types of ship were much more flexible than the big warships which appeared in the 11th century. The strakes were often not fastened to the ribs, which made the ship flexible. Another advantage, described in the sources, is that it was comparatively easy to set horses on land from a Viking ship, as illustrated on the Bayeux Tapestry which shows William the Conqueror’s invasion of England. There were also other reasons for William to build a fleet of this type for the invasion. Few historic events demonstrate the tactical advantages of the Viking ships better than William’s successful crossing of the English Channel and invasion of England. He took advantage of all the capabilities of this type of ship: the shallow keel; the manoeuvrability; and the flexibility of the hull, which made the ships reliable and seaworthy in the difficult weather of the English channel. Adaptability and use of sail enabled them to cross the channel quickly, and their cargo capacity enabled him to bring all the necessary troops, horses
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The Bayeux Tapestry shows that William the Conqueror used Viking ships for his invasion of England in 1066.
and e quipment. The type of ships meant that he could land his army on a beach in Pevensey Bay out of range of the Englishmen.
The sail revolution
Carvings found in 1989 at Stjørdal in Trondheim Fjord show that a ship with a mast visited the region sometime in the 3rd century.
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Before the advent of sail, ships were rowed along the coastline. Sails made it possible for the Vikings to set out over open sea, opening the way to the countries in and around the North Sea. We don’t know when sail first came into use in Scandinavia. It was being used in some places by the 7th century, and must have been in more widespread use by the middle of the 8th century. Sail was probably introduced to Scandinavia by trading ships from southern Europe, looking for Scandinavian produce. Stone carvings from Stjørdal in Trøndelag (Norway) indicate that there were sailing ships in Trondheim Fjord in the 3rd century AD. We know that sailing ships visited Scandinavia even before that. In 2 AD a Roman war fleet sailed along the west coast of Jutland, which must have caused some consternation to the local population. vi k i ng s h i p s
However, knowledge of sail did not necessarily mean that it would be put into use. Many factors needed to come into play before people could make use of the knowledge. Society needed to have attained a certain level of organisation, as the manufacture of sails requires considerable time and resources. Spinning and weaving wool to make sails needed many people to work together. Economics and availability of resources were just as important as knowledge of the technology. Even in Roman times, there were several places along the shipping routes that had the capacity and the means to manufacture sails. The rich finds of weapons from these times at Illerup in Denmark and grave finds from Karmøy in Norway and other places are evidence of such a level of societal development. We can only speculate about where sail was first put into use in the 8th century. We must assume that it was in a place where people were familiar with European technology and where political power was sufficiently centralised to enable organised manufacture. In Denmark, use of sail probably developed early on the east coast of Jutland
Fast ships According to The Saga of Olav the Holy, Torarin Nevjolsson reached Iceland in 1024, four days after setting out from Møre. This implies that he held an average speed of 6–7 knots. This account is supported by the measurements made in 1893, when Viking, a copy of the Gokstad ship, crossed the Atlantic to Chicago in the USA, achieving a measured speed of 11 knots on a particularly favourable day. In speed trials, a copy of the Skuldelev 2 maintained an average speed of 5–6 knots over long distances with 60 men at the oars, and a top speed of 15–20 knots under sail.
‘Viking’ sailing with ‘passengers’ during the International Exhibition in Chicago.
and the Island of Fyn. In Norway, it may have started at Avaldsnes, on the east side of Karmøy, where there have been rich finds from Roman times and where political power was centralised early. In the Baltic, the same applies to the Island of Gotland, where picture stones have been found indicating that sailing ships were already known in Scandinavia before the year 800. Perhaps this is where sail was first used in Scandinavia, for not far away, on the Estonian Island of Saaremaa (Ösel), we find the first archaeological evidence of sailing, in a Scandinavian burial discovered here in 2010 and dated to c. 720. The ship, known as Salme 2 from the place where it was found, appears to have had a sail. Before the Viking Age, rowing ships had for centuries been well suited to local conditions and transport needs in Scandinavia, and had been built without any thought of rigging them for sail. Indeed, the types of boats which could at that time be rigged for sail were unsuitable for Scandinavian conditions and requirements. What changed this was the invention of the keel. This technological innovation led to the development of a type of ship the like of which the world had never seen before – the Viking ship. The Scandinavians could now rig sails on their slender, shallow wooden boats, which rapidly developed into broader, faster and easily manoeuvrable seagoing ships. Shipbuilding on a bigger scale also required iron to be reliably available, as it was needed for fittings
and nails. In a ship such as the Oseberg ship from around 820 there would be at least 5,000 nails, forged from more than 125 kg of iron. Knowing that iron production in Scandinavia increased strongly in the 7th and 8th centuries, and that tools and equipment became more readily available, we can understand why shipbuilding also took off.
Types of Viking ship There were many different types of Viking ship, from fishing boats and cargo ships to enormous warships. The first Viking sailing ships were rigged for coastal traffic among the islands and skerries, either as small cargo vessels (børinger – ‘ships for carrying burdens’) or as barges (karver). The Oseberg ship (built c. 820–834) is an example of a royal barge. It has cargo capacity and is capable of seagoing, but is considered to be primarily a passenger ship. Viking ships did not have fixed accommodation for the crew, but tents would be set up fore and aft on bigger ships when in harbour. In the sagas, this is referred to as ‘tenting the ship.’ In skaldic poetry it is said that the crew also took shelter and slept in tents under sail. No such tents have been preserved, but they are mentioned in contemporary sagas from the Middle Ages. In the Oseberg ship and the Gokstad ship, however, fittings for pitching a tent on land have been found. The crew slept two men c hap ter 4
‘The sundial from Narsarsuaq’ in Greenland has been thought by some to be a navigation instrument and by others to be a toy or a church calendar. It has not yet been proven whether the Vikings used any form of navigation instruments.
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The Gokstad ship was found in ‘Kongshaugen’ (‘The King’s Mound’), also known as Gokstadhaugen, on Gokstad Farm in Sandefjord, Vestfold, Norway. The ship was built in c. 890 and laid in the mound about ten years later. It is made mostly of oak and is 23.8 metres long and 5.2 metres wide, equipped for 16 pairs of oars. Its top speed is estimated at 12 knots.
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Big ships from the sagas In the sagas there are many great ships which play central parts in the narratives, and which enable the heroes and antagonists to play out their endless struggles for political and military control. Some of the most famous ships are: Tranen (‘The Crane’), with space for 30 pairs of rowers, was built in Nidaros (Trondheim) in c. 955 for King Olav Tryggvason. Ormen Skramme (‘The Short Serpent’), with space for 30 pairs of rowers, was built in Salten, Hålogaland, c. 990 for Raud den Ramme and was captured by Olav Tryggvason. Ormen Lange (‘The Long Serpent’), built in c. 996 for Olav Tryggvason, is perhaps the best known Viking ship. Barden or Jernbarden (‘The Iron Beard’), Earl Eirik’s ship, built between 980 and 990, rammed Ormen Lange during the battle of
Svolder. It had a figurehead of Thor, which was later replaced with the holy cross. Visund (‘Bison’), Olav Haraldsson’s ship built c. 1020, was decorated with a gilded visundhode (a bison’s head with horns) on the stem. Karlshovde (‘Man’s Head’) is mentioned in The Saga of Olav the Holy as having sailed in the 1020s. The name comes from a human head on the stem. Skjeggen (‘The Beard’) belonged to Olav Haraldsson but was captured by rebels in Norway in c. 1028. Ormen (‘The Serpent’) was built for Harald Hardråde in c. 1060 as a busseskip (‘a big, broad ship’) with a gilded dragon’s head at the bow stem and a hook-shaped stern stem.
According to the sagas, ‘Ormen Lange’ was a huge ship, 52 metres long and requiring 120 rowers.
together in sleeping bags made from two skins sewn together. A sleeping bag of this type was among the finds in the Gokstad ship. Each man also had a seaman’s chest to hold his belongings. If there were no thwarts to sit on for rowing, the seaman’s chest would be used instead. There are two main groups of archaeological finds of ships from the Viking Age: the Viking ships which were found in Norway, at Karmøy, Tune, Gokstad and Oseberg for example – these are mainly from early Viking times; and the ships found in Roskildefjord in Denmark – the Skuldelev ships, the finds from Roskilde Harbour and the Hedeby finds, all from the 11th century. What is common to the ships from both periods is that they are all built in more or less the same way, and that they carried sail in addition to oars. Taken together, the many finds give a detailed picture of
the versatility of the boat-builders and sailors of the Viking Age. All the different shapes and sizes of ships are represented in these finds. The various types of ship are distinguished by how big they were and what they were used for.
Cargo ships Knarrs were bigger and broader ships specially designed for carrying goods and heavy freight. The knarr was undoubtedly the commonest and most important type of Viking ship. They transported the Vikings’ wares to the markets of Europe and Scandinavia and they carried settlers to the colonies on the British Isles, Iceland, Greenland and America. A ship like this had space for domestic animals and everything else needed to establish oneself in a settlement. These were the marine c hap ter 4
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Voyaging to the afterlife The ship is one of the most symbolic objects of the Viking Age. It represents status and wealth, but also fertility and death. In the world of the gods, the perfect ship was one of the symbols of the god Frøy. His magical ship, Skibladner, could sail both on land and on water, representing the ideal of what a ship should be. At the other end of the scale is the Ship of Death, Nagelfar, which appears at the end of time. The ship, together with the horse, was what carried the dead to the afterlife, but the ship is also a mediator between the worlds of the living and the dead. This theme appears both in the description of the god Balder’s death and cremation, and in the account of the hero Sinfjötle’s death in the Volsung Saga. To the living, the ship symbolises the journey into the unknown. The ship is an important burial offering which reflects the deceased’s position in life, and it is also used in a figurative sense on stone monuments, on picture stones and in skaldic poetry.
At the big burial ground near Lindholm Høye on Jutland there are hundreds of graves in the shape of ships, symbolic of the Ship of Death.
workhorses of the Viking Age. A big knarr from around 1025, found at Hedeby, had a freight capacity of about 60 tonnes. The knarr had a broader, deeper and shorter hull than the longship, and it was easy to manoeuvre. Unlike the longship and the karv, the knarr was mainly built for sail, though it was also equipped with oars. The Klåstad ship is the best known of the knarrs found in Norway, but the best preserved knarr to have been found is from Roskilde Fjord in Denmark, where it can be seen in the Roskilde Ship Museum. Another type of cargo vessel which is rather like the knarr is the byrding (‘birlinn’), which is a little smaller and more rounded than the classic knarr and has higher freeboard.
Barges Stone carvings from Guldalen in Sør-Trøndelag bear witness that big ships have sailed in the fjord.
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Most of the seagoing ships which were used by the Vikings in the 9th century were of a particular type known as ask. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle they were referred to as æsc, and the Vikings were sometimes known as askmenn. Asks were built as transport ships and were mainly smaller, oarpowered vessels with a mast. An ask of average size had 30 oars and a crew of 30–35. An ask was probably similar to a large karv. The vi k i ng s h i p s
karv (‘barge’) was usually a smaller boat used for sailing between the islands and skerries, but bigger versions were also used on the open sea. The word karv is borrowed from the Greek karabos, a word used by Byzantine writers in the 10th century to describe Rus (‘Russian’) ships in the Byzantine fleet. In Old Norse the word is karfi. The Old Russian form, korabi, appears in many accounts of the Vikings’ expeditions to Constantinople. The designation came to be attached to a type of light vessel suitable for river travel. These boats were used for passenger transport and to carry military provisions and equipment, but they are also described as small general cargo vessels. According to the literature from the Middle Ages, the karv was mostly used by rich people as a private ship. It had no fewer than six and no more than 16 pairs of oar placements. A karv with 16 placements would have 32 oars and 32 oarsmen. As there were no fixed thwarts, the oarsmen sat on their seaman’s chests on the deck, which extended from stem to stern and consisted of broad planks over the spaces between the ship’s cross-members. The first time the word karfi appears in an Old Norse source is in a poem by Egil Skallagrimson from 934, and it appears regularly up to 1381, when it is used in a document about a karv belonging to a canon in Nidaros (Trondheim). The burial ships
found at Gokstad and Oseberg, and probably also the one found at Tune, are examples of the biggest ships in the karv class. The karvs were gradually improved and developed into bigger and more specialised ships. At the beginning of the 10th century several distinct specialist types emerged, such as warships and cargo ships. The many different types of longships were developed around the same time as the knarrs, in the 10th century, but they were built purely as warships. In the 10th century, ship-building became specialised into different types of boats which gradually became bigger and more sophisticated.
Longships The longships were big, open boats with clinkerbuilt hulls, usually of oak. They had strong, shallow keels, high stems, many pairs of oars, a steering oar at the starboard side of the aft stem, the mast amid ships, a rectangular sail and fixed thwarts above the deck. They were mainly rowed. The giant ships developed towards the end of the Viking Age, up to c. 1100. The warship Ormen Lange, built c. 998 and known only from saga sources, was enormous, about 52 metres in length. The biggest Viking ship archaeologically documented so far was discovered at Roskilde in 1997 and is about 36 metres long. One type of longship was the busse. These were big, broad ships with high gunwales and large carrying capacity for cargo and crew. They required at least two men on each oar. The busses were built at the end of the Viking Age and the beginning of the Middle Ages. The name gradually came to be applied not just to warships but to big ships generally. In the 13th and 14th centuries the term was used mostly to refer to big cargo or trading vessels. Busses mentioned in the sagas include Olav Tryggvason’s Ormen Lange from c. 998, Tore Hund’s longship from 1025 and Harald Hardråde’s ship with 35 pairs of oars from 1062. Another type of longship was the skeide. This was a warship with less freeboard than a busse, but it was much slimmer and faster. It had one or two men to each oar. The big ship discovered at R oskilde in 1997 was a skeide 36 metres long with 39 pairs of oars and room for a crew of more than 100. It has
been dated to c. 1025, and was probably built in Vestfold, Norway. The sources refer to a type of warship used in battle or for voyaging as a snekke, but this may have been a generic description for various types of ships in the northern European sailing routes around Scandinavia. In some contexts the biggest karvs could also be referred to as snekkes.
Ships were also a popular motif on textiles. This one is from a 12th-century woven picture from Överhogdal in Sweden.
Embellishments Ships could be richly embellished to show power and status. Ships which had carvings of animal heads at the stem were known as drake (‘dragon ships’). Any type of longship could in theory be converted into a ‘dragon ship’ by changing the figurehead to represent the head of an animal. There are various interpretations of what an animal head represented. Sometimes an animal figurehead was a sign of royal or chieftain status, and in other circumstances it seems to have been intended to frighten the enemy, or to signal that a ship was ready for battle. It could also be a protection against ghosts and malevolent spirits. When the ship was on p eaceful business, the animal head was often taken down. The heads were painted in many colours and could take the form c hap ter 4
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The ship on this stone from Stratomta in Sweden has a bowsprit and also a mast and sail.
Several shields have been preserved from the Gokstad ship. These were originally painted in bright colours such as yellow and black.
Several picture stones from Gotland show ships with shields. Opposite: one of the many animal head stem-posts from the Oseberg find. Perhaps this is what the dragon heads on the longships looked like. 144
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of a dragon, a wild animal, a snake, or sometimes a fanciful human head. A snake’s head carving from Oseberg has been preserved, and from the Ladeby ship there are surviving fragments of what could have been ornamentation from the back of a figurehead. ‘Wind vanes’ were another common type of figurehead from late Viking times. Several of these were re-used as wind vanes on church steeples in the Middle Ages and have therefore been preserved. Warships were often distinguished by shields hung along their sides. The shields were hung along the outside, on a rope attached to the rim of the shield and tied to a cross-bar inside the gunwale. We must assume that the shields were usually part of the warriors’ personal equipment, but it is thought that sometimes the shields were part of the ship’s fittings. Several of the shields from the Gokstad ship were found almost intact. These were not particularly robust, which suggests that they were not intended for use in battle. They were about 1 metre in diameter and overlapped each other half way, so that there were two shields between each oar-hole. The shields may have blocked the oar-holes, in which case they could only be mounted when the ship lay in harbour or was under sail. On the other hand, it is possible that the shields were hung higher than the oar-holes and that they could therefore be used in normal travel. In the Gokstad ship, the oar-holes are in the third plank, leaving plenty of room above them if the shields were stuck above the edge of the gunwale. Analyses show that the shields from the Gokstad ship were made from thin planks of spruce, and that they were painted black and yellow. The iron shield-bosses are relatively small, and probably too small to protect a warrior’s hand, but they may have been used by the warriors onboard. It is also possible that they were not intended for use by the men but were part of the ship’s decoration, or they may have been made specially for the burial ceremony. In addition to traces of shields in ship burials, we also find shields pictured on rune stones. A number of the ships pictured on rune stones have shields hung along the gunwales, indicating that these are warships. Many Viking ships probably had painted strake planks. On the ships which adorn the Bayeux vi k i ng s h i p s
Tapestry, the planks above the water level are painted in various colours. Egil’s Saga also tells us of a karv belonging to Ragnvald, son of Eirik Bloodaxe, which was fully painted above the water level. Several traces of paint were also found on the Gokstad ship, on the steering oar and the shields and elsewhere. The stems may also have been painted. This is mentioned in verse 5 of Torbjørn Hornklove’s poem honouring Harald Fairhair after the battle of Hafrsfjord: The Northmen’s king Who rules over deep keels Red-painted stems And red shields Tarred oars Spray-soaked sails
Ordinary ships had plain-coloured homespun sails, but a chieftain’s or a king’s ship could have linen sails. The linen sails consisted of several strips sewn together, often of different colours. The broad, vertical stripes were usually coloured, for example yellow-red-yellow or blue-yellow-blue. Remains of a homespun square sail were found in the Gokstad ship. This had originally been white, with strips of red material sewn on for decoration. These strips are thought to correspond to a phrase often found in the sagas, for example in Egil’s Saga, that a sail was equipped ‘with cloth blue and red.’ Ships shown on picture stones from Gotland appear to show stripes crossing each other in a diamond pattern. According to Snorre Sturluson, Erling Skjalgson’s ship from Sola near Stavanger had striped sails. Striped sails probably showed that the ship belonged to a king or a great chieftain, because they were more expensive to manufacture than plain-coloured sails. In Christian times, we hear of ships with a cross on the sail.
Armoured and bearded ships There are several references in skaldic poems to a warship being armoured or ‘high-armoured.’ This may refer to a weapon at the bow stem and to the shields along the side. Ships in late Viking times may also have had iron-plated bulwarks, but there have been no finds to support this. However, a
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The Oseberg ship has a snake’s head at the stem.
The ship from Ladeby has coils along the back of the upper part of the stem.
Dragons’ heads, as on this needle from Hedeby, were also found on longships.
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number of pictures show ships with battering rams or bearded prows. Battering rams at the bow were an old type of weapon, designed to sink enemy ships by rowing into them and piercing the hull below the water level. Ancient Greek and Roman warships were often equipped in this way. No Viking ships with such bow armaments have been found, but both pictures and sagas tell of their use. They must have been fearsome weapons. The earliest example of this type of ship is the one pictured on the rune stone from Tullstorp in Skåne, which has 15 shields along the ship’s side, but no rigging. Mast and sail are also lacking on most of the remaining ships with this type of hull, but examples from Spentrup, Holmby and Stratomta in Sweden have mast and stay, showing that this type of ship was not just for rowing. The ships with bearded prows can be dated to 950–1025 and came mainly from present-day Denmark and from Skåne, but there is also an example of this type of ship on a stone from Östergötland. In Olav Tryggvason’s Saga, Snorre tells us that Earl Eirik had a ship with a bearded prow at the battle of Svolder: Earl Eirik had an enormously big bearded ship which he used when he went viking. There was an iron crest on the upper parts of both stems, and below them an iron frame as thick and as broad as the keel itself and going right down into the sea.
Descriptions of Svein Forkbeard’s and Canute the Great’s fleets in Gesta Cnutonis from the 1040s indicate that they too had such ships. Some Viking ships probably also had the advantage of being equipped with turrets or raised poop decks, enabling the crew to shoot from a height. The ships of Earl Eirik, Canute the Great and Svein Forkbeard are all described as having turrets. A monk from St Omer’s Abbey in Flanders described Svein’s fleet from 1013 thus: After they were finally assembled, they went on board the turreted ships. The iron-clad prows were the only means by which onlookers could distinguish the various leaders from each other. vi k i ng s h i p s
The Romans had turrets on ships, and researchers have suggested that descriptions such as these are the result of the writers of the sagas allowing themselves to be influenced by Greek and Roman literature. In the quotation above, the monk from St Omer’s Abbey has obviously combined expressions from classical Roman literature, such as Virgil’s Aeneid, with his own impression of the Scandinavian ships. Although there is no contemporary illustration of a ship with a turret, such a fortification would have been consistent with the Vikings’ view of sea warfare, where the aim was to wage a land battle at sea, making use of anything which would give an advantage.
Viking ship finds A number of ships from the Viking Age have been found in Scandinavia. Some had been used as burial ships and some have been found during the construction of harbours or the dredging of fjords. The condition of the finds varies from beautiful, well-preserved works of art to impressions in sand or mud. We have included the most important ship finds in this overview. The Kvalsund ship is considered to be the forerunner of the characteristic Viking ships. It was found in 1920 in a bog on Kvalsund Farm in Herøy in More og Romsdal (Norway). It is 18 metres long and 3.2 metres wide and dates from around 690 (+/- 70 years). It was found together with a smaller rowing boat which is known as the Kvalsund færing. The Kvalsund ship was equipped with rowlocks for 10 pairs of oars, but there are no traces of mountings for a mast, and it is almost certain that it is purely a rowing ship. It is built of oak and pine, and the keel is made up of eight strakes along each side. It was equipped with a steering oar aft on the starboard side and had a crew of at least 21 men. A reinforcement on the underside suggests a sort of predecessor of a keel. Moreover, one of the bottom planks was shaped so that it could be used as a keel plank. Because of this, some people have suggested that the ship may have been able to carry sail, even though it was not rigged for a mast. The Greenhaug ship, on Avaldsnes, Karmøy
(Norway) was discovered in 1902 and the remains excavated. The ship is 15–17 metres long and c. 3 metres wide. It was built in 780, and the burial probably took place between 790 and 795. It was built of oak and had carved and painted planks. It could be both rowed and sailed, and it is the first well documented Scandinavian sailing ship so far. The grave had been robbed, but it was of the same type as the mound burials at Borre, Oseberg and Gokstad. The Oseberg ship is a Viking ship which was found in the Oseberg mound near Tønsberg in Vestfold (Norway) on 10 August 1903. It is clinker built and consists almost entirely of oak. Dendrochronological analyses show that the ship was built in Vestland around 820 and buried in the mound in 834. It is 21.5 metres long and 5 metres wide. It had 15 pairs of oars and a mast with an estimated height of 9–13 metres. It weighed approximately 11 tonnes. The fore and aft stems are richly decorated with wood carvings. The ship as it is preserved today is about 90% original wood and 60% original iron nails. Reconstructions have shown that it was seaworthy and could maintain a speed of at least 10 knots under sail. The ship is easy to row but very difficult to manoeuvre under sail, and it may have been an elegant coastal sailing vessel rather than a warship. The Gokstad ship dates from the end of the 9th century. It was found in ‘The King’s Mound’, also known as Gokstad Mound on Gokstad Farm in Sandefjord, Vestfold (Norway). The mound was excavated in 1880. The ship was built c. 890 and was laid in the mound about ten years later. It consists mainly of oak and is 23.8 metres long and 5.2 metres wide, with 16 pairs of oars. The sail may have been up to 110 square metres and appears to have been made of homespun cloth. The ship’s top speed is estimated as 12 knots. Burnt remains of the Myklebust ship were found in a grave mound on Myklebust Farm in Nordfjordeid (Norway) in 1874. No wood had survived, but the archaeologists found a charred layer which showed that the ship had been about 25 metres long. A lump of rusted metal consisted of the remains of 58 shield bosses, indicating that there had been 29 shields on each side. This ship was probably from the 9th or 10th century. It is
thought to have resembled the Oseberg ship in size and appearance. The Tune ship is a Viking ship from around 900, found in a burial mound on Haugen Farm on Rolvsøy in Østfold (Norway). It lay in a mound known as ‘The Ship Mound’, and was excavated in 1867. The ship is clinker built and made mostly of oak. It is 18.67 metres long, 4 metres wide and had 12 strakes and 11 or 12 pairs of oars. It had a large cargo capacity and an extra strong keelson to hold the mast. So the Tune ship was more adapted to voyages under sail and was significantly faster than sister ships from Gokstad and Oseberg. The Ladeby ship lies in a burial mound in a meadow near Ladeby, by the coast of Kerteminde Fjord on Fyn in Denmark. It was found in 1935, and is Denmark’s only preserved ship burial from the Viking Age. It has been dated to the first half of the 10th century. The whole display around the ship has been built in such a way that the ship still lies in the original burial mound. The ship sits in the middle of the mound, with the bow towards the south. The oak timbers have almost disappeared, but the imprint of the ship’s shape and its clinker-built pattern are very obvious. The surviving c. 2,000 iron clinker nails underline the shape. The ship is c. 22 metres long and c. 3 metres broad. It was c. 1 metre high amidships and had a draught of c. 50 cm. The 7:1 ratio between length and breadth show that the Ladeby ship was fast and easily manoeuvrable. The bowsprit had the form of a dragon’s or a horse’s head. Even though the head no longer survives, the dragon’s mane can be seen as a number of fine, close iron spirals. The sternpost was in the shape of a curved dragon’s tail, which has also disappeared. A stocked anchor can still be seen at the bow. This originally weighed c. 20 kg, and it was equipped with an iron chain. The Rogne ship is a Viking ship from around 900, found in a bog on the Island of Rogn in Hordaland (Norway) in 1941. It was probably a sacrificial offering. It is thought to have been clinker built and it consisted mainly of oak, but with upper strakes of pine. Only the mast fixing, a few strake planks and bits of the oars are preserved, but this was probably a chieftain’s ship about the same size as the Tune ship. c hap ter 4
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The spectacular Oseberg ship was excavated at Vestfold in Norway in 1903. It dates from around 820 and has become one of the best known symbols of the Viking Age.
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The Klåstad ship was found in 1893 in a field at the inner end of the Viks Fjord in Larvik (Norway), quite near Kaupang, but first excavated in 1970. Annual growth rings indicate a date of 998. The ship probably foundered out in Vik Bay and drifted ashore in Klåstad Bay. It is a clinker-built knarr, a cargo ship, without oar-holes but equipped with rowlocks. It was originally 21 metres long and 4.5 metres wide. About 50 whetstones were found with the wreck. These were from Eidsborg in West Telemark, where whetstones had been produced for many hundreds of years. The Rostad ship, which was found in 1751, was probably the very first Viking ship discovered and documented in Norway. The people of Skjeberg Rectory came upon the remains of a big ship while vi k i ng s h i p s
they were digging. It was probably about the size of the Tune ship and had an oak, clinker-built keel. Knuckle bones of humans and animals were found onboard, plus some grave goods. This was the first of three Viking ship burials found on Rolvsøy in Østfold, the other two being the Tune ship and the Valle ship. Søren Thestrup wrote a short account of the finding of the ship in 1755. He reported that a big ship without a deck was found in Rolvsøy in 1751, built of oak planks fastened together with ‘iron bolts.’ Detailed information about the excavation is lacking, but it must have been comprehensive and time-consuming, and it attracted a lot of attention. It was probably exposed in full length so that Thestrup could view it and his observations could be documented for posterity. No trace remains of
the Rostad ship or the mound today. The remains of the Valle ship were found on Valle Farm in Østfold (Norway) during groundwork on a building site in 1894. Timber, a mass of clinker nails and a few grave goods were found. Among the finds were a sword hilt with AngloSaxon ornamentation and a weighing scale with lead weights. This boat burial probably dates from the 10th century. The Borre ship was found in 1852 during the excavation of ‘Mound 1’ at Borre in Vestfold (Norway). It was the first Viking ship find to be archaeologically documented. Mound 1 was destroyed by road-builders digging out filling material. In the course of their work they found fragments of a longship from around 900 and fine artefacts such as glass and iron tools. The ship was about 20 metres long and was laid parallel to the fjord, with the bow facing north. A good quantity of grave goods was found in the aft part of the ship, around where the burial chamber had been. The grave had probably been plundered, but riding tackle and wagon gear remained. The ornamentation on the harness was named after the place it had been found, and gave its name to the Borre style, which has a characteristic loop motif in combination with animal head motifs. The Äskekärr ship is a knarr which was found north of Alafors by the River Göta in Sweden in 1933. The ship is 16 metres long, with a high freeboard, and is made of oak. It has been dated to about 930. Evidence of repairs carried out on the ship show that it had a working life of about one hundred years. Remains of two further ships have been found in the same area, but these have not been excavated. These were not burial ships, but ships that sank near what was once a small shipyard or dock. The Hasnæs ship is a wreck found in the southern half of the Hasnæs peninsula near Ebeltoft in Denmark in 1961. Investigation of the remains showed that the ship, which had been partly drawn up on the beach and abandoned, was a warship from Viking times, and dated its construction to c. 990. Very little of the ship is preserved, but a keelson with a fender down near the socket for the mast and a longitudinal reinforcement of about 8.5 metres are features characteristic of the big longships. The
distance between the thwarts was about 80–83 cm. The Hedeby ships were found in Scandinavia’s most important Viking Age trading town. Parts of a big Viking ship had been found here in 1953, and excavation started in 1979. The ship was unusually long and narrow: 30.9 metres from stem to stern, 2.7 metres wide and 1.5 metres high. With a length to breadth ratio of 11:1, this is the narrowest longship found so far. It had room for 30 pairs of oars and had a simple mast which carried a square sail. This ship was particularly well built. The surviving remains show that the planks were up to 30cm wide and made of smoothly cut oak. Some of the surviving planks are up to 10 metres long and have been cut from oak trees which had 10-metre trunks without knots and a diameter of over 1 metre at the top. Such trees are not found in Europe today. Annual growth ring dating sets the year of building to about 985. The ship was built in or near Hedeby. It had been filled with flammable material and sent into Hedeby Harbour as an incendiary ship, possibly to set fire to ships which lay protected there. A big cargo ship was also found in Hedeby Harbour in 1981, 22.08 metres long, 6.2 metres wide and 2.52 metres high, with a cargo capacity of about 60 tonnes. This must have been one of the biggest cargo ships of the Viking Age. It was built around 1025, from oak trees felled in the Slesvig region. A ship burial from Hedeby that was excavated in 1908 contained a relatively large Viking ship from 825–850. This was originally built of oak, but the timbers had mostly rotted away and only the nails sticking up in the sand remained to show the ship’s size and shape. The length was 17–20 metres and the breadth 2.7–3.5 metres. The Roskilde ships are a series of ships found in the harbour area in Roskilde in Sjæland (Denmark). Only some of them date from Viking times. Roskilde 6 was found during building works in Roskilde Harbour in 1997 and is the biggest Viking ship found so far. It is about 36 metres long and 3.5 metres wide and could carry a crew of around 100 men, of whom 78 were rowers. The sail must have been over 200 m2. This ship was built of oak in 1025 and shows high standards of workmanship. It was built in Vestfold or Østfold in Norway, and it has been suggested that it might have been at the battle of Helgå in Sweden in 1026 and ended its life as Danish c hap ter 4
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war booty. Bone needles, a little blue glass jewel and half a ring from chainmail were also found. Roskilde 3 is a bigger cargo ship or knarr from around 1060. It is built of oak, 18 metres long, 4.4 metres wide and had a cargo capacity of 11 tonnes. The Skuldelev ships are a series of ships from the Viking Age, found near Skuldelev in Roskilde Fjord in Sjæland (Denmark). (Skuldelev 4 is from the Middle Ages and is therefore not considered here.) Skuldelev 1 is a strong, seagoing ship classified as a knarr. It was built around 1030 near the Sogne Fjord in Norway, using strong pine planks, and was later repaired in the Oslo Fjord area and in east Denmark. It was decked fore and aft, with open cargo space amidships. The ship is 16 metres long and 4.8 metres wide. It had 2–4 pairs of oars and a crew of 6–8 men. Skuldelev 2 is a seagoing longship, classified as a skeide. It had a crew of 70–80 warriors and was built in the Dublin area in Ireland in around 1042. With 60 men at the oars it could have held an average speed of 5–6 knots over long distances. The top speed under sail would have been 15–20 knots. It is built of oak, 30 metres long and 3.8 metres wide.
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Skuldelev 3 is a small, elegant cargo and passenger vessel of the byrding class, from around 1040. It could have been used when the farmer and his entourage had to go to assemblies or markets. It is built of oak and has open cargo space for about 4 tonnes. The crew would have been 5–6 men. The ship was 14 metres long and 3.3 metres wide. Skuldelev 5 is a smaller warship, of the snekke type. It was probably built and maintained as a conscripted warship somewhere near Roskilde around 1030. With 13 pairs of oars and a crew of about 30 warriors it would have been in the ‘13 bench’ class, the smallest longships in the conscripted fleet. The ship was 17.5 metres long and 2.5 metres wide. Skuldelev 6 is a combined rowing and sailing boat, apparently built for fishing and hunting. It was built near the Sogne Fjord in Norway around 1030 using pine planks and at some time it had each side raised by one plank to make it more suitable as a cargo ship. During the rebuilding, the original rowing gear was removed and the number of oars reduced. The ship is 11.2 metres long and 2.5 metres wide, and had seven pairs of rowers.
5. viking weapons
The Vikings and their weapons Free men in the Viking Age were expected to carry weapons. They had both a right and a duty to be armed, and there was a strong obligation on every man to maintain the weapons needed for the defence of the land. The laws required free men to have three basic weapons: spear, shield and either sword or axe.
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f a man failed to attend the annual weapon inspection or if his equipment was deficient, he would be fined. This was laid down in the two oldest surviving Scandinavian legal texts, admittedly in editions from the Middle Ages but with roots back to Viking times. The Gula Ting Law was first written down in the 11th century, and relatively complete versions from c. 1250 have survived. It already existed in oral form around 930 when it was the pattern for the Icelandic Ulvjots Law, and it must have been even older. The Gula Ting Law applied in west and south Norway. The Frosta Ting Law applied in central Norway and may be even older than the Gula Ting Law. Opposite: The well-equipped weapon burial from Gjermundbu in Ringerike contained the most complete helmet and the largest quantity of chainmail from any Viking Age finds in Scandinavia, and gives the closest image we can form of a fully equipped chieftain. Date 950–975. 154
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Weapons as symbols Weapons are well suited to symbolise humanity’s basic anxiety and fascination about the separations between life and death, power and powerlessness. Weapons made a child into an adult man, distinguished the free man from the slave and raised the warrior above other men. Those who managed to have other armed men in service under them vi k i ng w e a p ons
increased their power and political influence, but to maintain and pay such retainers required great wealth. This could lead to a need for further conquests in order to maintain the required levels of generosity and give gifts such as swords and gold as rewards for faithful service. The Old Norse poetry is full of references to weapons, using poetic expressions known as heiti (‘callings’), thul (‘references’) and kennings (‘recognitions’). The three terms overlap, and they can best be translated as ‘poetic synonyms’ or ‘metaphors’. The kenning is the most widespread, and can consist of up to four or five words which together convey the intended and recognisable meaning and implications. Weapons were perceived as devourers of life, almost as wild animals, carrion eaters or fire. Kennings for the sword included ‘the flame’, ‘the corpse’s torch’, and ‘the raven wine’s (i.e. blood’s) tongue of fire’. The textbook on the art of writing skaldic poetry, Skáldskaparmál, lists three hundred and fifty different expressions for weapons, classified according to different types of weapon. More than three and a half thousand kennings for weapons and fighting have been identified in Old Norse literature.
The weapon ting The Gula Ting Law, section 309, about the weapon ting: Always when there is to be a weapon ting shall the stewards or nobles announce it in the autumn and hold the ting in the spring. All men who are free and have come of age shall attend the ting, or they shall pay 3 øre (‘ears’) in cut silver each. Now the men shall show their weapons as it is said in the law. A man shall have broadaxe or sword, and spear and shield which shall have at least three iron bands across, and the handle fastened with iron nails. Now is paid with 3 øre for each hand weapon (which is missing). Land owners (böndre) shall for each thwart (i.e. for two people) procure two dozen arrows and a bow, and 1 øre is paid for each arrow which is missing, and three øre for the bow.
The Frosta Ting Law Vll, section 13, about the bow and other weapons: A bow shall lie by every thwart, and the two who travel and sit together shall procure and string it, or pay 1 øre and in addition procure the bow itself and two dozen arrows which are shafted or pointed. The landowner (farmer) shall provide these and will be fined half an øre for each arrow which is missing and 6 øre for two dozen arrows. All free men (drengmaðr; free men who did not own their own land) shall own shield and spear and sword or axe. To be valid the axe must be shafted, and the spear must be shafted. If he lacks one of these 3 weapons, then 3 øre are paid, and if he lacks all, then 9 øre are required, and he must travel unprotected by the law until he arms himself.
Old Norse poetry and mythology can give us an idea of what the various types of weapon represented in Viking society. In the mythical stories we see a complex use of associations conjured up by the names and attributes of the characters, including the weapons associated with them. Axes and clubs are primitive, used only by the brutal and hot-headed, but they are also the only language the simpletons in the society understand, a tool which strikes down and clears the way. The sword, on the other hand, refers to the mature, prosperous and just, who proudly asserts his rights. Spear and bow are for the sharp-eyed hunter balancing himself and his weapon and focusing on a distant target. The shield is feminine and cowardly, but is a necessary sacrifice for anyone who wants to stay alive.
Weapons as status symbols In a society where the right to bear arms was restricted to free men, carrying weapons in public was a status symbol. The slave was un-free, unarmed and owned no land. A free man who did not own land had an axe as one of his working tools, with which he could also clear land for himself. Not everybody had the means to acquire a sword. So carrying a sword was a mark of distinction, as compared with those who had only their working tools as weapons. Those who wore swords owned more land and had people in service under them. 156
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The different types of weapons reflected their owners’ positions in society. A spear was of little monetary value in comparison with a sword, but nevertheless it appears that the spear was associated with the very highest members of society. This may be because spear and javelin were culturally associated with the hunting of large animals, which on the continent was legally reserved to the upper classes. The use of spears to hunt aggressive wild animals such as wild boar, auroch and bear was dangerous and was seen as an expression of noble courage and a sign of masterful leadership. Spear and javelin were also seen as the first among weapons because they were the longest and had the greatest range. The Vikings appear to have had a view of life as a cycle of three parts, plus the taboo-laden fourth quarter of the cycle; death, the night-time of life. This cycle can be seen as: Morning – day – evening – night;
or as: Spring – summer – autumn – winter;
or on the human scale as: Childhood – adulthood – age – death.
In the social order this is represented by: Free man – earl – king – slave, (Free – land-owning – crowned – bound).
In the world of the gods it is:
Thor (son) – Frey (man) – Odin (father) – Freya (woman).
All this can be reflected in the classification of the basic weapons as: Axe – sword – spear – shield,
and the categories can be seen as metaphors: axe = free man = son = Thor (ox) sword = earl = man = Frey (stallion) spear = king = father = Odin (wild animal and hunter) shield = slave = woman = Freya (sow).
This is a simplified, structured picture of the world, which reinforces people’s understanding of their social position, binding them into a hierarchical society. Viking society can be said to have been a caste society. In the Old Norse myth Rigsþula, the four social classes are listed and are set in relation to specific tools, weapons and animals. We read how the slave looks after pigs and goats and makes rope. The free man (working class) controls oxen, ploughs and uses an axe. The earl rides a horse, masters the use of sword, shield, spear and bow, and owns many farms. The earl’s son, the young king, is his father’s superior. He has eight times the mental power, is greatest of them all and can control the birds. The axe represented clearing of woodland, laying bare, opening, a new start, birth and youth. The axe cut down and made an end to the wilderness so that land could be conquered and cultivated. Offerings for slaughter were stunned with the hammer-axe; the hammer carried judgement and the axe blade execution. The axe represented the necessary brutality. For the god Thor, this meant taking up his hammer to discipline unruly creatures such as the Jotun giants (great growths) or the smaller rise giants (scrub and underbrush). The sword symbolised honour and glory for the social elite. It was the tool of the duel, of defending rights and of self-assertion, the dominant leader’s phallus. In Old Norse the word for a sword also meant ‘penis’, and in Norse mythology Frey was the god of manliness, virility and crops. Frey was the planter of seeds, with the phallus as his symbol. He had a sword which raised and wielded itself, which made him invincible. However, Frey was willing to sacrifice his fighting sword and forego his magic
blade to be embraced by the youngest and fairest of maidens. The spear was the king of weapons, the longest fighting tool, with attributes of vision and foresight. It could be thrown over to the other side as a challenge when necessary. Odin was the headland, the tip, the foremost, the eldest, the closest to death, the one who could step over the boundary. The point of the spear was the sharp, one-eyed look which spotted a sacrifice from far off, predicted what would happen and dived like a bird of prey to plunge its beak into the carcase. The shield and personal armour allowed themselves to be worn out and sacrificed on behalf of the warrior. They were protective, they gave comfort and they dampened the fear of death; like a loyal wife, a faithful mother or a carer looking after a child. Shield and armour represented protection, shelter, cover, togetherness, drapery (coat of mail), veil and mask (helmet). The shield gave the living protection from the storms of death on the battlefield. The shield maidens, the Valkyries, bore the chosen warriors to new life with Odin after death. A pregnant mother was the infant’s shield, and the goddess Freya represented the seeded earth, the pregnancy. She was the foremost shield maiden and the first foremother of the kingly race.
Plundering graves and stealing swords Both cremated and non-cremated burials occurred in Viking times. In the cremated graves, in addition to the body and the grave goods being burnt, the weapons have often been cut up, bent or broken into pieces. It is as if a sort of ritual ‘killing’ had been performed on the objects, perhaps with the intention of ensuring that the grave goods would accompany the deceased on the journey to the next life. Pragmatists can claim that destruction of weapons was a deterrent to plundering of the grave. It is easy to think of grave robbing as theft of gold or wealth, but there appear to be more complex ideas underlying this activity. Both in the sagas and in archaeological finds, there are examples of grave mounds being plundered in Viking times and swords removed. This almost certainly happened to the big burial mound at c hap ter 5
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Amulet weapons The four basic types of weapon, namely axe, sword, spear and shield, are also found in the form of amulets from the Viking Age. These miniature weapons were usually made of silver, though the axes were often of amber, and occasionally bronze. Ideas about amber as a material go back to The Bronze Age and to antiquity where amber (Latin electrum) was associated with electrical power, sparks and lightning. Old Stone Age axes found in the ground have been interpreted in folklore as thunderbolts, the result of a lightning strike, something which is connected with the god Thor and his hammer. Both amber and lightning bolts (‘lightning stones’) were traditionally regarded as life-giving and as promoting fertility. Axe amulets and Thor’s hammer amulets probably had similar significance, with their attributes of promoting strength, life and health. The sword amulet may have been considered good for manly potency and capacity for conquest, associated with Frey. The spear amulet may have referred to identifying and hitting a target, mental foresight, the wisdom of age; Odin’s attributes. The shield amulet can be thought of as a protective talisman associated with the fertility god Freya, possibly for protection during pregnancy.
Gokstad. In the sagas, the grave mound is usually portrayed as a gateway into the kingdom of the dead. By breaking in, one came face to face with the deceased and a struggle could ensue during which the sword had to be wrested back to the land of the living. Several sagas tell of the hero’s sword being splintered at his death, to be taken out again later and re-forged into a new weapon by the hero’s descendants to take up the fight again. It is said of Saint Olav that his mother was unable to give him birth. The deceased King Olav Geirstadalv came to her rescue in a dream in which he bade her have his sword fetched from his grave, chop the head off his corpse and fasten the sword-belt round her waist in order to be delivered. There seems to be an underlying idea that the sword was in some way like a relay baton holding the spirit of the deceased, which the grave robber took from the deceased to carry the spirit on to the next phase, as if the warrior’s soul was inherited through his sword.
Weapons in burial finds Weapons found buried as grave goods are the most important available material evidence of how Viking warriors were armed and equipped. The many Viking weapon burials reflect an old 158
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Amulets in the shape of miniature weapons. Amber axe and silver shield from Birka, iron spear from Ålstad farm in Uppland, and silver sword from Randlev, south of Århus.
Germanic idea that a free man must be armed to be able to defend his freedom and his dignity. Graves with one or more weapons are traditionally regarded as male burials and referred to as ‘weapon burials’. It is difficult to say how many such burials are known from the Viking Age, but there are approximately 5,000 in Norway, 1,000 in Sweden and 200 in Denmark, plus several outside Scandinavia. The finds are mostly of axe-heads, spearheads, swords and shield bosses, and quite often arrowheads. Axes are the most common weapons in Norwegian burials, but swords and spearheads are found almost as frequently. In Swedish and Danish burials, swords and spears seem to be found more often than axes. About 20% of the Norwegian weapon burials contain two attack weapons, but the best-equipped 10% have all three: sword, spear and axe. The most richly equipped graves also have arrowheads and equestrian gear. Helmets or other personal armour are hardly ever found in the graves. The fortunate circumstances of finding undisturbed graves enable us to see a whole set of equipment which we can confidently say is from the same time. By cross-checking many such finds, we can assign dates to them in relation to each other and develop a typological classification of weapons. There is a
typology for each kind of weapon; an axe typology, a sword typology and so on. The typologies can be used to date new finds, but also to understand their cultural significance, such as expansion of cultural boundaries, trade, conflict and social complexity. The most important contribution to Viking weapon typology is Jan Petersen’s work from 1919, The Norwegian Viking Sword. Petersen systematised and presented typologies for most kinds of weapon from the Viking Age, admittedly with an emphasis on swords, and his book is still an important reference work today. The typologies we present here are mainly from Petersen, but with corrections and additions from more recent studies by other researchers and by the author himself.
Weapon quality and decoration Elegant shapes and noble metal ornamentation put the finishing touches to a handsome weapon which advanced the owner’s prestige and could serve as a valuable gift in the building of political relationships. A good weapon was expected to have a hard, sharp edge and to be well balanced. A sword blade should also be flexible. The ideal weapon almost came to life when it was taken up for battle, like a snake ready to strike or a carnivore who has scented blood.
A sword that could easily be bent and blunted in battle was called a deigr (similar to the modern Norwegian word for ‘dough’). Steintor in Eyrbyggja Saga and Kjartan in Laksdøla Saga each had the experience of a sword getting bent during battle and needing to be straightened out underfoot. Elasticity in a sword blade was highly valued, and it has been suggested that the hardest test for a sword was to bend the point of the sword back to touch the hilt without the blade breaking and then to let it spring straight again without sustaining a permanent bend. This is described in several sources, including Svarfdæla saga and Asmund Kæmpebanes saga. Forging and tempering processes were surrounded in a web of secretiveness and myth. Use of the best possible materials and control of the many temperature-dependent processes would not have been fully mastered by all sword smiths, and for most people parts of their craft must have seemed like magic.
A ‘ killed’ sword, thoroughly hacked to pieces, bent and broken in connection with a burial. From a burial near Hovin Farm in Ringsaker, Hedmark, Norway.
Pattern forging The technique known as pattern forging was already being used in the production of European sword blades hundreds of years before the Viking Age. After the Viking Age, this type of blade decoration became less widespread. The desired wave patterns were laid into the iron during forging and became visible when the c hap ter 5
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Groove-decorated long knife and spear-head from Torsdal, Bamble, in Telemark. Date around 750–800. The knife is 59 cm long.
surface was polished and etched. ‘Viper’ and ‘snake’ are among the expressions used in the description of sword blades, and the pattern on a blade forged in this way can clearly be seen to resemble the pattern on a viper’s back or a serpent’s sinuous movements. In Kormaks saga we are told about a viper who lives in the hilt of the sword Sköfnungr. It can be released by drawing the sword from its scabbard and blowing along the length of the blade. Didrik av Berns saga tells of a gilded serpent which ran from hilt to point of the sword, Ekkisax. Mál, mála and málfár were Old Norse terms used in describing decorated weapons, such as málasax, málaspjót and malswurd for knives, spears and swords respectively. The use of the term mál in Old Norse texts is not always clear. Sometimes it can refer to noble metal inlay, but it generally seems to be a reference to pattern forging and inscriptions on the blade of a weapon. Málfár means ‘inlaid with figures’, and mála means that something is depicted and coloured. Mál means ‘eloquence’ and ‘the quality of being well formulated’, for example in legal texts or poetry. The term mál is used in the context of entering binding legal agreements. In Gisle Surssons saga, a málaspjót is used in the ritual of swearing an oath of blood brotherhood. In Hervors og Heidreks saga, a málasax is used in the binding oath for taking power over two (mythical) dwarf smiths. Mál weapons seem to be associated with a power to displace trickery and lies and ensure the validity of a pact. Pattern forging, inscriptions and cryptic symbols such as omegas, circles and crosses on sword blades were certainly seen as quality marks, but can also be interpreted as bestowing spiritual properties on the weapon. In the 9th century, an anonymous monk from St Gall Monastery described Charlemagne’s sword thus: On the sword was first a sheath of beech wood, second a type of leather, third a wrapping of the whitest linen strengthened with shiny polished wax, so that the small crosses on the middle (of the sword blade) clearly stood out for the suppression of heathen opponents.
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never on axes. The patterns are forged into the middle of the blade, never on the cutting edge and never on the hilt of the sword or the socket of the spearhead. The technique consisted of building up a stack of flat iron rods. The rods were of two different alloys, preferably a contrast between phosphoric iron and pure iron. These were set alternately in five or seven or occasionally nine layers. The layered rods were brought to white heat in the forge and hammered together on an anvil to make a single rod which was then twisted at red heat. Laying two rods together, each of which is twisted differently, produces a fishbone pattern, which was the most common decorative pattern in the 8th and 9th centuries. Fishbone patterns continued into the 10th century, but they then came to be replaced (especially on spears) by an iron band laid in between the cutting edge and the core to create a contrast line. On more exclusive spears, this contrast line could be worked in the form of a serrated line, a dog-tooth pattern.
Hardening and metal quality A good sword blade should be flexible but should not be easily broken, and the edge should keep its sharpness. A combination of hard steel at the edge and soft, ductile iron along the middle of the blade can go a long way towards achieving this. A long, narrow-bladed weapon such as a sword needs metals with special qualities. It was important to have iron and steel of uniform quality. This required iron to be thoroughly formed by repeated forging, folding, hammering and forging again. This reworking at high temperature removed most of the slag impurities from the iron and rendered it homogeneous, thereby reducing the risk of the weapon shattering under the strain of use. Refining processes such as this required large resources of materials and skilled labour. The preparation and refining of good hardened steel was even more demanding, and such materials were very expensive to acquire by trading. Sulphur contamination makes iron brittle and unsuitable for weapons such as swords and spearheads. Axes, on the other hand, were so thick and massive that one could economise by using
Some examples of decorated axes.
iron of lower quality in the middle, though not at the cutting edge. Axes could be forged along with other tools as rough smithy work in simple forges on farms in wintertime, but swords and spears required more extensive and precise work, more specialised processes, more grinding and decoration, more expensive materials and a better understanding of choice of material and hardening processes. A few specialised weapon smiths may have prepared sword blades which would then have hilts made and mounted elsewhere. The edge was hardened by heating the weapon to about 800°C and then cooling it in water. The correct temperature for hardening was judged by the colour of the glowing metal. Properly carried out, this gave a hard, rather brittle steel which then had to be tempered by heating to about 250°C to soften it again. Heating the whole sword-blade uniformly to the hardening temperature at the same time is quite difficult, and the cooling of something so long and thin as a sword is also tricky. There is a risk of the blade bending or breaking. You only get one chance. Unsuccessful and partial hardenings do occur, and
sometimes the smith has not tried to harden the blade again, even though the edge has been forged from suitable steel. Sometimes the end of the blade towards the tip is hardened better than the part nearer the hilt. This can be a sensible compromise, as a strong, sharp cutting edge is most important in the sword’s contact area, the half nearest the tip.
Drop forging and decorative grooves Specialisation in weapon manufacture led to the use of drop forging, a technique which made it easier to forge small, two-edged blades. The use of this technique is seen especially on Viking Age arrowheads and 10th-century spearheads. Drop forging consisted of putting the glowing metal in between two shaped dies to form it into a chosen cross-section. The glowing metal was drawn back and forth between the two dies while the smith hammered on the drop die, bringing the blade eventually to the cross-section set between the dies. Hollow surfaces on the sides of a blade are evidence of drop forging. c hap ter 5
Examples of geometric precious metal decoration on the sockets of type N spear-heads from Gothem, Gotland, done with silver, copper and brass. Date 10th century, length 34 cm.
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Naming axes Hel is the name of Norse mythology’s goddess of Helheim, one of the realms of death, and it is the name of an axe. Names given to axes are consistently in the feminine form and refer to wild, primitive, uncultivated nature, destruction, aggression and rage. Several poetical heiti and saga names for axes refer to giant, exacting and uncontrollable troll creatures, mythology’s gýgr. These dangerous Jotun women were associated with forest, mountain and wilderness. When the gýgr didn’t get what she wanted, she became angry and released unrestrained natural forces as a punishment.
We find axe names such as Rimmugýgr (‘aggressive old hag troll’), Skogsgýgr (‘outlawed old hag troll’) and Galdsgýr (‘lunatic old hag troll’), genja (‘shreak, terrify’), skràma (‘horrify, terrify’), SkaðI (‘injure’), Saxa (‘cut off’), Snaga (‘cut short, stunt, gnaw’), Randgríðr (‘shield-seeker, shield-wrecker’), Svartleggja (‘send into darkness’), Himintelgja (‘chopping sky–high’), Stjarna (star), skeggja (‘bearded’) and barða (‘bearded’). We also have kennings for an axe, such as hamartröll (‘troll hammer’), grand hjalms (‘helmet wrecker’), bryðja randa (‘shield-eater, shield-smasher’), randgalkn (‘the shield’s wild animal’) and galli meginhurðar Gauts (‘shield disfigurer’).
This technique was also used to stamp decorative grooves along parts of spearhead sockets. This developed into a distinctive decorative style on 8th- and 9th-century spearheads. The longitudinal decorative grooves were usually further outlined with the use of a chisel. Broadaxe with gold decoration from Botnhamn in Lenvik, Troms. Date 1000–1050, length 14 cm.
Decoration with precious metals Whereas sword hilts were decorated with precious metals right from the start of the Viking Age, spears only began to be decorated with precious
metals from the beginning of the 10th century. Axes were very rarely decorated in this way, and only from the middle of the 10th century. Until around the middle of the 10th century, simple geometric patterns were mainly used. In the second half of the 10th century the geometric patterns became more complex and animal motifs with curling tracery became common. Precious metal thread was used for the inlays, mostly silver and copper, some brass and use of ‘niello’ technique, very rarely gold.
Axe The first weapon a free man acquired was the axe. The laws about how the population should be armed allowed the axe as an alternative to the sword. The axe was the weapon of working men, free men who didn’t own land. The axe appears to have been little recognised as a weapon on the continent of Europe, and it is not even mentioned or evaluated in the Frankish legal text, Lex Ribuaria, from the 7th century. Many axes from Viking burials are coarse and heavy, more like working tools than weapons. Specialised battleaxes first appear in the second half of the 10th century as light, narrow, usually thinly forged and broad-edged axes, sometimes decorated with precious metals. The axe was the weapon of the up and coming, a tool to clear land for cultivation. In battle it was a cutter and breaker of shields, a shield-smasher, an unstoppable ox. A warrior with a two-handed axe 162
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must have been a fearsome and hard-hitting enemy and must have required great faith and confidence to fight exposed, without the protection of a shield. We hear about the axe ‘Hel’ when King Magnus the Good led his men violently to victory against a numerically superior army of heathen Vends at Lyrskog Heath, north of Hedeby, in 1043: Ahead with his broad axe Tirelessly forward and first, Hordaland’s king, surrounded by A sea of swords, cast his chain-coat, Changed earthly armour for heavenly, Grasped the shaft with both hands; Hel cleaves, heads fall. arnor tordson jarlaskald, the saga of magnus the good
The axe ‘Hel’ would have belonged to Magnus the Good’s father, Olav Haraldsson (St Olav) before him. The saga description indicates that this was a broadaxe with a two-handed shaft. The twohanded axe features again as the symbol of St Olav in contemporary Middle Age descriptions, and it has become part of Norway’s national coat of arms.
Axe typology.
Types of axe There are three main categories of axe-head: narrow-bladed, broad-bladed and bearded. Narrow-bladed axes had a blade length of 5–10 cm and were general working tools. A thinner narrow-bladed axe mounted on a two-handed shaft was known as a bolöks. This was a woodman’s axe, for felling trees; bolr means ‘stem’. A skeggöks (‘bearded axe’) had a longer edge, designed to work c hap ter 5
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Few Viking Age axe shafts have survived, and very few with decoration. This late-10th-century type T axe from Over Hornbæk near Randers in Denmark has a little carved ornamentation preserved on the stump of the shaft. Blade length 22 cm.
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split tree-trunks into planks and beams. Some of the bearded axes were known as halfþynna öx. The neck on a ‘half thin axe’ was thinly forged, to make it lighter. Usually the beard was only at the bottom end of the blade, but axes did sometimes have extra long blades, bearded both top and bottom. These double-bearded working axes were used for smooth-cutting of broad planks, and they are found mainly from the second half of the 10th century as specialised battleaxes, quite frequently with precious metal decoration. We can call these type T axes, and they appear to be of Eastern, Slavic origin. Broadaxes, which appeared in the second half of the 10th century, are the type most characteristic of the Viking Age. They were not bearded, but nevertheless the cutting edge could be as long as vi k i ng w e a p ons
the length of the axe-head, resulting in a triangular type of shape. Broadaxes were made specifically as battleaxes, and they were lightened by the whole blade, with the exception of the edge, being þunnsleginn (thinly forged), down towards a thickness of 2.5 mm. Broadaxes like this can have a 125 cm edge and weigh only 500 grams. Precious metal decoration is not common on axes, but the few examples which have been found are mainly on broadaxes, which indicates that they were important status symbols. Raised high on a long, two-handed shaft, a broadaxe was a frightening and characteristic weapon. The Danish King Canute the Great had a well-armoured group of warriors equipped with nobly decorated broadaxes. These Danish axe-men were called huskarler (‘housecarls’), an expression which Canute introduced to England after he invaded and established himself as ruler there in 1016. Broadaxes are also referred to as ‘Danish axes’. The English King Harold Godwinsson still had the mail-clad housecarls with their broadaxes as his professional guard at the battle of Hastings in 1066. We also know that Vikings in mercenary service in Constantinople in the 10th and 11th centuries were notorious because of their broadaxes. Slavic battleaxes also came into use in Scandinavia, especially in the eastern parts of Sweden, Gotland and Denmark. We have already mentioned the Eastern, T-shaped axe type with a broad blade. There were also narrow-bladed types. The Old Norse word taparöx probably comes from topór, a Slavic word for ‘axe’. These narrow-bladed Slavic axes are described as being very light. They could weigh as little as 200–250 g, making them very suitable for single-handed use. Narrow-bladed axes of the Western Scandinavian type usually weighed over 450 g, which was rather heavy for single-handed use. Another characteristic of some of the Eastern axes is an extra long hammer or more rarely a secondary blade, protruding from the back of the axe-head. Both types have been found in graves at Birka. Eastern axes are also characterised by an almost completely round hole for the shaft, rather than the more nearly triangular or drop shape which we find in the West. Few of the Vikings’ axes were decorated. From the 9th to the middle of the 10th century
Naming knives It is not usual for weapon knives or single-edged swords to be given names in the sagas, but there are a few examples. In Grettis saga the knife Kársnautr is taken out of Kár’s burial mound. The name Kar or Karl means ‘a free, unbound man’ who manages another’s property. Nautr means ‘something you have got a share of, been given or come into possession of,’ a gift or a share of plunder. The saga tells how Grette with great courage defeats twelve berserk pirates single-handedly and receives the splendid knife Kársnautr as a coming-of-age gift. Reykdöla saga
tells of a knife called Nator. The word nator/ natur is related to the Latin word which means ‘to swim, to float’, or metaphorically ‘to hold up, to keep alive’. Natur (natura/nascor) originally means something like ‘birthplace, place where one grew up’. Nat is a basic word-stem carrying a sense of birth, origin, the division between life and death, the struggle for life. In Didrik av Berns saga, Didrik captures the weapon Ekkisax from the pirate Ekka, in a long, violent duel which continues into the night by the light of sparks from the clashing swords.
ornamentation was simple, consisting of parallel chiselled lines or rows of punch-marks. The lines bounded the side of the heel of the axe, over the shaft-hole, making a frame which sometimes enclosed a cross. Precious metal decoration started to be used on axes after the middle of the 10th century, on specialised battleaxes. A rare and quite typical type of decoration is found on the broadaxes which have parts of the mid-section cut away, leaving a cross in the part between the blade and the shaft-hole.
narrow-bladed working axes with shafts of 71 and 78 cm. A narrow-bladed 13th-century axe found in the River Vorma had a 110cm long shaft suitable for two-handed use. Archaeological investigations in the lake around the fortified island of Ostrów Lednicki in Poland have yielded masses of weapons from the early 11th century, including 128 axes, of which at least 12 had the full lengths of their 70–120 cm shafts preserved. The axe with the longest shaft is of type T.
The shaft of the axe
Knife
Descriptive classifications such as narrow, broad and bearded apply mainly to the head of the axe, but the terms ‘hand-axe’ and ‘woodman’s axe’ refer to shaft lengths for single or double-handed use. The Old Norse texts also refer to axes with ‘low shaft’, ‘high shaft’ or ‘long shaft’. The laws from the Middle Ages sometimes specify whether the axe required as a weapon should be a broadaxe or half-thin, and that it should be securely shafted. In King Håkon Håkonsson’s foreword to an edition of the Frosta Ting Law from 1260, he complains that people thought woodman’s axes were good enough to be acceptable. This is evidence of the tradition of ordinary farmers and workers equipped with a working axe as a weapon, a custom which we can be sure went back to Viking times. Axe-shafts from the Viking Age were completely straight. From Oseberg there are two 9th-century
Like the axe, the knife was a slaughtering tool, used for the necessary trick of cutting throats and draining away life-blood. The knife used as a weapon represents liberation from dominance: a son’s liberation from his father; a slave’s liberation from his master; a people’s liberation from a dominant race. This can also be seen as a cultural expression of the idea of the newborn infant being liberated from the mother through birth and the cutting of the umbilical cord. The slave was not allowed to own more than a small working knife, and so a larger knife designed as a weapon was a symbol of liberation. One type of long knife used as a weapon was known in Old Norse as a sax, and in Old English as a seax. The etymological origins of this word have meanings such as ‘to split in two, to separate, to divide, to cut. c hap ter 5
A long sax from Alling Lake, near Viborg in Denmark. Date probably late 8th century, length 72 cm.
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Knives and swords Knives as weapons are rarely found in Viking graves. By the 7th and 8th centuries Scandinavian straight-backed, single-bladed weapon knives had already grown to sword length, and around the start of the 9th century they started being equipped with metal hilts like those on double-edged swords. During the Viking Age, Scandinavian weapon knives evolved into single-edged swords.
Long Saxon knives While straight-backed Scandinavian weapon knives were developing into swords, Saxon knives elsewhere evolved differently, into a knife with a curved back and straight edge, a sax in Old Norse or seax in Old English. At its full development, this type of knife had a total length of 70–90 cm, enough to substitute for a sword. However, the Saxon knives didn’t develop into weapons with metal hilts as they did in Scandinavia, but retained their simple wooden handles. The handle of the knife was relatively long, 15–25 cm. The
Long sax with pattern forging on the blade, from Holvik, Gloppen in Sogn og Fjordane, Norway. First half of 9th century.
The method of carrying a weapon knife. 166
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blade usually had decorative grooves along both sides. Examples have also been found with patternforged bands either among or beside the decorative grooves. A few dozen long knives of Saxon type have been found in Scandinavia, all from early Viking times. In the Frankish kingdoms’ complement of handweapons, the sax was a supplement to the sword up to the second half of the 8th century, but then went out of use. In the Saxon region just north of the Franks, up towards the Danish border, long saxes were used in the 8th century as alternatives to swords. These disappeared when the Franks conquered the territory at the start of the 9th century. Both short and long saxes continued in use among the Anglo-Saxons in England through the rest of the Viking Age. Angle-backed knives are particularly characteristic of the Anglo-Saxons. These were prominent in the 10th century, usually as short (15–50 cm) but occasionally as long knives. Angle-backed knives are rarely found in Scandinavia, but three leather slings for this type of knife have been found in excavations in Trondheim. These have been dated to around 1000 AD.
Knives from eastern Scandinavia The tradition of laying weapon knives in graves is most widespread in the eastern part of Scandinavia. We are referring here to a type of decorated knife which is found in the region around the Baltic, especially in the Mälar Valley in eastern Sweden. Several have been found in graves at the trading town of Birka, at Valsgärde, in Vendel Grave 9 and in graves on Gotland. These knives are mostly from the 10th century. They have richly metalornamented sheaths and very narrow blades. They are 40–55 cm in overall length, including a 10–11 cm handle. The blade is only 2–2.5 cm wide, but the back of the blade can be over 1 cm thick. The handle is often enhanced with coils of thin silver thread at the blade end and a bronze plate with a ring at the back. The leather sheath covered almost the whole of the handle, and so the ring on the back of the handle may have held a loop or a cord to make it easier to draw the weapon from its sheath. The leather sheath was folded round the back of the knife, with the join along the cutting edge held together by a number of small metal fittings, with larger fittings towards the tip and the mouth of the sheath. These metal fittings include rings, normally three in number, for hanging from a belt. Well-preserved examples have a layer of tin or silver on the bronze fittings. These carefully made, richly decorated knives were status symbols for warriors and may have been given as rewards to the chieftain’s chosen men, Some of the finds from the trading town of Birka associate such knives with the garrison soldiers who protected the town on behalf of the ruler. The style of these knives shows signs of having been influenced by Birka’s extensive trade and contact with the East.
How knives were carried The medium-length knives used as weapons hung horizontally from the belt, across the front of the lower abdomen. The cutting edge faced upward, with the handle of the knife conveniently placed for the warrior’s right hand. The sheath had two hanging straps going up to a belt which appears to have been a specialised weapon-belt with fixed
fastening points so that the knife would stay in the correct position. Long knives were too long to hang horizontally in this way, and contemporary pictures show that they hung diagonally across the left hip, more like a sword. The 10th-century eastern Scandinavian knives were also worn horizontally, but as mentioned earlier they had suspension rings, and therefore a strap for each ring. An alternative system has been observed in smaller knives of the eastern Scandinavian type, where the straps or cords come together in one suspension point on the belt. c hap ter 5
Decorated knives from Birka and Vendel, in Sweden. Date around mid-10th century.
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Naming swords Words such as ‘sharp’, ‘shiny’ and ‘flaming’ are often used when describing or naming swords. Flawlessness, durability and Frankish manufacture are especially praised. The sharpness of Gunnlogi (‘battle flame’) is unequalled, its hilt is plated with gold, the cutting edge flames and it wins all battles. We find epithets such as Eggjumskarpi (‘sharp-edged’), Langhvass (‘long and sharp’), Hviting (‘shining’), Gullinhjalti (‘golden hilt’) and Flæmingr (‘Flemish’ or ‘flaming’). Names such as Refil (‘Weave-covered, Felted’) and Ridill (‘Tracery-covered, Insoluble, Mysterious’) may refer to swords with pattern forged blades. Other names include Misteltein (‘Parasite stick’), Bloðgangr (‘Blood-letter’), Niðing (‘Nailer
Sword
Sheath for an angle- backed knife found in Trondheim, Norway. Length 42 cm.
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The sword is associated with the mature and honourable warrior. It was an expensive weapon and a symbol of membership of the landed gentry. In duels, whether by holmgang (‘holm going’) or by einvigi (‘trial by combat’), the sword was the clearly preferred weapon for defending one’s honour. However, despite all its qualities and high status, the sword was a reserve weapon when it came to battles between armies. While the opposing formations stood facing each other it was the throwing spear with its long range which dominated the battlefield. The sword came into its own when the formations started breaking up and the situation became chaotic. The Viking sword was a single-handed weapon which left the other hand free to hold a shield. As mentioned earlier, in Old Norse the word sverð also means ‘penis’. The person who was pierced by the sword was therefore by implication a female, a vagina, a sheath for the sword. The sword is the weapon which is most often given extraordinary qualities and special names in the sagas. Poetically, the sword is often described as ‘the flame’, ‘the torch’ or ‘the source of light’. It can be the sheathed flame, the wounding flame, the corpse flame or blood’s conflagration. The sword was also compared with a snake, a stave or an icicle. vi k i ng w e a p ons
down’), Snidill (‘Pruner’), Laufi (‘Bladed, Leaved’), Dragvandil (‘Door-latch, Door-opener’), Sigrvendill (‘Winner’s stave’) Rostung (‘Walrus, Longtoothed’) Brynjubitr (‘Armour-biter’), Leggbitr, Fotbitr (‘Leg-cutter’), Hornhjalte, Lang, Nadr, Fjörsvafnir, Verúlf, Skálkr, Skrýmir, Grásiða, Fetbreðr, Ætartangi, Naglhring, and many others. Among Snorre’s heiti for swords we also find hræfrakki (‘corpse-freer, corpse-stamper’), afspringr (‘offspring’), ormþvari ( ‘snake-creature’), fjörsoðnir (‘life’s flesh-boiler’) and eldr (‘fire’). We also find kennings such as styrjökull (‘violence’s icicle’), mærir dreyra (‘slender blood-dripper’) and þorn rógs skjaldar (‘shield-mocking thorn’).
Old Norse literature contains more than 150 heiti and 500 kennings for sword, and there are more than a hundred named swords in the sagas. Among the most famous of these were Mimung, Gramr, Tyrfing, Sköfnungr, Kvernbit and Skrep. Several thousand Viking Age swords have been found in Scandinavia. There are relatively few weapon burials from this time in Denmark, with about 100 registered finds of swords. About 700 Viking Age swords have been found in Sweden. Many more have been found in Norway, with a tally of over 2,500 swords, possibly up to nearly 3,000.
Types of sword By ‘sword’, we usually mean a double-edged sword, but single-edged varieties were also very common in the first part of the Viking Age. The hilt of a sword consists of three or four main parts. These are the back-hilt, the grip and the fore-hilt, with the back-hilt often consisting of two parts, of which the very hindmost is called the pommel. The hilts on Viking swords were generally made of iron, more rarely cast in bronze. The total length of a Viking sword was generally 90–95 cm, rarely over 1 metre. The blade formed 70–90 cm of this and the hilt 12–18 cm. The blade was usually 5–6 cm wide, the widest example being 6.5 cm. For a sword to be effective in use the weight
had to be restricted, especially towards the point. This was achieved by tapering the blade both in breadth and in thickness towards the point. A blade thickness of 6 mm at the end nearest the hilt would gradually reduce to 2 mm near the tip. To reduce the weight further, a groove called the fuller (sometimes known as the ‘blood groove’) was forged and ground out along the middle of the blade. This reduced the thickness and therefore the weight of the sword, while preserving the necessary tautness. For several hundred years before the Viking Age, double-edged sword blades were relatively heavy towards the tip, with parallel edges and a flat
blade without a fuller groove along the middle. By the beginning of the Viking Age, development of better balanced and more easily handled swords was already well under way. Viking sword blades could be wider than before, but with the total weight reduced by the groove along the middle. Combined with narrowing and thinning of the blade towards the tip, this moved the centre of gravity towards the hilt, making swords easier to handle and enabling them to be made with longer blades. Viking swords usually weigh slightly over 1 kg. From the middle of the 8th century the number of double-edged swords in Scandinavia increased, c hap ter 5
Sword typology.
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Seven complete, well-preserved swords laid out in chronological order. Number 4 is from the Scientific M useum in Trondheim and the others from the Historical Museum in Oslo. (1) Type C, 102.5 cm (2) Type F, single-edged, c. 96 cm, (3) Type K, 94.5 cm (4) Type M/Q, 93.5 cm (5) Type P, c. 88.5 cm (6) Type T, 94.5 cm (7) Type X, 94.8 cm. 170
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Examples of patternforged swords.
and new, rather massive types of iron hilt begin to appear. Only one fifth of Viking swords found in Norway are single-bladed, and these are from the earlier part of the Viking Age. A lot of evidence suggests that the single-bladed sword was the last phase in the development of knives as weapons. Straight-backed knives evolved into sword-length knives during the 8th century. At the start of the 9th century these single-edged knife-swords evolved from having a simple wooden knife-handle to being mounted on a metal hilt like the doubleedged swords. Single-edged swords have been found mostly in Norway, especially west Norway, and this may have been where they developed. The most typical single-edged swords are probably those with the type C hilt, which accounts for over 10% of the type-classified Viking sword finds from Norway. Type C swords come from a short timeframe (800–850) but they are very numerous.
Type C has an unusually high proportion (60%) of single-edged swords. Types C, F, G and M all have simplified iron hilts and a significant proportion of single-edged blades. These are probably what one could call home-made types, made by the Vikings themselves. Towards the middle of the 10th century, single-edged swords gradually disappear and double-edged swords predominate. Some of the single-edged swords are the longest examples we have from the Viking Age, with total lengths up to as much as 107 cm, but at the same time the single-edged swords also include the shortest examples, down to 75 cm.
Pattern forging and inscription Pattern-forged sword blades in Viking times were traditionally made from two, three or sometimes four twisted iron bars laid parallel to each other and c hap ter 5
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Examples of inscriptions on swords.
then forged to laminate them together. The resulting decorative patterns covered most of the blade including the fuller, with the exception of the edge, which was undecorated. The shapes thus forged into the metal appeared as a herring-bone pattern or as beautiful star and wave patterns if the surface was
Petersen type D hilt from Vågå in Oppland, Norway, decorated with bronze and silver, with a human-like figure at the bottom. The pommel is missing. 172
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more worn, and there could be further variations if the twist varied or was absent on parts of the original iron bars. Home-made swords with simple iron hilts are seldom pattern forged, but imported types of sword frequently are. The technique was used mostly in the first half of the Viking Age, and it gradually went out of use between 950 and 1050. A variation of pattern-forging technique was to forge into the blade pieces of iron rod bent into the shape of letters and symbols. These inscriptions are found in the fuller on the back third of the blade. In the 9th century the inscription was often laid in on top of the forged pattern, but during the 10th century it became more common for the inscription to appear alone on the blade. In early Viking times the inlaid letters and symbols are made from pattern-forged rods, but they gradually come to be made from plain iron bars, before these too disappear towards the end of the Viking Age and are replaced in the 11th century by inscriptions and figures inlaid using precious metals.
The clearly most common inscriptions on sword blades are +VLFBERH+T and INGELRII. +VLFBERH+T occurs especially in the 9th and 10th centuries, and INGELRII in the 10th and 11th centuries. Sword inscriptions are traditionally thought to be some sort of maker’s signature, but a number of Christian inscriptions are also found, such as IN NOMINE DOMINI on blades in late Viking times and BENEDICTUS DNS (DomiNuS) on the hilt at the beginning of the Viking Age. There may have been powerful ideas behind the inscriptions, possibly religious invocations to ensure that the bearer had good fortune in battle and divine right on his side. The inscriptions mainly originate from Christian regions and are based on Christian ideas and symbolism of the time. The task of interpreting the inscriptions as more than just personal names is quite demanding. For example, the most common sword inscription, +VLFBERH+T can be read as something like ulvebåren or ulvefødet (‘born of a wolf’). Ulv (‘wolf’) traditionally alludes to uncontrollable hunger, greed, devouring, age and death, and the word may be related to the Latin prefix ult- (‘the furthest, the utmost, the end, the boundary’). The word-stem BER (bher) has been postulated in Proto-IndoEuropean and is connected with meanings such as ‘to bear, to carry, to advance, to maintain, to withstand,’ an original ancestor of words such as bear, bairn, birth and burn. In Old German, Berhta means ‘bright, shining’. So the sword can be seen as a light source, a flaming torch perhaps, which keeps the dark (the greedy wolf, death) at bay. These are difficult questions, which can be made even more complex if you begin to wonder why the final letter T in most instances stands separated at the end of the word +VLFBERH+T. Analysis of the +VLFBERH+T blades show them to be made of crucible steel, a smelting technique unknown in northern Europe at the time. This metal would have had to be imported, maybe from the Byzantine Empire. This would have made the genuine +VLFBERH+T blades extra durable and coveted. Many contemporary forgeries and inferior copies exist with slight differences in the spelling of the name Ulfberth.
Petersen type R hilt from Egge near Steinkjer in Nord-Trøndelag. Silver ornamentation in Mammen style.
Petersen type H hilt from Broa near Halla on G otland. c hap ter 5
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Decorated hilts The Old Norse expression for precious metal decoration on sword hilts was valböst (valskr bast; ‘Frankish bast’, ‘Frankish fibre’). This seems to have been a poetic metaphor. People seem to have imagined the sword-hilt’s encasing film of parallel precious metal threads as resembling a vegetable fibre wrapping. Unlike the other types of weapon, swords were already being decorated with precious metal from the beginning of the Viking Age, and as many as 40% of all the Viking swords found in Norway have had precious metal decoration. The most richly decorated swords may have been used as much for status symbolism as for fighting. Until the mid-10th century, geometric patterns of ornamentation predominate on sword hilts. During the second half of the 11th century, organic patterns of interwoven tracery begin to appear. Some instances of cast metal hilts with ornamentation also occur, mostly in bronze but occasionally in silver. There are also a few examples of hilts made from bone, antlers and walrus ivory. Petersen type H hilts are exceptional among decorated swords, with their enormous numbers and their long period of use. We find H type swords both in Scandinavia and elsewhere in Europe. They must have dominated the sword trade for a long time, in addition to being copied and manufactured at home in Scandinavia. The sword grip itself, meðalkafli, is normally not preserved, but it mainly consisted of wood wrapped in bands of textile or leather. In the last half of the 10th century a few decorated swords had a wrapping of silver thread, silfrivfjaðr, round
Sketch of three ways to hang a scabbard: belt attachment, supporting strap and side-straps. 174
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the grip. Decorated swords of type D are unique in having a grip made of iron, decorated with precious metal in the same style as the rest of the hilt.
Scabbards and their fastenings The organic materials from which scabbards were made have been partly preserved only in favourable circumstances where rust from the sword blade has impregnated them sufficiently. The best-preserved finds show that the scabbards were lined with cloth or short-haired sheepskin. Outside the lining was a 2–3 mm thick layer of wood, and beyond that an inner covering of cloth, probably glued to the wood to hold the scabbard together. The outer covering was either leather or a further layer of cloth. So the scabbard was made up of four layers: lining, wood, inner cover and outer cover. Quantities of outer coverings made of calfskin have been found in York in England and dated to the 10th century. From the 8th and 9th centuries we find scabbards where narrow bands of linen or leather have been wound round to make the outer cover. This appears to have been a Frankish design, which is testified by contemporary depictions. The tip of a sword scabbard is liable to being slit, and those with outer wrapping bands are wound particularly closely at the front end to protect the tip. Metal ferrules are another means of strengthening the tip of the scabbard. Ferrules are found especially from the 10th and 11th centuries, mostly in the Baltic region. Ornamental ferrules were cast in copper alloy, or occasionally silver or tin or gilded. In proportion to the large number of swords from the Viking Age we have very few metal ferrules. The Old Norse sources tell of both belts (lindi) and shoulder straps ( fetill) as means for carrying a sword. We can distinguish three different systems for the scabbard, namely belt attachment, fixed belt with supporting strap and suspension from two side-straps. Direct attachment of the scabbard to the belt is by a hoop of wood or other material fastened to the forward side of the scabbard for the belt to be led through. A fixed belt with a supporting strap used an extra strap to hold the scabbard tilted slightly back and prevent it from swinging forward when the wearer moved. The third variant was with two side straps. This was used mostly for
sabres and knives, obviously an Eastern tradition. Only a few contemporary Frankish depictions show swords carried on side straps.
Spear The dominating length of the spear made it the most important weapon when armies came to close combat. A well-organised front line of spearmen had a big advantage over enemies with shorter hand weapons. The length of the spear made it not only an attack weapon but also a means of defence, able to keep opponents at a distance. In the book Kongespeilet, written in the middle of the 13th century to give advice to men of noble birth, we can read: Never let go of your spear in the formation unless you have two, for one spear is better than two swords for fighting in the field.
Moreover, a simple spear was relatively easy and inexpensive to acquire. A spear was also a threat to the enemy when thrown from a distance, making it the most important long-range weapon other than the arrow. The heads of smaller throwing spears were just 20 cm long, almost as short as an arrowhead, but the strongest thrust-spears could have heads over 70 cm long, well on the way to the length of a sword. The suitability of the spear as a throwing weapon gave it a poetic identity alongside the arrow, as the airborne raptor of the battlefield, the falcon which spots its prey from afar and swoops down with beak and claw. The metaphor is particularly powerful if you imagine a hunting falcon cast up into the air from the hand of the hunter.
Spear typology.
Types of spear The main components of a spear are the metal head and the wooden shaft. On the head, we distinguish between the blade and the socket. The c hap ter 5
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Naming spears Spjót (‘to spy, to spot, to see from afar’) is related to the Old French word espiet, which means ‘a spy, someone who sees from afar’. Geirr (‘a beak, bill’) was another very common Old Norse expression for a spear. We also have darr (possibly ‘tremble’) and occasionally dåren (‘one who dares’). Darr is probably connected with the ancient Greek spearmen, hoplites, who were called doru (δóρυ). In Sanskrit, dāru means ‘wooden stick’. Some other poetic metaphors for a spear are frakka (‘Frank / set free’), svaf (glider/ bringer of sleep’) hræmaki (‘maker of corpses’), fleinn (‘tear/claw/anchor-hook’) and vigr (‘vigour’). Named spears
Winged spear of type C. Length 41 cm. 176
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are less common in the sagas than named swords, but we find spear names such as Atgeirr (‘nourishing spear, eating beak’), Vagn (‘fat cutter’), Atlanaut (‘Atle’s prize’), Skarphedinsnautr (‘Skarphedin’s prize’), Jarlsnautr (‘The Earl’s prize’) and Selshevner (‘Sel’s avenger’). Odin’s spear was called Gungnir (‘rocker, swayer, i.e. balancer, one who comes back’). Among poetic metaphors or kennings for spear we have: ‘dragon who darkens shields’, ‘wound’s flying dragon’, ‘corpse-liberator’, ‘corpse-maker’, ‘corpse-serpent’, ‘throwing-snake’ and ‘pointing-stick’.
shaft is fixed into the socket with one or two nails, but some types of spear can have a whole row of decorative nails along the socket. Some spears have two projections on the side of the socket, known as wings. Occasionally, the back end of the shaft is capped with a metal ferrule. Broadly speaking, Viking Age spearheads can be divided into two main groups. The first main group (types A/B, C, D and E) consists of what we can call Frankish spearheads, which occur between 750 and 950, but mainly in the 8th and 9th centuries. These account for one third of the spears we have from Viking times. Most of them have been pattern forged with a herringbone pattern along the middle of the blade. The blade has curved edges and blends inconspicuously into the socket. The socket tends towards a square internal cross-section and is decorated with chiselled longitudinal grooves. Wings are fairly common on these early types of spear. The other main group (types F, I, K, M, G and H) is from the period 850–1100. They are made quite differently from the first group and can be assumed to have originated from a different region. They account for half of the Viking Age spears that have been found. The blade has nearly straight edges, which end in an angle at the base and a marked narrowing of the blade as it merges into the socket. The socket is distinctly round in cross-section and is decorated with inlaid precious metal. Only type F has decorative grooves and these are consistently transverse, in contrast to the longitudinal grooves of the first group. Wings do not feature commonly in this second group, but decorative rows of nails are sometimes used. vi k i ng w e a p ons
In addition to the two main groups, there is one particular minor group which is numerous enough to merit mention. These spears are called type O, and they make up slightly over 10% of Viking Age spears. Type O spears are found from throughout the whole of the 10th century. They are usually quite slender, and their most characteristic feature is a flattened transition area between blade and socket. This flattened area continues quite far up onto the blade. The last group we should mention consists of throwing spears with barbs. These are not numerous, but they are very characteristic and they are found throughout the whole of the Viking Age.
Pattern forging and socket decoration As part of the research for Bergljot Solberg’s doctoral thesis on spears (1984), almost 900 Viking Age spearheads were investigated using x-rays. Half of them could be seen to have been pattern forged. The common types of spearhead from the 8th and 9th centuries had a very high proportion of pattern forged blades, amounting to 80% among types A/B and E. This indicates a highly developed standard method of manufacture. The patterns forged into these early spearheads are herringbone, along the middle of the blade. The 10th-century spearheads show a change to a much simpler pattern, where only a narrow band is laid in at the join between the middle section and the cutting edge. In a more exclusive variant of these 10thcentury spears, this band is made in a notched, dog-tooth pattern. In types G and H, which are
particularly broad-bladed, the decorated area is made broader by pattern-forged bands set in parallel to the dog-tooth line. In the 8th and 9th centuries, the sockets are decorated with longitudinal grooves chiselled into the iron. This changes completely with new types of spear in the 10th century. The decorative grooves disappear, to be replaced by decoration of the sockets with precious metals. In the first half of the 10th century this consists of bands or sections across the socket, often combined with a decorative row of nails. The geometric patterns gradually become more complex in the course of the 10th century, and towards the end of the century animal patterns and more free, coiling shapes appear.
Winged spears Almost half of the Frankish spearheads imported to Scandinavia in the last half of the 8th century had wings on the socket. Winged spearheads are still found from the second half of the 10th century, but by then they were very few. The protruding wings may have functioned to prevent the spear from penetrating unnecessarily far into the wound, making it easier to pull out and stab again. The wings were also useful for hooking onto and pushing the edge of an opponent’s shield and weapon, opening the way to a strike. Wings originated on spears for the hunting of large animals, where the wing functioned as a barb to hold the spear in the prey and hinder a large, angry animal from coming close enough to attack the hunter. The wings on many weapon spears are shorter than those on hunting spears, often no longer than the breadth of the blade. Wings which were too short could follow the blade into the wound. This suggests that that wings on weapon spears were possibly just a symbolic reference to the ruling class’s manly mastering of dangerous prey.
Throwing spears Specialised throwing spears were used in the Viking Age, but they are found in Viking graves less commonly than in earlier graves. Most characteristic are the fleinn, spears with barbs. Throwing spears
Silver-decorated spearhead from Tingstäde, Gotland. Remains of 5 nail holes on the socket. Date 10th century, length 43.3 cm, weight 467 g.
had a shorter range than arrows, but their greater weight gave them more penetrating power. A throwing spear could thrust a shield down and make it more difficult to handle. The range of a throwing spear could be increased by using a throwing line, which had a similar effect to a sling. In the saga texts these are referred to as snorspyd (‘sling spears’).
Shaft Ash wood was so commonly used for spear shafts that the term askr (‘ash’) was a synonym for ‘spear’. In Kongespeilet (The King’s Mirror) from c. 1250, we find the following advice about lengths of spear shafts: For fighting from a ship, choose a spear which you will not throw. Prepare one with a long enough shaft to reach between the ships. You will have c hap ter 5
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The main types of decorated spearheads.
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Poland, dated to the early 11th century. Hand-held spears appear generally to have been about 2.5 metres long, but the longest were over 3 metres. The shaft was usually about 2.5 cm in diameter, with some narrowing towards the back end. There appear to have been both lighter and thinner varieties of throwing spears, presumably with a range of shaft lengths down to 1.5 metres for the lighter examples, though there have been no documented finds.
Bow and arrow The sagas describe the use of bows and arrows in big battles, and they were clearly the Vikings’ most important support weapons. A group of archers could send a heavy shower of arrows over the enemy from a range of more than 100 metres. A raining down of arrows such as this is often described poetically in terms such as ‘the flock of ravens came flying down’, ‘there were showers of arrows’ or ‘it hailed’. In the Gula Ting and Frosta Ting Laws from the early Middle Ages, we can read that the farmers who were called up for military service should have one bow and 24 arrows per rowing thwart in the ship, i.e. one bow per two men.
Arrowheads and shafts
A
B
Arrowhead typology.
C
D
E
good use of another one with a short shaft when you try to board the enemy ship.
Few spear shafts from the Viking Age have survived in Scandinavia, and none of full length. What we know about shaft lengths has to be based on legal texts from the Middle Ages, the distance between spearheads and ferrules in burials, finds from before the Viking Age and finds from other parts of Europe. A complete spear with a total length of 321 cm was found along with others at Ostrów Lednicki in 180
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The Old Norse word for an arrow is ör. The plural form, örvar, also means ‘to drive forward, hunt, provoke’. The related Old Norse word örn (modern equivalent ørn, ‘eagle’) would appear to be closely associated. Arrowheads as they developed during the Viking Age can be divided into three main groups. The group which includes types A, B and C includes the blade-shaped, double-edged arrowheads. Of these, the broad-bladed varieties are particularly suited for the hunting of large animals. Type D are the spike-shaped arrowheads used purely for warfare, known as broddr (‘spikes’). Arrowheads for military use appear to be relatively light and narrow, probably designed to achieve long range and penetrate chainmail. This is in contrast to the hunting arrows’ capability of inflicting wide, bleeding wounds. Type E, known as bildör, are
specialised hunting arrowheads with a transverse, chisel-shaped edge at the very front, sometimes shaped into a V-shaped notch. Arrowheads with barbs, known as krókör (‘hooks’) do not seem to have been much used in Viking times. In the early Middle Ages use of barbed arrows against humans was banned and according to the Gula Ting Law would be penalised with a fine. The arrowhead was fixed into the shaft with a thin spike, a tang. On arrows, the use of sockets such as on spears had gone out of use before the Viking Age and did not come back into use until the Middle Ages. To prevent the tang from being pushed into the shaft when the arrow hit its target, the end of the shaft had to be bound. On hunting arrows which have been found, this binding is done with thread made from sinew, which is then wrapped in birch bark. The binding appears also to have been glued. The birch bark protected the glue from damp and the binding from wear and tear. On some military arrows in prestigious graves from Hedeby, Birka and Valsgärde the bindings to secure the end of the shaft are of thin brass or silver thread. There have been rich finds of arrowheads, nearly all made of iron. We have only a few surviving examples of the wooden shafts. These are hunting arrows that missed their prey on glaciers in the mountains and have lain preserved in the ice for a thousand years before emerging and being found again by today’s hunters. Most of the finds of Viking arrow shafts are from the mountains in Oppdal in Norway. These hunting arrows are made of birch, and the shafts which are complete are 60–70 cm long. The arrows used with the stronger military bows probably had to have longer shafts, perhaps 75 cm. Arrow shafts are never of regular thickness. The front half is thickest, about 8–10 mm in Viking Age finds. Towards the back, the arrow shaft narrows evenly down to 5–6 mm at the part where the feathers are fixed. At the very back, towards the nock for the bowstring, the shaft broadens again and usually changes from a round to an oval cross-section. Three feathers appear to have been the norm, but both two and four have been found on arrows from times other than the Viking Age. The feathers appear to have been up to 15 cm long and fixed to the wood with resin glue and a spiral
Arrowheads found in melting glaciers in Oppland (1) and Oppdal (2 and 3), Norway. The fastening to the shaft is reinforced with a binding of sinew wrapped round with birch bark which has been glued in place, probably using glue made from animal skins.
thread binding. The binding continued right back to the nock, where a tight binding protected the shaft from being split by the pressure of the string.
The bow We can distinguish between three basic types of bow in the Viking Age: longbow, made from a single piece of wood; Finnish bow, made from two different woods combined; and horned composite bow. The Vikings generally used longbows, the Finnish bows may have developed among the Sami and horned bows were occasional exotic introductions from Eastern horse-riding cultures. The longbow is referred to in Old Norse as ýbogi (‘yew bow’) and almbogi (‘elm bow’). Yew (ý, ýr) was the preferred species of wood, but elm was also used. A longbow is made from a single piece of c hap ter 5
Diagram of arrowheads with metal thread bindings.
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wood, the height of a man or slightly longer. A bow of this type was almost straight until it was strung. It was nearly round or ‘D’ shaped in cross-section and the grip was an integral part of the bow. The ‘D’ cross-section was obtained by removing only the bark and leaving the original surface of the wood to form the ‘back’ of the bow, the convex outer layer facing towards the target. Parts from seven bows of this type have been found from Viking Age Hedeby. These are all made of yew except number 7, which is of elm. Number 1 survives in its full length of 191 cm, but the six others only survive as end pieces of 16–50 cm. The working length of the bow, the length between the string fastenings, was about 180 cm. At the middle of the bow, the wood is 3.3 cm thick and 4.0 cm wide. Reconstructions with these dimensions have given a draw weight of 45 kg and a range of up to 200 metres. A longbow found at Ballinderry in Ireland is from the 9th century, dated from a decorated K type sword in the same find. This bow is also made of yew. It is preserved in its full length of 185 cm, with a rather thinner cross-section than the Hedeby bow but still quite powerful. Two bows similar to the ones from Hedeby have been found in the Dutch coastal region. The first is from Wassenaar near Leiden, made of yew and dated between 800 and 900. The end of the bow is decorated with an inlaid zigzag line. The second one is from Aalsum, dated to between 700 and 900. Both these Dutch bows have one end broken off, and an estimated complete length of between 160 and 190 cm. The bow made from two different types of wood can be seen as the Finnish-Ugrian peoples’ way of overcoming the problem of a lack of suitable material such as yew. What makes yew especially suitable for bows is the inherent difference in the mechanical properties between the outer and the inner wood. Putting the light outer wood in front to form the back of the bow and the denser wood on the inside of the arch to form the belly combines the desired mechanical properties of stretch and compression. In the Old Norse texts these bows are called tvíviðr (‘two-wood’). These are also referred to as finnbogi (‘Finnish bows’). Among Sami and other Finno-Ugrian peoples there is a tradition of making bows by gluing
Longbow made of yew, from Hedeby in modernday Germany. 182
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Other throwing weapons In addition to arrows and throwing spears, the sagas also tell of throwing axes and stones. In addition to simple throwing of stones by hand, various methods were probably used to throw stones further and to throw bigger stones. Throwing, slinging and stave-slinging of stones appear to have been particularly associated with situations where freedom of movement was
birch and pine together, with birch as the back of the bow on the outside and pine as the belly of the bow on the inside of the arch. The pine is specially selected from trees which have grown in a particular way, so that it has the right compression properties. It is also traditional to bind birch bark round these bows to protect the glue from damp. Another feature of this tradition is angled ends on the bow. These were known as ears, and they made it easier to tension the bow. Parts from bows of this type are found in early Middle Age towns, and we have a relatively wellpreserved example from Vibby Marsh in Överluleå, Norrboten, Sweden. The bow from Vibby has an almost complete front section made of pine, which is ornamented and has been dated to 980–1120. The bow from Vibby is now 126 cm long, and it may have been nearer 150–160 cm when it was complete with the ‘ears’ on the end. The composite horned bows were made from three materials; horn, wood and sinew glued together. They can be said to be more extreme developments of the two-wood bow. They were not in widespread use in Scandinavia in Viking times. However, in Birka and especially from grave 1125 B, there are instances of fittings and parts of personal armour typical of the Eastern tradition of mounted cavalry archers. These are reminiscent of comparable finds in 10th-century graves in Hungary. It is thought that the items found may be parts from horned bows, a thumb-ring for gripping the string, fittings for hour-glass shaped arrow quivers and fittings for a cover for a horned bow. There is no evidence of the use of crossbows in Scandinavia in Viking times.
limited, such as sea-battles and sieges. From the 12th-century Sverres Saga we hear of a formidable weapon known as Valslynge (trebuchet) built to prevent ships from approaching land. In other sources such a weapon is used to guard against ships threatening the town of Bergen, but it is not known if this weapon was in use in Viking times.
Shield In Norse mythology Odin had two weapons, his spear Gungnir and a white shield. The walls of Odin’s hall are built of spears and the roof is made of shields. The pejorative description skjoldunger (‘shield babies’) is sometimes used poetically to refer to warriors who hide behind their shields, like infants hiding behind their mothers’ skirts. Such warriors are the opposite of the berserkers, who attacked fearlessly without personal protection. The shield was the basic and most common defensive weapon, the most important piece of equipment a warrior had to keep himself alive. The shield and the spear can be said to be the most important military weapons of the Viking Age, and in duels to contest personal honour the shield was the sword’s indispensible partner.
Round shield The Vikings appear nearly always to have used round shields. The wooden shield-plate was flat with a hole in the middle where a wooden carrying handle was mounted crossways on the inside. A dome of plate iron, the shield-boss, was nailed securely over the hole on the outside, to protect the hand. In the Viking graves, this iron boss is the most important and often the only evidence of a shield. Remains of Viking Age shields sufficiently intact to be measurable are mostly from the 10th century. The diameter of these is 80–95 cm. The woodwork in the best preserved examples indicates a construction of seven or eight planks glued c hap ter 5
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Naming shields
The layered structure of a shield.
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The word ‘shield’ (skjöldr, skjaldar, skildi) has common origins with words such as skjul (‘cover, hide’), skjulested (‘hiding place’) and skille/adsklle (‘separate’). The Latin name for a shield was scutum (plural scuta). In Old Norse we find skuttingr as a heiti for ‘shield’. The Indo-European source word is skei, which refers to something which separates. After the sword, the shield is the weapon which has had most poetic metaphors in the Old Norse texts, with more than three hundred kennings identified: geirnet (‘spear net’), geirveggr (‘spear wall’), broddflet (‘arrow plate’), ‘spear plate’, ‘the sword’s castle’, ‘the sword’s land’, ‘the strife’s castle’, ‘strife’s plank’, ‘strife’s hiding place’, ‘strife’s sun’, and ‘the Viking’s moon’.
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Other kennings for shields are more mythologically complex, such as blóm valdrósar (‘the Valkyrie’s flower’) and hurð Oðins (‘Odin’s barrier, Odin’s door’). Snorre’s Edda names 37 heiti for shield, including örlygr (‘arrow deflector’), lind (‘relief, strengthening, bandaging, lime tree bast, lime tree), borði (‘ship’s gunwale’), hlif (‘stay alive’) and bera (‘bear, withstand, carry forward, bring forward, give birth, female bear’). The shield was often referred to poetically as a ship: the sun’s ship, the moon’s ship, the light’s ship or the arrow’s ship. There are only a few shields given proper names in the sagas. These include Skrepping and Þórveigarnaut.
Different types of Viking Age shield-bosses.
together edge to edge to form the whole plate. The thickness near the middle of the shield is 7–8 mm, diminishing to 5–6 mm near the edge. The thinning of the shield disc towards the edge reduces its weight. A shield plate made of one thin layer of woodwork like this would be totally inadequate on its own for providing protection, and could be split by a single arrow-shot. So a layer of hide (most probably rawhide) is glued onto the whole of the front and the whole of the back. On well-preserved finds, stitch holes can be seen round the edge of the shield, where an edging band of rawhide has been folded round and sewn securely for reinforcement. Together, these enhancements reduced the risk of the wood splitting and made even softwoods such as pine capable of stopping arrows and spears and withstanding blows from sword and axe. Lightweight pine and spruce softwoods were obviously preferred. A shield made of spruce has
been found at Rytterkær in Denmark, and one of pine at Trelleborg in Sweden. The Gokstad ship in Norway, dated 905, contained remains of several dozen shields. Analysis of these shows that most of them are made of spruce, though some may have been of pine. Spruce, maple and yew have been identified in shields from the graves at Birka in Sweden. At Tira, a marsh near Rucava in the West of Latvia, an 8th-century grave has been found with a well-preserved round shield of pine and spruce together, and in this instance the shield-boss is of wood instead of iron. A few more painstakingly made shield-bosses have a notched edge, or a crenellated band of brass or tin set over the edge. Several examples of prestigious shields with further metal fittings have been found from Birka and Eastern Sweden, one from Hedeby and one from Gokstad. The decorated shields usually have metal-covered hand-grips which become narrower towards their ends, before c hap ter 5
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The shield found in Trelleborg, Denmark in 2008 consists of a wellpreserved pine shield-plate about 85 cm in diameter and an ornamented wooden handle, but the shield-boss is missing. Date 10th century.
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finishing flatter and broader, or being capped with an inserted T-shape of cast bronze. Some or all of the iron casing of the grip is covered with crossing bands of ornamental bronze tracery or plated brass. Metal-covered grips of this type often also have two fastenings for shoulder-straps. The edges of the decorated shields have 2–3 cm long clamps, plates of thin iron or copper alloy, folded over and nailed down. Some shields have 5–10 clamps spread round the edge, probably intended mostly for decoration. A few examples have over a hundred clamps, covering the whole of the rim. vi k i ng w e a p ons
Drop-shaped shields Contemporary pictures such as the Bayeux Tapestry show that throughout the 11th century, drop-shaped shields were replacing round shields as weapons of war. The tops of the drop-shaped shields were round, but the lower halves narrowed more or less to a point, called the base of the shield. Centrally mounted handles and shield-bosses disappear, to be replaced by strap-handles, though smaller bosses survive as decorative features. A shield dated to about 1100 was found in 1975 in the
town burials in Trondheim. This is made of two crossing layers of thin planks, a simple cross-veneer. The shield from Trondheim is about a metre long and half a metre wide. It narrows downwards rather like a drop-shaped shield, and although strictly speaking this must be referred to as an oval shield, it does show that the new type of shield was introduced to Scandinavia.
Painted shields Sources from both before and after the Viking Age show that shields were sometimes painted, either plain-coloured or with different patterns. The description of the excavation of the Gokstad ship in 1882 says that the many shields mounted along the sides of the ship were plain-coloured, alternately black and yellow. In a 10th-century horseman’s grave from Grimstrup in Denmark, the deceased had a decoratively painted plate of wood lying over his upper body, possibly the remains of a shield. The background colour was dark blue and the figures were a tracery pattern of blue-green bands emphasised with white edges. White spots and a red colour were also used. In a 10th-century burial near Ballateare on the Isle of Man, painted pieces of leather from the shield were found. These had a white base layer over-painted with parallel black decorative lines and rows of red dots. The fragments are too small for us to envisage the Ballateare shield in its entirety, and so we can only speculate. Red pigments have been found on the shield from the early 11th-century Valsgärde Grave 9, and red shields are mentioned in Old Norse texts. In the sagas, white shields are spoken of as peace shields, while red ones are war shields. Contemporary descriptions in French documents, the series of pictures on the Bayeux Tapestry and occasional chess-pieces from the early Middle Ages also indicate that shields were sometimes painted.
Personal armour In the Viking Age, helmets and coats of mail were very expensive and were confined to the upper classes and professional warriors. The archaeological finds depend largely on what the people at that
time considered appropriate to put in graves, and their scarcity leaves us in doubt about how widely helmets and body armour were used by the Vikings. One of the reasons why helmets and body armour are seldom present in the graves may be that their mythological function is covered by the presence of the shield, which is nearly always present. A number of graves containing helmets, and a few with mail, have been found in Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Kazakh regions. Occasionally, leg and under-arm protectors made from strips of iron are also found. Christian Western Europe provides few preserved examples of armour from the Viking Age, but has left some illustrations.
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Examples of shield- painting from the Viking Age.
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Helmet The 7th-century Frankish legal text, Lex Ribuaria, states that a helmet cost as much as a shield, a spear and a sword together. Only a coat of mail cost more, double the price of a helmet. In the sagas, the king and the leading warriors are consistently described as wearing helmets, the king often with a gold helmet. Because the head was exposed where it stood up above the edge of the shield, a helmet was the most useful supplement to the shield to achieve overall protection. If a warrior wanted to invest in armour, a helmet was the first priority, before a coat of mail. There are only three documented finds of Viking Age helmets in Scandinavia. The most complete of these is a round-topped helmet with spectacle-shaped face protection, found in a grave near Gjermundbu in Buskerud, Norway, and dated to 950–975. Less than half of the Gjermundbu helmet is preserved, but there is enough to be able to make an approximate reconstruction. The two other finds consist only of loose nose-protectors attached to the eyebrow sections. One of these was found in a blacksmith’s tool-chest from Tjele in Denmark and has also been dated to 950–975. The other is an isolated find from Lokrume on Gotland, with a style of ornamentation which can be dated to 950–1,000. The one from Tjele is made of iron, with a thin plate of stamped bronze laid over the eyebrows. The one from Lokrume on Gotland is made of iron, plated with silver engraved with a tracery ornamentation and transverse copper strips. The nose-protectors from Tjele and Lokrume are both so damaged and corroded that it is difficult to say exactly what they looked like when complete and whether they were spectacle-shaped. An unusually well-preserved round-topped helmet was found at Coppergate in York. It has a long nose-protector, cheek-plates and a well-preserved neck-protector made of chainmail. The decoration and ornamented parts are brass. This is an early Anglo-Saxon product with Latin inscriptions, in a style dated to 750–775. The circumstances of the excavation show that the Coppergate helmet had been deposited in a ditch a hundred years later, around the time the Vikings took control of York.
The helmet from Coppergate in York. Date 750–775.
Construction diagram of the Gjermundbru helmet.
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The Gjermundbu helmet, 950–975. c hap ter 5
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Perhaps the helmet was stowed away to prevent the Vikings from getting hold of it. Helmets used in the early Viking Age consisted of several iron plates nailed together. They usually had a round top, but there was a trend towards more frequent use of spike-topped helmets, eventually forged as a whole from a single piece of iron. The Old Norse phrase hvassan hjalm (‘sharp/spike helmet’) refers to a helmet with a spiked top, or more precisely with a sharp ridge on the top. Helmets made up of four parts and topped with a spike are also mentioned. These are referred to as fjórðungar (‘quarters’). There are several examples of these four-part helmets from Hungary, Russia and the Kazakh territories. Many of them had a spiked top, to which a horse-hair plume or other such adornment could possibly be attached. We can deduce that such helmets came to be used by Vikings who travelled East. In Western Europe, there are very few surviving examples of helmets and armour which can be dated confidently to the Viking Age. One of the few but very interesting examples is in St Vitus’ Cathedral in Prague, where a mailed coat and collar and a spiked helmet are preserved, said to have belonged to St Wenceslas of Bohemia, who died in 935.
Chainmail
Nose protector on a helmet from Tjele, Jutland, Denmark. Date 950–975.
The final layer of protection against an attack that had penetrated or circumvented the shield was the coat of mail, also known as chainmail, (Hringabrynja; ‘ring mail’), an armour made from a web of iron rings. This was reserved to professional warriors and the top ranks of society. According to the Frankish legal text, Lex Ribuaria, a coat of mail (brunniam) was as valuable as shield, spear, sword and helmet together. It was the most expensive item of personal armour a man could acquire. Mail was hardly ever produced in Scandinavia in the Viking Age, but the French embargo against export of coats of mail and swords suggest that it was acquired from France. This is the type of armour that predominates in Scandinavia, even though the archaeological finds are very few. The most important and clearly the most comprehensive find is a big heap of
Nose protector on a helmet from Lokrume, Gotland, in a style dating from 950– 1000. Length 12.8 cm. St Wenceslas’ helmet, forged in one piece and with separate nose protector. Possible date 950–1000. Opposite: St Wenceslas’ coat and collar of chainmail. Possible date 10th century. Length 105 cm, weight of coat 10 kg, weight of collar 1 kg. 190
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Close-up photograph of chainmail from Gjermundbu. Half of the rings are whole, and the others were open rings whose ends have been nailed together to close the circle. This required neat, precise work and several specialised tools.
fragments found in a well-equipped weapon burial near Gjermundbru Farm at Ringerike in Norway, which can be dated to 950–975. About 5.5 kg of chainmail has survived, consisting of about 25,000 rings in over 100 fragments. The rings have an outer diameter of 7.5–8.7 mm. Calculation shows that this would have covered half a square metre, barely 192
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enough to clothe a torso, but there surely must have been more originally. This pile of fragments can be assumed to be the remains of a coat of mail which was buried with the deceased. Apart from the find at Gjermundbu, the most important finds of mail are from the fortified town of Birka in Eastern Sweden. These date from the
These appear to be illustrations of short coats of mail, in this late-10th-century edition of Prudentius’s Psychomachia, a poem from late Antiquity which personified virtues in struggles against vices.
first half of the 10th century, and the armour can be assumed to have belonged to professional soldiers who guarded the town. Around 300 chainmail rings have been found scattered throughout the garrison area at Birka, but there are not enough to conclude whether they are from coats of mail, attachments to helmets or something else.
Old Norse distinguishes between short (stuttr) and long (siðr) coats of mail. A short coat stopped at the level of the hips and did not have long arms. Short coats of mail of this type and with irregular edges are illustrated in a late 10th-century English edition of the allegorical poem Psychomachia (Battle of souls). Long coats could reach to the mid-thigh or c hap ter 5
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as far as the knees and had arms usually reaching to the elbows or further. Harald Hardråde’s coat of mail, Emma, is described as reaching right down to mid-calf, which seems unusually long.
Lamellar armour The other type of armour we know of from Viking times was lamellar armour. This consisted of oblong iron plates laced together with straps. In Old Norse this was known as spangabrynja, from the word spöng which means a shingle or a thin plate. The plates had narrow holes where they could be laced together with leather thongs. They were laced to overlap in such a way that they made up a flexible and partly telescopic tube round the torso. Plate armour was stiffer than chainmail and therefore dissipated the force of a blow more effectively. It covered mainly the upper part of the body, but it could be extended down over the hips and thighs and occasionally out over the shoulders and upper arms. A coat of lamellar armour requires between 700 and 1,600 plates or lamellae. The only Scandinavian finds of lamellar armour from the Viking Age are from the trading town of Birka. The lamellae from Birka can be dated to the first half of the 10th century. More than 700 fragments of lamellar armour have been found. Two main types can be distinguished. Most important are the long plates of type A, together with other and simpler types of similar size. The other main type consists of smaller plates with a distinct midrib, known as type F. Lamellar armour is rarely mentioned in the sagas, but in Sverres saga we are told that Erling Skakke was clad in lamellar armour at the battle of Kalvskinnet in 1179. The saga specified that Erling had failed to close up the front of his armour and was consequently struck in his stomach by a spear. The Khazar Empire was an important intermediary in trade between Asia and Europe, and as shown by the archaeological finds at Birka, the Vikings had a lot of trade contact with the Khazars, via Russia. The Khazars used lamellar armour on their heavily armoured aristocratic warriors, and it is possible that lamellar armour came to Scandinavia through them. The Khazars’ neighbours and allies on the south side of the Black
Goliath depicted with spiked helmet and chainmail hauberk in The Harley Psalter, c. 1030.
Clump of rusted lamellae from Birka. 194
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Diagram of a section of lamellar armour, showing how the plates are laced together.
Types of lamella from Birka. c hap ter 5
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Sea were the Byzantines, with whom Vikings are known to have served as mercenaries. Lamellar armour was also used in the Byzantine army. In the Frankish region, lamellar armour has been found in graves from the 6th and 7th centuries, and some contemporary Frankish descriptions from the Viking Age indicate that lamellar armour was still in use at that time.
Protective textile armour No remains of textile armour survive from the Viking Age, but Old Norse texts such as Kongespeilet, Hirdskråa and the Land Law from the 13th-century tell of armour made of cloth, referred to as våpentrøye (‘weapon shirt’) and panser (‘gambeson’). Kongspeilet advises that a mounted warrior should have a thin/soft panser under his coat of mail and a good/strong panser on the outside. For fighting on board ship, a panser is considered to be the best protection. Hirdskråa instructs the members of the king’s guard to have våpentrøye, with panser or chainmail over that. Panser is here being compared with mail, and the same comparison is made in the Land Law. Hirdskråa requires those with the lowest rank in the retinue, the ‘guests’, the king’s freemen farmers enlisted as soldiers, to have just a strengthened våpentrøye as their main armour. There are indications that a panser could be made up of as many as 30 layers of cloth and be as thick as 1 cm. We can assume that a våpentrøye was much thinner. Linen cloth was considered particularly suitable, especially for the outer layers, but woollen felt was probably used in the middle. Much of the textile armour’s strength came from parallel rows of stitches running right through all the layers to create a thick, solid, composite textile gambeson. Tests have shown that textile armour of panser thickness could stop arrows, sword strikes and light spear strikes.
The arms trade Weapons made in various parts of Europe are rarely found in their land of origin. In areas which had been converted to Christianity, the tradition of placing gifts or personal equipment in graves 196
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almost completely ceased. Perhaps it was seen as worshipping false gods or as a personality cult. This also happened in Scandinavia after conversion. The Roman Empire had been exporting swords and probably spearheads north to the Germanic tribes long before the Viking Age, and when the Roman Empire collapsed in the 5th century professional weapon smiths became established in the northern part of the empire’s territory, up towards the river boundary at the Rhine. This was where a new great power would arise, in the form of the empire of the Germanic Franks. The Frankish Empire was at its peak from the middle of the 8th century and during the following hundred years. This stimulated extensive export of weapons. From this early part of the Viking Age, there are rich finds of Frankish spearheads and double-edged swords in Scandinavian graves, especially swords of type H and spears of types A/B and E. Further evidence of export of weapons comes from the law by which Charlemagne (king 768–814) banned the export of coats of mail and swords, whether by sale or as gifts. In 864 a later Frankish ruler, Charles the Bald, went so far as to introduce the death penalty for exporting weapons to the Vikings. Skaldic poetry refers to weapons from valska (Valland; Gaul) and in particular from peitu (Poitou; Poitiers) in western France and vestrœna (Rennes) in Normandy. These weapons are described as having been acquired either as valuable gifts or by plunder. The Skald Tjodolv told of this after he had been in the service of King Magnus the Good in 1044: I bore a shield home from the strife, as my share, from Geat-land. Strong storms with waves of swords in the southern summer gave me mail too. I got good weapons, a flood before it abated. I won a helmet there, when the chieftain harshly defeated the Danes. tjodolv arnorsson, magnúsflokkr, verse 23
The Arab Ibn Fadlan tells that rus he met by the River Volga in 922 carried broad-bladed swords with French decoration. The term rus refers to Vikings
What did weapons cost in Viking times? We have no good information about what weapons cost in Viking times. The closest we have is the 7thcentury Frankish law book, Lex Ribuaria, which has a table showing the value of weapons when they were used as a means of paying restitution: Coat of chainmail 12 solidi Helmet 6 solidi Greaves (shin armour) 6 solidi Sword 3 solidi Sword and scabbard 7 solidi Shield and spear 2 solidi --------------------------------------------------------Cow 1 solidus Ox 2 solidi Horse 7 solidi The unit of value in Lex Ribuaria is a coin, the solidus, which corresponds to the value of a cow. For comparison, a sword with a gold-plated hilt mentioned in Laksdøla saga was worth half a gold mark, which in the scale of values based on the Gula Ting Law would equate to 13 cows. However, the coat of mail was usually the most costly part of a warrior’s equipment.
generally, both in Russia and in eastern Scandinavia. Other Arab writers, such as al-Kindi (9th century) and al-Biruni (11th century) state that pattern-forged swords were made by both the Franks and the rus. Sword hilts decorated with precious metals and double-edged, pattern-forged blades with Latin inscriptions were particularly significant imports from the Continent. Swords with wrongly spelled inscriptions on the blades have been assumed to be the product of illiterate Viking smiths. However, there is still widespread discussion about which weapons from Scandinavian Viking Age graves were imported and which were home-produced. It is difficult to estimate the size of the import trade in weapons, but we can speculate that about a third of the swords were imported. There is also uncertainty about where the imported weapons were manufactured. Swords imported in early Viking times are mainly of Frankish production, but type L swords appear to be of Anglo-Saxon origin. Imported swords may have been entirely copied by Scandinavian smiths,
or blades could have been imported without hilts, to have hilts made and mounted locally. Double-edged sword blades may also have been produced in Scandinavia, especially throughout the 10th century, but the first distinctively homeproduced Viking swords are the straight-backed, single-edged swords of the 9th century. These single-edged swords are found mainly in Norway, especially in western Norway, and they rarely occur on the Continent. Single-edged swords are hardly ever pattern forged, and they lack inscriptions on the blade. They usually have simple, undecorated iron hilts, which may have been produced in Scandinavia. The hilt types C, F, M and Q are important in this category, together making up as many as half of the Norwegian finds of Viking Age swords. It is tempting to consider double-edged examples of these types as home-produced also. Further evidence of home production of swords by the Vikings comes from Hedeby, where there is an example of a cast bronze hilt of type O. The most numerous types of Viking Age c hap ter 5
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spearheads are A/B and E, which have a very high proportion of pattern-forged blades and ridgedecorated sockets. These decorative features, with uniform and standardised shapes, are evidence of high-quality, centralised, professional production. It appears that extensive import to Scandinavia developed quite quickly. Contemporary continental descriptions and finds indicate that these early spearheads were of Frankish origin. In his research on spear finds, Bergljot Solberg points out that type A/B and E spears are found especially along the coast and around trading towns such as Birka and that they are spread numerously over a wide area, including Russia.
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This supports the theory of a centralised production with export along widespread sea routes. Between 850 and 900, spearheads produced in a new way become predominant. This may be evidence of spear production being moved to a new centre of manufacture. Around the middle of the 10th century the use of ‘Scandinavian’ animal ornamentation on sword hilts and spear sockets became an important element of decorative design, which may suggest that weapon manufacture in Scandinavia continued and became professionalised during the 10th century.
6. viking invasions
The world of the Vikings
The world of the Vikings differed from ours. It was full of powerful forces living on the earth and in the realm of the gods. The Vikings believe in other truths than us, and had other values and attitudes. But they cultivated and travelled the same lands as us. Attempting to understand the Vikings is therefore also an attempt to understand our own history, and therefore ourselves.
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he Viking warriors bore the stamp of the culture in which they lived and worked. All their experience and all the ways they expressed themselves were based on the accumulated knowledge of generations. Their spiritual and material culture was influenced by the virtues and the characteristics of their forefathers and their gods. The objective for many Vikings was not to live long, but to live and die with honour. As it was especially honourable for the Vikings to kill enemies in battle, physical fitness and weapon training were first priorities for personal development. Men trained from early childhood to develop skill and experience. The skaldic poetry reinforced the warrior culture with songs of praise for the few who fulfilled the ideals and scorn for those who didn’t measure up: it was better to die than to grow old without honour. One had to show manhood 200
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through loyalty to leaders and friends. A leader had to be generous towards friends and ruthless against enemies. Access to beautiful weapons, big ships, fine clothes and jewels were all evidence of living up to the ideal. The Vikings did not live in an unchanging society, but were open to adopting innovations, ideas and knowledge from elsewhere if these could contribute to the honourable life. Some would call them opportunists. They saw possibilities wherever they travelled: for friendship, for trade, for land acquisition, for plunder and warfare, and for following new gods.
Head covering for a horse, found in Borre, Vestfold, Norway.
The Islands in the West
In the 350 years after the introduction of sail to Scandinavia, Viking ships landed on almost every beach in the Western world. From the mouths of the west Norwegian fjords it is but a short voyage to the windswept Atlantic islands where the Vikings found safe harbours for their ships and short routes to the kingdoms of Europe.
Opposite: The ‘Ballateare man’, from 900–950. An important Viking grave at Ballateare on the Isle of Man contained particularly useful finds. These included small fragments of painted leather from a shield, not enough to reconstruct a pattern but enough to give glimpses of lines and dots in red, white and black. Three whole spears were found, and an unusually wellpreserved set of metal fittings for carrying a sword. Was the Ballateare man perhaps with the first group of Vikings who sailed from Dublin to land on the strategically important Isle of Man in the Irish Sea? 202
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e could have started our account of the Viking invasions of Europe with the shocking assault on the king’s bailiff on Portland island in 789. We could have chosen the raid on Lindisfarne Monastery in 793. However, these attacks would not have taken place if the Vikings had not already established themselves in regions near England from which they could reach these places with their ships. So we start this chapter with the Vikings establishing themselves on the windswept and often inhospitable Orkney and Shetland Isles. For this was where the Vikings from the land of the Northmen came when they set sail over the sea at the end of the 8th century. Over the course of a few years, these groups of islands went from being a den for pirates and refugees from Norway, to one of the Vikings’ greatest centres of power. Orkney and Shetland were strategically situated for sailing both to Norway and to the British Isles. Only a 13 km wide sound separates the Orkneys from Caithness, the most northerly part of Scotland.14 vi k i ng i n va s ion s
In the Viking Age and the Middle Ages, Shetland was part of the domain of the Earls of Orkney. The Old Norse name for Shetland was Hjaltland, from hjalt, ‘sword hilt’. An even older name was Insi Cait, ‘the Cat Islands’. Shetland is situated 100 km north of Orkney, but between these two groups of islands lies a small island, Fair Isle, which served as a ‘stepping stone’ between them. In clear weather, Fair Isle can be seen both from Mainland, the biggest of the Shetland Islands, and from Orkney. The soil on the islands was rich, fertile and easy to cultivate. In the 10th century, there were 300–400 farms and about 2,000 people on the Orkneys, and about 200 farms and 1,200 people on Shetland. Groups of sea pirates and traders also visited, lodging in camps along the coast. The islands became a central hub in the network of Viking trade routes between Norway, England, Ireland, Iceland and Greenland. The Hebrides are often also considered to have been part of the Earl of Orkney’s domain. They are probably what the Roman historian Pliny (63–113
The Wild Boar islands The Orkney Isles were already being mentioned by Roman authors in the first few centuries AD. The Roman historian Diodorus Siculus based his account on descriptions by the Greek Pytheas (c. 325 BC) in his Bibliotheca historica, which was published in 56 BC. The term Orcades is used here for the first time. In Old Norse this name for the island group became Orkneyjar. The name stems from the old description of the islands, Insi Orc. Insi means ‘islands’ and Orc is Celtic for ‘wild boare’ – ‘the Wild Boar islands’.
AD) is describing when he writes about ‘Haebudes’. Their Old Norse name was Suðerøyene (‘The Southern Isles’), in comparison with the Orkneys and Shetland which were and still are referred to as the Northern Isles. When the expression Suðerøyene is used in the sagas, it is usually interpreted as the Hebrides and the Isles of Skye, Mull and Islay. In mid-9th-century Norway, there was a patchwork of petty kingdoms which were constantly fighting each other. They were also regular victims of bands of pirates who attacked not only the shipping but also the settlements and trading centres. Many of these raiding groups came together each season to enhance their income by plundering. However, by the mid-800s the opportunities for such seasonal domestic plundering became severely limited as minor kings and chieftains got stronger control of their territories and restricted the pirates’ and warrior bands’ access to bases from which they could operate. The chieftains could now organise counter-attacks and pursue intruders. So some of the raiding groups found more secure bases on the Shetland and Orkney Isles. 204
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With a favourable wind it took little more than 24 hours to sail from Hordaland on the west coast of Norway to Shetland. The fjords and inlets around Shetland provided good, well-protected harbours for the Viking ships and soon became important bases for voyages of both plunder and trade: north to Norway; north and west to the Faeroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland; and south and east to England and Ireland. There is thought to have been good communi cation between Norway and the islands in the Western seas in the centuries preceding the Viking Age,15 but no colonisation of the island realm before the 9th century. The Vikings were already active on the coast of Scotland and on the Southern Isles from the end of the 8th century. The Vikings’ expansion over the sea from N orway was at the expense of the peoples who already made their home on the islands. On Orkney and Shetland the Scandinavians met an indigenous population, the Picts, ‘the painted ones’, so called because they covered their bodies with blue paint in intricate patterns. In the course of less than a hundred years the Picts went from being dominant on the islands
to disappearing completely. In addition to the Picts, the sources tell of a group of people who were called paper (Latin pater, ‘father’). These were Irish monks seeking solitude and isolation. They may have found other places to settle when the Vikings came, but it is also possible that they were persecuted or killed. Relations evolved rather differently on the Hebrides, where the original population of Irish (Gaelic) origin and the Scandinavian new arrivals are thought to have merged into an integrated Gaelic-Norse population. In the Irish sources these people are called Gall-Gaedhil – ‘Half-blood Vikings’ (See page 226). From the 6th century onwards the Picts on the islands had been part of a bigger national grouping with a supreme king in Inverness in Scotland. In the
first half of the 9th century the Picts were exposed to increased pressure from bands of Vikings who settled and set up raiding bases on the islands. Harassment, assault and persecution must have been common. But mutual trade, intermarriage and alliances very probably also happened. Not all researchers agree that the indigenous population was driven out or eradicated as some have claimed. Many believe that assimilation was the norm and that they became integrated with the Norse population through marriage and alliances. We cannot deny that the relationship between the Picts and the Vikings was characterised by conflict and that the Vikings did not have a high regard for the Picts. In an anonymous work, Historia c hap ter 6
The Shetland Islands were the first stopping place for the Vikings who went west over the sea from the end of the 9th century. Many of them found a living in this archipelago in today’s West Burra, not far from Lerwick, but even more travelled on southwards. We can catch a glimpse of the Orkney Isles in the distance.
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Jarlshof on Shetland The Norse settlement known as Jarlshof is at the southern tip of Mainland, the biggest of the Shetland Islands. Excavations here have to date revealed nine houses with associated paved courtyards, alleys and stone walls. The houses are all of the long, narrow type which is found throughout the islands in the Western seas and on Iceland. They have been rebuilt many times, and the rich finds of bone and metal goods show that they were inhabited from the beginning of the 9th century to c. 1300. The name ‘Jarlshof’ was first applied to the nearby ruins of a big 17th-century house and is taken from Sir Walter Scott’s novel, The Pirate, published in 1822.
Pictish warriors like those on a Pictish picture stone found at Brough of Birsay.
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Norwegiae, from around 1190, we find a rather derogatory description of the Picts, which must have survived in oral tradition through the centuries after they disappeared. They were referred to as ‘pygmies’ who built underground towns where they hid during the day. This is a good description of the Pictish houses, which often were sunk into the ground and must have been barely visible from the surface. The Picts were not equal to the Vikings militarily, and they were considered to be cowards. Many of the Pictish chiefs on the islands fled over to the Scottish mainland, but in around 839 almost all of the Pictish nobility in Scotland was killed in a big battle against the Vikings, and the possibility of a counter-invasion disappeared. The Pictish kingdoms were greatly weakened or destroyed. At the same time, the Picts were under pressure from expansionist Scottish kings in the south, and they gradually disappeared as a distinctive cultural group, both from the islands and from the Scottish mainland, though finds suggest that individual pockets of Picts survived on the islands into the 10th century. According to Snorre and other saga authors, the Norwegian King Harald Fairhair finally became impatient with the raiding groups who were living on Orkney and set out to get rid of them.16 This would have happened around 866. In the saga tradi tion, on the other hand, the establishment of an earldom over the islands is attributed to Ragnvald, Earl of Møre. The sagas relate that the islands were given to Ragnvald as compensation for the loss of his son Ivar, who fell in Harald’s battles against the pirates. This is also when the first Norse colonists are thought to have settled on the islands. vi k i ng i n va s ion s
This portrait of a man was found carved in sandstone at the Norse settlement of Jarlshof. Perhaps it shows a Viking who had settled here.
Kjetil Flatnose’s island kingdom Centres of early Norse power are also found on the Hebrides. In 853 a man called Kjetil Flatnose was lord of an area which, in addition to the Hebrides and the Isle of Man, included parts of Skye, Mull and Islay. All these had been part of the old Pictish coastal kingdom of Dalriada, until Kjetil drove out the last remnants of Pictish power and established himself as ruler. Kjetil appears in some late sources as ‘King of the Southern Isles’, but there is no evidence that he had been declared king. He had great ambitions and came within a hairsbreadth of dominating the countries around the Irish Sea. Two groups formed the basis of his power. He had support among the Vikings who had settled on the Hebrides and, perhaps most important, from a group known as the Gall-Gaedhil (‘foreign Gaels’). These were people who in many ways lived in two worlds, one Norse and one Celtic. They had Celtic-Nordic ancestry, and even though they lived among the Vikings, they had their own chieftains and their own laws and political ambitions. The Gall-Gaedhil emerged in many places, but mainly in Ireland and in the Norse colonies around the Irish sea. Mostly, however, they supported the Vikings in the wars against the Irish, Pictish and Scots. They were strongest in the Norse-dominated regions on the Southern Isles and in Galloway, but they were also found in Ireland and Wales. Wherever the Vikings came, people of mixed ancestry began to appear. Mostly they co-existed with the original
young son, Torstein Raude (‘The Red’). After Kjetil’s death in 866, Aud fled first to Caithness in Scotland and later to Iceland. Olav and Aud’s son, Torstein Raude, became the new leader on the Hebrides.
The Earls of Orkney
population, but they are thought sometimes to have lived apart. They often seemed more fanatical and anti-Christian than the Vikings, and they were so highly reputed as fighters that warring factions were keen to secure their services. At the end of the 850s the great Dublin king, Olav Hvite (‘Olav the White’) tried to gain control of the Hebridean-based Vikings and Gall-Gaedhil, by marrying Kjetil Flatnose’s daughter, Aud the deep-minded. The Gall-Gaedhil were central to Olav’s plan for gaining control of the Irish Sea, but the plan was short-lived because a short time later, Kjetil attacked Olav’s possessions and allies in Ireland. Kjetil surely saw Olav’s expansionist attempt as an attempt to seize power from him, and decided to launch a counter-attack along with his own Irish allies. The conflict came to a climax in 857, when Olav the White and his fellow king Ivar the Boneless repelled an attack on Munster by Gall-Gaedhil under Kjetil’s leadership. Kjetil’s attempt to halt Olav’s expansion failed, as Olav broadened his sphere of influence over Kjetil’s earldom. At about the same time, Olav divorced Aud. She t ravelled back to the Hebrides with their
Ragnvald Earl of Møre passed control of the Orkney Isles to his brother, Sigurd the Great, who transformed the islands from a peripheral part of Norway’s archipelago to a centre of power in the northern part of the British Isles. His reputation led many of the previously independent pirate bands to gather round him. He also maintained contact with powerful chiefs on the Hebrides and in Ireland. At the end of the 880s he entered a military alliance with Torstein Raude. Their aim was nothing less than an invasion of northern Scotland. Olav the White, king of Dublin, and his col league Ivar the Boneless had attacked the Scots several times during the 870s, with the aim of controlling enough land to ensure a trading route between Dublin and York. Olav and Ivar’s campaigns were violent, but did not succeed in wresting control of the land from the Scots, who had established a powerful kingdom under the leadership of Kenneth MacAlpin (died 858). Kenneth MacAlpin is considered to be both the last Pictish king and the first Scottish king. Over time, Scotland came to be divided into a number of smaller kingdoms with a single supreme king from the MacAlpin clan. Around 890, Sigurd and Torstein’s invasion had resulted in the control of Caithness and Sutherland. Argyll on the west coast and Moray in the north-east had also been attacked. Sigurd’s Scottish kingdom stretched as far south as the river Oykel, which formed the boundary with Ross. The victory over the Scots had cost Torstein his life: he was killed sometime between 880 and 890, after being lured into an ambush by Pictish chieftains. According to the sources this warfare was very brutal – one source says that ‘the Vikings lay Pictland waste’. It is possible that its aim was to gain control of the strategically important route through the Great Glen which divides the Scottish Highlands in two. Inland waters lie along the Great c hap ter 6
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Many of the great Earls of Orkney lived here at the Brough of Birsay on the west coast. Today the remains of St Peter’s monastery lie side by side with the Vikings’ longhouses, showing that the Earls of Orkney eventually became great Christian princes.
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Glen like pearls on a string, with Loch Ness and Loch Lochy as the biggest. Via these lochs and their associated rivers one could sail almost unhindered from the Irish Sea to the North Sea. This would have facilitated trade and contact between Ireland and Sigurd’s earldom. Sigurd built a fortress on the boundary with Ross, with the intention of using it as the starting point for an invasion, but in Ross his ambitions collided with the Scottish chieftain Melbridge Tooth (who was named thus because of a deformed tooth). Melbridge could not allow a fortress to be set up so close to his own kingdom, and in 892 he arranged to meet Sigurd for a meeting which would serve the best interests of both of them. However, the meeting went badly wrong. According to The Orkneying Saga it was agreed that each of them would have 40 men at the meeting. Sigurd used a deceitful stratagem. He sat vi k i ng i n va s ion s
two men on each horse, so that he arrived at the meeting with 80 men rather than 40. The Scots spotted this immediately, and prepared for a fight. Sigurd divided his forces in two; his foot soldiers would surround Melbridge’s men and attack them from the rear, while the horsemen would attack the front, break the formation and attack Melbridge himself. Sigurd made use of three classic Viking tactics: trickery, pincer movement, and a direct attack on the leader. Dividing one’s forces was a well-established strategy. What was new in this account was Sigurd’s use of cavalry. Generally, the Vikings used horses only as a means of transport, and it is possible that what we see here is the saga author’s misunderstanding of the situation. On the other hand, the use of cavalry to break up an enemy formation would be a good strategy under the right circumstances. In this case we are told of just 40 defenders against 40 horsemen. The odds
would clearly have been in favour of the horsemen, except that they probably were unaccustomed to this style of warfare. In the engagement which followed, Melbridge Tooth was killed. The saga relates that after the victory, Sigurd chopped Melbridge’s head off and hung it on his saddle-strap. During the ride which followed, Melbridge’s famous tooth scratched Sigurd’s thigh. The wound became infected and eventually led to Sigurd’s death. This story sounds so improbable that it could well be true. A scratch from part of a corpse can easily cause bloodpoisoning. Sigurd was then buried in a mound somewhere by the banks of the river Oykel. Sigurd’s death caused a crisis on the Orkney Isles. His young son, Guttorm, succeeded him but died only a year later. Pirates again started using the islands as bases for their raiding expeditions. The Danes, who controlled York, Northumbria and large parts of Ireland, also had their eyes on the strategically placed island group. Two Danish chieftains, Tore Treskjegg and Kalv Skurva, soon became the real rulers of the islands. Ragnvald Earl of Møre sent his son Hallad with a fleet to re-establish control, but in 895, after failing to expel the pirates or defend the islands against the Danish Vikings, Hallad resigned as earl. His younger brother, Torv-Einar (‘Turf-Einar’) then had the task of subduing the rebels. Turf-Einar was so named because he was the first person on the islands to dig peat as fuel for the winter fires. Einar is described as a big and ugly man who was blind in one eye, but also as a brave fighter. Turf-Einar and his retinue stayed on Shetland for a while to recruit reinforcements before successfully invading Orkney and expelling the Danes. The next challenge to Einar’s position as earl came from Harald Fairhair’s sons. The islands had become a support base for Ragnvald Earl of Møre’s family in their struggle for power in Norway. The islands also secured a lucrative trade route from the Irish Sea and onward to west Norway. Harald’s son, Halvdan Hålegg, arrived to seize control from Einar, whose only option was to flee to the Scottish mainland. At home in Norway, Ragnvald was unable to hinder Harald’s sons in their expansion of power, and he was killed in the struggle. Two years later the rivalry came to a head in a
big sea battle between Halvdan and Torv-Einar, in which Halvdan was taken prisoner and killed as vengeance for the death of Einar’s father, Ragnvald. According to The Orkneying Saga, Halvdan was killed by the ritual of blodørn (‘blood eagle’),17 which was done in honour of Odin. Hearing that his son had been killed, Harald Fairhair sailed out to the islands himself with a big fleet and demanded 60 gold marks from the inhabi tants as tax payment in recompense for his son’s killing. As there was no way the islanders could pay such a huge sum, they themselves now risked being killed. Einar offered to pay the whole sum himself in exchange for being allowed to continue as earl, while recognising Harald as his supreme king. Harald agreed to this and so confirmed Einar’s status as lord over the isles. Einar used his new authority to set about a comprehensive military organisation of his terri tory. This enabled him to keep control of large parts of his uncle Sigurd’s Scottish mainland k ingdom. c hap ter 6
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Einar ruled with a firm hand right up to his death, sometime between 910 and 935, and he was succeeded by his sons, Arnkjell and Erlend. Under Einar’s rule, the Orkney Isles had become an important link in trade routes from York and Dublin, over the Norwegian Sea to Norway and over the Atlantic to Iceland and Greenland. The Earls also had dynastic and diplomatic links with kinsfolk in Normandy and with other Norse colonies in Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Hebrides. In the mid-930s Harald Fairhair’s youngest son, Håkon Adelsteinsfostre (foster son of King Ethelstan) drove his brother Eirik Bloodaxe out of power in Norway. Eirik and his family ended up on the Orkney Isles, where he took over power from Torv-Einar’s sons, Arnkjell and Erlend. They became Eirik’s closest supporters, they were present when he took over the kingdom of York in 948, and they were both killed alongside Eirik in 954. Then a third son of Einar, Torfinn Hausakljuv (‘Torfinn the Skull-splitter’) became the new earl of Orkney. We know little about the man with the Viking times’ toughest nickname, just that he was a feared warrior and ruled the territory with an iron fist until his death in 963. At first, his power was restricted by Eirik Bloodaxe’s sons, who continued to use the islands as their power base in their struggle for royal power in Norway. When they left the islands for good, he was able to step forward as the single ruler. By then, the earl’s position in Caithness had already been greatly weakened, and large parts of his great-uncle Sigurd’s Scottish territory were taken over by the Scots. Torfinn doesn’t appear to have had the opportunity or the means to do anything about this. Five of Torfinn’s sons succeeded him as earl, and three of them in turn were married to Eirik Bloodaxe’s daughter, Ragnhild. Conflict between the brothers hindered them from demonstrating any significant military presence on the Scottish mainland. Skule managed to be declared earl of Caithness and Orkney by the Scottish king, but he had no real power. The brothers fought among themselves and took part in a succession of different alliances with the Scots. Skule was killed in a fight with his brother Ljot, who himself was killed in a fight against the Scots. Only the fifth brother, Lodve, survived the squabbles, to rule a weakened earldom until his death in 985.
The Kingdom of Man and the Isles It is not clear how the power structures in the region evolved after Eirik Bloodaxe left the Orkney Isles. There are signs which suggest that the centre of power was moved away from the Orkneys and that a powerful island kingdom developed with its headquarters on the Hebrides around 970, but that the centre of power soon shifted to the Isle of Man. The Kingdom of Man and the Isles was divided into five semi-independent areas which sent their representatives to a central parliament, the Thingvollr (Tynwald) on the Isle of Man. This kingdom survived more or less intact as a political entity until 1095. We first hear about permanent Viking control over the Isle of Man in around 918, when the Dublin Vikings invaded Anglesey and probably also the Isle of Man. From then on, this big island with its central location was a strategically important piece in the Vikings’ struggle for control of the Irish Sea. For a long time, Olav the White’s sons used the island as a lair and as a starting point for their campaigns in Ireland. Our knowledge of the first of the kings of a composite kingdom including the Isle of Man comes from British sources. In 973 a number of local kings assembled in Chester to acclaim the English king, Edgar. Among these was King Magnus (Maccus) Haraldsson who was ‘king over many islands’. He may have been a son of the Viking King Harald Sigtryggsson in Limerick and among those who were sent into exile when Limerick was captured by rival Vikings. Magnus must have controlled the Gall-Gaedhil on the Hebrides and been a supporter of the kings in Dublin. Otherwise, he would not have been able to dominate the islands and acquire the status of king. The Irish sources refer to the kings who ruled Man and the Isles as Ri Innsi Gall, ‘King of the Islands of the Foreigners’. These kings were central players in regional power struggles. Magnus started his career as leader of a band of warriors who gained control of the trade route through the islands. Having built up his power in this way, he broadened his sphere of operations c hap ter 6
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southwards in the 960s. He and his brother Gudrød Haraldsson made themselves overlords of the Norse settlements on Anglesey, off Wales, in 969 and fought military campaigns on Anglesey in 971 and 972. Magnus also had lordship over the Norse settlements in western Galloway. He was acknowledged as king on the Isle of Man from 972. All this gave him control over the lucrative trade route which came from the Mediterranean through the Bay of Biscay into the Irish Sea. Magnus was also active in Ireland. In 974 he attacked the monastery of Iniashcathy on the island of Scattery at the mouth of the river Shannon, where King Ivar of Limerick had his place of refuge. Ivar was at war with the Dublin King Olav Kvåran (Irish Cuarán, ‘Sandal’), and Magnus’ attack should be seen in the context of the bigger political power struggle which was going on between the Vikings in Dublin and Limerick. There is no indication that Magnus had his own power base in Ireland. Either he was an ally of Olav Kvåran or he was under Olav’s control. After Magnus Haraldsson’s death in 977, he was followed by his brother Gudrød, who maintained control over the Irish Sea kingdom until he died in 989. Gudrød Haraldsson was soon challenged by the new earl of Orkney, Sigurd the Strong. In 986 Sigurd had plundered the kingdom’s religious 212
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centre on Iona, killing the Abbot and 15 monks. Sigurd was an aggressive, heathen ruler who could not leave such attractive booty undisturbed. By plundering Iona he sent a signal that the Orkneys were once again a force to be reckoned with. However, Gudrød retaliated and revenged the killings on Iona by killing 300 heathen Vikings who were ravaging the coast of Scotland. Gudrød was a Christian Viking ruler who despised the heathen earls on Orkney. Sigurd lacked the military muscle to follow through with his plans, but by marrying into the Scottish royal family of Malcolm II (1005–1034) he acquired the means to equip a bigger fleet. In 987 Sigurd challenged Gudrød’s position on the Isle of Man, attacking and plundering the island. Sigurd also found another ally on the Hebrides who was willing to help him against Gudrød. The little island of Colonsay, north of Islay, was ruled by an earl called Gilli, whose little domain was outside Gudrød’s control. Sigurd secured a foothold and bridgehead on the Hebrides and Gilli gained a powerful defender against Gudrød. From Colonsay, Sigurd could expand the radius of his expeditions, and during the 980s he undertook as many as three lucrative plundering raids in Ireland. The careers of Magnus and Gudrød marked a political high point in the Viking history of Man and the Hebrides. For a long time after that, the island kingdom was a pawn in the big political game to control the Irish Sea. Gudrød Magnusson was succeeded by his sons, Lagmann and Ragnvald. They chose to enter a peace treaty with Sigurd, and they accepted him as overlord of their kingdom. From about 990, King Brian Boru of Munster dominated the islands. Gudrød’s sons’ hold on the kingdom was further weakened in 995 when the Norwegian king’s son, Olav Tryggvason, and the Danish king’s son, Svein Forkbeard, attacked the islands. Then in 1000 the English King Ethelred attacked the Isle of Man to crack the Norse domination of the region. Ragnvald Gudrødsson died during a campaign in Munster in 1005, probably in an attempt to win control of Limerick back to his family. It is uncertain who held real power in the island kingdom at this time, though Lagmann Gudrødsson still held the title of king. However, he spent a lot of time as a
mercenary in France. One theory is that he was banished from Man by Brian Boru, who at that time was fighting for supreme kingship in Ireland. The island kingdom appears to have become fragmented. The islands to the north had already fallen into the control of the Earls of Orkney in the 990s, and Man was dominated by Irish kings. The real power on the Isle of Man probably lay for a long time with Earl Brodir, until he was killed at the battle of Clontarf in 1014. In around 1030, Ragnvald Gudrødsson’s son, Echmaracach (‘Horseman’), comes onto the scene. He was the ally and vassal on Man of the English King Canute the Great, but he eventually became an important solo player in the royal power games in Dublin and on the Isle of Man, without formally being declared king until shortly before his death in 1065. The best known of all the kings of Man and the Isles is Gudrød Crovan. He is the first king to be described in the chronicle of the kings of Man and the Isles. Gudrød was the son of Harald Svarte (‘Harald Black’) who was from Islay (or possibly Iceland or Ireland, depending on interpretation). According to some reports, Gudrød took part on Harald Hardråde’s side in the battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066 and sought refuge on the Isle of Man after the defeat. In 1066 the Irish King Murchad mac Diarmata appointed the Dublin King Sigtrygg’s son Gudrød as earl of Man. When Gudrød Sigtryggsson died in 1075, Gudrød Crovan saw his chance to take over the island. This was not as easy as he thought. His third attempt was a night attack on the town of Ramsey, in the north of the island. Gudrød won the battle of Skyhill, as it is called today, and made the island the ruling seat for his family right up to 1277. He had 300 men hide in the woods up towards Skyhill, then known as Skakafjell. In the morning the islanders came into battle against Gudrød Crovan’s main forces, who had taken up position on the plain between Skyhill and Ramsey. The islanders were holding their own until they were attacked from behind by the men who had been hiding in the woods and they were forced out onto a promontory, where they were surrounded and forced to surrender. After Gudrød’s victory, Man was divided in two. The
northern part was given to Gudrød’s Vikings for plundering, while the southern part became Gudrød’s own domain. Through a series of bloody campaigns, of which the victory at Sky Hill was the culmination, Gudrød Crovan succeeded in bringing together the Hebrides, Skye, Mull, Islay and the Isle of Man. This kingdom survived as a political entity until Gudrød’s death in 1095. Gudrød also managed to control Dublin from the end of the 1080s and eventually large parts of Leinster in Ireland and c hap ter 6
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The rise and fall of the Orkney earls
The battle of Sky Hill took place on the open plain in front of the hill itself, which was then known as Skakafjell. Gudrød’s men lay in hiding in the woods at the foot of the hill and fell upon the islanders from the rear.
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parts of the outer islands. In 1089 the Dublin King Donnchad mac Domnaill Remair tried to occupy Man, but was killed during the attack. Gudrød launched a counter-attack and seized power in Dublin. He sat secure as king here too – at least for a few years. In 1094 he was expelled from the town, like so many others, and he made his way back to Islay, where he died in 1095. After Gudrød’s death the kingdom’s independence was challenged by the Norwegian King Magnus Barefoot, who thought that the Norwegian crown had a historic claim to the region. Magnus followed up the claim with military force, when in 1098 he made his first attempt to conquer the Hebrides and the Isle of Man. One of his generals succeeded in settling on the Isle of Man, but was killed in a local uprising. In 1102 Magnus succeeded in regaining partial control over Man and the Norse settlements around the Irish Sea, and some of the chronicles list him as one of the kings of Man and the Isles. However, when he was killed in 1103 the region fell under the influence of first the Irish and later the English kings. The Scandinavians’ physical dominance of the region was over, but Nordic traditions and language survived for hundreds of years. The Isle of Man inherited the Vikings’ legal system and still has its Tynwald today. vi k i ng i n va s ion s
On his way back to claim kingship in Norway in 955, Olav Tryggvason stopped off in Osmundwall on the Orkney island of South Walls. He summoned Earl Sigurd to a ‘meeting’, and obliged the mighty earl to become his vassal and to let himself and the islanders be converted to Christianity. Olav made it clear that if this did not happen, he would have the earl killed, plunder the islands and burn all the farms. This must have been an appalling personal humiliation for Sigurd as it frustrated his own ambitions for a great and independent earldom. As was the usual tradition in such circumstances, one of his sons was taken away to Norway as a hostage. Sigurd’s power was only temporarily weakened, however. When King Olav was killed in 1000, Sigurd was free to do as he wished. In his new role as a Christian earl he secured full control over northern Scotland and the Hebrides. The fact that people here were already accustomed to Christian princes helped Sigurd in taking power. A Christian tyrant could be accepted, but not a heathen one. He found an ally on the Isle of Man in the person of the powerful Earl Brodir. With control over the Orkney Isles, the Hebrides, northern Scotland and the Isle of Man he set his sights on Ireland. It is not known whether he had plans to carve out a kingdom for himself in Ireland. He signed willingly when Sigtrygg Silkybeard, king of Dublin, was building an alliance against the powerful Irish Supreme King Brian Boru in 1014. However, Sigtrygg did not turn up on the battlefield at Clontarf where the fight for power was to take place. Sigurd, Brian and Brodir all took part, and none of the three left the battlefield alive (see page 238). Sigurd’s realm fell apart after his death in 1014. His three eldest sons, Sumarlide, Bruse and Einar, shared the earldom between them. His youngest son, Torfinn, was passed over because he was only five years old when his father died. Instead, Torfinn stayed with his maternal grandfather, the Scottish King Malcolm II. However, when he came of age the Scottish king awarded him the Earldom
of Caithness and Sutherland. When his brother Sumarlide died in 1015, Torfinn nominally acquired a third of the Orkney realm. Torfinn is described as a very ugly man with black hair, sharply cut features, a big nose and bushy eyebrows. It is said that he was a formidable fighter, and that he was already leading warriors on raids of plunder at the age of 14. He was also described as having a greed for both goods and honour, and a determination to get what he wanted. These were character traits that the Vikings regarded highly. However, Torfinn had something else in addition to raw muscle power and iron will – he understood how power functioned and should be handled. He quickly formed a picture of the power structures in Scandinavia and in Scotland and learned how to relate to these to maintain his independence. Torfinn’s road to power was hard. A strong enmity developed between him and his brother Einar. In 1020 this came to open conflict between the two brothers. It ended with Torfinn’s foster father killing Einar, convinced that Einar was planning to kill Torfinn. Torfinn then demanded half of the earldom. Bruse, however, was concerned about his own son Ragnvald’s inheritance. Moreover, the Norwegian King Olav Haraldsson (St Olav) had himself taken over Einar’s third share of the earldom and delegated its administration to Bruse, whose son was a hostage in Olav’s household. So Bruse could not give Einar’s half share to Torfinn, even if he wanted to. A break with King Olav would have led to the death of his son. Several years later, however, when it became apparent that Bruse lacked the resources to defend his earldom, Torfinn was able to take over Olav’s third by taking responsibility for the defence of the realm. This was probably done without Olav’s knowledge. When Bruse died around 1030, Torfinn took over sole power. He was however astute enough to recognise as his overlords the successive Norwegian Kings Olav Haraldsson, Canute the Great and Olav’s son Magnus the Good. Torfinn didn’t only have his relatives and the Norwegian king to worry about. After his grandfather Malcolm II died in 1035, his control over lands in Scotland was challenged by Macbeth, the
Earl of Moray. When Macbeth seized control of Sutherland and demanded tax from him, Torfinn attacked the Scottish earl. He not only drove Macbeth out of Caithness, but also reinvaded Sutherland and took Ross, which even his forefather Sigurd the Great had not managed to do. Macbeth responded by sending 11 ships round the coast to Caithness and at the same time sending a land force north, in an attempt to catch Torfinn in a pincer movement while he was in Duncansby in Caithness. Torfinn had sent his fleet back to Orkney and had only his close guard troops around him. So when Macbeth’s men approached, he drew back over the Pentland Firth to the Orkneys with his five longships. Macbeth followed, and Torfinn was forced to meet the Scots in a sea battle. The two fleets met outside Deerness on the south coast of Orkney mainland. Torfinn took the initiative and started the battle with a violent attack on the Scots. He laid his longships alongside Macbeth’s and with Torfinn himself in the lead succeeded in killing or wounding so many of the Scots that Macbeth himself was threatened. Torfinn sent several warriors to attack the enemy’s flagship, and in the end Macbeth ordered the mooring ropes cut so that they could get away. But Torfinn held the ship fast with boarding hooks and came with his raven banner onto the Scottish earl’s ship, whereupon Macbeth jumped over to one of his other ships and rowed away from the battle. Part of the explanation for the Vikings’ success may be that Torfinn’s ships were bigger and had higher sides than the Scots’ ships. Also, Torfinn’s strong attack on the flagship had a psychological effect on both sides. Macbeth’s fleet fled back over to Scotland and then south to Moray. In the meantime, Macbeth’s nephew Muddan had taken the land route north to Thurso in Caithness. Torfinn sent his foster father, Torkjell, to meet the intruders. Torfinn’s warriors snuck into Muddan’s camp at night and set fire to the tents. It is said to have been Torkjell himself who killed Muddan as he dashed out of his tent. The defeat made Macbeth even more determined to get rid of his rival. He assembled an army of both Irish and Scots. Torfinn and Macbeth met on Tarbat Ness on the north side of the Moray Firth. This was said to have been where Turf-Einar had c hap ter 6
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Olav Tryggvason, king and hero Of all the personalities in Norwegian history, Olav Tryggvason is the one around whom most myths have been spun. He is one of the kings from the Viking Age about whom most has been written, but still the one we know least about. His father, Tryggve Olavson, was one of the many minor kings around the country, probably one of the kings in Oppland, and it is possible that he may have been connected in some way to Harald Fairhair’s widespread family. However, it is uncertain whether Tryggve was Harald’s grandson as the later sagas maintain. Tryggve was killed before Olav was born, and from early childhood Olav was part of a roaming band of warriors. Many of his formative years were spent in the East with the Rus Vikings and with Prince Vladimir in Kiev. Olav earned a reputation as a warrior and quite soon was leading his own band on plundering raids. Olav’s career as a Viking is summed up in the epic poem Olavsdråpa by the Icelander Hallfred Vandrædaskald. Hallfred tells of Olav’s conflicts with the Danes; the Saxons in north Germany; the Friesians in the Netherlands; the Britons in Brittany, Wales and western England; the valkere from Walcheren in the Netherlands; the Cumbrians; the imbere from Northumberland; the Isle of Man and the Irish. The list of peoples who were subjected to Olav’s raids is impressive. Many of these raids were cooperative enterprises with Svein Forkbeard, son of the Danish king, Harald Bluetooth. For many years, Olav and Svein were among the most feared and active Viking chieftains in Europe. They stayed in England for several years, and together they extorted enormous sums of Danegeld from the English King Ethelred. In 994, however, Olav concluded a separate
and lucrative peace treaty with Ethelred and allowed himself to be converted to Christianity. Olav followed this with a short career as a mercenary and then travelled to Norway to claim royal power there, introducing an apparatus of power based on the ruling values of Christianity, backed by power of arms. We cannot know whether Olav was a fanatic with a deep sense of personal salvation, or whether he made a carefully calculated political analysis. What is not in doubt is that by breaking the established Norse power apparatus and creating a new kingdom on a European model, he introduced a new ideology. He also sent missionaries to Iceland, which led to the Icelanders accepting Christianity at the Allting (‘supreme parliament’) in 1000. Around 1000, Olav took a hand in an ongoing conflict between the Danes, the Swedes and the Polish Prince Boleslaw, and he died in a big sea battle at Svolder that same year.
When he returned to Norway, Olav minted coins with Anglo-Saxon designs. Only three pennies like this have been found, and they were probably used more as ‘visiting cards’ than as means of payment.
had peats cut for the winter fires, which accounts for its Norse name of Torvneset. The Scots again significantly outnumbered Torfinn’s forces, and Torfinn again took the initiative. With Torfinn in the lead and long, strong spears in hand, the Vikings attacked, accompanied by the sound of loud yells and booming horns. They headed straight for the banner of the leader of Macbeth’s Irish contingent. The Irish formation bent back under this pressure, and there was a danger it would break and the Irish would flee. Macbeth directed his own formation directly towards Torfinn’s raven banner, but it was halted by Torfinn’s solid shield wall and drew back to re-form. Torfinn and his men then attacked the Scots. In the meantime, the Irish flank had completely 216
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b roken and the Irishmen were fleeing, with the Vikings at their heels. With the Irish out of the game and his own formation hard pressed, Macbeth had no choice but to order a full retreat. Torfinn’s men began a merciless hunt for Macbeth and plundered their way southwards. Macbeth escaped. Torfinn divided his army and sent Torkjell north to secure the northern territories. Throughout the 1030s Torfinn increased his influence in Scotland. It is said that he became overlord of nine Scottish earldoms, and for many years he was the unchallenged leader of northern Scotland. In 1037–38, Ragnvald Brusason came back to the Orkneys after a stay in Kiev. Ragnvald was a foster brother of Magnus Olavsson, son of King Olav
Haraldson, and had been one of Magnus’s leading supporters in Kiev. Ragnvald had fled to Prince Jaroslav in Kiev with Harald Sigurdsson, King Olav’s half-brother, after the defeat at Stiklestad in 1030, and he had stayed there to protect King Olav’s young son, Magnus, while Harald went on to seek mercenary service in Byzantium. Ragnvald is described as a giant of a man, bigger and stronger than most, very good-looking and unusually well trained in warfare. Ragnvald became a powerful man when Magnus became king of Norway in 1035. Now he wanted to recover his father’s inheritance. Torfinn knew when he was out-manoeuvred, and he promptly ceded both his brother’s and King Olav’s third shares of the realm to Ragnvald. He kept his properties in Scotland, which were not part of the deal. Torfinn had for a long time been making plans to expand around the Irish Sea, and in return for ceding the Orkney properties he asked Ragnvald for support in this venture. Torfinn’s goodwill towards his nephew gave a good basis for cooperation, and the two earls were soon busy bringing the Hebrides and the Isle of Man back to the earldom. The Hebrides had long been under the Dublin King Sigtrygg Silkybeard, but his abdication in 1036 now made a reinvasion possible. England was another favoured raiding-ground for the earls, and they fought at least two big battles against the English. At the end of the 1030s however, the relationship between the earls cooled significantly. Major politics were again influencing events. Torfinn was married to Ingebjørg, daughter of a Norwegian local governor, Finn Arneson. This marriage had probably been promoted by King Olav Haraldsson himself. Finn was one of King Olav’s strongest henchmen and had stood by his side at the battle of Stiklestad in 1030. Finn’s brother, Kalv Arnesen, however, had been on the other side and was among the group who killed King Olav at Stiklestad. When King Magnus’s relationship with Kalv Arneson cooled, Kalv fled to Torfinn on the Orkneys in the hope of getting help from him. The obligations of family loyalty to his wife’s uncle required Torfinn to receive Kalv favourably. Kalv had a big following of men with him. After a while, Torfinn had problems feeding them. He asked his nephew Ragnvald for
the income from King Magnus’s third share of the earldom. When Ragnvald refused, Torfinn prepared to make war on him. Ragnvald sailed to Norway, where King M agnus gave him a strong band of troops to use in the struggle against Torfinn and Kalv. Torfinn’s and Ragnvald’s fleets met in the Pentland Firth outside Robbery. Ragnvald had 30 longships, whereas Torfinn’s 60 ships were mostly small. Only his own flagship was a proper longship. Kalv Arneson had six big longships, but he chose to stay out of the fight. Torfinn’s little ships were soon dealt with, and his flagship soon came under a strong attack. Just as they were about to be boarded, Torfinn gave the order to cut the mooring ropes which bound the ships together. He was then able to withdraw from the battle and row to land, where it is said that they unloaded 70 corpses and many wounded. Undermanned and hard pressed, Torfinn sought out Kalv Arneson and persuaded him to help. They threw themselves back into the battle together. Torfinn’s little ships were already in retreat when the longships arrived. Torfinn rowed right towards Ragnvald’s ship, while Kalv went for the smaller ships and eliminated them. Now it was Ragnvald’s turn to flee. By a hairsbreadth, Torfinn emerged as the winner. Ragnvald went back to King Magnus in Norway, but returned to the Orkneys in 1046. This time, he chose to use cunning rather than force to get the better of Torfinn. With a little group of men he attacked Torfinn’s longhouse by night and set fire to it. There were few survivors, but among them was Torfinn, who cut his way through the wall and ran unseen out into the night, with his wife in his arms. Thinking that Torfinn was dead, Ragnvald settled down as ruler of the Orkney Isles. Yuletide was celebrated as usual with a big drinking feast. Using the opportunity of the festival, it was Torfinn’s turn to overwhelm Ragnvald. The longhouse was surrounded, and anyone who tried to come out was killed. Among these was Ragnvald. Torfinn was again ‘The Great’ and sole ruler on the Orkney Isles. The only thing to worry about now was how King Magnus’s vengeance would hit him. Once more, the political circumstances in Norway impacted on Torfinn’s world. In the year after Ragnvald’s death, Magnus was too busy with c hap ter 6
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the war against Denmark and the conflict with his uncle, Harald Hardråde, to be able to do anything about the situation on the Orkney Isles. Magnus died in 1047, and King Harald didn’t have any unfinished business with either Torfinn or Kalv. Nor did he show any particular interest in the Orkney Isles so long as the earls there recognised him as king and paid tax. Torfinn’s power on the Orkney Isles was never challenged again. In 1050 Torfinn was an older man. Instead of going on his annual plundering voyage to Scotland, Ireland or England, he went this time on a long journey which took him first to King Harald in Norway and then on to Rome, where Pope Leo lX absolved him of all his sins. When he came home, he settled in Birsay and used the rest of his life to consolidate and reform his realm into a Christian state on European lines. In addition to the Orkney Isles, the region he controlled included Shetland, Caithness, Ross, the Isle of Man and the Hebrides. Torfinn died of illness in his own bed in 1065, nearly 60 years old. Despite all Torfinn’s work to build a solid state, his great realm did not survive long. The Scottish King Malcolm III, who had ousted Macbeth from the throne in 1057, took control of Torfinn’s Scottish lands after his death, while Irish Vikings took power on the Isle of Man and the Western Hebrides. On Orkney, Torfinn’s sons Pål and Erland took power. In 1066 they were with Harald Hardråde when he was defeated at Stamford Bridge in England. The brothers survived, but their power was weakened and they spent the rest of their lives repelling intruders. The brothers ruled the little island realm till 1098, when the Norwegian King Magnus Barefoot took direct control over the islands by appointing his eight-year-old son Sigurd (later King Sigurd Jorsalfare) as Earl of the Orkneys. King Magnus needed the islands as a strategic link in his attempt to expand into Ireland and the Irish Sea. When Magnus died in Ireland in 1103, Sigurd delegated responsibility for the islands to Earl Pål’s son, Håkon, and went to Norway take up his inheritance as king. The descendants of the Earls of Møre continued to govern the island realm until 1137, followed by a new line of earls until 1455 when the islands were 218
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given as dowry for the marriage of Christian I’s daughter to King James III of Scotland. After being part of both the Norwegian and the Danish kingdoms, they were incorporated into the Kingdom of Scotland in 1470.
The Faeroe Islands and Iceland The Faeroe Islands ( fårøyene; ‘sheep islands’) lie about 540 km west of Norway and consist mainly of about 18 large islands. They are known to have been inhabited since around 650. In 825 the Irish monk and geographer, Dicuil, wrote that it took two days to sail there from Ireland, and that the islands had been inhabited by Irish hermits for hundreds of years, but that Norwegian Vikings had forced them out. Thirty years before this was written, Norse ships arrived among the islands. Even though the Vikings didn’t settle in the first instance, many of the hermits chose to leave the islands as the solitude they sought was lost. The first Viking to settle on the Faeroes was a man called Grim Kamban, who arrived there about 825. He had Irish slaves with him, and may have come from the Hebrides or the Isle of Man. Sporadic settlers followed in his wake, and significant immigration started between 885 and 890. Many people chose to emigrate from Norway at that time because of the political situation, which was dominated by the conflicts between Harald Fairhair and independent chieftains in Vestland. The island soon became a popular stopping point for people on their way further west to Iceland. The Faeroe Islands soon came under the influence of the Norwegian kings, and were governed by families who were well-connected with Norway.
The Vikings in Iceland It is uncertain exactly when the first people came to Iceland. Roman coins from the 3rd century AD have been found on the island, but they were most probably taken there much later. Throughout history, many people have thought that Iceland may be the land which the Greek explorer Pytheas called ‘Thule’. However, this is unlikely, because Pytheas
described a populated, agricultural country with products such as milk, honey and fruit. There are written sources which tell that Irish monks settled on the island, but no archaeological evidence of this has been found. The Irish monk Dicuil described Iceland as a place where ‘darkness ruled all winter, but in summer there was enough light to pluck lice from the clothes’. It doesn’t sound exactly a ‘land of dreams’, but for many Irish hermits it was just that, a place where they could worship their god without being disturbed. The Icelandic writer Are Torgilson wrote in the 12th-century Islendingabok that when the first Norwegian settlers came to the island they found small bells of exactly the type used by Irish monks. Norsemen were sailing regularly to the Faeroe Islands in the mid-9th century, but some of them went so far off course that they discovered Iceland. The sources claim that the first Scandinavian to set foot on the island was a Norseman from Agder,
called Naddodd. He only stayed on the island for a short time, and when he came back to Norway he called it ‘The Snowland’. He was followed by a Swedish seafarer, Gard Svåvarson, who reached the east coast of Iceland about 860. Gard followed the coast right round, confirming that this really was an island. Before he left, he named it after himself, Gardarsholm. When the first Scandinavian settlers came to Iceland, the coastal strips were covered in low birch woods, and the island must have appeared very fertile and inviting to seafarers. The trees were not big enough to harvest timber to build sea-going ships, but there was an alternative source of good timber. Many of the beaches were covered in driftwood from North America which the first settlers were able to use to build both ships and houses. The Icelandic Landnåmabok tells us that ‘There was a man called Floke Vilgerdarson, he was a great Viking. He voyaged to look for Gardarsholm.’ Floke landed with his crew and his domestic animals in c hap ter 6
Remains of settlements are scattered all along the coast of Iceland. Driftwood littered the beaches and provided the Icelanders with timber.
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Vatnsfjord, an arm of the Breidafjord. A hard winter killed all his livestock, and ice floes in the fjord led him to call the country Iceland. He returned to Norway in the summer of the second year. The first person to come and stay on Iceland was a Norseman, Ingolv Arnarsson. He and his foster brother Hjørleiv had been pronounced guilty of murder in Norway and they had to flee. In around 870 they sailed on an expedition to Iceland and overwintered in what is now Álftafjord. A few years later they came back to settle permanently on the island as the first colonists. In Norway they stowed two ships with as many moveable goods and household furnishings as they could and set sail with their whole household including the slaves, and such of their livestock as they could fit. Tradition says that when they reached the coast of Iceland, Ingolv cast the posts of his forefathers’ high ceremonial chair overboard and said that he would settle where they came to land. The following year they found the chair-posts at what is now Reykjavik. While they were looking for the 220
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chair-posts they came upon Hjørleiv and all his men, murdered. The slaves had seen an opportunity to gain their freedom and had rebelled when they reached the island. They had then taken the ship and the women to the Vestmanna Islands. Ingolv went out to the islands, killed the slaves and freed the women. Violence had come to Iceland with the Viking ships. Ingolv’s farm was the first centre of settlement on Iceland, as he was the first to sail there with the intention of settling. Many Norwegians followed, and probably a number of Swedes and some Danes. Some sailed direct from the west coast of Norway, but quite a few came via the British Isles, bringing Irish household members and slaves. The Icelanders were not subject to Viking raids or invasions from abroad. Nor did they themselves set out on organised raids. However, as individuals or as small groups they took part in many of the biggest military campaigns in Europe. They participated as warriors, traders and skaldic poets. They entered service in the retinues of kings and
chieftains, perhaps mostly in Norway but throughout Scandinavia, the British Isles, Normandy, Russia and Byzantium. At home on Iceland there were no great military mobilisations or organised warfare. What did occur was what some have called ‘saga warfare’. As there was no central authority which could implement sentences, it was up to individuals to seek justice. The uncertainty about the allting’s (‘central parliament’s’) judicial authority led to bloody conflicts. These often took the form of murder by ambush or fire-raising. Duelling (‘holm-going’) was another usual way to resolve conflicts, but it was often misused as a means of self-enrichment, and the allting passed a resolution to forbid it in 1006. The constant feuds, which have provided material for the rich saga literature, led to the development of a state with its own legal system. Christianity first came to Iceland with Icelanders who had been converted abroad. One such was the widely travelled Torvald, who brought with him a bishop called Fredrik, from Saxony, but this mission was unsuccessful. A messenger from King Olav Tryggvason, the German-born
warrior priest Tangbrand, succeeded in persuading the chieftain Hall Torsteinson to accept baptism, followed by many other important men. At the same time, Tangbrand was committing a number of murders in the course of his mission, which roused opposition from other islanders. In 999, Tangbrand was compelled to leave Iceland. The following year, the Christians succeeded with Hall’s help in having the religious question decided at the allting. The decision was made by the legal spokesman, Torgeir from Ljøsavatn, and both heathens and Christians were required to accept his judgement. The solution was pragmatic. He resolved that everybody should accept baptism, but that heathen sacrifices could be performed in private. In this way, Christianity became established by law in Iceland in the year 1000. However, even though the Icelanders converted to Christianity, the internal feuds continued. Struggles between the chieftains about land, honour killings and family feuds continued unabated until Iceland came under the Norwegian king in 1262–1264.
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Ireland Sometime in the 790s, the Viking fleets operating round the north coast of Scotland and the Hebrides came to Ireland. It is uncertain where they first came from. Both Norwegian and Danish Vikings were navigating the Irish Sea at that time, the Norsemen from the north via the Hebrides and the Danes from the south.
T
Opposite: Many gold and goldplated fittings from bibles, prayer books and hagiographies were torn off and taken back to various places including Norway, where some of them such as these ended up as treasury deposits in the ground. Today, they are silent witnesses of the dramatic events which struck religious communities in Ireland and elsewhere. 222
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he annals for 794 (795) relate that the heathens had ravaged Britannia’s islands. This probably refers primarily to the attack on Lindisfarne, but it could equally describe the fate of the inhabitants on the Hebrides, Iona and perhaps the Isle of Man and Anglesey off the Welsh coast. The following year there were accounts of attacks on the islands of Skye off western Scotland, Rathlin off northern Ireland and Inishbofin and Inishmurray off western Ireland. In 797 (798) the character of the attacks changed. From carrying out quick, overwhelming raids in search of valuables, the Vikings gradually became more audacious. When they ravaged Lambay Island outside present-day Dublin, they also took cattle and food stores. They then used the island as a base for raids on the mainland, and were soon drawn into Irish internal conflicts. Landing on ‘the Emerald Isle’ they were treading on a uniquely complex political viper’s nest. Ireland was divided into over 150 independent kingdoms, which in turn belonged to six supreme kings (Connaught, Leinster, Munster, Ulster, Northern Uí Néill and Southern Uí Néill). The kings of Northern and vi k i ng i n va s ion s
Southern Uí Néill were the most powerful and fought tirelessly to become the greatest of the island’s supreme kings. The various power groupings were in a constant state of war. Even the smallest disagreement between factions could at any time spark orgies of violence which spread throughout the whole island before dying down until the next conflict flared up. Strong local loyalties prevented the Irish from coming together in a single kingdom and coordinating their defence against the Vikings, but this also prevented the Vikings from gaining control over large territories in Ireland. The Vikings were both willing and unwilling participants in the never-ending Irish power game. The northern Irish Sea and the waters around the Hebrides and Scotland were dominated by Vikings from Norway, the Finn-Gall or ‘White Foreigners’ as the Irish annals call them. Danish Vikings, the Dubh-Gaill or ‘Black Foreigners’, probably came to the Irish coast from the south at this time. This seems to indicate that the Norwegians where the first to arrive in Ireland. The Irish annals refer to the power struggle between the Norsemen and the Danes as ‘The war
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Iona, the Holy Island The monastery community on Iona was founded in 563 by St Columba, who fled from Ireland with twelve companions. The conversion of Scotland and northern England started from here. The monastery on Iona was one of the biggest and richest in Scotland until the Vikings attacked and plundered it for the first time in 794. The monastery was plundered by the Vikings for the second time in 802 (801). In 806 (805) the monks were all ready to travel to the security of the motherhouse at Kells in Ireland, but before they could get away the Vikings attacked for the third time. Sources relate that 68 of the inhabitants were killed in the attack. Soon after the fourth attack, in 807, the abbot led most of the monks back to safety in Ireland. Only a few monks stayed on, under the leadership of Blathmacc Mac Flaind, a warlike aristocrat who was seeking martyrdom along with his brothers in the order. Their wish was fulfilled in 825. The Vikings came back, killed most of the monks and then tortured and killed Blathmacc because he refused to reveal where St Columba’s remains were buried. The monastery on Iona had been the spiritual heart of Celtic Christianity in Scotland for almost 250 years. Now it had come to an end.
The monastery community on Iona, seen from the south. The sandy bay where St Columba landed in 563 is bottom left in the picture. The village and abbey are towards the northern end of the east coast, top right in the picture. The sandy beach just south of the village is Martyr’s Bay, where legend says that Vikings killed the monks in 806. The beach at the north end is ‘The White Strand of the Monks’, where the Vikings massacred a number of monks in 986. The island is about 5.6 km from north to south.
between the black and white foreigners’. The epithets ‘black’ and ‘white’ seem odd, but in Irish literature the word for ‘black’ was also used to describe some thing which was newer; the n ewcomers. In the years following the first attacks, numerous monasteries were ravaged repeatedly. The Norwegian Vikings voyaged ever further south, and Kerry in south-west Ireland was the target of an attack in 813. However, Viking activity is thought then to have diminished gradually. There began to be fewer easily accessible targets, and they had instead to travel inland to find booty. This made them vulnerable to counter-attack, and there are reports of a series of defeats by the Irish kings. Another reason for the let-up was that the Vikings were busy elsewhere, beginning to colonise the Hebrides. 224
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The Vikings establish Dublin The Vikings came back to Ireland in the 820s. Previously, small groups of ships would have appeared off the coast. Now they arrived scores at a time. These attacks coincided with the Danes’ increasing attacks on England and France, as Vikings from these expeditions also took part in plundering raids around the Irish Sea. In 831 they plundered North Louth, took the king hostage and demanded ransom money. The monks in Armagh, the religious centre of Ireland, sent troops to defend their properties in the region, but they were heavily defeated. Instead, the effect was to make the Vikings aware of the wealth in Armagh and launch the first of a long series of raids there in 832.
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There is a lot of evidence that the minor kings in Scandinavia wanted control of the increasingly lucrative raiding and trade voyages to Ireland and England. Members of the royal families from Vestfold were active in Ireland in around 840, for example. In 836 (838), two fleets of about 60 ships each arrived on the Liffey and Boyne rivers. The Vikings who sailed up the Boyne were met with stiff resistance, but managed to force their way into Lough Erne and plunder the surrounding countryside of Meath. The other fleet sailed into the Liffey and landed near a little village called Ath-Cliath. The site had a perfect harbour, could be defended easily without expensive investment and was a short sea journey from England. Here, the Vikings established what the sources call a longphort, a fortified harbour for the longships. The place was named Dyflin, or Dublin (from Irish ‘Dubh Linn’, meaning ‘black pool’). This was to be first in a series of fortified harbours set up in Ireland. The Irish thought that these bases were intended to be temporary and mostly left them in peace, but a chronicler noted rather impatiently in 842 that ‘The heathens are still in Dublin’. They were to be there for a good while. The fortified harbours opened the rivers to fleets of Viking ships and exposed the interior of Ireland to widespread plundering. The only region where permanent Viking bases were not set up was in the north, where the Irish kings managed to mount a successful resistance.
Torgils’ reign of terror In 844 a large Viking fleet succeeded in sailing up the river Shannon and establishing a raiding base on inland waters at Lough Ree, from which they attacked the kingdoms of Meath and Connaught. One of the leaders of this fleet is known in the sources as Turgis (‘Torgils’).18 To the Irish, he became the symbol of the most wicked and most heathen of warriors. In the Irish annals he is described as ‘a servant of Satan and enemy of Christianity’ and as one of the most important leaders and kings among all the foreigners in Ireland. He occupied Armagh, appointed himself 226
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as heathen high priest and devoted all the worship to Thor. His wife, Aud, is said even to have performed sacrifices on the high altar in the church at Clonmacnoise, the second most important centre of Irish Christianity. Torgils may have had specific reasons for coming to Ireland to take control over the Vikings of Norwegian ancestry. A strong leader could prevent the Danes from getting a foothold in Ireland, and he may also have been trying to prevent Christianity from getting a foothold among the Vikings there. The sources also speculate about whether he actively tried to convert the Irish to the Norse religion. Mission was not usually a feature of Norse religion, but it is possible that it was then being actively promoted in imitation of the Christian missionaries. There are reports of Irish abandoning the Christian faith and joining with the Vikings. These converted Irish took an active part in the plundering of Armagh, talked of themselves as Norsemen, were enthusiastic followers of Thor and performed heathen rituals. The sources say that they were excessively fanatical and aggressive towards the Christians. One chronicler considered that these anti-Christian bullying gangs were a result of the Vikings having mixed with the Irish population. There may be some truth in this, because a relatively large group of ‘half-blood Vikings’ emerged, the children of Norse fathers and Celtic mothers. They were outside both Irish and Nordic society, and they considered themselves as a group of their own with their own title: Gall-Gaedhil (‘Foreign Gaels’). Not all the Gall-Gaedhil were of Irish origin, for the Vikings mingled with the local population wherever they came. Many Gall-Gaedhil came from the Norse colonies around the Irish sea, but many of them must have had Irish mothers, as the Irish sources considered them to be traitors. With the support of the Gall-Gaedhil, Torgils succeeded in creating a form of power structure in the occupied territories. This was not well received by the Irish kings, who conspired to have him removed. The chronicles tell a story that Torgils was captivated by the daughter of the king of Southern Uí Néill, Máel Sechnaill, and yearned to have her. So the king sent her to Torgils, with 15 maidens who were to be a gift for Torgils’ captains. These 15
These fragments of slate were found during excavations of the monastery on the island of Inchmarnock, off the west coast of Scotland. The carvings show the impact of a Viking raid. A Viking wearing chainmail is dragging a captive back to the ship. Perhaps the captive ended up in the slave market in Dublin? This was the fate of many who were exposed to Viking ravages.
were actually cross-dressed, armed young men, who killed Torgils on his wedding night. A less fanciful source says that he was captured by Máel Sechnaill in 845 and drowned in Lough Owel. The Shannon fleet’s invasion collapsed after Torgils’ death. With the Vikings in total confusion, the Irish fought back and inflicted on them a series of sharp defeats.
Olav and Ivar come to Ireland Torgils’ fear of a Danish invasion was fulfilled in 850, when the ‘Black Foreigners’, the Danes, landed in Carlingford, north of Dublin. The first thing they did was to challenge the Norsemen’s authority with a series of attacks on their strongholds. Dublin itself, the capital of the ‘White Foreigners’’ realm, was occupied in 851 and plundered for goods, slaves and women. The following year, the Norsemen and a big group of Gall-Gaedhil together launched a counterattack on the Danes in Dublin. The battle lasted for three days until the Norsemen had to withdraw.
In their celebrations the Danes dedicated the victory to the Irish patron Saint Patrick and for a short time the Irish allowed themselves to be lulled into believing that the ‘Black Foreigners’ were a new, God-fearing type of Viking. This fostered good relationships, and they offered their help and support to the Danes in Dublin. However, the Danes soon began their own raiding and the Irish learned by bitter experience that they were just as heathen and hungry for gold as the Norsemen. It was every man for himself. The political landscape changed quickly in such a situation, and by the following year everything looked different. A powerful Danish-Norwegian alliance came to Ireland to take over from the divided Viking factions. The Annals of Ulster describes the arrival in 853: Amlaíb, son of the king of Lochlann, came to Ireland, and the foreigners of Ireland submitted to him, and he took tribute from the Irish.
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The leader of this alliance, Olav (Amlaíb) the White19 has been connected to the Norwegian kings from Borre in Vestfold. He arrived with two members of the Danish royal family, Ivar (Imar) the Boneless and Asle (Auisle). Ivar is thought to be the founder of a royal dynasty in Ireland known as Uí Imar, which held onto power till 1035. We know almost nothing about Asle except that he was titled as ‘King of the Foreigners’ in 863 and was killed in 867, and that Olaf and Ivar were suspected of being the culprits. Ivar, Asle and Olav were probably closely related through dynastic connections. Some sources say that they were brothers, but this could just refer to being ‘brothers’ in a warrior brotherhood. In 853, Olav the White declared himself supreme king of Dublin and of all the Vikings in Ireland, Norwegian and Danish. At the same time, Ivar took over control of the Vikings in the west of Ireland by annexing the Viking base in Limerick. The status of Olav and Ivar as members of royal lineages helped them not only to gain control of the Norwegian and most of the Danish Vikings, but also to receive support from many of the Irish minor kings. They were opposed by the mixed race Vikings, the Gall-Gaedhil, and by Máel Sechnaill. The Irish and the Gall-Gaedhil had formed a temporary alliance, and their territories extended right out to Dublin. Serious war broke out in 856. The Vikings defeated an army of Gall-Gaedhil in Munster that year, and in 858 with the help of the minor Irish King Cerball mac Dúnlainge from Osraige they defeated a new Gall-Gaedhil force at Ara Tiere in Tipperary. Cerball had allied himself with Olav the White and Ivar in an attempt to become supreme king in Southern Uí Néill, but in 859 he changed sides and pledged allegiance to the supreme King Máell Sechnaill. Olav and Ivar faced this new threat by allying themselves with the supreme king in Northern Uí Néill, Aed Finnliath. Olav the White married Aed’s daughter, thereby initiating a long and confused alliance with the Northern royal family. Things may have got too hot for Olav and Ivar around 860, when they appeared in Spain for a short time, and its possible that Asle took over the role as king in Dublin in their absence. In 862 Máel Sechnaill died and the Southern kingdom split into several competing factions. This gave Olav and Ivar an opportunity 228
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to make their mark again, and for the next 20 years they held power in Ireland alternately. The arrival of Olav the White and Ivar marked a new phase for Ireland and the whole region around the Irish Sea. Olav’s ambition was to dominate the Viking colonies in the region. While Ireland was being held in a military iron grip, Olav gradually turned his attention east to the Isle of Man and Galloway and north to the Hebrides. Control of these regions was essential for his plan to control all trade on the Irish Sea. Olav the White used political means just as much as military. He was particularly known for forming alliances by marriage. At the end of the 850s he tried to gain control of the Hebrides by marrying Aud the deep-minded, daughter of the greatest Hebridean chieftain, Kjetil Flatnose, who was central to Olav’s plan. The alliance proved to be short-lived, when Kjetil and the Gall-Gaedhil soon afterwards attacked several places in Ireland. Kjetil also had personal ambitions to control the Irish Sea, and he would not be subject to Olav. In 857 Olav and Ivar fought back and forced Kjetil out of Ireland, after which Olav gradually expanded his area of power to include the whole of Kjetil’s earldom. Olav the White also developed a habit of hiring his troops out to the Irish minor kings. This often led to him being drawn into local feuds and made him very unpopular with the major kings. He also proceeded with other provocative enterprises. He systematically ransacked the Irish kings’ burial mounds for valuables. This was normal practice in Scandinavia when one established a new dynasty. The situation boiled over in 863 when he had a series of burial mounds along the river Boyne dug up. Here lay buried some of the greatest and richest Irish kings. This desecration released a widespread wave of protest, with Vikings and their supporters being hunted and killed. Many thought it wise to leave the island for a while. Ivar left Ireland in 864 and fought alongside the Great Heathen Army in England (see page 249). In 866, Olav and Asle went to Scotland. Olav and Ivar had already carried out several raids in Scotland in 856. This time they attacked both Dunkeld and the royal centre at Clunie. This led to the Scots making a peace agreement with Olav, which was sealed by Olav the White marrying the daughter of the Scottish King Kenneth MacAlpin.
The time was now right for Olav to re-establish his position in Ireland. The absence of Olav and Ivar had given the local Irish kings opportunity to challenge the Vikings in Dublin, Cork and Youghal and destroy some of their fortified camps. Olav’s own fortress at Clondalkin outside Dublin was destroyed. Several hundred Viking leaders were killed in the fighting and their heads taken as war trophies. These defeats required Olav to return to Ireland, and from 870 the situation improved significantly for the Vikings in Dublin. Internal conflicts within the royal family in Leinster and a victory over the king of Southern Breda benefitted Olav, and he took the opportunity to travel to northern England and campaign with Ivar. This time they laid waste the power base of the Strathclyde Britons. Olav the White then controlled most of the areas round the Irish Sea. In 871 he brought masses of booty and numerous slaves to the markets in Dublin. Soon after his return to Dublin, Olav the White disappeared from Ireland for good. Sources say that he was called home by his father, Gudrød, king of Lochland, to support him in an internal conflict. This may have been the struggle between Harald Fairhair and a Norwegian-Danish alliance which culminated with Harald’s victory at the battle of Hafrsfjord c. 872. If Olav took part in the battle, he very probably fell there. Other sources say that he was killed by the Picts when he went to Scotland to demand tax from them.
Ivar took over as sole king in Dublin. The sources now refer to him as ‘King of all the Norsemen in Ireland and England’. Even though this title reflects his ambitions rather than reality, he was indeed an important leader even beyond Ireland. When he died in Dublin in 872/73, his body was boiled and his bones cleaned and probably taken to the Great Army’s headquarters at Repton in Mercia for burial. Ireland now entered a period which slightly misleadingly has come to be called the ‘forty-year pause’. There was little peace in the land, but it was forty years before the next big Viking invasion. Through invasion and terror followed by the building of alliances, Olav and Ivar had succeeded in taking control of a large kingdom stretching from Northumbria in England to Dublin and the other Viking towns in Ireland and including parts of Scotland, the Hebrides and the islands in the Irish Sea as far as Wales. The disappearance of Olav and Ivar from the political scene in Ireland left a power vacuum which led to a decade of internal strife among the Vikings there. Among other events, a Danish chieftain from York, Halvdan, tried to attack Dublin in 875 but was repelled and killed in a battle against the Norsemen in 877. Taking advantage of this political chaos, the Irish came together under the leadership of Cerball of Leinster and expelled the Vikings from Dublin in 902/3. The Irish were again able to concentrate their forces to fight together. c hap ter 6
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The social effect of this first Viking period on Ireland has been difficult to measure. There is no doubt that the Vikings were responsible for the ruinous decline of monasteries and church life at this time. On the other hand, there is no indication that the attacks led to a set-back for Christianity and its hold on the population. Despite extensive persecution and plundering by the Vikings and Gall-Gaedhil, the church institutions were strong enough to resist the pressure. There are also indications that the extent of the plundering and the consequences for individual centres have been somewhat exaggerated by the chroniclers. We see the same tendency in all the other parts of Europe visited by Vikings.
The Vikings return Two of the Viking chieftains who left Ireland in 902/903 were Ragnvald (Ragnall ua Ímair) and his brother Sigtrygg the Squint-eyed (Sihtric Cáech). The Irish sources’ use of ‘ua Ímair’ in connection with their names suggests that they may possibly have been grandsons or relatives of Ivar. They came back from England to Waterford in Ireland in 914, thereby ending the ‘forty-year pause’. From Waterford they launched a series of campaigns against the Irish in Munster, and in 917 Sigtrygg the Squint-eyed succeeded in recapturing Dublin. It had been 15 years since the Vikings had controlled the town. Ragnvald soon went back to York, while Sigtrygg remained in Ireland. In 919 the Irish set out to drive the Vikings from Dublin again. The town generated a lot of income for the Irish kings and was well placed to control trade over the Irish Sea. However, Sigtrygg defeated them in a big battle at Islandbridge, just south of Dublin. Niall Glúndub, supreme king of the Northern Uí Néill, and five lesser kings (some sources say 12) fell in the battle. This victory established Sigtrygg the Squint-eyed as undisputed leader of the Vikings in Ireland. When Ragnvald died in 921, Sigtrygg went to York and installed himself as his brother’s successor on the throne there. He now controlled two of the greatest Viking kingdoms outside Scandinavia. In Dublin a younger brother or cousin, Gudrød (Gofraid ua Ímair), now governed on his behalf, 230
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but Gudrød’s rule was plagued by conflict with the Irish. He made several raids along the Irish coast in search of slaves, which led to the Irish declaring war in 921. Gudrød therefore needed to keep his fleet in constant readiness, patrolling between Carlingford on the east coast and Inishowen in the north to keep watch over Irish movements. Gudrød chose his time cunningly and struck first. St Martin’s Day, 11th November, was one of the most important Irish festivals. The sacred town of Armagh was full of visitors and locals, in festive mood. Gudrød’s attack on the Irish was overwhelming, and the Vikings came away with masses of goods, slaves and hostages. The Irish soon hit back. One of the three plundering armies which Gudrød sent out from Armagh was attacked and every member killed. The loss of men, weapons and equipment almost equalled the profit gained from looting Armagh. Then came worrying news from the west coast. A Viking chieftain, Tormod (Tomrair) Helgason, had come to Ireland and occupied the Viking base in Limerick. Limerick soon challenged Dublin’s status as the main trade centre and slave market in Ireland. Tormod had probably come from the Viking bases on the Loire. He now controlled the trade network from the Mediterranean through the Loire valley to Ireland, the ‘wine route’. In exchange for shares in the loot, he opened the river Shannon to venturers who wanted to undertake plundering raids in the interior. Tormod’s third great source of income was ransom money. He had an effective intelligence apparatus which kept the movements of the leading churchmen and nobility under surveillance, enabling him to capture them when oppor tunity presented and then demand good ransom. At the start of 924 the position of the Limerick Vikings was so strong that they were able to challenge the Dublin Vikings’ dominion over central Ireland. Gudrød’s Vikings tried to attack Limerick but were repelled. Their ventures elsewhere were more successful. One of Gudrød’s sons was installed as king in Waterford, and his eldest son, Halvdan, drove back the Irish in the north. The downward trend continued, however. In 925 Gudrød suffered a bloody defeat inflicted by King Muirchertach at Carlingford, where hundreds of Dublin Vikings were taken prisoner and slaughtered after the battle.
Nobody was safe from the Vikings. One of the most important monastic communities in Ireland, St Kevin’s Monastery in Glendalough, lies far from navigable waterways but was nevertheless exposed several times to attacks from bands of Vikings who ravaged the interior of Ireland on foot or on horseback.
In January 926 Halvdan and many of his warriors were caught in an ambush and killed by King Muirchertach. The rest of Halvdan’s army were chased north until they were saved spectacularly by Gudrød and his fleet. Gudrød was sitting humbled and penniless in Dublin when he got the news that Sigtrygg the Squint-eyed was dead. He must have seen this as an opportunity to strengthen his position both economically and militarily. So he travelled to York to claim the throne there. Tormod had been sitting in Limerick waiting for just such an opportunity, and soon he was standing outside the palisades of Dublin with his army, demanding to be granted power in the town. When this was refused he attacked the town and took it by storm. Tormod’s time as king in Dublin was to be short, however. Gudrød returned the same year, and Tormod withdrew to Limerick. After a series of small but successful raids against the Vikings in Limerick throughout 929, Gudrød gradually re-established his authority over the other Viking groups in Ireland. The Limerick Vikings’ fleet escaped inland to Lough Corrib and then Lough Neagh in the north. These areas were within the Dublin Vikings’ sphere of influence, but Gudrød did not manage to eliminate this fleet until 931.
With his newly won authority, Gudrød got support for another attack on Armagh in 933. Things didn’t go much better for him this time. His Vikings suffered a series of bloody defeats and the Irish recaptured all the goods and freed all the captives Gudrød had taken during the campaign. Following this defeat, Gudrød retreated to Dublin, where he died in 934. Olav Gudrødsson succeeded his father as king in Dublin. He set about re-establishing the position of Dublin as the leading Viking town in Ireland. To achieve this, he entered a close alliance with the king of Ulaid against their common enemy, Muirchertach mac Néill in the north. This alliance was the start of increased cooperation between the Irish aristocracy and the Viking kings and of integration of the Viking kings into the Irish ruling families. The use of Vikings in the Irish kings’ internal squabbles increased. However, Olav’s main aim was to control all the Nordic settlements in Ireland. After plundering the royal capital towns in Brega and Knowth in 935, he felt strong enough to tackle his hereditary enemy, the Vikings in Limerick. A man called Olav Sinful-head had taken over power there after Tormod. Olav Sinful-head had carried out several successful plundering raids throughout Ireland and had also subjected many of the Viking colonies c hap ter 6
This fragment from a sword hilt was found during excavations in the old Viking fortress in Waterford.
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The fire-raisers The Vikings were notorious fire-raisers. They burnt living people and their own dead. They burnt buildings, farms, churches, monasteries. This is a constant feature in all sources. They burnt villages where people failed to buy their freedom, and on many occasions they burnt them regardless. The Muslims in Spain called them al-madjus (‘fire-worshippers’). This is also a word for heathens who do not worship the right god, but the Muslims cannot have failed to notice the Vikings’ propensity for fire-raising.
What is the explanation of the Vikings’ attitude to fire? It wasn’t used to cover their tracks; they didn’t worry much about that. The answer probably lies in their religious beliefs. The Vikings believed in all sorts of revenants and ghosts. If you burnt the buildings you plundered, you could feel safe that spirits would not follow you. Fire was considered the best protection against sorcery and dark forces.
to his authority. He was a serious threat to the authority of the Dublin kings. Olav’s Gudrødsson’s first move was to lead the Dublin fleet up the river Shannon and plunder the powerful monastic community in Clonmacnoise, which was under the protection of the Limerick Vikings. This brought the war right to the heart of Olav Sinful-head’s territory. The two Olavs’ fleets met in a big ‘sea battle’ inland on Lough Ree, in 936. The wealth these Vikings were fighting for is exemplified by a hoard found in the remains of a Viking base on the island of Hare in Lough Ree in 1802. This contained ten broad gold arm-rings with a total weight of about 5 kilos, the largest Viking Age gold hoard ever found. What was at stake was control over all the Vikings in Ireland. Olav Sinful-head’s forces were crushed in the battle, and Olav Gudrødsson crowned his victory by installing his cousin Harald Sigtryggsson as king in Limerick. With control over all the Nordic settlements in Ireland, Olav Gudrødsson no longer had to watch his back and he was free to turn his attention to England and the family’s lost kingdom of York. The peace treaty which the Scots and the Vikings had formed with the English King Ethelstan had already broken down in 934, resulting in an English attack on Scotland. So the Scottish King, Constantine II, who was Olav’s father-in-law, was more than willing to help Olav against the English. They invaded England together, but were defeated in a battle at Brunanburh (see page 268), where Olav only just escaped with his life. This defeat had repercussions on the political situation in Ireland. The Irish thought that the 232
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Vikings had been weakened, and Muirchertach allied himself with his rivals to storm and capture Dublin in 938. But Olav still had his fleet, which had not been in Dublin, and this enabled him to strike back ferociously. In 939 he took Muirchertach’s fortress at Ailech in Donegal and took the king himself prisoner. The booty and the enormous ransom he got for the king ensured that he would be able to buy control over all the Vikings in Ireland. Moreover, the Irish kings were quick to start peace talks with him, and Olav Gudrødsson was soon powerful enough again to set his sights on York. However, he did not enjoy the fruits of victory for long, as he died in 941. When Olav went to York with a detachment of troops, his brother Blacaire Gudrødsson remained in Dublin. This tempted the Irish to carry out a series of raids on the Vikings. Refugees streamed into Dublin, where Blacaire prepared to face an attack. The attack came, and it is said that over 1,200 Vikings were killed. The number of Irish dead is not known. However, despite this slaughter the Irish did not succeed in capturing the city. Blacaire survived, and in 943 he launched a counter-attack. The target was Armagh, but Blacaire’s Vikings were confronted by Muirchertach’s men at Clonkeen, not far from Dublin. Their objective was probably to get their hands on Blacaire, whom they saw as the last obstacle to throwing the Vikings out of Dublin. However, at the end of the day the Vikings emerged as victors and it was the Irish king who lay dead on the field. If Blacaire had had the resources which had been available to his brother, he might have followed up the victory by re-establishing his dominion over the Irish minor kings, but instead he had to
draw back to Dublin and prepare to defend himself against the new Irish warlord, King Congalach mac Máelmiting of North Brega. Congalach plundered Dublin twice in the next few years. It was probably this increased threat to Dublin which brought Blacaire’s cousin, Olav Sigtryggson, also known as Olav Cuaran (Sandal), home from York in 945. He deposed Blacaire and sent him into exile. The political climate in Ireland no longer allowed the Vikings to go about their business independently of the Irish kings as they had previously. Olav Cuaran realised that the only person who could guarantee the survival of Dublin was Congalach, and he initiated a
rapprochement which succeeded against all expectations. An alliance between Dublin and North Brega not only secured Dublin’s existence and its dominance of the other Norse settlements in Ireland, but also established Brega as the dominant Irish kingdom. The agreement also specified a stop to the plundering of monasteries and religious establishments in Brega. But Olav Cuaran’s main interests were in York. He recalled Blacaire to Dublin in autumn 947 and in 948 he sailed over the Irish Sea and travelled to York. Blacaire’s reign as Dublin king was short, however; the following year he fell out with Congalach and was killed in the resulting conflict. c hap ter 6
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The population of Dublin suffered horribly in the years 950–51. The town and surrounding district were ravaged by plague which killed many of the colonists. This was followed by an epidemic affecting cattle, and consequent famine. Blacaire’s cousin, Gudrød Sigtryggsson, imposed taxes which hit the Irish farmers extra hard. Viking warriors were billeted out among the farmers for both food and lodging. If the warriors were not satisfied with the way they were being treated, they could take legal proceedings against the farmer at the ting, which could impose death and confiscation of land and possessions. Gudrød also abandoned Olav Cuaran’s policy of coexistence and plundered monasteries and churches. Thousands of prisoners were brought back to Dublin, to be sold as slaves or released in exchange for a ransom. Many cattle and horses and masses of goods were also captured and brought back to Dublin. In the midst of all this, plague struck. Olav Cuaran had no choice but to return to Dublin and depose Gudrød. He kept a firm grip on royal power in Dublin for the next 28 years, by building widespread alliances which also involved marrying himself and his family into the Irish ruling families. In 976 he initiated an offensive against Leinster and the Southern Uí Néill in the hope of re-expanding Dublin’s shrivelled territory and re-establishing the town as a powerful force in Ireland.
Limerick rises from the ashes One of the obstacles to Olav Cuaran’s attempts to rebuild Dublin’s fortunes was a growing Viking dynasty in Limerick. The Viking kings from Limerick begin to feature regularly in the Irish chronicles from about this time because they had become more closely involved in the Irish wars. In the second half of the 10th century Limerick had its own line of kings who came under constant pressure from the Irish kings in Munster and especially from one particular clan, Dàl Cais, who dominated the north-western part of Munster. When the Dàl Cais kings were not fighting the Vikings, they were working hard to set the settlers in Waterford and in Limerick against each other. In 967 the Limerick Vikings attacked Munster 234
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but were defeated in a big battle at Solloghead in Tipperary, just a few miles away from Cashel, the Munster king’s capital. The Irish responded by sacking Limerick ‘in an orgy of violence’. In 969 a new Viking dynasty rose from the ashes. Led by a man called Ivar, the Limerick Vikings carried out a series of spectacular attacks. The king in Osraige was killed and the region’s principal church in Emly was plundered. This victory made Ivar a power to be reckoned with in the region and he achieved status as an ally of Mathgamain, king of the Dál Cais. The Limerick and Waterford Vikings were now both part of Munster’s alliance with the kings of Leinster and the Vikings in Dublin. Ivar’s alliance with Munster only lasted until 972, however. Limerick had developed into a centre for the ‘blacklegs’. These were Vikings who hired out their services to anybody at all, and were soon to be found in the service of Mathgamain’s enemies. When this became known, Limerick was burnt again and the populace driven out. Ivar had a place of refuge on Scattery Island by the mouth of the river Shannon. There was a monastery community there which traded in wine and luxury goods with monasteries in France and which was therefore an important source of income for Ivar. The Limerick Vikings took refuge here when the Irish drew too close, but the monastery’s well-stocked wine cellars were an attractive target for other Vikings and in 974 Ivar only just escaped from an attack. In the meantime Mathgamain had lost the struggle for power in Munster and been replaced as king by Brian Boru. This in turn meant that Ivar could rebuild his fortress in Limerick. However, it was not in Brian’s interests to let the Limerick Vikings develop into an independent power, and 977 he succeeded in killing Ivar and both his sons during an attack on Scattery Island. The remainder of the Vikings in Limerick then pledged allegiance to Brian Boru. Towards the end of the century, the conflict for the position of supreme king of Ireland intensified strongly. In 980 Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill came to power in the north, to become Ireland’s greatest supreme king for some time. Munster in the south was ruled by his rival, Brian Boru, who succeeded him as supreme king in 1002.
On Scattery Island, by the mouth of the Shannon, there was a monastic community which traded in wine and luxury goods from monasteries in France. This was an important source of income and a place of refuge for the Vikings in Limerick.
After his rise to power, Máel Sechnaill immediately had to defend himself against a threat from Dublin. In 980, Olav Cuaran had penetrated far into Meath and occupied Tara, the symbolic centre of royal power in Ireland. The king who ruled Tara was traditionally considered to be supreme king of the whole country. Olav Cuaran didn’t fancy the aggressive Uí Néill king as his superior, and wanted to try to break him before he had a chance to consolidate his power. Things did not exactly go according to plan for Olav Cuaran. Instead of breaking the Irish king’s power, the Dublin Vikings suffered one of their biggest defeats ever. Olav’s son and heir, Ragnar, was killed along with many of the Dublin elite. The defeat also enabled Máel Sechnaill to besiege Dublin and force the Vikings there to free all the Irish slaves. Olav Cuaran also had to abandon his claim for dominion over the Uí Néill territories and pay an enormous sum in retribution. Among the goods lost from the town as tax payment were said to be ‘Tor’s ring’ and ‘Karl’s sword’. These were two mysterious items which symbolised royal power in the town. ‘Tor’s ring’ was a massive iron neck-ring, on which oaths were
sworn in heathen times. The sword was probably the one which had been carried by Karl, son of Olav the White, when he was killed at the battle of Killoderry in 868 (869). Alternatively, ‘Karl’s sword’ may refer to Charlemagne, as a gift given in his time to some Viking chieftain. Images of a sword on 10th-century coins from York may be symbols of this sword. Olav Cuaran’s defeat was so complete that he decided to abdicate and retreat to the monastery on Iona, where he died soon after. Dublin was now controlled indirectly by Máel Sechnaill, with Olav’s Cuaran’s son, Jernkne (‘Iron Knee’) as puppet king. One of Jernkne and Máel Sechnaill’s first undertakings as allies was to attack the Vikings in Waterford. A sea king called Ivar had already established a small Viking realm there in 969, with the fortress as its centre. Waterford was traditionally allied with the Dublin and L einster kings, but these relationships were eventually set aside as the Irish kings more and more saw the benefits of recruiting different Viking groups as mercenaries. The aim of Jernkne’s attack was to weaken Leinster, whose power was based largely on the mercenary army c hap ter 6
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from Waterford. This made it possible for Brian Boru to secure power over southern Ireland, including the Vikings in Waterford.
Sigtrygg Silkybeard strives for Dublin When Jernkne was killed by one of his own slaves in 989, the way was open for another of Olav Cuaran’s sons to assert himself. Sigtrygg Silkybeard was the result of an alliance between Olav and the kings of Leinster; his mother, Gormflaith, was a Leinster princess. After Olav Cuaran’s death in 981 she was given away in marriage to Máel Sechnaill to strengthen the new alliance between Leinster and Uí Néill. With support from his stepfather Máel Sechnaill, Sigtrygg worked to re-establish Dublin’s hegemony over the Vikings in Ireland, which would be to Máel Sechnaill’s advantage in his war against Brian Boru. However, Ivar of Waterford was also seeking to become king in Dublin. He managed to take power briefly in the town on two occasions before Sigtrygg drove him out again with Máel Sechnaill’s help. In 995 Ivar of Waterford’s son, Ragnar, captured Dublin and expelled Sigtrygg. On this occasion the Waterford Vikings were supported by Brian Boru, who wanted to weaken Máel Sechnaill’s position as supreme king. Máel Sechnaill responded by attacking Waterford, while Sigtrygg regained power in Dublin. The reasons for Munster’s and Leinster’s interest in Dublin were plain. They wanted to control the wealth which was being created in the town by trade between the continent and Scandinavia, and they wanted to control the town’s formidable military and fleet. Dublin was seen as the weight which could tip the scales in the apparently endless struggle between the Irish kings. For his own part, Sigtrygg worked actively to avoid becoming permanently associated with any of the sides. He forged alliances where he needed to and he courted various Scandinavian power groups around the Irish Sea. In 997 the power struggle between Máel Sechnaill and Brian Boru took an unexpected turn. They made an agreement to share Ireland between them, and at the same time created an alliance to 236
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drive the Vikings out of Ireland once and for all. It was a hollow agreement. Brian benefitted from the Vikings’ fleets in Waterford and Limerick, and he later made good use of Dublin’s cavalry in his struggle against the other Irish kings. Máel Sechnaill was totally dependent on Dublin’s cavalry and fleet, without whose help neither side could expect to dominate Ireland.
The people in Leinster were not happy that their king, Máel Sechnaill, had submitted to King Brian Broru of Munster, who was considered to be the more powerful of the two. So Máel Sechnaill was deposed in 998 and replaced by Gormflaith’s brother, Máelmorda mac Murchada, who led a rebellion against Brian’s authority. Sigtrygg Silkybeard had also ended up under Brian’s control, and from now on he had to send hostages and taxes to the king in Munster. By 999 Sigtrygg Silkybeard had had enough of this. With support from Máelmorda, he too started a rebellion against Brian. Brian and Máel Sechnaill’s combined army succeeded in pushing Sigtrygg Silkybeard back to Dublin. Brian then besieged the town for 20 days before storming it. The inhabitants were afflicted with famine and lack of water, and the streets were full of wounded Vikings and Leinster Irishmen. Brian didn’t wreck the town; he needed its resources for the forthcoming struggle for supreme kingship in Ireland. Sigtrygg Silkybeard was reinstalled as king in Dublin and was obliged to enter a more or less voluntary peace treaty and alliance with Brian. To seal the new deal, he had to marry one of Brian’s daughters. For his part, Brian married Sigtrygg’s Silkybeard’s mother, Gormflaith, who was divorced from Máel Sechnaill. Gormflaith again became an important but involuntary pawn in the power game. In this way both the Dublin Vikings and Leinster came under Brian’s influence. He now had the necessary resources for a final showdown with Máel Sechnaill. With the help of Sigtrygg Silkybeard and the Vikings, Brian Boru finally succeeded in establishing himself as Irish supreme king in 1002. With further help from the Vikings in the following years, he brought more and more of Ireland under his own personal control. His ultimate aim was probably to take over the Norse settlements round the Irish Sea and Celtic Scotland to create an Irish-Scottish empire. Slightly before 1012, Brian had divorced Gormflaith, who was probably no longer important for political alliance. The chronicles record that from then on, she used all her time to urge her brother, Máelmorda, and Sigtrygg to revenge themselves against Brian. In 1012 rumours were circulating of a new rebellion led by Máelmorda
and Sigtrygg Silkybeard. Brian barricaded himself in his fortress in Munster, but in 1013 he led an army from Munster and south Connaught into Leinster. His son, Murchad, led a detachment which ravaged the southern part of Leinster. Brian’s and Murchad’s forces came together outside Dublin on 9th September and laid siege to the town. Brian’s forces ran out of supplies however, and the siege was lifted about Yuletide. The rebellion came to a surprising end when Máelmorda recognised Brian as his superior king. The Leinster king had to bow to political reality, and Brian Boru was still the strong man in Ireland. Máelmorda had probably hoped for broad support from other regional rulers who had earlier been forced to submit. When this support failed to materialise, he chose to recognise Brian as supreme king. Sigtrygg Silkybeard’s rebellion continued, however, and the alliance which he was building grew fast. Sigtrygg’s son, Olav, got support from the Norse colonies in Galloway. On the Isle of Man, the powerful Earl Brodir acknowledged Sigtrygg as his superior king and promised him military support. Sigurd the Great, Earl of Orkney, supported Sigtrygg Silkybeard, because Brian also threatened his regional dominance. According to the sources, Sigurd the Great and Earl Brodir were both promised Gormflaith’s hand in marriage, and thereby supreme kingship in Ireland. This would not really have been politically possible, but the story illustrates the status associated with marriage to Gormflaith. She must have been an exceptional woman. Sigurd’s purpose in joining the alliance was not to become king in Ireland but to regain his control over the Hebrides and recover the power he had had in the 990s. c hap ter 6
Sigtrygg Silkybeard (king 989–1036) was the first of Dublin’s kings to mint coins (997). The inscription reads SIHTRC REX DIFL, ‘Sithric king of Dublin’.
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The king’s mother Gormflaith Murchada MacFinn was born c. 960 in Naas in what is now County Kildare in the Province of Leinster in Ireland. She was the daughter of Murchad MacFinn, king of Leinster. She was married one after the other to three of Ireland’s most powerful men: the Viking King Olav Cuaran; the Irish Supreme King Máel Sechnall; and Supreme King Brian Boru. She is also considered by Irish sources to be the mother of Brian’s successor, Donnchad MacBrian (d. 1064). Gormflaith survived all her husbands and died in 1030. Sources such as Cogadh Gaedhil re Gallaibh and Njåls saga present Gormflaith as the driving force behind the war which culminated in the battle of Clontarf in 1014. Gormflaith encouraged her son, Sigtrygg Silkyberard, to get help in the war against Brian Boru from the Norse Earl Sigurd of the Orkney Isles and from Norse warriors on the Isle of Man. Her loyalty naturally lay towards her son Sigtrygg and her brother Máelmorda rather than with her ex-husband Brian who had rejected her. However, the role which history has ascribed to her as a scheming femme fatale is surely exaggerated, based more on the contemporary suspicion of strong, independent women than on historical facts.
This picture from one of the Stora Hammars stones on Gotland shows a woman urging her men on to fight, rather as history has portrayed Gormflaith.
Brodir was there because he was being paid, but also because Man was threatened by Brian.
The battle of Clontarf Later chroniclers describe the conflict which was building up as the culmination of two hundred years of fighting for power between the Vikings and the Irish. Clontarf was where it was finally resolved. Brian Boru mobilised all his minor kings and his allies, including Vikings from Limerick and the Hebrides. His predecessor, Máel Sechnaill, brought 1,500 men from Meath. Brian’s assembled army amounted to 7,500 men and was led by his oldest son, Murchad. Towards the end of April 1014 this huge army surrounded Dublin and closed all roads around the harbour town. Inside Dublin, Sigtrygg had also gathered a formidable force. He himself had 2,000 well-equipped Dublin warriors. Sigurd came with 1,000 Vikings from the Orkney Isles and Brodir with 1,000 from the Isle of Man. Máelmorda rallied 3,000 poorly equipped men from Leinster. On the night of 22nd April Brian’s spies reported that a huge fleet was leaving the harbour. Rumours circulated that Sigtrygg Silkybeard’s allies had 238
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abandoned Dublin and left for home. However, the fleet rowed just a few kilometres up the coast and landed an army on the shore at Clontarf. In those days Dublin lay on the south side of the river Liffey and was connected to the north side and Clontarf only by one simple wooden bridge. Brian’s troops controlled the bridge. By this manoeuvre the Vikings succeeded in being able to choose the site of battle, which is always strategically important, and they gained time to organise themselves. The Viking alliance formed up with their backs to the shore. Sigtrygg Silkybeard’s son, Olav, took up position on the outside left flank with 1,000 Dublin warriors. Sigtrygg had at the last moment opted out of taking part in the battle himself, and stayed in Dublin with 1,000 warriors. Nobody knows why he decided at the last minute to stay away from a battle he had been working towards for years. Perhaps he wanted to protect the population and the wealth in Dublin against a possible overwhelming attack by Brian? Perhaps he had secretly accepted payment from Brian to stay away, as some sources claim? Whatever the explanation, it was his son Olav who represented him on the battlefield. Máelmorda drew up his lightly armed troops from Leinster on Olav’s right. The men from
Orkney formed up in the middle under Sigurd’s raven banner. Sigurd was the real leader of the army in Sigtrygg’s absence and the one who by dint of his seniority and experience must surely have laid out the main strategy. Brodir stood on the right flank with the men of Man. Brian didn’t take part in the battle either, but stayed behind in his tented camp with a small guard troop. His oldest son Murchad mac Brian led the Munster alliance. Straight opposite Olav stood 1,000 Viking mercenaries from Limerick, the Hebrides and elsewhere. Beside them were 1,500 clansmen from Connaught under the leadership of their king. Murchad placed his 2,000 Munster men in the middle, facing Sigurd. The left flank was made up of 1,500 men from Dál Cais, led by Murchad’s 15-year-old brother Donnchad mac Brian and his uncle, Ulf. Máel Sechnaill refused to take part in the battle and placed his men on a height to the left of the field, where they would have a good view of events. So there were a good 6,000 men on each side on the plain at Clontarf. The battle started in the usual way with each side throwing insults at the other, resulting usually in warriors from each side coming forward to meet each other in personal duels to the accompaniment of yells of jubilation and jeering from both sides. Meanwhile, the opposing lines moved slowly towards each other. As soon as they were in range, arrows were fired and stones and spears thrown, in the hope of breaking the enemy’s fighting spirit. Neither of the lines gave way, and the warriors on both sides readied themselves for hand-to-hand fighting. The Viking alliance had the upper hand at first. Their experience in battle and their strong weapons forced Murchad’s line to swing back, but it did not break. Only the Viking mercenaries on the Irish right flank held position and repelled the Dublin Vikings. On the Dublin Vikings’ right flank, Brodir started a storming attack on Ulf ’s standard, but ended up in a personal duel with Ulf and was knocked unconscious. Murchad’s Munster men were elite troops, and all their leaders had some sort of family tie with Brian. Half of them pressed hard on Brodir’s leaderless troops and forced them back to their ships on the shore. Among the losses in this action was Murchad mac Brian himself.
Sigurd’s and Máelmorda’s men faced the rest of the Munster men and gradually began to gain advantage over them. But Sigurd’s raven banner was like a magnet to the enemy, which constantly stormed the shield wall round the standard bearer and the earl. In the end they broke through, and Sigurd’s standard bearer was cut down. Sigurd’s banner is described as having a magic power. It was said that even though it always brought victory to the army, it always brought death to the bearer. So nobody would take it up, for fear of being killed. A fallen banner only signifies defeat, and the warriors in the ranks began to become uneasy. So Sigurd grasped the banner himself and raised it. The Irish cut him down and killed him a few minutes later. The battle waged on, interrupted only by short pauses which allowed the warriors on both sides to move the wounded out of the way. When evening came, the Viking alliance was in a serious situation. Both flanks had broken, Sigurd had been killed and Brodir was injured. Ulf controlled the shore. Many threw themselves into the sea elsewhere and tried to swim out to the ships, often drowning in the attempt. Olav and a bigger group tried to fight their way out to retreat to safety in Dublin. Máel Sechnaill saw how things were heading and now threw himself into the fight. He blocked the bridge over the Liffey, and Olav Sigtryggsson and nearly all the surviving leaders of the Viking alliance were killed in the fighting which followed. c hap ter 6
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The Vikings used silver as a measure of value. So silver was attractive booty and a symbol of wealth. Payment rings, fittings and brooches found buried in Rollag in Norway.
Brodir and a handful of warriors had sought shelter in a copse not far from the town. There they discovered Brian’s relatively undefended camp and stormed the king’s tent. The watch was outnumbered, and Brian was cut down by Brodir himself, according to the Irish sources. However, Brodir’s forces were soon outnumbered and Brodir was taken prisoner. Ulf killed him in a gruesome manner, as revenge for his killing of Brian. It is impossible to reckon the losses in this battle, but it is estimated that only a fifth of the Viking army survived the battle and the subsequent massacres. None of the Viking leaders survived apart from Sigtrygg Silkybeard who had stayed in Dublin. On the Irish side, somewhere between 1,600 and 4,000 were killed, in addition to both Murchad and Brian Boru himself.
The Vikings’ last phase in Ireland The defeat at Clontarf did not immediately change 240
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the political situation between Irish and Vikings, nor Dublin’s status as the regional power-centre. Sigtrygg Silkybeard was still alive, with several thousand men around him. Brian’s death, however, led to the resurrection of Máel Sechnaill as supreme king and the collapse of Munster’s hold on the Norse and Irish settlements around the Irish Sea. Canute the Great was fighting his way to power in England and stood ready to fill the vacuum. Canute’s long sword arm soon reached Ireland and several of the southern Viking colonies recognised him as their superior. The Waterford Vikings led by Ragnvald Ragnvaldsson took advantage of the Dublin Vikings’ decline to steadily take control of the colonies around the Irish Sea. Sigtrygg Silkybeard tried to re-establish some of his former dominance, but in 1022 the Dublin fleet suffered a humiliating defeat against the king of Ulaid, who was probably supported by Ragnvald. Sigtrygg Silkybeard was further weakened in 1026, when an army from Ulster raided within Dublin’s immediate neighbourhood, and he was completely humbled in 1029 when he was taken prisoner by the king of Brega and was freed only on payment of a king’s ransom. Sigtrygg Silkybeard was able to sit relatively secure while Canute the Great was alive, so long as the tax income was flowing in Canute’s direction. When Canute the Great died in 1035, Ragnvald came to Dublin and demanded Sigtrygg’s abdication. Sigtrygg responded by having Ragnvald assassinated. This event led to a political crisis in Ireland, which ended with the ageing Sigtrygg being exiled from Dublin. He had been ruling Dublin more or less continually for 47 years, longer than anyone before or since. Sigtrygg Silkybeard died in 1042, probably aged over 70. Sigtrygg’s impact on the area was formidable. In the 990s he introduced the minting of coin in Dublin and towards the end he established a bishopric in the town. In 1028 he undertook a pilgrimage to Rome. He had successes both before and after Clontarf. On the broader scale, however, the end of his rule can be seen as a significant stage in the decline of Viking power in Ireland. Sigtrygg’s going marked the end of Dublin’s position as the leading Norse centre in Ireland, though the town continued to be an important pawn in the
continuing conflict between the kings in Munster and Leinster. Dublin would survive as an independent kingdom until 1171, but after Sigtrygg Silkybeard was exiled the kings were mostly Irish, or members of various Viking dynasties which were well integrated with the local royal families and had become more Gall-Gaedhil than Viking. The first of these ‘half-blood Vikings’ to hold power in Dublin was Echmarcach (‘Horseman’), king of Man and the Isles and son of Ragnvald Gudrødsson who had died in 1005. Echmarcach had established himself as the dominant power on the Isle of Man about 1030, and he also controlled the Norse settlements in Galloway and on the Hebrides. Echmarcach was Canute the Great’s man in the region, and after Canute’s death he was able to emerge as an independent power. With help from Donnchad mac Brian he took power in Dublin after Sigtrygg. However, he didn’t get to be king for long. In 1038 he was challenged by Sigtrygg’s nephew Ivar Haraldsson and forced to leave the town. Ivar Haraldsson held royal power till 1046 with the support of Leinster. Then Echmarcach succeeded in wresting power back from the L einster dynasty, with help from the king in Munster. Six years later, Echmarcach was supplanted by Murchad, son of the Leinster king Diarmata mac Mael.
The Irish now started to recapture territory around the Irish Sea. Echmarcach was expelled from the Isle of Man in 1061 and the island given as a fiefdom to Gudrød Sigtryggsson. Ireland and the Irish Sea were now Irish, and the Vikings’ time in Ireland was nearly over. In a final spasm, a man by the name of Gudrød Crovan succeeded in being declared king in Dublin in 1089 (1091) and ruling the town until his death in 1095. Gudrød Crovan first appears on record in the context of supporting Harald Hardråde’s invasion of England in 1066. Following the defeat at Stamford Bridge, Gudrød is recorded to have arrived on Man at the court of Gudrød Sigtryggson. He later became king of the Isles himself, prior to arriving in Ireland. After Gudrød, Dublin only had Irish rulers. Norse names lived on in Gaelic form for many generations within the royal families, but the Vikings’ language and customs were long gone. The politics of Viking Age Ireland appear complex. This is because of the rich body of written sources giving detailed insight into local events. Similar but less well documented political complexities could probably also be found elsewhere. The Vikings’ activities around Ireland were widespread and complex, but they cannot be compared with what was happening on mainland Britain; in England their intervention in the country’s economic, political and cultural life would have an everlasting effect.
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Axe head found during excavations in South Great George’s Street, Dublin, evidence of troubled times.
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England The first recorded visit to England by Scandinavian sea-warriors was when a group of Vikings landed on Portland Island on the Wessex coast in 789. This event marks the beginning of 300 years of Viking warfare in England.
Opposite: The Mammen man, from 970. This well-equipped warrior is based on finds from ‘Bjerringhøj’, a chief ’s burial mound at Mammen in Denmark. The richly decorated axe has given origin to the name of a Viking Age ornamental style, the Mammen style. The spear and sword are also decorated in Mammen style, but are from different burials. The decoration on the nose-protector on the helmet is also Mammen style. The raven motif on the banner was associated with the Danish royal family, was carried by the leaders of the Great Heathen Army and was also a symbol of the kings in York. 242
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ccording to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Vikings who attacked Portland in 789 were from Hordaland20 in Norway. We don’t know whether this and the other early attacks came via the Orkney Isles, but the islands certainly were a launching platform for numerous attacks on England and Ireland in the coming years. After this first recorded attack the Vikings disappear from the source documents for four years until 793. Was this first recorded arrival in England an isolated incident, or were there other, unrecorded, attacks? The second alternative is more likely. Why would the great King Offa of Mercia extend his coastal defences in 792 if he had not been exposed to attacks from the sea and was frightened that more might follow? What might have seemed to King Offa and his contemporaries as a minor but growing irritation suddenly became deadly serious on 8th June 793 when Vikings attacked St Cuthbert’s monastery on the holy island of Lindisfarne, the most sacred place in England. Many saw the plundering of Lindisfarne as God’s punishment for the sins of the people of Northumbria and England. The attack was also interpreted as an assault on vi k i ng i n va s ion s
Christendom itself. Gruesome tales of the Viking ravages on Lindisfarne spread throughout Europe. The pirates had not only plundered the monastery for valuables, but had also killed monks, smashed everything they found including holy relics and abducted several of the monks to a life of slavery. The person who was most enthusiastic in explaining the attack as a divine punishment for the nation’s moral shortcomings was the monk Alcuin from York. He was one of the most influential spiritual thinkers of the day and was an adviser to the Frankish King Charlemagne. Alcuin was hoping that news of the attack could lead to a strengthening of the weak political position of the church in northern England. The group who attacked the monastery on Lindisfarne in 793 were probably a breakaway group from a bigger fleet which rounded Cape Wrath in north-west Scotland in 793 and attacked monasteries and settlements on the Hebrides. We can imagine that several groups of Vikings with bases on the islands tried their luck in the west, against Pictland, Ireland and England. These were surely easy targets, for the Scandinavians were well aware of the political organisation and military strength of mainland Europe. Trading
The attack on Lindisfarne ‘Fearsome warnings came over Northumbria, terrifying the people. There were intense lightning flashes, and people saw terrifying dragons flying through the sky. These signs were followed by a great famine and later the same year on 8th June hordes of heathen men tragically laid waste God’s church on Lindisfarne by plundering and killing.’ the anglo-saxon chronicle for the year 793
The Lindisfarne stone is part of a cross which was probably raised in memory of the dead after the Viking attack in 793. The stone shows what appears to be a group of attacking Vikings. On the other side there is a motif of the Day of Judgement. Many people interpreted the attack as a sign that Doomsday was imminent.
Alcuin (735–805) was one of the leading intellectuals of his day. Among other things, he wrote about the Viking attack on Lindisfarne. He was born in York, but worked for long periods between 782 and 804 at Charlemagne’s court in France.
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ships, missionaries and travelling monks had been bringing luxury goods, weapons, information and ideas from Europe to Scandinavia for centuries. The monasteries were particularly attractive targets. They lay in isolated situations by land but were readily accessible by sea. They were usually not fortified, and even those that were fortified could not mount much defence. In addition to being a potential source of slaves, the monasteries were rich in goods. Candlesticks, crucifixes, silver vessels, book fittings, gold clasps and jewelled reliquary casks must have given Vikings gold fever. The treasure hunt led to a race between different groups to find the monasteries first, with the result that many establishments were plundered frequently and repeatedly. The response to this in many cases was that religious communities disappeared or moved to safer locations. Many archaeological finds in Scandinavia provide evidence that the Vikings who started plundering monasteries found great profit in their enterprises, and we can assume that the plundered goods financed many a chieftain’s domestic ambitions. vi k i ng i n va s ion s
The Viking bands from the Orkney Isles who roamed the coast of Scotland in 793 met weak resistance, and so came back again the following year. This time, they plundered monasteries on Skye and Iona. From here it was not far to Ireland, which received visits by raiding Vikings the year after that. The third recorded attack on England itself was against the monastery at Jarrow, just south of Lindisfarne. Viking attacks usually took the form of quick raids by two or three ships’ crews, sometimes more, completed before the monastery or the neighbourhood had time to organise any effective defence. At Jarrow, however, the Vikings met tougher resistance than anticipated, and their leaders were killed. Bad weather caused several of their ships to founder off Tynemouth, and the local population killed all the shipwreck survivors they found. After this hectic prologue, there was a sudden pause in Viking attacks on England. If the annals are to be believed, the Vikings stayed away for the next 30 years, except for some minor incursions into Kent. The most important reason for this is that in Scotland there was still a strong Pictish kingdom which could keep southbound Vikings at
a distance, either by agreement or by force of arms and most probably by both these means. The Vikings concentrated their efforts instead on the Scottish coast, the Hebrides, Ireland and the Isle of Man. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Kent was first attacked by Viking raiders in the late 8th century and became an attractive target for Scandinavian raiders because of its wealthy minsters, often located on exposed coastal locations. In 804, the nuns of Lyminge were granted refuge in Canterbury to escape the Vikings, and in 811 Kentish forces gathered to repel a group of Vikings based on the Isle of Sheppey. When the Vikings returned to England in force in 835, they came from a different direction. From his fiefdom in Rüstringen in today’s north Germany, the exiled Danish King Harald Klak had unleashed his Vikings on France. Some of these crossed the Channel to plunder in England. It has always been an important question for historians whether the many attacks on England in this period originated from Scandinavia, from Ireland or from bases on the continent. The answer is that they came from all these regions. The Vikings raided England from France, from Ireland and directly from Scandinavia. Their reasons varied; they often turned their attacks on England when they were under pressure in France or had been paid to stay away. The Vikings in Ireland raided England for both economic and political reasons. There were many lucrative targets to be plundered, and they often tried to gain control of regional trade. England was the closest target if you travelled via the Orkney and Shetland Isles and didn’t fancy Ireland or Scotland. The political situation in England was unstable, making it easier to carry out raids there than in the more centralised kingdom of France. At this time, England consisted of five more or less independent kingdoms: Northumbria in the north; Mercia in the centre and inland west; East Anglia in the east; Kent in the south-east and Wessex in the south-west. Two smaller kingdoms, Essex and Sussex, had been absorbed into Mercia and Wessex respectively. Until 830 the king of Mercia was considered supreme king in England, but after the death of King Offa in 796 the ambitious kings of Wessex
gradually took over this position. The Vikings often took advantage of the many conflicts between the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and between the AngloSaxons, the Britons and the Celtic population in northern and western England. The attacks generally followed the same pattern. The Vikings appeared in early summer and left in late summer to travel home to their farms in Scandi navia or, as became increasingly their custom, to winter camps on the French coast.
The Vikings attack southern England The first really big attack was aimed at the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, at the mouth of the Thames, in 835. It came from the direction of the continent and was followed by a series of smaller attacks right along the coast, westwards as far as the Welsh border. These attacks revealed that the country’s weak points lay in the west, where there was a rebellious local population of Britons. Wessex had invaded the regions of Cornwall and Devon a few years earlier, and the Vikings tried several times to stir up local dissatisfaction with the kings of Wessex. In 836 a fleet of 25–35 ships attacked Carhampton in Somerset but had to withdraw after a series of defeats. In 838, on the other hand, the local people in Cornwall joined with the Vikings in an attempt to capture the town of Exeter in Devon. The Vikings’ main aim was plunder, but the Britons saw this as an opportunity to expel the Anglo-Saxons. King Egbert of Wessex faced the Vikings and the Britons on Hingston Down in what is today Dartmoor National Park in Devon. King Egbert’s army drove them to flight, back into Cornwall. Despite this defeat, the Vikings soon got a good foothold in this part of the country. However, the local population began to feel that they had had enough of Vikings arriving year after year, and support eventually gave way to active resistance. Raids of plunder continued unchallenged further along the whole coast of Wessex, Kent and East Anglia. Portland Island, where the Vikings had first appeared in 789, was plundered again in 840, and Southampton, an important administrative and trading centre for Wessex, was also plundered that year. c hap ter 6
Offa, king of Mercia (775–796) was ruler of England’s most powerful kingdom when the Vikings attacked, but neither he nor his successors managed to halt their attacks on the kingdom.
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On 8th June 793 the Vikings attacked St Cuthbert’s Monastery on the island of Lindisfarne, the most sacred place in England. The picture shows Vikings returning to their ships after plundering and setting fire to the monastery. They would take such things as candlesticks, monstrances, reliquaries and fittings from the holy books. Wine and alcoholic drinks were also attractive booty. The reason for setting fire to the buildings was probably to avoid pursuit by vengeful spirits.
The early years of the Vikings’ interaction with England are mostly hidden in the mists of history. For every attack on England of which a record has been preserved in written sources, numerous attacks must have gone unrecorded. The few that we know of are the ones suffered by the Kingdom of Wessex, because that is where the written sources mostly come from. Even these have many years without mention of attacks. We know from French sources that the Vikings were active in the Channel at this time and must have had easy access to England. Absence of attacks from the English annals is therefore not necessarily conclusive evidence that attacks did not happen; it just means that they were not documented. Vikings probably visited England every year in the 850s and 860s. London was attacked by Vikings for the first time in 842. The town on the Thames was at that time not a capital city, but an Anglo-Saxon trading centre, controlled by the king of Wessex and rich in goods. The town had been founded by the Romans as Londinium in around 50 AD. When the Romans left in 410, its strategic position ensured that it soon came to life again. It was controlled by Mercia from around 730 and by Wessex from 825. From London, one could control both access to the interior of southern England via the Thames, and export routes to overseas. This was important for Wessex. Following the Viking attack, the Roman town walls were restored and extended, in the hope of being able to stop the Vikings on their next visit – which came in 851. Nor were East Anglia, Kent, Mercia and Northumbria spared from annual raids. King Roedwulf of Northumbria was killed in a battle against the Vikings in 844, and from around 850 onwards the pressure almost became too much for the English kingdoms. That was when the Vikings began to overwinter in England, first on the Isle of Thanet, a peninsula at the eastern tip of Kent, and then in many other places along the coast. In 851 a huge fleet of Viking ships (the sources say 350) arrived at the Isle of Thanet after an attack on Sandwich further south. They built a harbour on the island to protect the ships and then marched to the important church town of Canterbury and burnt it to the ground. Kent seemed to be attractive as it provided access to 248
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major routes, both by land and by sea. In a battle outside London, they drove King Berthwulf of Mercia and his army to flight. However, King Ethelwulf of Wessex intercepted the Vikings at Aclea, probably somewhere in today’s Surrey, and put them to flight. English chroniclers described this as the greatest military victory on English soil to date, whereas a French writer drily noted that the Vikings met resistance in England that year. The truth lies somewhere between these two extremes. Anyway, the Vikings withdrew, first to their winter camp on the Isle of Thanet and then over the Channel to Viking encampments on the Rhine, the Somme or the Seine. However, they had initiated a new tradition of overwintering in England. The next winter camp we hear about was set up on Sheppey, a big and fertile island by the mouth of the Thames. All we know further about this is that a big Viking fleet came there in 855. We know more about the next overwintering. In 860 the Viking chief Weland (Vemund?) (see also page 313) travelled from France to England with a sizeable fleet. The aim was no less than to plunder Winchester, capital town of the Kingdom of Wessex. King Ethelred had been crowned that year, and he was away on his coronation tour when the Vikings attacked. So they met little resistance in the town, but on the way back to their ships, weighed down by ‘an enormous heap of booty’ as the historian John Asser described it, they were attacked and put to flight, leaving their booty behind. Vemund then overwintered on Sheppey Island before returning to France. Another tradition also came to England at that time. In 865 the Vikings were for the first time offered payment to withdraw from a district. A small Viking army which settled on the Isle of Thanet negotiated with the local population to accept silver and valuables in exchange for abstaining from plundering. The locals considered this preferable to fighting with them. The Vikings accepted the offer and took the silver, but on reflection decided that plundering would give better returns all the same. Using the peace agreement as cover, they sneaked away from their camp on the Isle of Thanet and started a bloody raiding rampage in eastern Kent.
The Great Army In autumn 865 a large group of Vikings landed in East Anglia. They came not to plunder, but to conquer and settle there. According to the AngloSaxon Chronicle this army was led by Ivar (Imar), Halvdan and Gorm (Guthrum). They probably belonged to branches of the Danish royal family. Four other Viking kings are named in connection with the Great Heathen Army: first Ulf (Ubba) and later Åskjell (Oscytl), Bagsecg and Anund (Anwend). Several earls are also mentioned. The Great Heathen Army, as this military array is called in the sources, was made up of a number of smaller units consisting of a chieftain or king with his guard retinue, household, volunteers, associates and others who had come together for the enterprise. The army’s tactical manoeuvres over the next five years demonstrated a clear understanding of the strategic military situation in England and a good knowledge of the political situation in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Using brutal coordinated attacks supported by well-grounded intelligence information and rapid advances and retreats, the army came within a hairsbreadth of crushing all organised resistance in England. The Vikings in the Great Heathen Army made use of the old Roman road system which connected all parts of England, making it possible for them to cover great distances in short time. Raiding parties had been using the road network for many years to reach far inland, and the knowledge they had built up of the country’s geography had surely been passed onto the leaders of the army. After receiving the East Anglians’ submission and tribute at Thetford in Norfolk, the army did not withdraw for the winter as expected. Instead, they built fortified winter quarters in Thetford. This is the first record of overwintering somewhere other than on the coast, and this may have been a completely new pattern of behaviour. We can imagine panic spreading among the local population and frenetic discussions at the court of King Edmund when they realised that the Vikings were here to stay. It was only 38 years since East Anglia had freed itself from Mercia, and now an enemy was threatening the kingdom again.
There have been many attempts to estimate the number of warriors in the Great Heathen Army, and the numbers have varied from as few as 500 to an unbelievable 50,000. The army probably consisted of between 2,000 and 5,000 warriors, surely never more than 5,000. There were no lines of supply, either from Scandinavia or from a central base in England, from which the army could draw replenishments to support such large numbers. The army had to cater for itself with what it managed to acquire in the field. To feed so many troops requires advanced logistics. In addition to the warriors there was a following of an unknown number of slaves, women and children. We can assume that most members of the army were recruited from among Danish Vikings, probably in groups that had previously operated in France, the Netherlands and Saxony. Other parts of the army surely came from Ireland with Ivar, who had been active there in the late 850s and early 860s. We can also assume that Ivar was almost certainly Ivar the Boneless and that he only joined the army’s leadership soon after it arrived in England. Some of the groups who took part in the army most certainly came from Norway, or were Norwegians who were already operating overseas. Evidence of this has been found in graves from various places, including the camp at Repton in Mercia where the army overwintered in 874. These groups all accepted a shared leadership and functioned as a single army, but they probably also had opportunities to carry out plundering raids of their own. Over the years the army was in operation, new groups would join just as others left.
The Vikings capture York The winter months while the army was laid up in East Anglia were used to gather intelligence about the political situations in the neighbouring kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex. Northumbria was riven by discord. King Aella was at war with his predecessor, Osberht. The Vikings wanted to profit from this conflict. Speed and mobility had always been their trademark at sea, and they now applied this talent on land. As part of the tribute from the East Anglians, they had commandeered horses. These enabled a rapid advance c hap ter 6
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north along the Roman roads. In autumn 866 the Great Heathen Army followed Ermine Street north to York, which they took on 1st November without serious resistance. York was the Roman Eburacum, founded in 71 AD as a garrison town for 7,000 Roman legionaries. In 866 it was not only an important Roman ruin, but the seat of one of the two archbishops in England and the richest trading centre north of London. It was strategically situated in the fertile agricultural land of present-day Yorkshire and was accessible from the sea along the rivers Humber and Ouse. The town offered the Viking army both a choice of escape routes if need arose, and access to a rich surrounding countryside with great opportunities for plunder. Under its new name of Jorvik, York would gradually become the most important Viking town in northern England. The immediate priority, however, was to pacify Northumbria. On 21st March 867 the local population hit back under the combined leadership of Aella and Osberht. The Northumbrians stormed the town, and vicious hand-to-hand fighting took place both inside and outside the old Roman town wall. But the Vikings were well prepared and the attack failed. A chronicler reported that the Northumbrians were cut down and that both Aella and Osberht were killed. The Vikings now controlled a major English town for the first time. Halvdan installed a puppet king, Egbert, in Northumbria. Egbert was to govern ‘until the time when Ivar and Halvdan would return’, and a garrison of Vikings was installed to supervise him, before the army went on to Mercia. Towards autumn, the army reached Nottingham where they besieged and stormed the town. The Vikings overwintered there in 867–868. King Burgred of Mercia didn’t have enough troops to drive the Vikings out, and he sought support from his brother-in-law, King Ethelred of Wessex. Together, they led their armies to Notting ham and tried to urge the Vikings to come out of the fortress and face them in open battle. Not wanting to abandon a strong defensive position, the Vikings declined the offer. The outcome was a peace treaty whereby Mercia paid the Vikings to go away and granted them safe passage through Mercian territory.
Back in York, the army was able to regroup and recruit more warriors. We must assume that after the Great Heathen Army’s victories became known, an influx of Scandinavian warrior bands arrived in York and other places, eager to join in the warfare against the English. By the autumn of 869 Ivar and Halvdan felt strong enough to return to East Anglia where, after an ‘orgy of plunder and violence’ according to the chroniclers, they came in late autumn to Thetford and prepared to overwinter there. During the winter, King Edmund gathered troops for a final showdown with the Viking army. At Hoxne in November 869 the Vikings annihilated the last of Edmund’s forces. The king himself was taken prisoner, and depending on which source you choose to believe was either executed immediately or killed as an offering to Odin – by Ivar and Halvdan themselves.
The first war against Wessex In East Anglia the army split in two. Ivar got news of the political circumstances in Ireland and considered the time was right to return to Dublin. But the northern borders of the kingdom in York had to be made secure first. In 870 Ivar took control over the capital of the Strathclyde kingdom, Dumbarton in present-day Scotland. The Vikings’ Dublin–York axis could now dominate northern England and southern Scotland. From there, Ivar sailed over to Dublin in 871 with 200 ships laden with warriors, booty and slaves. Anglo-Saxons, Britons and Picts were among the ethnic groups sold in the slave market there. Halvdan led the rest of the army south towards Wessex in summer 870. Wessex, and possibly Kent, were the only Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which had avoided the army’s plundering. The Vikings captured the town of Reading, by the Wessex border, and set up a fortified base there. Strategically placed where the river Kennet runs into the Thames, Reading was an ideal starting point for systematic plundering of the surrounding area. However, if the Vikings thought that Wessex would fall as easily as East Anglia and Northumbria, they were seriously mistaken. King Ethelred controlled a well-organised kingdom and according to c hap ter 6
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some sources he could muster 30,000 men. Most of these were enlisted farmers and peasants, but Wessex could also mobilise up to 5,000 elite troops. Almost immediately after their arrival in Reading (after three days, according to the chronicles), between Christmas and New Year 870 the Vikings faced their first challenge. This took the form of skirmishes with a local unit of conscripted troops from Berkshire under the leadership of the king’s ealdorman (earl), Ethelwulf, at Englefield. Bands of Vikings out plundering were forced back to the camp, which was then surrounded. Four days later, King Ethelred and his brother Alfred arrived with the main army. A bigger engagement followed on 4th January 871 when Ethelred launched an unsuccessful attack on the Viking camp. Ethelwulf, who had put the Vikings to flight only a few days earlier, was killed in the fighting. A series of bloody battles between the Vikings and Ethelred followed, starting at Ashdown only four days later. The precise location of the battle of Ashdown is lost to history, but it probably took place somewhere on the big chalk downs that extend between Reading and Marlborough. Considering that Ethelred had only four days to reorganise his forces, it probably took place somewhere near Reading. The Viking army, still full of self-doubt after the defeat at Reading, probably planned a pincer manoeuvre. Halvdan split his forces. He took control of one half together with Bagsecg and probably also Gorm and Ulf, and he delegated command of the other half to some of his earls. Ethelred and Alfred must have understood this tactic, for they divided their own army to face the two Viking detachments. Ethelred fought against Halvdan and Alfred against the earls. The battle 252
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did not go well for the Vikings. Bagsecg fell, and Halvdan had to retreat with great losses. On the second front, things went even worse. The sources tell that five earls were killed. How did Wessex achieve such an overwhelming victory? Alfred and Ethelred probably decided to concentrate their attacks on the leaders of the Viking army. They would not be difficult to identify, since they fought, as was traditional, in the front ranks under their own banners. Despite their defeat at Ashdown, the Vikings still held the initiative in the war, and already on 22nd January the two armies clashed again, at Basing. This time the Vikings won, so decisively that for the next two months they could plunder Wessex without fearing Alfred and Ethelred. On his side, Ethelred used the time to enlist fresh troops. A new battle took place between King Ethelred and Halvdan in March at a place referred to in the sources as Merantun, 9 km south-west of Marlborough, Wiltshire. This time the Englishmen came worryingly close to total victory over the Vikings. Halvdan had again split his army in two and again they were pushed back. Halfway into flight they turned, attacked Ethelred’s position and inflicted a mortal wound on him. Was this a tactic based on the experiences of the defeat at Ashdown, or was it the result of a serious misjudgement on the Wessex side? In any case, it was the Vikings who held the field at Merantun. The fact that Halvdan again chose to split his forces indicates that the conscious choice of a tactic which had proved successful in earlier battles. As mentioned earlier, the army was made up of a number of smaller units which had no problems operating independently. Or were the internal relationships between the leaders of the army so difficult for Halvdan to control that the army just didn’t manage to work together against bigger forces? Be that as it may, the Vikings both achieved victories and suffered defeats using this tactic. Wessex went from bad to worse during 871. Just as the Englishmen were having to withdraw from Basing, a new Viking fleet arrived to plunder the south coast. These reversals culminated when Alfred, who had become king after Ethelred’s death, suffered yet another defeat, this time at Wilton.
Alfred had to fight with his army greatly reduced both in numbers and in morale. Halvdan was standing on the threshold of taking over the whole kingdom. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle summarises the year 871 thus: This year nine big battles were fought against the plundering army in the kingdom south of the Thames, in addition to innumerable skirmishes which Alfred, the king’s brother, a single ealdorman and the king’s thegn fought.
Alfred must have felt very insecure. He sometimes had to fight a war on two fronts, mainly against the Viking army but also against frequent raiding fleets along the Channel coast. So in desperation he asked the Viking army for a truce, and surprisingly Halvdan accepted the request. Wessex was the only kingdom that had offered the Viking army significant resistance. This had probably surprised the Vikings, who were accustomed to local defence rapidly falling apart. The campaign in Wessex had already cost the lives of at least one Viking king and nine earls, in addition to hundreds, perhaps as many as a thousand, warriors killed or injured. It is perhaps not so surprising that Halvdan accepted the offer of a truce. His own army was on the verge of collapse, and a pause in the warfare was a welcome chance to lick his wounds. The Vikings drew back to Mercia and settled in London for the winter of 871–72. Mercia was not strong enough to resist the Vikings, and there was no help to be had from Wessex. So the king agreed a peace treaty with the Vikings. When spring came, Halvdan took his main army back to Northumbria, but London remained more or less under Viking control till 886.
Mercia falls to the Vikings Halvdan and the army returned to York in 873, after an absence of four years. Here, they recruited fresh troops for a new invasion of Mercia. They established winter quarters in Torksey, along the river Trent. From there they plundered the surrounding countryside of Lindsey (present-day Lincolnshire). Mercia pleaded for peace and paid taxes to the army to prevent further plundering, but the Vikings
broke the agreement before it had even come into force. After effectively breaking all resistance in Lindsey, the army moved south to Repton, a burial place of the kings of Mercia. Torksey and Repton both lie on the Trent and were easily accessible both by boat and by horse. The Vikings probably used mainly their ships to reach central Mercia on this occasion. The capital town of Tamworth was sacked by the army in 874. King Burgred fled and eventually ended up in Rome, where he stayed until he died. Tamworth remained a ruin until 913, when Ethelfled, daughter of King Alfred, rebuilt the town and constructed a fort to defend it against the Vikings. The army set up a fortified winter camp in Repton among the ruins of the burial place of St Wigstan and the kings of Mercia. Halvdan installed a puppet king, Ceolwulf, who swore solemnly that he placed himself and the kingdom at the disposal of the army. This was an empty oath, as Ceolwulf had no authority beyond what the Vikings gave him. The chronicle describes him as a ‘stupid servant’. Sickness and famine assailed the army while they were in Repton. A number of single graves and a mass grave with over 260 skeletons have been discovered in and around the fortifications. Most of them probably died as victims of an epidemic. Ivar the Boneless is probably also buried here. His years of struggle to gain control of Dublin ended with his death, and his bones may have been brought back to the main army and buried in the mass grave in Repton. However, the Vikings who froze and suffered in Repton had much to be proud of. They controlled three Anglo-Saxon kingdoms: East Anglia, Northumbria and the eastern part of Mercia, and they had brought mighty Wessex to its knees. At this moment, at the height of its power, the Great Heathen Army divided itself again. Halvdan went north to take control of the rest of Northumbria while his youngest brother, Gorm, continued the war against Wessex. Why did the Great Heathen Army divide itself at that particular time? First, many of the warriors had been in the field on active campaigns since the arrival of the army in England 12 years earlier. It was natural that many of these would wish to retire from active warfare. Many of them must have had c hap ter 6
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Throughout occupied England, little villages with Scandinavian settlers gradually grew up. Many of the settlers were warriors who left the Great Heathen Army and settled down as farmers. Others were newcomers from Scandinavia and the islands in the Western seas, seeking a fresh start in life. The picture is from the reconstructed ‘Dark Age village’ outside York.
wives and children who had either arrived with them or were from conquered England. The bloody sequence of battles in Wessex and the disease in Repton meant that some people had just had enough of warfare. Second, the fact that Wessex would be a constant threat to the Vikings’ control of the rest of England if it were not conquered, was in itself a reason to continue the war. Third, there was a change in the leadership of the army. We may assume that the new generation of leaders, guided mainly by Gorm, Åskjell and Anund, wanted to extend the field campaign and make their own mark on the war, thereby securing honour, wealth and immortal repute for themselves.
A new war against Wessex Gorm and his army spent the winter of 875–876 in Cambridge prior to launching their attack on Wessex in spring 876. If King Alfred had been busy with anything since the previous attack, it was certainly not the defence of his kingdom. The Great Heathen Army advanced more than 250 km, to Wareham in Dorset, without meeting any resistance at all, and there was no serious resistance when they plundered the western part of the kingdom. Alfred managed to get together a counter-offensive strong 254
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enough for him to negotiate a peace treaty with Gorm. The negotiations started at Wareham, where the Vikings accepted the terms and ‘swore oaths on the holy ring’, which was something they had never done before. The terms were that they must leave Wessex. Halfway through the negotiations, the Viking army broke out of Wareham and set course for Devon. With Alfred in pursuit, they captured Exeter and barricaded themselves in there. Gorm’s unexpected march was in response to news that a big Viking fleet had reached the coast of Devon and was heading east. Gorm’s plan was to revitalise his offensive by uniting with this fleet. However, a storm dispersed the fleet and several ships sank. Without these expected reinforcements, the Viking army was now isolated in Exeter, and it was not long before Alfred appeared on the scene. Gorm and the other leaders refused to leave their fortress, and Alfred offered them a new agreement instead. This time it was not enough to swear an oath on a holy ring. The Vikings must also hand over a number of prominent people as hostages. In autumn 877 Gorm made his way back to Mercia and set up winter camp in Gloucester. From here, he demanded that Ceolwulf abide by the terms of the treaty from 874 and put himself at Gorm’s disposal. Gorm demanded personal control
The Viking camp in Repton The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates that in 874 the Great Heathen Army overwintered in Repton and conquered all the land in the kingdom of Mercia. Excavations carried out at Repton between 1974 and 1993 have revealed this winter camp in the form of a D-shaped enclosure adjacent to the former bed of the river Trent, extending right to the Anglo-Saxon church which stood on the site of the present church. The original church contained the graves of St Wigstan and several kings of Mercia, and Repton was a centre of Mercian power until the Vikings put an end to the kingdom. The excavations revealed several weapon burials from Viking times and a mass grave containing the remains of at least 264 individuals. The mass grave is in a mound just outside what was the wall of the camp. It was first explored in 1686 by a worker, Thomas Walker. He told Dr. Simon Degge that he had seen a giant skeleton, ‘a full 9 feet (c. 2.7 metres) long, surrounded by hundreds of normalsized skeletons, all laid out so that the legs pointed in towards the giant in the middle.’ Thomas Walker took the skull of the giant and gave it to the local schoolmaster, who had it on display in a glass cabinet until it disappeared. When the grave was re-opened in 1787, the remains of the skeletons all lay in disorder, and there was no sign of the giant. The next excavation was in 1980–86, when the remains of at least 264 individuals were found. There was no sign of the central burial of a giant which Thomas Walker had described, but several weapons were found, plus several coloured pigments (used in burial rituals?) and silver coins from before 872. All this can suggest that a person of high status was buried here. Who was the giant buried in the middle? The archaeologists Martin Biddle and Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle wanted an answer to this question, and they turned to the chronicles and the sagas to find evidence. As the chronicles tell us that all four of the Viking kings left Repton alive in 874, it cannot have been one of them who was buried there. There was however a fifth leader of the Great Heathen Army, who died in 873. Ethelweard’s Chronicle tells of ‘the tyrant Iguar’, who came with the fleet from the north in 865 and overwintered in East Anglia. This Iguar has been identified as Ivar the Boneless, according to tradition one of Ragnar Lodbrok’s sons. He was probably a brother of Halvdan who was in Repton in 873/4. Ivar was with the army until 870, when he travelled north to capture Dumbarton
over all the land north of the river Welland, which extends inland for about 50 km from the Wash, the large bay which separates East Anglia from Mercia. This comprised the main part of the kingdom. Ceolwulf got to retain the little bit that was left. Most of the army settled in the region which later
Skull of a Viking buried in Repton. He had a little Thor’s hammer round his neck, and researchers think he was from Norway. and then, the Ulster annals tell us, sailed to Dublin in 871 with a big fleet to capture the Norsemen’s profitable base there. The annals for the year 873 state that ‘Imar, king of the Norsemen in Ireland, had died’, without specifying how that had happened. Ragnar Lodbroks saga says that ‘Ivar was buried in England in the old manner (i.e. by being laid in a mound) in a place exposed to attack, so that he could be on site to protect the land’. The name Beinlaus means ‘boneless’, but it could also mean that he had exceptionally big bones, like the giant in the grave. Ivar was called ‘Boneless’ in the same way as the giant in the story of Robin Hood was called ‘Little John’. So it is likely that the man who had been buried in the centre of the grave was the fifth leader of the Great Heathen Army, the legendary Ivar the Boneless. Several of the Viking leaders in Ireland and England, including Ivar the Boneless, have traditionally been thought to be sons of a man called Ragnar Lodbrok. Several studies have shown, however, that Ivar Lodbrok is a purely fictional character.
came to be known as ‘The Five Boroughs of the Danelaw’: Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham and Stamford. The threat to Wessex appeared to be over for the time being. From his base in Gloucester Gorm re-armed, while he and Ulf rekindled the ambitions to defeat c hap ter 6
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This is what the winter camp in Repton in the winter of 873–874 may have looked like. The moat was up to 4 metres deep and 4 metres wide and the wall was up to 6 metres high with a breastwork along the top. It would have taken 200 men five weeks to build the fortifications. 256
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Wessex. Ulf had overwintered with about 1,000 men in south Wales, and now they planned a coordinated invasion of Wessex in the winter of 877–878. Gorm attacked Dorset and Somerset, while Ulf with his fleet of 23 ships was to land in Cornwall and join up with Gorm’s forces somewhere inland. Ulf met unexpectedly strong resistance from the inhabitants of Devon, and in the battle of Contisbury Hill Ulf and 800 warriors were killed and ‘their sacred raven banner captured’, as said in the chronicle. Gorm had in the meantime set up a fortified camp in Chippenham, from which he had succeeded in subjugating large parts of Wessex. King Alfred’s army was on the point of falling apart, and he had no alternative than to make a strategic withdrawal to the swamp districts around Athelney in Somerset. Gorm’s Vikings, confident that they had achieved a comprehensive victory, didn’t pursue Alfred but instead started a ruthless campaign of plundering.
King Alfred strikes back
Alfred the Great was king of Wessex (871–899). He is honoured for preventing the Vikings from conquering the whole of England in the 9th century.
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From his involuntary exile in the swamp, Alfred set about organising a resistance campaign. He adopted several of the strategies used by the Vikings, such as widespread use of fortified support depots and small, mobile groups of warriors. His soldiers carried out a series of guerrilla raids on Viking supply lines and spies. At the same time, he built up his main army by recruiting men from Somerset and Wiltshire and the neighbouring parts of Hampshire and starting them on intensive training. Alfred was well into planning his own spring offensive when news reached him of Ulf ’s defeat at Contisbury Hill. He recognised this as a golden opportunity to seize the initiative, and he launched an attack on Gorm. He eventually managed to bring about a decisive engagement between the Vikings and his fresh, well-motivated troops in open battle at Eddington in Wiltshire. The Vikings were put to flight and pursued back to their fortress at Chippenham. Alfred besieged them there for two weeks, until Gorm had no other option but to accept a new peace offer. In addition to the usual oaths and hostages, Alfred extended the terms this time by requiring Gorm and his leading men to vi k i ng i n va s ion s
submit to baptism. Gorm was given the Christian name Ethelstan and solemn oaths were sworn about the terms of the withdrawal. However, Gorm remained in the fortress at Chippenham throughout the summer of 878. The Vikings were still strong enough to be a real threat to Wessex, but didn’t entirely trust that they would have safe passage to leave the country as Alfred had promised. They eventually left Wessex in the autumn for nearby Chichester in West Mercia, where they set up winter camp. Did Gorm still have ambitions to conquer Wessex? A new Viking army came to Fulham in the autumn of 878 and settled there for the winter. Was Gorm hoping for a combined campaign? Whether or not there were negotiations between the groups, in any event this came to nothing. The new army left England for the continent as soon as spring came. Gorm demobilised the remains of his army and established himself as a king in East Anglia. A final and formal peace treaty eventually came into force between Gorm and Alfred. Alfred got nominal control of London and all the country west of Watling Street, the old Roman main road. The boundary, which ran along the Thames, northwards up the river Lea to Luton, straight on to Bedford and then along the river Ouse to Watling Street, divided Anglo-Saxon England from the region which later came to be known as the Danelaw, the region which was governed by Danish law. Gorm had managed to create a Danish realm in England. But the boundary was not fixed and the peace was fragile, and in 884 it appeared that war was about to break out again. The arrival of a Viking army which had been operating around the Somme in France stimulated many of Gorm’s settlers to brush the dust off their battleaxes, roused by the prospect of armed clamour and plundered silver. Together, they attacked Rochester in Kent. Alfred responded by sending his fleet to East Anglia. After an initial victory over 16 Viking ships, Alfred’s fleet was forced into retreat by a new Viking fleet. Alfred also invaded London in 886. After this victory, the relationships appear to have stabilised again. Despite the defeat at sea, Alfred had strengthened his position as absolute leader of Anglo-Saxon Wessex, whose boundaries now appeared more secure than they had in 870.
Meanwhile, the Vikings were fortifying their position in the Danelaw. They set up five fortified support bases in the main development areas. As already mentioned, these five towns with their surrounding areas gradually came to be known as ‘The Five Boroughs’: Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham and Stamford. York continued as the capital centre and was also the starting point for colonisation throughout Northumbria. Those members of the Great Heathen Army who did not want to settle down and earn a peaceful livelihood went instead to France or Ireland. For ten years after 880 there was relative peace in England. Gorm controlled East Anglia until his death in 890. From around 880 till 895 a man called Gudrød Hardeknutsson operated as joint king in East Anglia. Gudrød must have been a respected leader, as he is also found as king in York in 883 after Halvdan’s death and later as king in Dublin in the 920s.
The Great Heathen Army returns In autumn 891/92 a large Viking fleet of about 250 ships assembled at Boulogne, with England as its target. This army was made up mainly of Vikings who had been defeated in the Netherlands the year before. News of these assembling troops soon reached England, and King Alfred wanted to ensure that they didn’t receive help from the Norse settlers in the Danelaw. He got the most important Viking chiefs in Northumbria and East Anglia to swear oaths that they would not help the invading army. But even though the chiefs had both sworn oaths and given Alfred hostages, they either could not or would not keep to the agreement. Perhaps the prospects of a final showdown with Wessex and of shares in the country’s wealth were too tempting. No sooner had the army landed than the inhabitants of the Danelaw were there wanting to take part. The invasion appeared outwardly to be relatively uncoordinated and chaotic, but behind this there was a sophisticated strategy. The army was to overrun and take control of Kent by a series of pincer manoeuvres, and then surround Alfred’s forces by attacking from Devon in the west and from East Mercia in the north. The underlying aim of the
invasion was probably to settle in England, for they brought women, children, horses and domestic animals with them from the continent. The fleet divided to make two separate landings on the Kent coast. The bigger force came up the now long-lost Limen estuary and attacked a Saxon fort near lonely St Rumwold’s church, Bonnington, killing all inside. They then moved on to attack and defeat one of Alfred’s unprepared garrisons at Appledore in southern Kent. Eighty ships under the leadership of Hallstein landed further east in Kent, on the Isle of Sheppey. Alfred put all his resources into getting hold of this force, and he hunted the Vikings for several weeks until Hallstein finally had to agree to a treaty. The Vikings had to leave Kent and travel to the Viking bases in Benfteet and Mersea in Essex, where they were to remain. In addition, two of Hallstein’s sons were to live with Alfred as hostages and consent to baptism. The other part of the army avoided Alfred’s forces and moved into Hampshire and Berkshire in spring 993. They followed the Roman roads through Wessex and headed north towards the abandoned Roman fortified town of Chester in Mercia, where they thought they would be well out of Alfred’s reach. But Alfred was the dominant king in the rest of England and he was able to dictate West Mercia’s policies. Mounted messengers sped through the country to instruct the garrisons to burn down and destroy all crops and villages along the route the Vikings would have to travel, so that they would not be able to live off the land. Alfred himself caught up with the Vikings at Buttington and besieged their camp. At the cost of great losses, the Vikings managed to break out and travel north to Chester. Chester was a formidable, more or less uninhabited, ruined Roman town but with large sections of the old town wall intact. Under ideal conditions, one could keep an enemy out indefinitely. However, Alfred’s scorched-earth tactic had worked. Lack of supplies soon forced the Vikings to move over the border into Wales, where they remained for almost a year while Alfred’s forces kept watch over them from across the border. In 893 the rest of the Viking settlers in the Danelaw threw themselves vigorously into the fight and attacked Pilton in Devon with a fleet of possibly as many as 100 ships. The Vikings besieged c hap ter 6
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the town. They didn’t manage to capture it, but Alfred had to set out on a lengthy but successful rescue expedition to Devon. The Vikings had to leave Devon and sail north into the Irish Sea. This gave the Vikings who had taken refuge in Wales an opportunity to come back into play. In 894 they made a long and devious trek via Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia in an attempt to join up with Hallstein in Essex, but they were cut off near Farnham in Surrey by a force led by Alfred’s oldest son, Edward. After minor skirmishes they were forced to turn back. They headed north and barricaded themselves on Thorney, one of the many islands on the river Colne in Buckinghamshire. Alfred was approaching from the west with his main army, and he and Edward joined forces to surround the camp. Then came news that an army of Viking settlers from Northumbria and East Anglia, led by King Sigurd from York, had attacked Exeter and 260
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besieged the town. Alfred had to turn again to meet this new threat and Edward made an agreement with the Vikings on the island, giving them safe passage out of the region on condition that they left England altogether. Instead of leaving the country, the Viking army went straight to Hallstein’s camp to join forces with him. While Hallstein and the other Viking leaders were away plundering Mercia, a force made up of a militia from east Wessex and the garrison from London attacked the Viking camp at Benfleet and captured all the booty the Vikings had collected there over many years. They also took women and children as prisoners, but these were later released and sent back. Hallstein established a new fortified camp at Shoebury, where a steady flow of reinforcements arrived from Northumbria, East Anglia, France and Scandinavia. As soon as they felt strong enough, they went into the Thames Valley and encamped
A fiend from hell Hallstein (also recorded as Anstign, Haesten, Hæsten, Hæstenn or Hæsting in the sources) was one of the most hated Viking chieftains, both in France and in England. The chronicler Guillaume de Jumièges likens him and his men to a ruinous maelstrom from the north. Benoît describes him as a fiend from hell and a man who takes pleasure in the tears of Christians. He was really no worse
by the river Lea, which is a tributary of the Thames. The Englishmen altered the course of the river to leave the camp exposed, and drove the Vikings out in 895. The women and children were sent to East Anglia, while the warriors made a spectacular march through the Midlands to Bridgnorth on the river Severn. A force made up of men from Wessex, Wales and Free West Mercia pursued them and besieged them at Bridgnorth. After several weeks without fresh supplies, the desperate Vikings cut their way out through the English lines on the east bank of the river and drew back again to Shoebury, with Alfred’s men hot on their heels. Hallstein’s army had now been greatly reduced, and the survivors were worn out and war weary. Alfred reckoned that this was the right time to buy the Vikings out, and he offered them silver to leave the country for good. Hallstein accepted the offer, and in the autumn of 896 he demobilised the remnants of his army. Some went to East Anglia, some to Northumbria and others back to France. Hallstein himself came to an agreement with the king of France to spend his retirement somewhere as a feudal overlord. Hallstein’s strategy had been well thought out at the start, but he hadn’t considered two important factors. First, Alfred built an extended ‘burh’ system. This was a network of small fortresses manned and maintained by local forces, which gave the English secure support and recruitment bases throughout the kingdom. Second, Alfred did not lead his army into unnecessary confrontations with the Vikings, but regularly harassed, hunted and attacked them where they were weakest. His consistent strategy was to prevent the Vikings from gathering their
than many others, but he had an unusually long career as leader of different Viking groups. He was active not only in England but also in France, Spain, North Africa and Italy. He is remembered on the Channel Islands as ‘Earl Hallstein’. He was one of the most successful Viking chieftains and he had a particular talent for getting out of difficult situations.
forces, and to pay them when necessary, without making unnecessary concessions. However, neither Alfred nor any other English leader was able to render the Vikings incapable of launching new attacks on the country. The Vikings also had the advantage of being able to draw back to secure bases in the Danelaw, and Wessex was still on the defensive when Alfred died on 26th October 899. Many historians have praised him as a great strategist and England’s liberator. In fact, the Vikings’ grip on England was stronger than ever after Alfred’s death. They had secure footholds in Northumbria, East Anglia and East Mercia, and they were constantly threatening Wessex and Kent. Between 896 and 910 they launched major attacks on English territory from one or other of their colonies at least five times. Even though the Scandinavians in the Danelaw had a shared culture and country of origin, they were not at all a united people. In the north there was a kingdom which more or less corresponded to the original Northumbria, with York as its capital. This was the best organised of the Viking realms in England. East Anglia consisted of at least two small ‘mini states’, each with its own king: an older state with its seat in Thetford; and a younger one with its seat in Colchester. East Mercia, or Danish Mercia, consisted of at least nine independent chieftainships, each with its fortress and its own army. Alfred’s descendants were key people in the old Anglo-Saxon kingdoms which were still independent. His son Edward the Elder inherited control of Wessex. Alfred’s daughter, Ethelfled, was married to King Ethelred of West Mercia. Edward’s son, Ethelstan, followed him as king of Wessex. Over c hap ter 6
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the next forty years, Wessex would take control over the whole of England south of the river Humber, and even the Viking kings in York eventually had to acknowledge that the king in Wessex ranked above them.
King Edward unites England Ethelfled and her husband King Ethelred built a series of fortresses in West Mercia in the first decade of the 10th century, and Queen Ethelfled continued the building developments and expansionist foreign policy after Ethelred’s death in 911. She governed the kingdom on her own until her death in 918, but coordinated her policies with her brother Edward. 262
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She succeeded in expelling the Vikings from Derby and Leicester, while Edward concentrated on the Vikings in the east. Between 912 and 915 he captured the Viking capital in Colchester, followed by Hertford. In 914 he captured Bedford. In 917 he defeated the Viking armies which held sway in Towcester, Cambridge, Huntington and Northampton. By the time his sister died in 918 he had reached the Humber and was on the threshold of the kingdom of York. Following her death he acquired control of West Mercia and he was now sole king over the whole of southern England. Only the Vikings in the Five Boroughs were hanging on. Victory had not come easily, however. Soon after Edward the Elder had been declared king of Wessex in 899, his cousin Ethelwold, son of the previous King Ethelred, rebelled and barricaded himself
in the royal castle at Wimborne in Twinham, solemnly declaring that he would live or die there. When Edward arrived with his army, Ethelwold changed his mind and sneaked away to the Vikings in Northumbria. He was well received there and was declared king of York and Wessex. He persuaded the Vikings in York and East Anglia to take part in the rebellion against Edward. However, the Vikings now had an Achilles heel. They had settled and they now had families and land to protect. So it is uncertain how widespread the support for Ethelwold really was. The Viking king Erik (Eohric), who probably governed from Colchester, and a number of chiefs from the East Anglian Viking realms gave Ethelwold support in 902. Essex was the first of the southern regions to submit, and the following year the combined army of Vikings and Anglo-Saxon rebels invaded and plundered Mercia. Then they crossed the Thames and were doubtless planning to go to Winchester to establish Ethelwold as king. Edward took the offensive in 904 and forced Ethelwold and the Vikings into the Fens, the swamps north of Cambridge. Some confusion arose about Edward’s orders, and in the resulting confusion the Vikings and the rebels managed to surround Edward’s forces. The Vikings won the bloody battle which followed, but at great cost. Both King Erik and King Ethelwold were killed. Edward had to flee with the remains of his army, but with Ethelwold gone and the Vikings’ wings severely clipped, time was now on Edward’s side. By 907 he had negotiated a treaty with the Vikings in Northumbria and East Anglia, as an important step towards neutralising possible attempts to re-establish the cooperation between the Dublin and the York Vikings. This treaty probably held. The years following the establishment of this alliance were years of political and economic decline in Northumbria. Coins which were minted in York after 905 no longer bear the king’s name, but were of an anonymous design which continued in circulation for the next 15 years. This suggests that there was no clear, unambiguous leadership in the town, but several factions and alliances struggling for control. After Edward sent a plundering expedition into Northumbria in 909, the Vikings did make
an attempt to come together to hit back against Wessex. The York kings Eigil (Eowils) and Halvdan, with Ivar from Northumbria, invaded West Mercia together. Edward again tried to make a treaty, but they did not want to negotiate this time. Mercia was subjected to a massive plundering raid, and Edward had no choice but to counter-attack. The Wessex fleet, which was lying up in Kent, was called east to support Edward’s offensive. The Vikings, who always had effective intelligence, got news of the fleet movement but misinterpreted this as the main part of Edward’s forces. So they felt confident that Edward could not reach them in West Mercia and they were unaware of the approaching danger. Edward’s army managed to surround the Viking army at Tettenhall, which is now within the city of Wolverhampton. The fighting was fierce, but Edward won and the Vikings were put to flight. The Viking kings Eigil, Halvdan and Ivar lay dead on the battlefield, together with several earls. Some of the names known to us are Othre (Ottar), Scurfa (Skule), and the chieftains Olav Svarte (‘the Black’), Athulf, Osferth Sannsiger (‘the Truth-sayer’) and Agmund (Ingimund, Øgmund). Øgmund is thought to be one of the Viking chiefs who fled from Dublin when the town fell in 903. He settled first on Anglesey in Wales but had to leave the island after a defeat by the king of Gwynedd in the battle of Ros Melion in 905. He and his army later settled outside Chester, with the blessing of the English king. Vikings had earlier used Chester as a refuge, and it had been rebuilt in 907. Øgmund later tried to attack the town, and he ended up as an ally of the York kings, alongside whom he was killed at Tettenham. So it appears that Edward’s fear of cooperation between the Dublin and the York Vikings was well founded. Some of the Vikings probably fled over the Channel to Brittany under the leadership of Earls Ottar and Harald. Others withdrew to York. The Scandinavian settlers had again shown themselves to be treacherous, and Edward must have felt that the only way he could make his kingdom safe was to make the whole of the Danelaw subject to him. Edward’s labours over the next eight years to win control of southern England were interrupted by only one serious event. In 914 Ottar and Harald came back from Brittany with a large fleet. They c hap ter 6
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followed the coast eastwards, sailed into the mouth of the Severn and raided the coast of Wales. They were confronted further inland by local forces from Gloucester and Hereford, together with members of the royal guard. In the battle which followed, Ottar’s brother and Harald were both killed. Surviving Vikings were forced into a narrow pass, where they prepared to defend themselves. The Englishmen surrounded them and did not allow the Vikings to leave until they had handed over hostages and given assurances that they would leave the country. To ensure that they didn’t attack Cornwall on their way out, Edward deployed large guard forces along the south bank of the Severn. The Vikings used the protection provided by the agreement to get away from their encirclement, but they didn’t leave the country. Instead they stopped in Steepholm, on the north side of the Severn not far north of Bristol, where they stayed until hunger drove them away in September. Ottar and the remains of his fleet then sailed to the south coast of Wales and onward to Ireland.
The Viking kingdom in York The kingdom Halvdan founded in 866 would survive, with occasional interruptions, until 954. The Kingdom of York, as it eventually came to be known, was bounded geographically by the river Humber in the south and the Pennine Hills in the west. There were periods when the territory extended west as far as the Irish Sea, and sometimes it included Dublin in Ireland. In the north, it extended to the river Tyne. The region corresponded to the southern part of the old Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, and there were times when it dominated the whole of the old Anglo-Saxon kingdom. The Vikings’ power in this part of England was challenged several times. A popular rebellion arose against the ruling Norse elite and their allies as early as 872. King Egbert and Archbishop Wulfhere, who were both loyal to the Vikings, had to seek refuge with another of their allies, King Burgred of East Mercia. The Vikings who stayed on were unable to maintain control of the territory beyond the town of York itself. The surrounding area got a new, 264
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local king who kept Northumberland independent for the next three years, until Halvdan returned, invaded northern Northumbria and toppled the new king. Halvdan then set up a permanent boundary region against the Picts in the north and another against the Strathclyde Britons in the west. The chronicles say that during this campaign he plundered, among other places, Carlisle, Hexham and the island of Lindisfarne. This was the attack on Lindisfarne which led the monks to abandon the monastery there for a long time. After subduing all resistance in the north, Halvdan went back to York in autumn 875 and settled there as king. The chronicle for the year 876 relates that ‘This year Halvdan shared out the Northumbrians’ land and they started ploughing and earning a yield.’ Another source expresses this as ‘Halvdan occupied Northumbria and divided it between himself and his chieftains and let the army work the land.’ Halvdan did not live long to enjoy his success; he was killed the following year during an expedition to Ireland, probably in Dublin. Many members of the succession of kings in York are known to us only through finds of coins, mostly from a find in Cuerdale in 1840. This enormous find, dated from c. 905, consisted of over 8,600 coins and bits of silver. Over 5,000 of the coins were of Anglo-Saxon type, and a few of these were struck by the Viking kings in York. This enormous treasure has been thought to be the war chest of a Viking army. The fact that it was found on the route between York and Dublin may indicate that it was to have been used in an attempt to recapture Dublin. The Vikings in York were closely integrated into a York–Dublin political and commercial axis. Large hoards of coins found along the trade route between these Viking towns provide supporting evidence of this. The alliance was broken when the Irish expelled the Vikings from Dublin in 902/903, but was quickly reactivated when the Vikings recaptured Dublin in 917. The first Viking king who appears on the coins is Gudrød Hardeknutsson, who ruled from around 883. From a coin with a cross, struck in his name, we know that Gudrød had consented to baptism during his time in England. This has been interpreted as the beginning of a gradual fusion of the heathen and Christian cultures in the region.
There are many stories and legends about Gudrød. One story is that he was a slave bought by the abbot of Carlisle and presented to the Viking army in Northumbria, who later chose him as king. Another tells that he was a grandson of Ivar the Boneless, who had been captured by the English, bought free and then made king. The stories do have some similarities, and he probably was related to one or more of the leaders of the Great Heathen Army. He is also named in several sources as father of Sigtrygg, Olav and Ragnvald, who are also thought to have been Viking kings in Northumbria. Gudrød eventually lost power in York, but he appears again as king in Dublin in 921. The subsequent York kings are known only through finds of coins. Sigurd (Sigfred) who ruled between 895 and 900 is probably the same person as Earl Sigurd who ruled Dublin in 894. A king named Knut ruled at the same time as Sigurd. After Sigurd and Knut, Eigil, Halvdan and Ethelwod came to power in the town.
Ragnvald captures York Among the Viking chieftains who left Ireland in 902/3 were Ivar the Boneless’s grandson Ragnvald and his brothers and cousins, including Sigtrygg the Squint-eyed who would later be king in Dublin, and a man called Ivar of whom little else is known. Ragnvald and his relatives campaigned in the old Kingdom of Strathclyde and in southern Scotland, and one of their first operations was to plunder St Columba’s new monastery in Dunkeld. They may have been planning to create a new Viking kingdom for themselves in southern Scotland. However, they were not strong enough to conquer the land, and after a defeat at Strathearn where Ivar was killed, Ragnvald disappeared for a while. He probably went to Brittany and set up business as a warlord there, until he returned to campaign again in the region around Strathclyde several years later. The Kingdom of Strathclyde had its capital at Dumbarton Rock on the north shore of the Firth of Clyde. The town had been attacked by Ivar the Boneless in 870, and Strathclyde appears to have become an independent kingdom around 890. Dumbarton Rock was a conspicuous starting point for plundering raids both inland and along the
Scottish coast. Ragnvald remained in the area until 910, when he attacked Northumbria and captured York. He was able to do this because the Viking defeat at Tettenhall had created a power vacuum which opened the way for the landless Dublin Vikings. Ragnvald probably had coins struck in his name to demonstrate his newly won power. It is possible, however, that these coins date from his later period as king in the town, for by 913 or possibly as early as 911 he had left York. He travelled east to Cumbria, where he demanded ships from the Norsemen who had settled there. He probably had ambitions to re-establish the York–Dublin axis by dominating the remaining Viking colonies in Ireland and trying to recapture Dublin from the Irish. Ragnvald’s first victory on this journey was in a sea battle against another Viking fleet off the Isle of Man. Having secured control of this strategically important island, he voyaged over to Ireland in 914 and attacked the town of Waterford, which had been established by the Vikings but was now dominated by the Irish. Thus ended the ‘pause’ c hap ter 6
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which Ireland had had from Viking invasions. The Vikings’ position in Ireland had been weakened for almost forty years, and in the past ten years they had had no power base on the island. From Waterford, Ragnvald and his brother Sigtrygg launched a series of campaigns into Munster and re-established their power base in southern Ireland. The high point came in 917, when Sigtrygg managed to capture Dublin and re-establish royal power there. Ragnvald continued to rule Waterford, but already that same year he returned to Northumberland and invaded the kingdoms neighbouring York to the north. In the following years he killed the Scottish king in battle and dominated southern Scotland, in addition to defeating the king of Bernicia. These victories made him the mightiest king in northern England. However, his absence from York had given other men, with the support of West Mercia, the opportunity to make their mark, and Ragnvald lost control of the town until he re-took York in 919. This time he made the town his permanent seat. Despite his apparently strong position after many victories, in 920 Ragnvald acknowledged Edward as supreme king over Northumbria. If Ragnvald had not been Christian before he was now, in name at least. Ragnvald was a realist who understood that he did not have enough warriors or resources to withstand an English invasion. His acknowledgement of Edward as his superior was just a formality. Ragnvald continued to rule York as an independent kingdom. Ragnvald’s submission to Edward made him unpopular among his own people, however. Some sources say that he was deposed by his brother Sigtrygg the Squint-eyed, others that Sigtrygg first came to York after Ragnvald’s death in 920/21. Sigtrygg gave his cousin Gudrød Hardeknutsson power over Dublin, but he kept supreme kingship there and was thus the greatest Viking king outside Scandinavia at that time. Sigtrygg did not acknowledge Edward as his superior, and in the following years he expanded the York kingdom into Edward’s territory. He started by recapturing all the land which had been lost to the south as far as the Humber, and then went on to Lincoln. From here he could threaten the king of Wessex and challenge his hold on the
southern part of the Danelaw. In 926, however, he surprisingly made a peace treaty with Ethelstan, Edward’s son and England’s new king. As part of the agreement Sigtrygg married the king’s sister and consented to baptism. Sigtrygg understood that for him to establish a stable kingdom in the north, it would need to co-exist with England in the south. The solution to this was an alliance with Ethelstan and the associated recognition of Sigtrygg as an independent king in his own right. From whatever cause, Sigtrygg died the following year and his son Olav was proclaimed king in York. Ethelstan did not want a new Viking king in York and he deposed Olav, who was just a child. In an impressive and symbol-laden ceremony, Ethelstan joined the two kingdoms, England and Northumbria, into one kingdom governed by himself. The Viking kingdom was a thorn in the flesh for the English kings, and Ethelstan grasped this opportunity to rid himself of or clip the wings of the Viking kings there. This did not mean the end of the struggle, however, because Gudrød promptly left Dublin and took back power in York. Ethelstan had to return to York with his army, and Gudrød fled north to the Scottish King C onstantine II. The Vikings in Northumbria formed an effective buffer between his kingdom and the Wessex kings, and Constantine was more than willing to support Gudrød with troops. The Vikings headed south again, but when they didn’t get support from the local population in Northumbria Gudrød had to flee back to the Scottish king again. This time, Ethelstan followed and demanded a meeting with the Vikings and the Scots. They met early in 928, by the bridge over the river Eamont in Cumbria. The Vikings had to humbly cede all the land north of the river Tees and the kingship in York to Ethelstan. As part of the agreement, Gudrød had to swear to abstain from all future claims on York and travel back to Dublin. Also, Constantine II and Owen, king of Strathclyde, had to accept Ethelstan as their superior or risk invasion. By a series of displays of power and without bloodshed, Ethelstan had accomplished what his father had not. He had extended the kingdom of England right up to the Scottish border. c hap ter 6
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The battle of Brunanburh Constantine II worked actively during the next ten years to change the situation. He strengthened his alliance with the Vikings in Dublin by allowing Gudrød’s son Olav to marry his daughter. Then in autumn 937 Olav invaded Northumbria with a big Viking army. Olav and the Scottish king had been planning the offensive for several years, and together had created a formidable alliance. In addition to his own troops from Dublin, Olav had a large contingent of the feared Gall-Gaedhil. In England they were supported by the Anglo-Scandinavian population in Northumbria and Cumbria and by the Scots and the Strathclyde Britons. While Constantine and Owen marched south and took control of York and the Scandinavian settlements in the Midlands, Olav’s fleet sailed into the Firth of Clyde to where Glasgow is today, and via rivers and the Firth of Forth to the east coast. The Dublin fleet then sailed south towards the Humber. The two armies joined forces here, and together they penetrated deep into England. In August or September 937 the alliance fought Ethelstan and his brother Edmund in a big battle at a now unknown location, which at that time was known as Brunanburh. This is often described as one of the most important battles of the Viking Age between the English and the Vikings. It was also reckoned to be the biggest battle since the Anglo-Saxons had come to Britain. We don’t know how many fought in the battle, but a tally of several thousand warriors on each side 268
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has been suggested. The English were supported by troops from throughout England and Wales, plus a large contingent of Scandinavian mercenaries, which may have included the Icelander Egil Skallagrimsson. They had chosen to fight for Ethelstan, because they considered it more honourable to follow a real king than a usurper. Good wages probably also had a part in their decision. The sources say that the battle lasted from first light till dusk. This is probably a literary exaggeration, but the large number of men involved and the many thousand fallen on each side are evidence of a long battle. Among the dead were Owen, king of Strathclyde; four Scandinavian minor kings and seven earls from Northumbria; Ethelstan’s two cousins Alfric and Ethelwin; and a prominent bishop. Constantine II and Olav came away alive. Why did such a superior force lose to the English? The Vikings and their allies were a composite army, made up of a number of individual warlords who each wanted to distinguish themselves in battle. This individualism may have prevented the allies from coordinating their tactics effectively. The English army had one clear leader and could therefore work together more effectively. Ethelstan’s political ambition was to unite England and if not to expel, at least to hold back the threat from the Vikings. He also succeeded in being acknowledged as superior king over the neighbouring kingdoms of Strathclyde and Scotland and over the princes in Wales, and he took annual tribute from them. He was the first English king to bring Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia, Northumbria and Wales into one kingdom. His victory at Brunanburh appeared total at the time, but the benefits turned out to be transient. Two years later, Ethelstan was dead and Olav Gudrødsson was back in York. This time, Archbishop Wulfstan and the most influential citizens of York were in the front ranks of the welcoming committee. They now considered Olav the best candidate for the job of keeping Edmund, the new king of England, away from the town. Over the next few years, Olav formed a new alliance with the Scots, the Vikings from Dublin and the Western Isles and settlers from the Danelaw, and managed to recapture the Five Boroughs from
Egil Skallagrimsson The Icelander Egil Skallagrimsson is reckoned to have been both a talented skaldic poet and a formidable warrior. In the saga about him (Egils saga) it is said that he could compose poems by the age of three and that at the age of seven he killed an older boy by hitting him on the head with an axe while they were playing. At the age of 12 he took vengeance on his father by killing his father’s house slave. Egil was born in Borg in Borgarfjord on Iceland between 904 and 910, and died as an old man of over 80 in 992. Both his father, Skallagrim (‘Ugly Skull’), and his paternal grandfather, Kveldulv (‘Night Wolf’), were feared berserkers. Egils saga paints a picture of Egil as a violent man of determined character and with the Vikings’ lust for gold and fighting. He is described as a big, broad-shouldered fellow with a big, red beard and clean-shaven head. With his sword,
the English king. This set the boundaries of Wessex back to what they had been two decades before, and the English didn’t succeed in taking these territories back until after Olav’s death in 941. Olav achieved great success in his two or three years as king. He carried out lucrative campaigns against Bernicia in the north, which reopened the trade routes between Scotland and York and revitalised the York–Dublin axis. His cousin, Olav Cuaran (Sigtryggsson) took part in the campaigns against Bernicia. Olav Cuaran had been king of York for a few months as a child, and he came to power again in 941 when Olav Gudrødsson died. Before a year had passed, however, Olav Cuaran had lost the Five Boroughs to Edmund. Olav chose the pragmatic solution. He consented to baptism and acknowledged Edmund as his superior king. The loss of the Five Boroughs and the homage to Edmund kindled an intense rivalry between Olav Cuaran and his cousin Ragnar Gudrødsson. Internal strife tore the Kingdom of York apart to such an extent that in 944 Edmund was able to take the town almost unopposed and send both of them into exile. Olav first fled to Strathclyde to find help to oppose Edmund, but in the meantime Dublin had twice fallen into the hands of the Irish. So Olav Cuaran went on to Ireland and had himself proclaimed king in Dublin, where he held the seat of power for almost 35 years.
which was called hoggormen (‘The Viper’) he performed mighty deeds throughout Europe. At one time he served under the English King Ethelstan, and he took part on the English side in the battle of Brunanburh in 937. Egil’s arch enemy was Eirik Bloodaxe. On one occasion, Eirik managed to take Egil prisoner in York. Egil swallowed his pride and during one night he composed a heroic poem in Eirik´s honour. This was in the form of a great drápa, a 20-stanza long head-ransom poem. Eirik was so impressed by the quality of the poem that he decided to give Egil his life, even though Egil had killed one of Eirik’s sons. The saga about Egil was written in the 1220s, perhaps by Snorre Sturluson.
Eirik Bloodaxe comes to York When King Edmund died suddenly in 948 at the age of 24, the throne in York became open to new challengers. The Anglo-Scandinavian elite did not want Olav Cuaran back as king. They would rather have a king they could control, which meant one who was not backed by formidable military power. The throne was offered instead to the former Norwegian king, Eirik Bloodaxe, who was now living in exile on the Orkney Isles. Eirik Bloodaxe claimed that accession to power in York was his rightful due, since Ethelstan had promised him kingship in York as compensation for his brother Håkon, who was Ethelstan’s foster-son, becoming king in Norway. There may be some truth in this, for we know that Ethelstan had good relationships with both his father, Harald Fairhair, and his brother, Håkon the Good, who had been fostered in Ethelstan’s household. We can only speculate about what really happened. What we know for sure is that Eirik’s first spell as king of York was short-lived. The Anglo-Scandinavian population of the town mainly lived from trade and were therefore dependent on political stability and good relationships with their neighbours. They had become less and less prepared to bow down to the growing queues of Viking kings coming to the town to claim power and control. Even though Eirik Bloodaxe had support among the elite, the population rebelled c hap ter 6
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Svein Forkbeard Svein Forkbeard was born around 860. He followed the military career of his father, Harald Bluetooth, and led several military expeditions into the Baltic region. In 985 he led a rebellion against his father and had him killed. His nickname comes from the Old Norse tjúgu-skegg and refers to his long moustache which hung down and resembled a hayfork. The name appears to have been in use already in his lifetime. The Jelling dynasty’s big new kingdom of Denmark needed a more central royal seat than the Jutland peninsula, and Svein moved it to Roskilde on Sjæland (Zealand), where it was easier to control shipping through Øresund and the trade routes into the Baltic. During Svein’s reign the big circular forts which his father had built fell into disuse and disrepair. The Danes withdrew from Friesland and Saxony. To create a buffer against possible attacks from the Germans in the Holy Roman Empire, Svein made alliances with the
Slavic peoples south of the border. The fact that Svein was a Christian king also reduced the likelihood of religiously motivated attacks from that quarter. Svein Forkbeard was a renowned plunderer and conquered England. He died in 1014, just days after being crowned king of England.
and drove him out of the town before the year was out. The threat from Olav Cuaran probably also played a part. Eirik Bloodaxe had no power or resources to act independently of the archbishop or the Anglo-Scandinavian elite. Olav Cuaran did have such power. After Eirik’s hasty flight, Olav Cuaran was again declared king. Archbishop Wulfstan, who was no friend of Olav Cuaran, worked persistently over the next few years to gather support for a coup. In 952 he managed to unite Olav Cuaran’s opponents, and the king was forced to abdicate and leave the town. Olav’s downfall marked the end of the York–Dublin axis, which had dominated regional politics for fifty years. He was also the last of the family of Ivar the Boneless to hold royal power in York. Eirik Bloodaxe, who must surely have had a hand in the plot, was again declared king in the town. However, when his most powerful supporter, Archbishop Wulfstan, fell prisoner to the English, Eirik Bloodaxe had great difficulty holding onto power. Oswulf of Bamburgh, leader of the last remnants of the Saxons in Northumbria, organised a new coup which drove Eirik Bloodaxe out in 954. He and his men then ambushed and killed Eirik Bloodaxe and his allies, the Orkney Earls Arnkjell 270
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Svein Forkbeard (c. 960–1014) also had coins minted to AngloSaxon patterns when he regained power in Denmark after 994. This example was probably minted in Lund in present-day Sweden.
and Erlend, at Steinmore, a lonely spot on the old Roman road north from York. Eirik Bloodaxe had probably been on his way either to the Scandinavian colonies in Galloway or to Scotland, with the thought of sailing to the Orkneys to gather new men and supplies. The death of Eirik Bloodaxe marked the death of the Viking Kingdom of York. English earls now governed Northumbria until Svein Forkbeard invaded in 1013.
The second Viking phase in England The struggles against the Vikings in the mid-10th century led to England developing into a strong, military-based kingdom. After the Viking kings of York were driven out, it would be almost thirty years before the Vikings again tried to settle in England. They came back in 980. These were troubled times in Denmark, with King Harald Bluetooth forcing several leading chieftains into exile. In France and Germany, the Vikings had been blocked from the rivers and from access inland. In Norway, Earl Håkon’s powerful rule frustrated other men’s ambitions.
The first big wave of attacks was against the east and south coasts, striking places such as Thanet, Southampton and Cheshire. The Vikings were mainly out for slaves and booty to carry away. There was a series of raids to capture slaves from Southampton and elsewhere, and many valuable goods were also taken. Between 981 and 983 the raiders mainly concentrated on the Welsh coast and Cornwall. The only attack on central England during that time was on Dorset in 983. It was still considered too dangerous to challenge the English king’s coastal defences. The situation changed dramatically around 990, when the Danish King Svein Forkbeard and the ruling elite in Denmark were forced into exile
by the Swedish King Erik the Victorious and started to lead plundering raids along the coasts of Kent and Essex. The rumours of booty to be had in England, Wales and Cornwall reached the ears of the Norwegian king’s son, Olav Tryggvason, in exile in Russia. He led a powerful Norwegian fleet which included Vikings based in Russia and the Baltic. Olav arrived in England at about the same time as Svein. The two warlords met, formed an alliance and divided England between them. One fleet under the leadership of Olav, his uncle Jostein (Justin) and a chieftain called Gudmund (Guthmund) plundered along the coast of Essex, while Svein’s fleet concentrated on the south. c hap ter 6
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Olav’s fleet is said to have numbered about 94 ships and around 3,000–4,000 men. Even such a cunning strategist as Olav Tryggvason couldn’t have assembled such a fleet. So the majority of the army must have been made up of troops brought over by Svein.21 After plundering Ipswich in August 991, Olav’s fleet sailed south to Maldon, the second biggest town in Essex and a centre for production of coinage. The target of the raids was probably the workshops where coins were minted. Poor sailing conditions prevented the fleet from coming right into the town, and so the army was set ashore on the tidal island of Northey in the Blackwater Estuary. Northey’s separation from the mainland at high tide made it easy for Olav to defend and a good base from which to send out raiding parties. The English King Ethelred (‘the Unready’) reacted by mobilising a ‘fyrd’ of conscripted troops from the eastern districts and sending them to face the Vikings, under the leadership of an ‘ealdorman’, Byrhtnoth. Olav demanded huge sums in return for leaving the island voluntarily. This demand was refused. Byrhthnoth was not just anybody; he had ruled Essex as his own realm for three years and was in effect a petty king. His status obliged him to do all he could to stop the intruders. He had considerably fewer troops than the Vikings, but his military position was basically very good. So long as engagements were restricted to minor skirmishes with Vikings eager to prove themselves and a decisive major battle could be avoided, he could prevent the Vikings from coming over the tidal land-crossing to the mainland. 272
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Olav certainly didn’t want a big land battle. There had not been a major battle between the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings for almost 60 years, and both sides knew that the outcome of such an engagement was unpredictable. Byrhtnoth saw that the impasse might eventually lead the Vikings to put to sea and go elsewhere to plunder, and he wanted to resolve the impasse by confronting them. He felt so confident of victory that he allowed the Vikings to cross unhindered to the mainland and form up for battle. The Vikings who formed up behind their shield walls were not undisciplined freebooters or unfamiliar with fighting in set formations. Many of them had had military training in the big round forts that Svein’s father, Harald Bluetooth, had built in the previous decade (see page 124). Many of them had fought alongside Olav in the prince of Kiev’s army. Byrhtnoth underestimated the Vikings’ military skills. After an initial missile bombardment which the Vikings saw off, he launched a storming attack. The shield wall withstood the English attack, and Olav launched a counter-attack aimed directly at Byrhtnoth’s position. Byrhtnoth was killed, and with the death of their leader the English army quickly began to fall apart. Only Byrhtnoth’s personal guard fought to the last man; the rest all fled. Victory cost the Vikings dear, however. Hundreds of them lay dead on the battlefield, and the survivors were so weakened that they opted to withdraw from the district. Before they left, they chopped Byrhtnoth’s head off and took it with them. The English leader was later buried with a ball of wax in place of his head. There are several instances of the Vikings beheading their enemies, but archaeological finds in England show that this custom was also widespread among the English.
Olav Tryggvason becomes a mercenary King Ethelred now made a decision that would turn out to be disastrous for himself and for England. He offered Olav Tryggvason 10,000 pounds of silver to take his army away from England. This was the first in the series of payments of silver to the Vikings which came to be known as the
Danegeld. The battle of Maldon was the Vikings’ first major victory in the second wave of Viking attacks on England, and it had major political consequences. It led to a change in Ethelred’s policy, from confrontation to paying his way out of trouble. Many of the Vikings went back home to Scandinavia with their shares of the booty and the Danegeld, but most of the army overwintered in England. This army consisted mostly of Scandinavians but also included Rus, Slavs, Friesians and Celts. Most of them had said permanent goodbyes to their homelands, and many of them had families with them in the field. Political circumstances in their homelands also prevented both Olav and Svein from going back home. Even though the army was now being paid to refrain from plundering England, there was nowhere outside England that they could settle safely. So we must assume that they used well-known island sites such as Sheppey or Thanet for their winter camps. The Vikings still had a formidable fleet of about 90 ships, which implies a force of about 5,000 individuals. This constituted a continuing threat against England. Ethelred’s reaction when the Vikings did not go away as he had reckoned, was to call all seaworthy English ships to London to be fitted out and join a fleet which could challenge the Vikings. The fact that he summoned a fleet indicates that the Vikings were lodged on an island, beyond the reach of his land army. Under the leadership of ealdorman Elric, the fleet anchored a little distance away from the Vikings, thereby challenging them to meet in open battle. Early the next morning, while Elric and many of the crews were still on land, the Vikings left their base and sailed towards London. The bewildered English crews could only stand and watch as the Vikings sailed past and disappeared over the horizon. Only a solitary straggler was captured and its crew killed. Ealdorman Elric had achieved a degree of success by managing to flush the Viking fleet out of its winter quarters. He reported his success and dismissed the ships to sail home. He himself set course for London with several other local crews and soldiers, when they were suddenly confronted by a line of Viking ships coming directly towards them. Svein and Olav had held back with the fleet,
anticipating this opportunity. A sea battle ensued between the Vikings and the reduced, unprepared English fleet. Elric’s flagship was an irresistible target and was boarded and plundered. When evening mists and bad weather eventually put an end to the fighting, the Vikings had captured several ships and prisoners, including Elric. The king later paid a considerable sum of silver to buy his freedom. Instead of returning to their winter camp, the Viking fleet sailed north and settled somewhere in Northumbria, where we hear nothing more of them until they attacked Bamburgh sometime between September 992 and spring 993. Bamburgh was not just a random target. It was the capital town of the earls who ruled the north. They were partly independent of England, but they were loyal allies who defended the national boundary against Scotland in exchange for noble titles and lands in the south. With the Bamburgh earls’ power-base destroyed, Svein and Olav were now a serious threat to the English kingdom. When spring came, the Viking fleet sailed south and plundered the areas around the Humber and Lindsey. The English kept a bigger army ready, beyond the range of the Vikings. Their strategy was probably not to bring about a major confrontation, but just to ensure that the Vikings didn’t reach too far inland. By denying the Viking army access to the interior, they forced them to continue south, where larger English forces were being mobilised. On 8th September 993 Olav and Svein entered the Thames with 94 ships, sailed to London and attacked the town. The fighting was fierce, but the townspeople and the militia managed to prevent the Vikings from coming within the town wall. The Vikings eventually halted the attack, and instead started a systematic plundering of the surrounding countryside. King Ethelred and his advisers submitted to another round of negotiations. They offered Olav and Svein 16,000 pounds of silver to withdraw and stop the plundering raids. The Vikings again agreed to the king’s terms. The fleet withdrew from the Thames and settled for the winter in Southampton and on the Isle of Wight. This is the first time we hear of overwintering here, but the big island just off the south coast was to become one of the Vikings’ most important English bases. c hap ter 6
Ethelred II (c. 968–1016) was the king who started paying the Vikings in England to stay away.
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Ethelred II (c. 968–1016) was the king who lost England to the Vikings, for which he is known as ‘Ethelred the Unready’. He lacked a clear political direction, but alternated between paying the Vikings to go away and hiring them for his own use. Both these alternatives were lucrative for the Vikings and just encouraged them to stay on in England. Illustration from ‘The Chronicle of Abindon’, c. 1220.
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Once again, a cash payment to Olav and Svein had not achieved the desired result. The fleet was still in England, and it had found an even more secure base than before. Moreover, it was now not very far from Winchester, the king’s home town and capital. The English hatched a new plan in the winter of 993/94. Instead of yet again paying the fleet to leave, they would now pay them to remain in England and protect the country from other potential enemies. The architect behind the partly unsuccessful strategy of buying off the Vikings was Bishop Elfheah. He was sent to Southampton to invite Olav Tryggvason to a meeting with the king. Olav, Jostein and Gudmund were then escorted to Andover and presented before the king with pomp and ceremony. Svein is not mentioned either in the sources or in the agreement which was about to be made. Perhaps the Norwegians were leading the army at that time, or perhaps Svein didn’t want to negotiate with the English. The agreement between Olav and Ethelred specified that peace would prevail between the Vikings and the English, and that the Vikings from now on would protect the country against invasion and foreign powers. It also set up a number of regulations about how Englishmen and Vikings should relate to each other, both in England and if they met or participated in joint operations beyond Ethelred’s realm. Olav and his men were given fine gifts and 22,000 pounds of silver. The agreement included an absolute requirement that Olav and the Vikings who were present at the great ceremony would submit to being baptised. Ethelred himself was godfather to Olav. The agreement gave England sorely needed breathing space. Olav ravaged around the Irish Sea in the years 994–995. Little is known about what Svein and his Vikings were doing meantime, but the fact that they appear to have been calm and peaceful suggests that they too had benefitted from the treaty. However, a major battle in Friesland in 994 changed Svein Forkbeard’s fortunes. Most of the Vikings who fell there were Swedes and Danes who had been the basis of the power of the Swedish King Erik the Victorious, who had forced Svein out of Denmark five years before. With King Erik’s power weakened, Svein was able to return
to Denmark and reclaim the throne in 995. Olav Tryggvason also went home in 995, to become king of Norway. However, most of the combined Danish-Norwegian-Slav Viking army stayed on in England under the leadership of Pallig, a warrior chief who was married to Svein’s sister. It is possible that the members of the army who didn’t become settlers continued to operate according to the agreement with Ethelred, at least throughout 996. We know very little about the next few years, but there are reports of unrest and minor confrontations between the local population and members of the mercenary army in 997, 998 and 999.
Ethelred strikes back Many of the Vikings who didn’t decide to settle remained on the Isle of Wight, where their numbers were probably augmented by the arrival of new warrior groups, adventurers and chieftains. As there was no extra silver for the newcomers and the treaty denied the opportunity for plundering, the terms of the treaty were soon broken by headstrong chieftains raiding the surrounding countryside. In 999, Ethelred again assembled a large fleet and land forces in the hope of bringing about a final decisive battle with the Vikings on the island, but the confrontation failed to come about. He was probably not strong enough to expel them, and he gambled instead on renegotiating the treaty with some of the main leaders. This seems to have been partly successful, as another big contingent of Vikings joined Ethelred’s army. The remainder of them sailed over to Normandy, whether at Ethelred’s behest or on their own initiative. There are reports that they harried the land there. Rouen at that time had the biggest slave market on the continent and was a trading centre for plundered goods. With help from his mercenaries, in 1000 Ethelred launched a bigger campaign, this time in the Irish Sea and the north. His fleet attacked the Viking bases on the Isle of Man, while the land forces plundered Cumberland and Strathclyde. This was a signal to the Dublin Vikings, the Scots and the Britons that Wessex was still the dominant power on the British Isles.
In 1001 the rest of the Vikings came back from Normandy. A force of about 1,500 men plundered throughout Sussex and Hampshire before setting up camp in Devon. Pallig then broke off the treaty with Ethelred and joined the Devon group with his mercenaries. In autumn, when the English conscripts would traditionally be sent home, further negotiations took place. This time the Vikings were offered 24,000 pounds of silver to cease ‘their evil business’, as it is described in the sources. By 1002 the silver had been paid over and gathered in, and the Viking troops were again Ethelred’s mercenaries. The Vikings had broken their agreements with Ethelred on almost every occasion. However, Ethelred had no illusions about his new agreement with Pallig, and he expected to be betrayed again. So in spring 1002 he made an alliance with Richard, Duke of Normandy and married his sister, Emma. They both ruled countries which had problems with the steadily increasing stream of Scandinavian fortune hunters, and there were constant rumours that Pallig and his mercenaries were planning a coup against the king. On 13th November Ethelred struck against what he saw as a threat to his kingdom, in what later came to be known as the St Brice’s Day Massacre. He had been planning a countrywide genocide of all Scandinavians in the kingdom, including Pallig and his mercenaries. Thousands of settlers, farmers of Scandinavian ancestry, women and children were killed by furious mobs of citizens all over England. There are reports that churches where people had taken refuge were set on fire and the victims burnt inside. Nobody knows how many people were killed, but among the dead were Pallig and his whole family together with thousands of settlers and mercenary soldiers. Svein Forkbeard was among many who lost family members in the atrocity, and the demand for vengeance was soon so strong in Denmark that Svein himself equipped a fleet and sailed to England. Svein’s position on the home front was quite different from seven years before. He was now a confident ruler who effectively controlled both Denmark and Sweden. He had married the widow of Erik the Victorious and was stepfather of the young Swedish King Olav. He had defeated c hap ter 6
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Olav Tryggvason in the battle of Svolder in 1000, and his brother-in-law Earl Eirik of Lade (Yric Dux) was his loyal deputy in Norway. Svein was now able to turn his attention to England again with full force, without having to worry about his position in Scandinavia. Svein’s ships with their dragon’s head prows sailed into the mouth of the river Exe in the summer of 1003 and attacked the town of Exeter. It was right here in Devon that many of Pallig’s Vikings had settled as farmers, and although many of them had surely been killed it may be that Svein chose to land here to come to the aid of any survivors. His troops stormed Exeter’s defences, burnt the town to the ground and proceeded inland towards Wiltshire, harrying and burning farms and villages wherever they went. A powerful English army was sent against them but was repulsed. Svein then captured, plundered and burned the town of Wilton. The next target was Salisbury, a key military town and a seat of the kings of Wessex. The town lay in and around the fort known today as Old Sarum, the birthplace of the Kingdom of Wessex. Svein’s Vikings tore down the defences of the old earthwork fort, burnt the buildings both in and around it and drove the people away. The symbolism of destroying and desecrating Salisbury must have been very significant for Ethelred. After this incursion Svein set up winter camp on the Isle of Wight. He started his 1004 season of campaigns by taking his fleet north to East Anglia and going inland to plunder and burn Norwich. East Anglia was ruled by a man called Ulfkjell Snilling, who was of Scandinavian origin and had grown up in the Danelaw. In some of the saga sources, this part of the country is known as Ulfkjellsland, which is evidence of how much power and reputation this man had among the Scandinavians. Ulfkjell’s family moved in the innermost circles of Ethelred’s court and were responsible for the defence of this region. Ulfkjell aimed his counter-attack against what he considered to be Svein’s weak point, the ships. However, Svein had fortified the landing place and left behind a strong guard troop, which repelled Ulfkjell’s assault. Svein now had the upper hand. The fortress in Norwich fell first, followed three weeks later by Thetford. Ulfkjell pursued and 276
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harried Svein, and managed on several occasions to inflict great losses on the Viking army. This warfare caused a poor harvest in southern England in 1004, causing famine which afflicted both the local population and Svein’s Vikings. Unable to obtain reinforcements or supplies, Svein withdrew from the area in 1005. Most of his army stayed on in secure bases in England, while Svein and his closest retinue went back to Denmark. If the purpose of Svein’s campaign had been to elicit great payments of Danegeld, it was unsuccessful. Nor had he achieved any territorial gains. But if the motivation was revenge, as many sources have maintained, the campaign was a success. Honourable revenge was almost more valuable than gold for acquiring good repute in Scandinavia. Potential booty was still plentiful in England, and Svein left the responsibility for plundering to his leading chieftains.
The nest of vipers The beginning of the end for Ethelred’s kingdom came in 1006, when an enormous Danish plundering army landed at Sandwich. A surviving runestone erected in memory of a man called Ulf (Wolf) provides a clue to who led this army. The runes tell that Ulf was in England three times and won booty in the army, first with Tostig, then with Torkjell and finally with Knut (Canute). As we know from sources that Torkjell and Canute led the Danish army in 1012 and 1015 respectively, this suggests that Tostig may have led it in 1006. We can form an idea of the size of this army from reports that all arms-bearing men in Wessex and Mercia were called up, but that the English avoided confronting the Vikings in a direct battle because they did not feel strong enough. Instead, they pursued the Vikings and hindered them from splitting into smaller groups to forage for provisions. When winter came, the English relaxed their vigilant pursuit and sent most of their troops home to prepare for Christmas. The Vikings initially followed their usual pattern and settled in their fortified winter camp on the Isle of Wight. This had become such normal practice that the English did not make a formal winter truce with them, as was usual. Frustration at lack of success, supplies
THE INVASION OF ENGLAND
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Winchester Autumn 1013: Svein invades Winchester and declares himself King of England. Ethelred, Torkjell the Tall and Olav flee to London.
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and booty, combined with a mild winter, led Tostig to break with convention too, launching a big campaign about the time of the midwinter celebrations. The Vikings marched over 80 km inland before Ethelred could muster an army. The English tried to cut off the Vikings’ return journey at East Kenneth in north Wessex, but were themselves put to flight. When the Vikings, elated by victory and laden with booty, came to a hilltop near where the A31 trunk road runs today, they could see Ethelred’s capital town of Winchester. Tostig just paused to enjoy the view, however, before they carried on south towards the coast with their precious loot. This spectacular incursion prompted the king to resort to his old custom of trying to buy peace. In 1007 Tostig’s army obtained 36,000 pounds of
silver and an agreement that food and drink would be delivered to them regularly on the Isle of Wight so long as they stayed there. So the army made themselves at home and remained on the island until 1009. The wealth the Vikings had accumulated enabled them to buy luxury goods such as wine, weapons and fine clothes in the great markets in Denmark, Rouen, Dublin or other teeming Viking metropolises. The Isle of Wight must have attracted many ambitious young Vikings in these years. Ethelred watched the nest of vipers just outside his door with growing concern and fear. Using the respite provided by the peace treaty, in 1008 he initiated several programmes to build up his fleet and his army. If the Vikings would not leave the island voluntarily, they would need to be forced out. Eighty fully laden English warships sailed south in c hap ter 6
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A new dynasty in Denmark Around 916 a man by the name of Hardeknut came to power in Jelling on Jutland. Adam of Bremen relates that Hardeknut came from ‘Northmannia’, which is probably a reference to the Danelaw in England. Hardeknut’s son, Gorm the Old, became king around 947. Gorm’s son, Harald Bluetooth, was born sometime around 930 and became king about 958. Harald Bluetooth presented an account of his enterprises on a big rune stone which he had erected in honour of his ancestors: ‘Harald, king, requested these memories be made of Gorm his father and Tyra his mother, the Harald who won himself all Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christians.’ The meaning of ‘won himself all Denmark and Norway’ is disputed. Some have interpreted it as meaning that Denmark was split between several petty kings and that Harald gathered most of Denmark, including Viken (the region around the Oslo fjord) under his own control. It could also mean that he re-conquered southern Jutland, which may have
spring 1009 but were struck by a fierce storm off the coast of Kent. All of the ships either foundered or were driven ashore. This was an unimaginable blow not just to Ethelred’s plan for getting rid of the Vikings but for the whole of England, which had contributed to the enterprise with materials, labour, soldiers and crews. The king abandoned the plans for an armada and the salvaged remains of the fleet sailed to London to be laid up. In the meantime, the Danes were continuing their preparations for yet another invasion of England.
The Danes conquer England The brothers Hemming and Torkjell the Tall led several large fleets from Denmark. According to tradition, Hemming and Torkjell were brothers of Earl Sigvalde, leader of the Jomsviking order of mercenaries and brigands established by Harald Bluetooth in the 970s. So they had strong political 278
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been under German control for a period. His claim to be king of Norway is based just on the powerful men in Norway recognising him as supreme king and on the fact that he received gifts and taxes from them.
and family ties with Svein Forkbeard, and we can assume that he initiated and supported their plans. Among the young Viking chieftains who accompanied Torkjell on his big expedition in 1009 was the future king of Norway, Olav Haraldsson (St Olav). Torkjell and Olav carried out a combined punitive and plundering raid on Jutland and Friesland before they set sail for England in August 1009. In England, Torkjell’s brother Hemming had assumed leadership of the Vikings on the Isle of Wight. They joined forces there and proceeded to invade Kent and plunder Canterbury and the surrounding area. They drew back to the Isle of Wight only on payment of 3,000 pounds of silver. From there, they invaded Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire, but left Ethelred’s capital town of Winchester undisturbed. Ethelred had assembled a large army there, and the Vikings probably did not want to risk everything in a major battle. In November 1009 the Viking army moved back to Kent and settled for the winter at Greenwich, outside London. They tried several times to capture
London and thereby win control of the Thames, but without success. In the first days of May 1010 the Viking army rode into East Anglia on horses they had obtained in Ipswich, and by 5th May they stood in battle order outside Ulfkjell Snilling’s base in Ringmere. Ulfkjell was unprepared for the attack, and his hastily assembled troops were easily put to flight. The Vikings followed this victory with a three-month
plundering tour, using the Roman roads. Finally, Ethelred asked for peace talks and once more paid them to go away. Olav and Hemming then returned to the base in Greenwich, while Torkjell went back to join Svein in Denmark. In the course of the winter, however, Hemming was killed in a plot in which Ulfkjell had a hand. If Ethelred thought he could get rid of the army by liquidating the leader, he was mistaken. When news of Hemming’s death reached Roskilde, Torkjell called for revenge and equipped a new fleet. By early summer 1011 he was back in England taking over command of the Vikings on the Isle of Wight, and a new wave of plundering swept over England. c hap ter 6
Harald’s enterprises are summed up on this big rune stone in Jelling, Denmark: ‘Harald, king, requested these memories be made of Gorm his father and Tyra his mother, the Harald who won himself all Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christians.’
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The Vikings, a punishment from God The Englishmen have for a long time suffered complete defeat and been despondent because of God’s anger; for the Vikings are so strong with his consent that just one of them often drives ten to flight in war … all this because of our sins … what
Ethelred had to pay up again and Torkjell the Tall disbanded his army in 1012, after he had been paid 48,000 pounds in silver. He and Olav, with 45 ships and their crews, then went into mercenary service for Ethelred. Svein personally led an invading army to England in 1013. He may have become dissatisfied with his share of the great wealth his Vikings were obtaining in England. The fact that Torkjell had now joined Ethelred’s side as a mercenary weakened Svein’s position in England. He may also have feared that Torkjell might do as Olav Tyrggvason had done – amass a huge fortune and threaten his authority in Denmark. Svein had no choice but to go over to England himself. Svein’s fleet arrived at Sandwich at the end of July 1013. They spent five days there taking on provisions before sailing north to the Humber Estuary and into the river Trent. Svein established his headquartes in Gainsborough and built a fortified camp. Declarations of support soon started streaming in from potentates and chieftains from the Five Boroughs, from Mercia and from Northumbria. Ulfkjell came from East Anglia and swore loyalty to Svein. The invasion appears to have been well planned and directed. Svein’s son Knut (Canute) was married into one of Mercia’s leading families, undoubtedly with the purpose of legitimising Svein’s claim to England. The populace might accept him as their king more easily if they saw that he had support from one of the greatest families in the land. Earl Uhtred, the powerful ruler of Northumbria also made an agreement with Svein, to ensure that he still held power in the north of the country. Svein had brought the northern part of England under his control by political ingenuity and without having to face any military resistance. He installed 280
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else can be the cause than God’s clearly obvious anger with his people? So wrote Archbishop Wulfstan of York at the beginning of the 11th century to explain the previous thirty years of Viking attacks.
his 23-year-old son Canute in Gainsborough with responsibilities for protecting the fleet, supplying his father with troops and provisions and keeping the allied earls and their families under control. Svein then led the army to Lincoln, which became his new headquarters. Lincoln’s position as a node on the old Roman road network made it a good strategic starting point for an invasion of southern England. The Anglo-Scandinavian population quickly subjected themselves to Svein’s rule, and they became an important component of his army. From Lincoln, the army followed the Roman roads and the river systems southwards into Wessex. The great towns of Northampton, Oxford and Winchester fell like dominoes, without a struggle, as Ethelred sat in London awaiting the inevitable. Many of the Vikings became impatient when they saw the town, and drowned when they tried to cross the Thames without using the bridges. Svein tried several assaults on the city, but Ethelred and Torkjell’s men fought hard. Among other things, London Bridge was set on fire to prevent the Vikings from crossing. Svein got nowhere. This was the first set-back in his campaign. However, instead of committing himself to a long and potentially ruinous siege or storming of London, he headed east to Bath. There, he made an alliance with one of the king’s powerful relatives, Ealdorman Ethelmær. Then he moved back to his headquarters in Gainsborough for the winter. That same autumn, Olav Haraldsson came back to Rouen in Normandy after an expedition to Spain. In Rouen he met several refugees from England, including King Ethelred’s sons. Olav was baptised and enlisted as a mercenary for Ethelred. In autumn 1013 he travelled to England and joined Torkjell the Tall. The situation in England was
unstable, however, and just before Christmas 1013 Ethelred decided to leave the country. He went first to Torkjell’s winter camp on the Isle of Wight, and then when the midwinter festivities were over he travelled on to Rouen, leaving Svein to become king of England. However, fortune intervened in Ethelred’s favour. Svein Forkbeard died unexpectedly in Gainsborough on 2nd or 3rd February 1014, just days after he had formally been declared king of England. When news of this reached Rouen, Ethelred came back to England with Torkjell and Olav and started a violent reinvasion. This fell especially hard on Svein’s former allies in the north. The population who had ended up on Svein’s side were sorely punished, several of the most important men were killed and land and goods were confiscated. Parts of Svein’s army, now loyal to his son Canute, were still holding London. According to
the saga it was Olav Haraldsson who personally saved the day for Ethelred. The Englishmen and their Scandinavian mercenaries had tried without success to storm the fort which protected London Bridge. Olav’s little fleet of ships, protected by roofs improvised by weaving bits of timber and branches together, went in under the bridge and tied onto the posts with ropes. Then the ships were rowed away and by the sheer force of muscle-power the bridge crashed into the sea, weighed down by the swarms of Danish Vikings. With the route up the Thames now open to Olav and Torkjell’s fleet, the Vikings in London had no choice but to surrender. Olav and Torkjell then led Ethelred’s army into East Anglia and recaptured that region. They defeated large parts of Canute’s forces in a big battle in Northumbria, forcing him to go back to Denmark. There were still Danes lodged in welldefended positions throughout the country, and c hap ter 6
After the Englishmen and their Scandinavian mercenaries had tried unsuccessfully to storm the defences of London Bridge, Olav Haraldsson managed to collapse it into the river.
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Olav himself led several campaigns to drive them out. He either allowed them to buy their freedom with silver, or he defeated them. At the age of only 20, Olav had become one of Ethelred’s most trusted men and a feared warrior.
Canute returns to England Ethelred became seriously ill during the year 1015, and his sons fought for power. Torkjell the Tall travelled to Denmark and asked Knut (Canute) to come back to England. Torkjell had had a personal conflict with Svein, but after Svein died there was nothing to hinder him from resuming relationships with the Danish royal family. So when Canute 282
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invaded England in September 1015, Torkjell was with him. Unlike Svein, Canute decided to invade from the south instead of from the north. This may have been because of his shameful retreat the previous year. Fleeing from Olav and Torkjell and the English army, he had left the inhabitants and his father’s allies in the north exposed to Ethelred’s revenge, which had fallen especially hard on the population of Lindsey. Also, the earls in the north were supporting Ethelred’s son, Edmund Ironside, in the struggle to be the next king of England. So Canute could not expect a hearty welcome from that quarter. Moreover, Torkjell had thorough knowledge of the military and political situation in
the south, and it may have been on his advice that Canute invaded Wessex. They reckoned that large parts of the mercenary army would change sides, considering it more profitable to support a strong Scandinavian king than a weak English one. Canute’s fleet stopped first at Sandwich in Kent, before going on to Poole, just 30–40 km west of the Isle of Wight. From Poole, they started invading Wessex. Edmund Ironside and Ealdorman Eadric Streona of Mercia had been entrusted with the responsibility of defending England, but they were bitter political enemies. When they could work together no longer, Eadric turned to Canute to form an alliance. At the same time, the mercenary soldiers provided Canute with the equivalent of 40 ships’ crews. The situation now appeared really hopeless for moribund Ethelred. Edmund mobilised troops in the southern part of the Danelaw, but he realised that he could not defeat the Danes unaided. He called for the London militia to come to his support, and for the king himself to turn out to fight the Danes. Ailing Ethelred tried to come to his son’s rescue, but soon moved back to London, which could be defended more easily. Edmund joined forces with one of his few remaining powerful supporters, Earl Uhtred. Together, they harried areas in Cheshire, Staffordshire and Shropshire which had gone over to Canute. Most of Eadric Streona’s largest properties were in these areas. In response to these attacks, Canute decided to invade the Danelaw. Four months after making landfall in Wessex he had subdued both Wessex and Mercia, and on 1st January 1016 he entered Northumbria. Earl Eirik of Lade, the mightiest man in Norway and Canute’s vassal and brother-in-law, had also come to England to help Canute. Olav probably got news of this, and this might have been what motivated him to return to Norway and claim the throne there after Ethelred had died. Olav had amassed enough silver to buy support from the landed gentry and the petty kings in Norway. With Earl Eirik out of the country and Canute preoccupied in England, the field was clear. At the head of his little army of about 100 warriors, Olav sailed via the Orkney Isles over to Norway, where he installed himself as king after defeating Earl Eriks
brother, Earl Svein, in a big sea battle at Nesjar in 1016 (see page 82). Faced with a possible military defeat in Northumbria, Earl Uhtred realised that his only chance of saving himself and his possessions was to submit to Canute. Canute welcomed the earl, but he had no wish to include him in England’s political future and he had Uhtred was killed a short time after the meeting. Earl Eirik from Norway took over Uhtred’s Northumbria and Torkjell the Tall was installed as earl of East Anglia. When King Ethelred died on 23rd April 1016, the Wessex aristocracy chose Edmund as the new king in Wessex. Canute was recognised as king in Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria. Canute’s ambition, however, was to rule the whole of the Kingdom of England, and he advanced on London where Edmund was in residence. With Canute approaching and the widowed Queen Emma in negotiations with Torkjell about the surrender of herself and her sons by Ethelred, King Edmund decided to leave London and go to Wessex, where he thought it would be easier to assemble a new army. Emma obtained several concessions and guarantees that she and her sons would not be killed, and they stayed on in London. Edmund had taken with him as many men as he could, leaving just the town militia behind. Canute’s fleet took control of Greenwich on 9th May, prior to sailing up the Thames and laying to on the south bank near Bermondsey. London Bridge had been rebuilt and was now blocking Canute’s way upriver. Rather than attacking the bridge at the cost of heavy losses and valuable time, he decided to drag the boats round it. He had a defensive earth rampart built round the turret at the south end of the bridge, to protect ships and crew from missile barrage and sudden attack by the town’s defenders. Having bypassed the bridge, Canute gave orders to build a siege wall round parts of London, so that the town could be completely cut off. Then Canute and large parts of his army set off to find Edmund. Canute could have no hope of ending up as king in Wessex until Edmund was defeated. They met in several minor skirmishes throughout the summer, without either side gaining a definitive victory. So Canute decided to travel back to beleaguered London. Wanting to come to c hap ter 6
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provisions in East Anglia and Mercia. Then the army rode south to Kent. Edmund attacked this force, and at the battle of Offord, south-east of London, he succeeded in driving the Vikings to flight. He pursued them as far as their fortress on Sheppey. Canute now seemed to be even further from a decisive victory than when he besieged London. On top of that, Eadric Streona had changed sides again and was now supporting Edmund in the struggle for the royal crown.
The final struggle for England
Canute the Great quickly adopted the English kings’ traditions. Here, he and Queen Emma are presenting a magnificent cross to New Minster Church in Winchester. The queen’s English name, ‘Ælfgyu’, is written above her head. From Liber Vitae, c. 1031.
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the town’s rescue, Edmund prepared for an attack on the Danish positions. He crossed the river at Brentford just east of London and proceeded along the north side of the Thames towards the town, avoiding the roads and taking instead to the woods behind Tottenham without being discovered. Overwhelmed by Edmund’s attack, the Danes took to their ships out on the Thames where Edmund was not able to pursue them. A few days later, Edmund brought his troops back to Wessex. Canute was also in difficulty, with problems finding food for his army. So he decided to storm London both from the land and from the river. The fierce attack failed. He abandoned the siege, dragged his ships downriver around London Bridge and took his army to plunder wealth and gather vi k i ng i n va s ion s
The war between Canute and Edmund ended in an unexpected manner. In autumn, the Vikings crossed the mouth of the Thames and plundered Essex and the neighbouring parts of Mercia. Edmund followed them with his army and caught up with them near Ashingdon in south-east Essex. There, it was agreed that the armies should at last meet for a decisive battle. The field of battle was on and around a small hill covered with ash trees. From the top on a clear day, one can see almost 15 km over the marshland that comprises large parts of Essex. There is a church there now, built by Canute in 1020 to commemorate the site of the battle. Canute drew up his army on the top of the hill, among the ash trees. Edmund formed his army into a dense shield wall. Like a kilometre-long wall of men, with their spears out in front, they then started moving slowly up towards the Vikings. From behind, the English archers shot volley after volley of arrows over the ash wood. Canute closed himself in behind his own shield wall and awaited the attack. The Vikings were accustomed to attacking with clamour, jeering shouts and resounding horns, but the English moved in step and in silence and didn’t start their war cries until they were a spear’s length away. At Hastings in 1066 they chanted ‘Out! Out! Out!’ as the armies clashed, and we can imagine that they did the same here. The exhausted Englishmen stormed into Canute’s massive shield wall with their last strength, aiming for his black and white raven banner. At the same time, the Vikings launched their counter-attack on Edmund’s banner. The lines waved back and forth, without either of them
breaking. But as soon as the fighting began in earnest, the whole of Edmund’s flank, led by Eadric Streona and including a Welsh contingent, withdrew from the battle. He betrayed an ally once again, probably in exchange for attractive promises from Canute. Twilight sets in about 5 p.m. at that time of year, and we must suppose that the battle ebbed to a conclusion at about that time. Canute had not only stood against the attack, but had pushed Edmund’s troops back to the bottom of the hill. Many of the English leaders had been killed. Among these was Ulfkjell Snilling, who had decided to fight on the English side after the death of Svein Forkbeard. Edmund himself was wounded in the fighting but survived. His resistance to Canute had earned him the nickname of ‘Ironside’, and he later acquired legendary status among the English. Although Canute had won the battle, he had not yet won the crown. He would need to eliminate Edmund. News soon came that Edmund was in Gloucestershire in Mercia, and Canute set off in pursuit. They met again at the Forest of Dean, but this time their confrontation did not come to a battle. Instead, a peace treaty was negotiated. Canute had indeed won at Ashingdon, but his army had been weakened and Edmund had already acquired fresh troops from Wales. Edmund and Canute came face to face on Alney Island in the river Severn near Deerhurst. They exchanged hostages and words of friendship and discussed dividing the kingdom between them. Canute would rule all the land north of the Thames, while Edmund would rule south of the Thames. London would function as a sort of no-man’s-land and would be governed by Dowager Queen Emma. The agreement must be seen as a victory for Edmund. He had achieved recognition as king and he was still the ruler of Wessex. With time, he might perhaps have managed to expel Canute from England. But fate again took an unexpected turn. Edmund Ironside died in November 1016 while still a young man, and in January 1017 Canute was officially declared king of all England. There are indications that Edmund may have been murdered. Canute had no scruples about using cloak-anddagger murder, although his name is not specifically mentioned in connection with Edmund’s death.
One of his first actions after Edmund was buried in Glastonbury Abbey was to send Edmund’s pregnant widow and young son Edward to his ally Olav Skötkonung (‘Olav the Tax King’) in Sweden with a request that they be discreetly disposed of. Edmund’s younger brother was likewise killed on Canute’s orders. His next move was to marry Ethelred’s widow, Emma. This gave his crown a veneer of continuity and legitimacy and allied him with the Dukes of Normandy. That same year, Canute divided England into four large earldoms. Torkjell the Tall got East Anglia again, Earl Eirik retained power in Northumbria, Eadric Streona got Mercia and Canute kept control of Wessex himself. Eadric Strona, who had proved unreliable on several occasions, was later assassinated on Canute’s orders. In 1018 Canute sent his conscripted fleet home to Denmark, after first imposing the last payment of Danegeld in England. This was for the huge sum of 82,500 pounds of silver. Much of this went to pay the warriors and the rest went into Canute’s war chest. With Canute established on the throne in England, the classic Viking Age was over. Adventurers still came wanting to serve in Canute’s retinue, and from time to time there were local disturbances and risings which had to be suppressed. But major plundering raids inland and coveted payments of silver were no longer possible.
Canute the Great’s North Sea Empire Throughout the 1020s Canute expanded his sphere of influence to include the regions around the Irish Sea. His aim was to hinder the ambitious Earls of Orkney by extending his kingdom in the south. In 1026 he fought off a threat from King Olav Harldsson and the young Swedish King Anund Jakob in a sea battle at Helgø in southern Sweden, and in 1028 he became king in Norway after he expelled Olav Haraldsson. In 1030 he invaded Wales with good help from his ally King Sigtrygg Silkybeard of Dublin, and in 1031 Canute himself led the army into Galloway, Strathclyde and Scotland, where he forced the Scottish King Malcolm and two petty kings to acknowledge him as supreme king. c hap ter 6
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Canute’s network of alliances and his military leadership gave him unsurpassed control of Scandinavia and the British Isles. He was so dominant that neither Scandinavian royal pretenders, Orkney earls nor Irish kings could challenge him. He was the ‘Emperor of the North’. However, the basis of his power was personal, and like many such personal kingdoms it held together only so long as the king lived. Many people were therefore concerned that the kingdom would fall apart after he died. Canute himself wanted to bequeath the kingdom intact to his heir. Canute the Great died an untimely death in Shaftesbury in Dorset on 12th November 1035. According to some sources, he was only 40 years old. As so many had feared, Canute’s extensive kingdom was divided after his death. Hardeknut, his son by Emma, became king of Denmark while Harald Harefoot, his oldest son by Alvfiva, became king of England. This meant that Emma had to flee from England again with Edward and Alfred, her sons by Ethelred who were now grown up. In 1039 Hardeknut set sail from Denmark towards England with 63 ships, intending to seize power from his half-brother, Harald. His first stop was at Bruges where he visited his mother Emma who was living in exile there. While he was staying with her, news came that Harald Harefoot had died. Hardeknut arrived at Sandwich with his fleet on 17th June 1040, and he was formally chosen as the new king shortly after. Hardeknut’s most notorious action as king of England was to increase taxes drastically to pay for his fleet. This provoked uproar in several places, to which he responded by coming down hard on ‘the agitators’. Among other places, Winchester was reduced to ruin in the course of this suppression. These hard-handed methods made him even more unpopular among the population, and especially among the Anglo-Saxon nobility who held the real power in many parts of his kingdom. In an attempt to silence the critics, in 1041 he invited his half-brother Edward home from Normandy and made him his heir. Hardeknut died at the age of only 23 on 8th June 1042, apparently during a wedding celebration. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports that ‘He died while he stood with his drink. He suddenly fell down 286
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with violent convulsions.’ There was probably more than just wine in his beaker. The Chronicle also says of Hardeknut that ‘In the whole of his reign he did nothing worthy of a king’. With Hardeknut, the Anglo-Danish kingdom in England died out before it was properly established.
Anglo-Saxon interlude Edward (known as Edward the Confessor) followed Hardeknut as king, but there were others who thought they had just as much right to the English throne. Foremost among these were Canute’s nephew, Svein Estridsson, and Magnus the Good (Olavsson), king of Norway and Denmark. Magnus and Hardeknut had made a peace treaty in 1038, in which they agreed that whichever of them lived longest would inherit the other’s kingdom. As Hardeknut died childless, Magnus considered himself his legal heir. The threat from Magnus was the more serious of the two. Svein was still just a youngster, but Magnus was a grown man and a feared warlord. In 1044–45 Edward took personal command of the fleet to face a possible invasion by Magnus. This was not a panic measure by a paranoid king, but a move based on intelligence. Magnus had called up a fleet to sail to England in 1045, but at the last minute the fleet was diverted to Denmark where a rebellion had broken out, led by Svein Estridsson. Magnus’s unexpected death by drowning in October 1047 averted the threat to England for the time being. In Denmark, Svein Estridsson functioned for a long time almost as a vassal to Edward, ensuring that there would be no attack from there. However, after 1050 he too began to look menacingly towards England. At the same time Magnus Haraldsson, a son of the new Norwegian King Harald Hardråde, was leading big expeditions to the Orkney Isles and the Hebrides. Edward felt that England was being surrounded by enemies. As he was childless, he used the need to appoint an heir as a bargaining card throughout the 1050s to hold off his enemies. Svein in Denmark, Harald in Norway and Edward’s relative, William Duke of Normandy were all given the impression that they were possible heirs to Edward, but when Edward finally died on 1st January 1066 it was Harold Godwinsson, who was
elected to be the new king. Harold was the son of Godwin, Earl of Wessex, Edward’s leading adviser. This stirred up another major war.
The thunderbolt from the north The news of Edward’s death probably reached King Harald Hardråde of Norway early in spring 1066, and he immediately started preparing for an invasion to secure power in England. He may have been planning an invasion even before the news of Edward’s death. Edward had already vaguely promised him the succession, to avoid Viking plundering. With the English king ageing and bedridden, Harald may well have wanted to ensure that he was ready to grasp power when he died. Hearing that Harold Godwinsson had been chosen as king must have made Harald Hardråde feel betrayed and overlooked. True enough, Harold was the son of Earl Godwin of Wessex. He had been one of Canute the Great’s trusted men and had married into the Danish royal family. Harold was supposedly also a distant descendant of both Styrbjørn the Strong and Harald Bluetooth. But if Harold Godwinsson had a drop of royal blood in his veins, it was nothing compared to Harald Hardråde. Harald was brother of the now saintly Olav Haraldsson and uncle of the previous Norwegian king, Magnus Olavsson. As Magnus’s successor on the Norwegian throne, Harald was also heir to England and Denmark. He had surrendered his claim to Denmark in a peace treaty with Svein Estridsson in 1064, but now he saw the opportunity to acquire England instead. An unexpected ally came to Harald in the winter of 1065/6. King Harold’s brother Tostig had been deprived of his earldom in Northumbria by Edward in October 1065, and when his brother refused to restore it to him he turned first to Svein in Denmark and then to Harald in Norway to seek help. He promised Harald good support from Northumbria, which was important in deciding where the invasion would take place. By summer 1066 the fleet was ready. According to different sources, it consisted of between 250 and 500 ships. If we start from the lowest number and reckon that
St. Valéry
each ship had a crew of between 44 and 48 men, the army numbered between 10,000 and 12,000 men. It is difficult to say whether it was really possible to muster so many men from Norway and the Orkney Isles. The sources say that Harald ordered half the Norwegian conscript forces to be mobilised. So he probably recruited a maximum of 5,000 men from Norway. In addition to this there were about 1,000–1,500 from the Orkney Isles. The rest must have been allies, probably Scots. Harald’s and his landed gentry’s professional retinues together made up about a tenth of the army, while the others were allies and conscripted farmers. The farmers in Norway were still obliged c hap ter 6
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Harald Hardråde Harald Hardråde (king of Norway 1046–1066) was born around 1015 at Ringerike in Oppland, son of petty king Sigurd Syr and Åsta Gudbrandsdatter. He was a half-brother of Olav Haraldsson who became king of Norway around 1016, and he made his military debut at the age of 15 when he took part on his brother’s side in the battle of Stiklestad in 1030 where Olav was killed. Harald was wounded in the fighting, but he managed to get away and eventually ended up in Kiev. He had military training in Kiev and he was taken into Prince Jaroslav’s Viking guard retinue. After two or three years in Kiev he travelled south to Constantinople with about 500 Vikings to serve in the Byzantine emperor’s army. He later became the first commandant of the Varangian guard. Harald served under three emperors and became enormously wealthy. On his return to Kiev he married Jaroslav’s daughter, Ellisiv. In 1045 he travelled to Sweden and made an alliance with King Anund Jakob and Svein Estridsson, and in 1046 he managed to persuade his nephew Magnus the Good to recognise him as joint king in Norway.
Harald Hardråde (‘Harald the Hard Ruler’) (1015–1066).
to carry arms and develop combat skills at this time; so it was not an peasant army that Harald brought with him to England. Part of the plan was that Tostig’s fleet of about 30 ships would sail to the English Channel and attack the Isle of Wight. This would ensure that Harold’s troops and fleet stayed in the south. Then Tostig would hurry north to meet Harald in Nothumbria. When Harold got word of Tostig’s plundering he moved south as anticipated, to meet what he thought was a major attack. After carrying out these minor raids, Tostig sailed north to Lindsey in Northumbria. By the time Harold reached the south coast, Tostig was gone. Meanwhile, Harold received information that Duke William was gathering an invasion force on the other side of the Channel. So Harold had to remain in the south to face the threat from Normandy. Harald’s big fleet sailed first to Orkney. By this time it was already late in July. In Orkney he received homage and military support from Earls Pål and Erlend. From Orkney the fleet sailed south to Dunfermline, where the Scottish King Malcolm 288
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welcomed him and provided another 2,000–3,000 men. On 8th September Harald’s expeditionary force met up at Tynemouth with Tostig’s fleet. Tostig had met fierce opposition on his journey north, and his fleet now consisted of just 12 ships. Together, they then sailed south to the mouth of the river Tees, where the army landed and demanded tax and hostages from the local population. We don’t know why Harald landed here instead of sailing further south and into the Humber to reach nearer to York. Perhaps this was a decoy tactic, to draw the English forces north towards the coast, just as Tostig had drawn them south, and thereby bring them away from York. Perhaps the army just needed recreation after six weeks on board ship. However, Harald was a great tactician. He most probably wanted his arrival to be known in good time, so that the local Earls Morcar and Edwin could mobilise all their forces against him, which would enable him to crush all organised resistance in a single short battle. This was a dangerous game, because Morcar and Edwin were the two most powerful men in northern England and could field a formidable army.
The Viking army marched south along the coast, plundering the few settlements they came across. They first met a degree of organised resistance at Scarborough. Scarborough was no fortified town, but there was an old Roman signal station standing on a cliff above the town. The Vikings quickly occupied this. The inhabitants of the town numbered not more than about 1,000 men, women and children. The defence force was therefore small, but the town refused to surrender and the population barricaded themselves in. So an assault was launched. Despite being outnumbered, the defenders fought back with such determination that Harald resorted to crude methods. He had the town set on fire to smoke out the defence and the population, who were then pursued and many killed. The orgy of violence had a purpose beyond suppressing a stubborn defence. Harald wanted to establish his reputation as a harsh harrier and send a signal to the other villages in the area that resistance was futile and would be fatal. The fate which had befallen Scarborough led several towns to surrender without a struggle. The army marched south to the mouth of the Humber, where they joined up with the fleet. Harold Godwinsson’s fleet avoided a direct confrontation with Harald Hardråde’s superior forces. Instead, they had sailed up the river Wharfe, planning to turn back and block the Vikings from returning to the Humber as soon as the Viking fleet had sailed upriver from the Humber into the river Ouse and on towards York. In the narrow river the superior number of ships would count for nothing, but probably just lead to a chaotic plug of ships and men which could be shot at and defeated from land. Harald understood this, but went straight on board and sailed up the Ouse. However, instead of sailing into York, he set up a fortified base at Riccall, about 16 km south of York. The old Fulford Road was not far away, by which one could quickly reach York on foot. In York, the Earls Morcar and Edwin had for a long time been receiving reports of the Vikings’ progress along the coast, and they had had plenty time to prepare themselves. Morcar had called up his conscripted troops from Northumbria, and Edwin had brought a major force from Mercia.
Messengers had also been sent to King Harold in the south, but he could not be expected to arrive before a week at the earliest. Morcar and Edwin would have to halt the Vikings’ advance themselves. So the combined English army marched out from York to cut the Vikings off before they reached the town. Harald and Tostig were about to face the two mightiest men in northern England. A victory over them would effectively give Harald control over the whole of northern England.
The battle of Fulford Gate If Harald’s plan was to crush the region’s combined opposition in one violent battle, his strategy paid off completely. The two armies met on 20th September at Fulford Gate, just outside York. Today Fulford is a densely populated suburb of York, with no trace of the topography of the battlefield. However, we know that the terrain at that time was marshy. The Vikings had the river Ouse on their left flank, and on their right there was a main road into York, with a ditch on the other side. Beyond the ditch was an extensive bog. Between Harald and the earls was a watercourse which would have to be crossed. Both armies formed up quickly into formations which stretched from the riverbank to the ditch. Harald c hap ter 6
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positioned himself under his banner, Landøyda (‘Layer Waste of the Land’), on the left flank, near the river and straight opposite Earl Edwin. Tostig was on the right flank, facing his arch-enemy, Earl Morcar, who had replaced him as earl in N orthumbria. The Vikings’ formation on Harald’s side was the most dense whereas Tostig, who commanded significantly fewer men, had a thin formation on the right flank, near the ditch. This was a tactical decision on Harald’s part. He wanted the English to attack first, and he gave them an incentive by showing an apparent weakness in the formation. An attack could create a situation where Harald’s disciplined troops could let the Englishmen wear themselves to exhaustion and hopefully expose their own flank to a counter-attack. If Morcar and Edmund had created a shield wall and held position, Harald would have had to try to break through with a direct assault on a very strong opponent, which would have taken time and cost dear, possibly even leading to defeat. The young Earl Morcar was eager to show his predecessor Tostig what he was made of, and he ordered a storming attack on Tostig’s position as Harald had hoped. The English totally ignored Harald’s stronger flank. Tostig’s shield formation yielded to the pressure and was pushed back like a swing door, with Morcar’s banner flying right at the front of the attack. Morcar was leading the assault from the front, as tradition required. He was surely hoping that the ferocious attack would break the Vikings’ fighting spirit and drive them to flight. Tostig’s line did not break, and when the English line had come completely out of position Harald ordered a massive assault directly against Edwin, who was holding the English right flank, near the river. Harald’s troops stormed Edwin’s position and broke it completely. The English troops in the rear ranks withdrew from the attack and the breakthrough split the English army in two. Those nearest the river were forced into it, and many drowned. The left flank was forced out into the bog and Morcar’s flank was soon also fleeing in panic into the bog, with the Vikings at their heels. Many were trampled and drowned, though Morcar and Edwin were among those who escaped. 290
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York now lay open to the Vikings, but instead of pursuing the English into the town and plundering it, Harald ordered a part of his army back to Riccall to protect the fleet. York had an AngloScandinavian population, and Harald hoped to be well received there. Moreover, as York was to become Tostig’s new headquarters there was little to be gained by plundering it. Harald then sent a group of men north to the strategically important Stamford Bridge, where he set up his forward base on a small rise on the east side of the river. Ermine Street, an old Roman highway, ran straight across Stamford Bridge. It would be easy to march from Stamford Bridge right out to the confluence of the river Ouse with the Humber. Harald’s plan may have been to meet the fleet at the Humber, rather than exposing the army to possible English attacks while on board ship. The narrow river system flowing downriver from Riccall was ideal for an English counterattack. Also, Ermine Street was one of the most important routes to southern England if Harald was thinking of marching south. Harald’s choice of Stamford showed that he had good knowledge of the land. It was altogether the perfect site for a forward base. Messengers from York brought news to Harald that the town was surrendering. If Harald was to have any hope of receiving support from the region, he would need to nurture his relationships with the population and the Anglo-Scandinavian elite in the town. In a spectacular display of strength, the whole of Harald’s army marched towards York on Sunday 24th October. The town’s upper classes turned out in their finest clothes, solemnly swore loyalty to Harald and surrendered the town to him. Earl Edwin, who had been taken to the prison, was handed over to Harald. It was also agreed that 150 sons of the leading men of the town and surrounding district would be handed over to Harald as hostages, in exchange for 150 of Harald’s men. The exchange of hostages was to take place in Harald’s camp at Stamford Bridge the following day. Then the ceremony was concluded and Harald, Tostig and the army marched back to base at Riccall. In the south, Harold Godwinsson had been receiving news of earlier events. By the time Harald Hardråde had first landed at Riccall to set up
his headquarters, Harold had probably already had news of the attack on Scarborough. By early September, Harold Godwinsson’s troops had been in the field all summer and early autumn. Provisions were running low, the men were complaining and the work of the autumn harvest was approaching. On 8th September he had to demobilise large parts of his army and send the men home. On 20th September, the same day that Harald was winning victory at Fulford Gate, Harold Godwinsson set off north along the Roman roads with his personal guards and chieftains. By 24th September, as Harald was receiving homage at York, Harold’s army had covered an astonishing 320 km and was encamping at Tadcaster, just 16 km south-west of York. How did Harold manage to muster his army, obtain fresh supplies and march nearly 80 km per day? This is still considered among the most impressive achievements in English military history. Harold had followed the old Roman road system north towards York, recruited fresh troops while on the march and arrived at Stamford Bridge only a few hours after Harald Hardråde had come back to his camp there.
The battle of Stamford Bridge At crack of dawn on Monday 25th September Harald and Tostig left much of their army and equipment at Riccall and rode to the meeting place at Stamford. They left their chainmail, helmets and heavy equipment in Riccall and travelled light. After all, they were on peaceful business and what is more, the day was warm. It was still early morning when they arrived to prepare for a new day of victory ceremonies. The exact location of the bridge over the river Derwent at that time is uncertain, but Harald’s camp was on the east side of the river, on a plateau about 15 metres above the riverbank, now known as Battle Flats. From the plateau there was a relatively steep slope down to the river. On the west side of the river the ground is lower. Harald had chosen this site because of its strategic advantages. It gave a good view over anybody or anything approaching the bridge or the camp. On that morning, this usually so careful general had become overconfident. He
had not deployed spies in and around York, who might have warned him of Harold’s arrival, and he had not foreseen that Harold would succeed in coming so soon. His troops were small in number and not fully equipped, and the camp in Stamford was not fortified as his headquarters in Riccall were. Harold and the English army had left Tadcaster early in the morning and ridden into York. Here they enlisted the few armed men the town could still muster and set out on the 9 km march along the Roman road towards Stamford Bridge. Harald had not long arrived at Stamford Bridge when he espied a large crowd coming towards them. Several small groups of Vikings were busy gathering provisions on the north side of the river when they were surprised by Harold’s cavalry. One group had been driving together a flock of cattle on the west side of the river, when they themselves were driven down and many of them were killed. Harald and Tostig soon realised that their visitors were not hostages and prominent guests from York, but an enemy army which had come upon them. Some of the fleeing Vikings on the west bank returned to the bridge, where they took on the duty of preventing the Englishmen from crossing. Several men were sent down from the plateau to help. These troops could do no more than buy valuable time for Harald and Tostig to get organised, and they paid for it with their lives. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relate one particular incident from this phase of the battle. A Viking wearing chainmail and helmet, and equipped with c hap ter 6
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Spearheads with noble metal decoration, from late 10th century.
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a battleaxe took up position on the bridge and single-handedly repelled several English attacks, preventing them from crossing for several hours. The Englishmen tried several times to persuade him to surrender and accept the king’s generosity, but he just taunted them and called them cowards. It is said that he killed 40 English warriors before he fell himself. His end came about when some of the Englishmen went under the bridge and stuck their lances up between the planks and under his chainmail, wounding him sufficiently for him to be overpowered. This incident made an indelible impression on those who witnessed it, but it is not mentioned in the Norse sagas or poems about vi k i ng i n va s ion s
Harald Hardråde. The Vikings who survived the battle probably didn’t know about it, and therefore the story was not retold in Scandinavia. In the meantime there were heated discussions between Tostig and Harald about what they should do. Tostig advised Harald to pull his forces back to Riccall, but Harald refused. He knew that they could not march away from the English cavalry and that they would be attacked in the rear and the flanks. He probably also understood that Harold would already have closed the bridge further south at Kexby, and that his army would never reach Riccall. So Harald decided to face Harold from the top of Battle Flats. Three riders were despatched to Riccall on the fastest available horses to fetch the rest of the army and equipment. Harald drew up his army in a thin formation with a dense shield wall on the outside. The flanks were then bent back until they met to form a circle. This was the best defence Harald could set up against Harold’s cavalry. The king’s and Tostig’s banners were raised in the middle of the circle. The archers and a reserve of elite fighters from the guard retinue were also brought within the circle, so that the archers could direct their volleys and the elite troops could quickly come to assist wherever the cavalry attacked. The front rank within the shield wall fastened their spears in the ground and slanted them upwards towards the horses’ bellies. The line behind them would also use their spears against the horses. They hoped in this way to weaken the brunt of the cavalry attacks. Harald rode round inside the circle encouraging his men. By the time the English army had crossed the river and formed up ready for battle, Harald was ready too. The moment of surprise had passed. Harald had set up his shield wall, a formation which could usually only be broken at great cost to the attacker. Twenty heavily armed and armoured English knights with the king himself at their head rode up to Harald’s line and offered Tostig the opportunity to come over to their side and regain his fiefdom of Northumbria. Tostig refused when Harold refused to make a similar offer to Harald, replying that he would give him only seven feet or more of English soil, as he was a bigger man than most. Harald was furious when he later learned that it was the king himself who had made the offer. If
he had known, he would surely have put all his efforts into having Harold killed there and then, thereby bringing the war to a conclusion. Harald’s circle formation was soon surrounded by galloping cavalry making regular heavy charges into the defenders’ shield wall. The spearmen stabbed assiduously at the horses’ unprotected bellies, and the archers rained their arrows on the riders. The losses on both sides must have been enormous in this phase of the battle, but the shield wall held. Then Harald changed his strategy. Instead of continuing to keep the shield wall intact in the hope of holding the position long enough for the reinforcements to arrive from Riccall, the Vikings began to respond to the cavalry attacks with their own violent counter-attacks. This would normally have been a very unwise tactic so long as the shield wall held, but it was Harald’s deliberate choice. He had realised that the chance of being able to hold out indefinitely without defensive works and access to reinforcements was small. On the other hand, if his elite warriors could achieve a couple of overwhelming and successful assaults against the English leaders, they might perhaps be able to scare the English into flight. The English army consisted mostly of hastily enlisted farmers, who were weary after several days of forced marches. Harald’s reputation also played a part. He was respected and feared by his contemporaries. Harald led several of these wild forays himself. Without the protection of chainmail, helmet or shield he threw himself into the ranks of the enemy, wielding his sword with both hands. The saga says that he went totally berserk. During one of these charges Harald was struck in the throat by an arrow and fell. Everybody who was with the king during this assault died with him. Tostig and the rest of the army watched in disbelief as the king’s banner fell to the ground and was drowned in a wave of English warriors. Tostig quickly had the signal sounded for retreat. The warriors outside the line hurried back, but the loss of men had been so great that they couldn’t close the holes that the cavalry had made in the shield wall. The English infantry stormed through the openings and soon the whole shield wall was falling apart. Tostig himself was hit in the face by an arrow and killed.
With both their leaders killed, the Vikings began to flee from the battlefield. At about the same time, Harald’s son-in-law, Øystein Orre, arrived with reinforcements from Riccall. They had run more or less the whole way and were exhausted, but the saga says that when they saw all their fallen comrades they were gripped with violent fury and they attacked nevertheless. Øystein himself took up Harald’s banner, Landøyden, and led a fearsome attack on the exhausted English lines. For a moment it looked as if the English line would break, but then Øystein was killed and the Vikings fled. By now it was late afternoon, and the battle had lasted almost all day. In those times a battle usually lasted only a few hours, until one of the parties put the others to flight or the leaders fell. The battle of Stamford Bridge lasted significantly longer. One of the reasons for this is that the battle was fought in four phases: first against Harald’s troops on the west side of the river; then against the defenders of the bridge; then against Harald and his main body of troops; and finally against Øystein Orre’s reinforcements. Harold and the English army slowly followed the fleeing Vikings to Riccall, aware that they had inflicted a crushing defeat. When Harold eventually reached Riccall, he didn’t attack. The base was strongly fortified, and an attack could quite possibly end up in defeat for Harold. Instead he gave Harald’s son Olav, the Earls Erlend and Pål and the rest of the survivors permission to leave the country. Once hostages had been exchanged and Olav had sworn not to come back to avenge his father, they were allowed to start their journey. It is said that the remnants of Harald Hardråde’s mighty army fitted into 20–25 ships. That would imply that over two thirds of the army had been killed, which doesn’t tally with what is known of the events. However, if we take the surviving Orkney Islanders and Scots out of the calculation, it is quite possible that the Norsemen didn’t need many ships for their journey home. Most of the warriors from Scotland and the Orkney Isles were probably in Riccall while Harald and his Norsemen were at Stamford. That could explain why Olav, Øystein Orre, Erlend and Pål were not with Harald at Stamford Bridge. They were looking after the fleet’s base in Riccall.
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Norman epilogue
A lost empire
Harold Godwinsson’s victory over Harald Hardråde did not mean that his kingdom had been saved. William of Normandy’s invasion was about to follow. Harold and the remains of the English army had to march south again immediately to face William’s invasion. Harold and William came face to face on 14th October 1066 at Hastings, where Harold was killed and William became king. If Harald Hardråde had defeated Harold Godwinsson at Stamford, England would probably in the short term have been split into two kingdoms, one in the south with William as king and one in the north with Harald as king. Each of them would probably have been very reluctant to risk all his gains in a battle against the other before consolidating his situation. We can only speculate what might have happened. Harald would certainly have had support from the Anglo-Scandinavian population in the Danelaw, Galloway and Northumbria, from the kingdoms in Wales and from Scotland, which had already supported him with troops. William’s war machine was much more effective than Harald’s, with a formidable cavalry and a larger proportion of professional soldiers. Harald’s main army of Norwegian conscripts would have had to return home as soon as spring came. Despite that, Harald’s reputation and local support would probably have led to some sort of agreement between them, such as that between Canute and Edmund in 1016. A northern English kingdom under Harald, with its capital in York, would probably have continued so long as Harald was alive. Whatever these speculative details, William would probably have eventually succeeded in taking over the whole kingdom, and England would have become a unified Norman kingdom as happened in reality. Harald’s sons Olav Kyrre (the Peaceful) and Magnus ruled Norway through a time of peace for the next 30 years. We can only speculate whether this peace resulted from the enormous loss of men in England. Norway may have been left with too few men who could wage war for their living. Not until the 1090s could Norwegian Vikings be led back to the British Isles by Olav’s son, Magnus Barefoot.
As Canute the Great’s heir, Svein Estridsson felt that he too had a claim to the English throne. Svein had used the years following the peace treaty with Harald Hardråde to consolidate his position in Denmark and rebuild the country’s military strength. In summer 1069 he started his own invasion of England. His fleet came to the coast of Kent under the leadership of two of his sons, Harald and Knut, and his younger brother Asbjørn, and made several raids to reconnoitre William’s defences. The fleet then set course northwards towards N orthumbria and sailed into the Humber. There is a lot of evidence indicating that this was not the full invasion fleet, but a preliminary expedition to establish a bridgehead in anticipation of Svein himself arriving with the main army. After landing in Northumbria, the Vikings joined up with a large group of English rebels led by Edgar, the last male heir of the Wessex dynasty, and the exiled Anglo-Saxon earl of York, Siward. Without waiting for Svein, they captured York on 20th September. With the whole country north of the Humber under their control, the army now marched south and settled on the big, fertile island of Axholme in north Lincolnshire. The island no longer exists, following centuries of drainage and cultivation, but in those days it was a strategic starting point for campaigns both north and south. The Danes may have been hoping that an alliance with the Anglo-Saxon elite in the north would have enabled them to gain control of that region, but William’s troops attacked and forced them to abandon Axholme and return to Yorkshire. At the end of December 1069 the Danish invasion lost impetus completely. Food was short, and their ships were cut off from the sea. Rather than risk all in a desperate battle against William, Harald and Knut chose to negotiate. In exchange for a significant sum of money, provisions and permission to remain in England over winter, they promised that the fleet would leave as soon as spring came. William agreed to this, and with the Danes now under control he started a bloody winter campaign against the Anglo-Saxon rebels who had supported the Vikings.
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In the spring, Svein himself finally arrived with a large fleet. He joined with his sons and as William’s army was still in the region they left their exposed position by the Humber. Instead, they sailed south and into the Wash, the broad bay which forms the boundary between East Anglia and Mercia. They landed here and led the army far inland to Cambridgeshire, where they captured and fortified the Isle of Ely, in the middle of the big area of wetlands known as the Fens. Support failed to materialise from the local population, and was only moderate among the Anglo-Saxon population in East Anglia. Svein soon realised that the only way to save something of his reputation and honour was to make an agreement with William to withdraw – in return for payment. When William offered to negotiate, Svein readily agreed. Svein withdrew his claim to the English throne, and in exchange for a not insignificant payment he withdrew his army from England and went home to Denmark. As Olav Kyrre did in Norway, Svein spent the rest of his life reforming the state of Denmark on the European model. His death in 1074 marked the end of the dynasty’s ambitions to regain England. In 1075 a group of Anglo-Saxon rebels from Northumbria and East Anglia approached his son, Knut Sveinsson, with an offer of support if he would come to England and take up the struggle against William. Knut’s brother, King Harald III, made a big fleet available but by the time the fleet arrived in East Anglia, William had already suppressed the rebellion. There were no longer rebels to welcome them in Northumbria either. Knut had used promises of booty to recruit the fleet, and suddenly he found himself with no means of paying them. The answer was to plunder York, which only strengthened the local population’s opposition to the Danes. Knut Sveinsson became king of Denmark in 1080, and in 1085 he had assembled a formidable fleet for a new invasion of England. However, an overhanging threat of invasion from the new Frankish emperor, Henry IV, made him postpone
the departure and the fleet remained in Limfjord. This soon became the focus of an uprising against the king, and in summer 1086 Knut was killed by his own people. Knut Sveinsson’s death was also the death of the Danish kings’ ambitions to re-establish Canute the Great’s North Sea Empire. Never again would a Scandinavian king try to take England. Instead, a cultural exchange began to take shape between England and Scandinavia. The age of plundering and invasions was over. The Vikings had become Europeans.
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The Frankish Empire and France When the Viking ships rounded Brittany and the Vikings plundered and destroyed St Philbert’s Monastery on Noirmoutier Island off the entry to the river Loire in 799, Charlemagne finally recognised the growing threat from the north. He could not say he had not been warned.
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Opposite: Warrior in Gudrød’s army c. 800. This warrior might have taken part in the Danish King Gudrød’s campaign against Charlemagne and the Frankish kingdom in 810. His equipment is typical of early Viking times, with weapons of continental and Frankish type. The weapon knife is a Saxon type ‘ long sax’. The shield shows Frankish characteristics, slightly concave instead of the flat shape the Vikings generally used. The long spear is a Frankish winged spear, and the two smaller ones with hooks are throwing spears. 296
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lcuin, an English monk and one of the leading intellectuals of his day, was an adviser to the Frankish King Charlemagne. After the Viking attack on the monastery on Lindisfarne in 793 he had taken up ‘the Viking problem’, with the king. However, despite Alcuin’s many warnings and regular reports, Charlemagne had still not come up with a solution to the growing Viking problem by the time of the assault on Noirmoutier in 799. After this first major attack on his territory, Charlemagne had to take the Viking threat more seriously. One of his most important undertakings was to start building large coastal forts at the mouths of the major rivers, but beyond this little else was done to face the threat. Conflict between the Vikings and the Franks was not new, however. When the Saxons in today’s northern Germany suffered repeated attacks by the Franks towards the end of the 8th century, some of the Saxon aristocracy sought refuge in Denmark and continued the fight from there. The relationship between the Danish King Sigurd Ring and Charlemagne was already tense and was made even worse by Sigurd’s protection of the Saxon leaders. As Widikund, the foremost of the Saxon leaders, was vi k i ng i n va s ion s
Sigurd’s brother-in-law they had an obligation to help each other. Charlemagne did not like this at all. Sigurd was represented by envoys at a big conference in Saxony with Charlemagne and the Saxons in 782. We don’t know for sure what the conference was about, but Danish support for the Saxons must surely have been one of the main issues. One of the outcomes was a peace treaty between Widikund and Charlemagne. The fact that Charlemagne executed at least 4,500 Saxons at Verden and systematically wrecked Saxon shrines that same year may have influenced Widikund to give up the struggle. He returned to Saxony, submitted to Charlemagne and consented to baptism. In return, Saxony would be allowed to exist as a semi-independent kingdom for the foreseeable future. News of the mass murder of the Saxons spread throughout Scandinavia. In the short term, this may have led the Nordic leaders to avoid coming into conflict with the Franks. In the longer term, however, it may have increased their antipathy towards the Christian world and contributed to some extent to the fact that several of the first Viking raids were directed against prominent Christian targets in Europe.
Charlemagne (c. 742–814) was engaged in warfare almost constantly throughout his reign.
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Denmark and the other Nordic lands created no threat to the Franks for the next 20 years. However, in 798 Charlemagne resumed his conquest of Saxony. This time he wanted to avoid Denmark being a place of refuge for Saxon rebels, and he sought to make an agreement with the now ageing King Sigurd. Sigurd tried to hold the Franks at bay by avoiding unnecessary provocation, and he agreed not to get involved in the Franks’ new conflict with the Saxons. Despite this, plundering raids against the Frankish kingdom and its vassal states in the north increased during the last years of Sigurd’s reign. Sigurd’s own sons were probably behind many of the attacks. Their memories of the massacre in Verden were rooted in childhood and hatred of the Franks found fertile soil among the Danish warrior elite. Sigurd died the year after his agreement with the Franks and was succeeded by his son Gudrød. Gudrød did not want to deny refuge to Saxon refugees. This created grounds for conflict. When Charlemagne finally subdued Saxony in 804, only a scattered population remained. Charlemagne was reluctant to set his boundary adjacent to the Danes. Instead, he made Saxony into a buffer zone and delegated its defence to Wendish Abodrite tribes. Gudrød probably had ambitions to have this land as a fiefdom from Charlemagne as part of a peace treaty, and he must have been furious when he learned that Charlemagne had given control of it to the Abodrites. They were a Slavic tribe who originally settled in the areas around where Mecklenburg is today and who had traditionally paid taxes to the Danish kings – an income source which Gudrød could now only eye wistfully. Another disputed region was Friesland, a fertile and well-populated area along the west coast of Germany. The Danes had probably been collecting taxes from here since the early 700s. If Charlemagne allowed them to continue doing this, he would risk Friesland coming under Danish control. Tension between the two kingdoms was at breaking point when Charlemagne unexpectedly invited Gudrød to a meeting. Gudrød saw the invitation as a sign of weakness from Charlemagne, and as an opportunity for a display of power in front of the emperor. He called out his whole conscripted vi k i ng i n va s ion s
fleet and travelled to Slien in southern Jutland with a massive assembly of infantry and cavalry to meet the emperor as an equal. But Charlemagne had not invited Gudrød to a meeting to establish friendly relations or find a solution to the border disputes. His request was for the handing over of Saxon rebels and of Christian slaves captured by the Vikings in England and Friesland. Charlemagne acknowledged nobody as his equal, and he promptly broke off the meeting. Gudrød returned home dejected. The conflict with the emperor split the Danish ruling elite between Gudrød’s confrontational faction and those who had been in King Sigurd’s circle and wanted a more conciliatory relationship with Charlemagne. This conflict culminated in several of the Danish potentates leaving Denmark, either by choice or by compulsion. Some of them moved to France where they received fiefdoms and leading positions from Emperor Charlemagne. Others went to England and Friesland where there were good prospects for plundering. The Abodrites and other Wendish tribes were now living between a rock and a hard place. If they chose to join with the Danes, they risked punitive incursions by the Franks. If they opted to support the emperor, they lay themselves open to attack by the Danes. Between the two evils, they chose the emperor. According to the old Scandinavian conscription law at that time, the king could only call up troops every fourth year, unless the country was under attack. So Gudrød had to wait until 808 before making another offensive. His first move was to launch a week-long punitive expedition against the Abodrites in Mecklenburg and their allies, the Wagrians in East Holstein. The expedition was successful but costly for Gudrød. Thrasko, king of the Abodrites, was put to flight while Godelaib, king of the Wagrians, was captured and hanged. Gudrød lost several of his leading chieftains. He had however gained an important piece of territory. Rerik (Gross-Strömkendorf), one of the Abodrites’ most important trading towns, had fallen into his hands. After extensive plundering, he had the town burnt to the ground. He then took all the traders and craftsmen and their families back with him to Denmark and settled them in Hedeby, not far from the Frankish border.
Hedeby soon took over Rerik’s function as a centre for trade between east and west over the narrow southern part of Denmark. At the same time, Gudrød set his conscripts to work extending and strengthening the big defensive wall, the Danework. As part of the works, Hedeby got a town wall which was connected with the main defence walls. The following year, Gudrød invited Emperor Charlemagne to a ‘conciliation meeting’. Twelve leading men from each side met together, without coming to any definite agreement. Charlemagne still supported the Abodrites, and with help from Saxon troops he was able to harry the territory of the Danes’ allies, the wilzerne and rebuild Rerik. Gudrød’s response to this was to have the Abodrite King Thrasko assassinated. By 810 the situation between the Franks and the Danes had reached a low point and the dominant question for both sides was not whether they could come to an agreement but who would attack first. In the event, it was Gudrød who attacked first. Even though four years had not passed, he had managed to assemble a military force. The Danes probably considered themselves to be at war with the Franks already. Gudrød directed his initial attack against the Frisians, whose territory stretched along the North Sea coast from the mouth of the Rhine to the mouth of the Ems. The Frisians controlled several important trading centres including Dorestad by the mouth of the Rhine, and since the 7th century they had played a central role in the trading of goods and commodities from the Rhineland to the North Sea and Baltic Sea coasts. Friesland had been incorporated into the Frankish Empire in 770, and the attack in 810 struck both at the Franks’ income from trade and at their status as lords and defenders of the land. Charlemagne was in his capital town of Aachen, busily making plans to attack Denmark, when he got the shocking news of the Danish assault. The Frankish annals relate that a Danish fleet of up to 200 ships had plundered all the islands along the coast, landed and beat the Frisians in three battles, and that the army was now not far from Aachen. The Franks were panic-stricken. Fearing an attack on his capital, Charlemagne forcibly conscripted local farmers and ordered them to the mouth of the Elbe to block the Viking fleet from entering.
Then further news arrived: Gudrød was not leading the army himself; he was home in Denmark. Then more news: Gudrød was dead! The Franks were confused. Were these reports part of a Danish stratagem? Both the Danes and the Franks appeared to have lost control of the situation. Gudrød really was dead, murdered by one of his own retinue. He had probably been the subject of a plot. Gudrød’s policy had been to gamble on trade and peaceful coexistence with the Franks, while at the same time demonstrating military muscle and approving voyages of plunder to appease the hawks among his chieftains, led by his own sons. It is not known who was responsible for the assassination, but it was his nephew Hemming, one of the doves, who took over power, rather than the hawks as might have been expected. c hap ter 6
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The Franks The Franks were a Germanic tribe who originated in the region which is now modern Germany. During the time of tribal migrations (200–400 AD), the Franks and other Germanic tribes migrated over the borders of Gaul and the Roman Empire. The Merovingians under the leadership of Klodvig their chieftain united the Franks into one kingdom at the end of the 5th century. After the Merovingians, power passed to the Carolingians. The Frankish kingdom reached its maximum extent and power under Charlemagne (Charles the Great), who became king in 768. His
The first thing to happen was a peace treaty with the Franks. Gudrød’s sons fled to Skåne with the hawks. The treaty made with Charlemagne in 811 established that the Danish border ran along the river Eider. This meant that the Danish chieftains and kings could no longer count on tax revenue from Friesland, Saxony and the Wendish tribes in the east. This cannot have been very popular among the chieftains, and Hemming only reigned for two years until he died. In 812 two obscure heirsapparent from his faction, the brothers Harald Klak and Reginfred, took power. They were supported 300
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kingdom included both modern France and modern Germany, in addition to the Benelux countries and parts of Italy, and in 800 he was crowned as Emperor by the Pope in Rome. The West Frankish Kingdom in time became France, and the East Frankish Kingdom developed into the German Roman Empire, also known as the Holy Roman Empire. The third part, Lorraine (German: Lothringen) was divided between the two remaining Frankish kingdoms in 840. The last Carolingian emperor died in 899.
by the Franks, who were reluctant to see Gudrød’s heirs on the Danish throne. The change of king set off a series of rebellions throughout the Danish kingdom. That same year, Harald Klak and Reginfred had to travel to Norway to subdue a growing uprising in Vestfold, where some of the vassal kings had probably seen the civil conflict in Denmark as an opportunity to increase their own influence or achieve independence. The uprising was suppressed in 813. Harald and Reginfred’s campaign followed the traditional pattern of eliminating the rebels
and installing their own supporters. In this way, Vestfold could continue to be a power base for the brothers if things were to go badly on the home front. They did. Gudrød’s sons, led by Hårek, took advantage of Harald and Reginfred’s absence to seize power in Denmark. In 814 Harald and Reginfred made an unsuccessful attempt to regain power. Reginfred was killed and his son Rørek (Rorik) fled with Harald to the Abodrites and then to the Franks for protection and aid.
The struggle for Denmark Charlemagne had died on New Year’s Day 814. His son Louis the Pious succeeded him as emperor and welcomed Harald, who fitted perfectly into Louis’ plans for a final confrontation with the Danes. He was planning to invade Denmark with help from the Saxons and the Abodrites, and with Harald as a vassal king there might perhaps at last be an end to the threat from that quarter. The Franks had planned a winter campaign, but because of unfavourable ice conditions on the river Elbe the army was not able to leave until May. By then the Danes had had plenty of warning and their army was ready. The combined Frankish, Saxon and Wendish army advanced into Slien, where they encamped and awaited the expected counter-attack. The Frankish army was probably not significantly superior in number, but it included a feared Saxon cavalry division. These heavily armed and well-armoured warriors were the tank division of the time, and infantrymen had little defence to offer when they attacked in close formation. The Danes were well aware of this. Not wanting to risk everything in a land battle, they encamped their fleet and army on Fyn, out of range of the intruders. When the Franks realised that there wasn’t going to be any open battle and they couldn’t maintain their army in the field much longer, they plundered the surrounding area half-heartedly, took 40 hostages from the local population and went back home. Emperor Louis might be able to humiliate the Danes, but he couldn’t defeat them in open battle. To do that, he would need naval forces which he lacked. The invasion may however have worked on a psychological level. The powerful men in
Denmark now knew that Harald Klak was a force to be reckoned with and that he could draw on the emperor’s support in future if necessary. When the awesome Saxon cavalry had gone home, the Abodrites suddenly found themselves in the front line against a possible retaliation attack by the Danes. Diplomatic soundings were made. Could they depend on support from the emperor? Could they perhaps make an agreement with the Danes? North of the Elbe, in the Saxon region of Holstein, stood the fort of Esesfelth. This was the strategic starting point for the Frankish attempt to invade Denmark, and it constituted a constant threat to Gudrød’s sons’ position in Slien and southern Jutland. In an attempt to come to an agreement with the Danes, the Abodrites’ leader proposed that they should join forces to attack and eliminate the fort. This plan was put into action in 817. The Danish forces were split in two. The boats were transported overland from the Baltic to the North Sea via the rivers Rheide, Treene and Eider to the Wadden Sea. From there they sailed south and into the river Elbe to attack Esesfelth from the sea. At the same time, a Danish and an Abodrite army had been advancing by land. Despite the coordinated and apparently overwhelming assault, they did not succeed in taking Esesfelth by a direct attack. The fort was well fortified against such measures. Instead, it was besieged until it surrendered. By capturing Esesfelth, Gudrød’s sons had demonstrated that they were the people the emperor would have to negotiate with if there was to be peace between their kingdoms. The emperor didn’t take the bait. He maintained his support for Harald Klak. He insisted that the only way to bring about a reconciliation between the countries was to reinstall Harald as king of Denmark. In Denmark this brewed up into an internal dispute between the brothers. Hårek thought that the only way to take control of the situation was to accept Louis’ wish and take Harald as joint king. The conflict led to two of the brothers, probably the two who refused to accept Harald, being exiled in 819. Hårek then invited Harald home as joint king. Louis had won the next round. c hap ter 6
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Vestfold – Norwegian or Danish? The Vestfold Harald Klak subdued in 813 became an important ally and was under Danish rule in his time. The debate about whether Vestfold should traditionally be reckoned part of Denmark or of Norway in Viking times has been lively and animated. The truth is that this region changed hands between the countries depending on shifts in political power in Denmark and Norway. The oldest known source which names Vestfold is Frankish and describes the events of 812–13, when Vestfold was certainly part of the Danish kingdom. Harald Klak and Reginfred undertook an expedition there to subdue rebellious chieftains and the region is described as the furthest part of the Danish kingdom. Eighty years later the trader Ottar from Hålogaland travelled along the coast of Norway via the trading town of Kaupang in Vestfold, on to Hedeby in Denmark and then to England. In his
account to King Alfred in Wessex it is quite clear that Kaupang was then separated from Denmark and belonged to Norway. In the 890s Denmark was occupied by Swedes. The Danish kingdom was in ruins and had obviously lost power in Norway. However, the Danes regained control of the region. On Harald Bluetooth’s rune stone in Jelling dated from the 960s it is clearly stated that he won Norway (back). From then on, Vestfold continued to be part of the Danish kingdom until 1035 at the latest, when Canute the Great died. Internally, Vestfold saw many rulers come and go. Many people have thought that the region consisted of several centres of power, including one in Borre and one in Tjølling, further south. These may have paid taxes to the Danes either together or separately, and at times some parts of Vestfold have been more independent than others.
The big burial ground in Borre in Vestfold is evidence that mighty princes ruled here. At least seven large mounds and 20 smaller mounds raised between 600 and 900 are still preserved.
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Even though Harald’s time as king was short, relationships between the Frankish and the Danish kings never came to direct confrontation. What for a long time appeared to be a new Frankish expansionist phase became submerged in the Franks’ internal disputes and in a desperate struggle to defend themselves against the Vikings’ plundering raids.
Harald Klak and the contest for Denmark The Vikings first appeared in large numbers off the French coast in the 820s, when a large fleet sailed along the coast of Flanders and onwards to the Seine and Loire river mouths. This was a new and serious threat to the stability of the region. One fleet of 13 c hap ter 6
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After Charlemagne died in 814, Louis the Pious became sole ruler of the Frankish Empire.
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ships harried the coast as far south as Aquitaine and the Spanish border. The Vikings also attacked the island monastery of Noirmoutier, set up a summer base there and returned almost every summer throughout the 820s. They used their base on the island for plundering voyages up and down the coast and the rivers. To avoid risking a war with the Franks, Hårek the Danish king declared his innocence and promised to punish the guilty and pay compensation, but Harald Klak advised the emperor not to take Hårek’s assurances seriously. He hinted at who was instigating the attacks, and succeeded in persuading the emperor to mistrust the Danish king. In reality, Hårek was probably not behind the attacks. His power was relatively weak. He and his brothers had hardly any influence on the warrior aristocracy, but it was to Harald Klak’s advantage to lay the blame on them. The emperor came to understand that the only way to put an end to the attacks was to incorporate the Danes into Christian Europe. Emperor Louis’ vision for the future of Denmark has been the subject of much speculation. Was it to capture Denmark militarily and include it in the Frankish Empire, or was it to create a vassal state like those along his eastern border? This was already happening in several neighbouring Slavic states. Young, independent nations sought the emperor’s protection by becoming his vassals. What is certain is that the emperor did not want a militarily strong Denmark with unstable leadership. However, the Frankish aristocracy was too strongly opposed to an extended conflict for the emperor to have any possibility of winning a protracted war. Despite its modest size, Denmark was capable of mobilising large military resources at short notice. In 823 disputes developed between the Danish kings, and the emperor again had to mediate between Harald and Hårek. He also sent Archbishop Ebo of Reims to Harald Klak’s part of the kingdom to start converting the Danes to Christianity. The only effect of this attempt at evangelism was to strengthen the antagonisms between Hårek, the emperor and Harald. Relationships became so strained that in 824 Harald sought refuge with Louis. This time, the emperor required Harald and all his dependents, including his nephew Rørek, to consent to baptism. Louis had to pay a high price for vi k i ng i n va s ion s
Harald Klak’s conversion: the county of Rüstringen by the mouth of the river Weser, plus troops to achieve his reinstallation as king, first over Slien and then over the whole of Denmark. Harald Klak launched his invasion of Denmark in 827. He rapidly gained control of Slien and crossed the Danewall into southern Jutland, but then came to a stop. Hårek not only withstood the attack, but launched a counter-attack and captured all of Harald’s share of the territory as far as the boundary at the river Eider. Following this victory, Hårek offered the emperor a peace treaty. Harald still controlled parts of Slien and his fiefdom in Rüstringen, but if Hårek made a treaty with the emperor he could soon lose everything. So Harald started guerrilla warfare to undermine Hårek’s new relationship with Louis. He sent small detachments of troops over the border into Denmark to burn some villages. The reaction was not slow to come. Thinking that they were subject to a Frankish attack, the Danish border forces stormed the camp of the imperial emissaries and plundered all their valuables. The ambassadors and dignitaries who had come to be present at the signing of the peace treaty fled for their lives. Harald Klak’s joy over what he had done was short-lived, however. The peace talks resumed in 829, after Hårek had apologised for the incident and promised to pay compensation. This enabled him to conclude a peace treaty with the emperor in 831.
Harald Klak withdrew to his fiefdom in Rüstringen. His agreement with the emperor was now broken, and he considered himself free to go his own way.
The Vikings d estabilise France In the following years the Frankish Empire was assailed by civil war between Emperor Louis and his four sons. Lothar, Louis the German, Charles the Bald and Pippin wanted to depose their father and divide the empire among themselves. The Vikings stayed well out of this conflict, but in 834, the same year in which the emperor had re-established his power, they attacked the coast again. A fleet came to West Friesland and ‘immediately began to harry and plunder’, according to the sources. The target was Dorestad, one of the most important trading centres in the region. As a centre of trade between south and north Europe, the town provided rich tax revenues and luxury goods to the Frankish elite. This also made it an attractive target for the Vikings. Louis ordered the coastal defences to be put in order, but the Vikings came back to plunder the town in both 836 and 837. Dorestad remained a milch cow for the Vikings right until it was wiped out in a catastrophic flood in 864. The purpose of the attacks on Friesland was probably to weaken Louis’ internal position in the empire. King Hårek was again picked out as the main suspect, but his ambassadors maintained in the strongest terms that they had nothing to do with the attacks. Hårek then sent a message to the emperor that ‘He [Hårek], because of his loyalty to him [the emperor], has captured those who were responsible for the attack and executed them.’ As payment for this endeavour, Hårek wanted to be given control of the Frisians’ and the Abodrites’ lands. Saxony and Friesland were rich, extensive regions which yielded the emperor considerable revenue. Louis could obviously not agree to this. Hårek’s tactic was to negotiate good agreements with the Franks. Random attacks on Friesland and Dorestad were not part of his strategy. The Vikings’ violent harassment of these regions could only weaken Hårek’s position, not strengthen it. It was not Hårek who was behind the attacks, but
Frankish 9th-century sword-carrying strap found in Hoen in Øvre Eiker in Norway. Fittings such as this were popular as war booty and were often worn by Scandinavian women as adornments.
Harald Klak. From his exile under the emperor’s thumb in Rüstringen, he had few prospects of wealth and honour. The solution came from an unexpected quarter. In 834, once the civil war was over, Emperor Louis was working on vague plans for punitive expeditions against his rebellious sons Lothar and Louis the German, who were reigning as princes in the middle and eastern sections of the empire. To forestall this, Lothar made an agreement with Harald Klak. Harald would make sure that the emperor had other things to think about than punitive expeditions. So he unleashed his Vikings on Friesland and Dorestad. Why shouldn’t he grab his chance? He could not expect any help from the emperor in his struggle for Denmark. Lothar, on the other hand, could be very useful to Harald when he inherited the imperial throne. In 837 Harald’s Vikings shifted their focus of attention to the large Walcheren peninsula, in today’s Zealand. The population there had avoided all previous Viking attacks because the island was home to Hemming, a member of the Danish royal family who had settled there under the emperor’s protection. Hemming’s murder secured Harald Klak power over the peninsula and at the same time rid him of a potential challenger for the Danish throne. We don’t know what the emperor’s reaction was to Hemming’s murder. He probably didn’t know that Harald Klak was behind it. When Louis died in 840 his surviving sons and his nephew Pippin II divided the empire between themselves. Lothar became emperor and ruled c hap ter 6
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Lothar I was the Frankish king who made most use of the Vikings in his conflicts with his brothers. Through his alliance with the Danish King Harald Klak he exposed the Frankish Empire to a wave of Viking attacks. Illustration from Lothar’s Gospel from between 849 and 851, now in Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.
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the middle part, Charles the Bald got the western part, Louis the German got the eastern section and Pippin II took Aquitaine as a fiefdom. One of Lothar’s first actions as emperor was to nominate Harald Klak as the new feudal lord of Walcheren. Harald then sent word to the chieftains in Vestfold to come with their warriors to join him. Lothar was now in a conflict with his brother Charles the Bald, and had asked Harald to set his warriors on Charles’s kingdom. In 841 a fleet arrived from Vestfold under the leadership of a man called Åsgeir (Oscherus). On 14th May, the Vikings plundered and burnt the area around Rouen. The sources say that they ‘raged with robbery, sword and fire’. Monks and many prominent residents were taken prisoner, to be released later on payment of large ransoms. Those who could not be bought free were at risk of ending up in one of the many slave markets which appeared wherever the Vikings travelled. Åsgeir set up a base on the island of Oissel in the river Seine just south of Rouen. The Vikings called the island Thorhólmr (Tor’s Island or Tord’s Island). From their base near Rouen the Vikings proceeded further up the Seine, plundering the villages and monasteries as they went. The annals relate that people often had to choose between fire and desolation or buying their freedom – something very few could afford. The wealthy monasteries and religious communities helped to rescue many from the Vikings’ claws. There are reports that the monks from St Dennis’ monastery purchased freedom for 68 people at a cost of 26 pounds of silver. Other wealthy individuals did likewise. When autumn came, the Vikings disappeared as fast as they had come, but the following year Åsgeir was back and carrying on as before. The trading town of Quentovic was attacked and scorched. Only the few who could afford to pay got to keep their homes. Here too, prisoners were taken and ransom demanded. We don’t know whether Lothar was selecting the targets for Harald, or whether the Vikings were selecting the targets themselves. Probably neither the emperor nor Harald Klak still had full control of events, and they soon lost what little control they had. The plundering developed its own impetus. Men returning to Vestfold
encouraged others to join in, and the gold rush to the rich and undefended monasteries in France was soon under way. The attack which Åsgeir led in 843, however, appears to have been directed by domestic politics. That year, the Vikings established an all-year base on the island of Noirmoutier, off the west coast. About 50km inland is Nantes, which was one of France’s most important bishoprics and trading towns, ruled alternately by Frankish and Breton princes. In 843 the town was controlled by supporters of Charles the Bald but the local count, Lambert, was Lothar’s man. Lambert was already allied with the Bretons. Control of Nantes would give him, and therefore Lothar, dominance of a very central part of Charles’s realm. The sources suggest that it was Lambert who invited the Vikings to Noirmoutier to attack Nantes, with promises that the town was rich in gold, silver and other valuables. Åsgeir and another Norwegian chieftain, Gunnar (Gunhard) led a fleet of about 67 ships up the Loire in June 843. Their force may have numbered between 2,500 and 3,000 men. As the fleet approached Nantes, they systematically plundered the monasteries and villages throughout the valley. The town of Nantes was founded in 70 BC by a Gallic tribe, the Namnetes, and had seen many invaders come and go. The Roman general Julius Caesar captured the town in 56 BC and made it into a Roman provincial town. Then came the Saxons (c. 285 AD), the Franks (c. 500) and the Bretons (7th century). But the town had never experienced such fiends as the Vikings. On 24th June 843 the midsummer market was under way in Nantes, and the town was teeming with people in festive mood when refugees from the countryside started streaming into the town with news that the plundering fleet was on its way. The mood soon changed from festive to panic-stricken. Nobody managed to organise any effective defence. All the gates into the town were closed, which prevented anybody from the town escaping to take refuge in the countryside. The big Viking army soon stood in front of the town gates. They would not have been impressed by the sight of the town’s defensive works, which dated from the late Roman period and were old and poorly maintained. Most of the country’s defensive works had been
disintegrating during 200 years of internal peace, and Nantes was no exception. The Vikings used scaling ladders to storm the town walls and then opened the town gates from inside. Many of the citizens sought refuge in the Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul, where Bishop Gunthard celebrated mass. The doors were locked, but the Vikings smashed the windows and forced their way in. The sources relate that the murderers struck hardest at the clergy. They describe vividly how the bishop was killed halfway through a prayer, the sursum corda. He got as far as ‘Lift up your hearts’ before falling in front of the altar in a pool of blood. The priests, monks and canons suffered the same fate before the whole cathedral was plundered and set on fire. In the light of the burning town, the Vikings dragged prisoners and booty down to their ships. The fiery glow in the sky warned the people round about of the disaster which had struck their town. They gathered up their scanty possessions and fled further inland. A large group of Vikings settled outside Nantes for the winter and ravaged the countryside. The occupants of the many monasteries in the area quickly packed up their relics and fled inland. The main army returned down the Loire valley to Noirmoutier, burning any remaining monasteries and villages as they went. A Frankish eyewitness later told of what he had experienced when the army returned to base with their loot. Many of the young warriors were completely overcome by greed when they saw how much there was to be shared out. They lost all respect for their senior officers and vicious fighting broke out. The Vikings later introduced the death penalty for those who took the law into their own hands during the distribution of booty. Quite a few of the hostages managed to escape during this tumult. The others were either set free on payment of ransom or sold at the slave markets. No matter how much ill-will Lothar bore against his brother this must have been too much even for him, but it was too late to do anything about it now. Rüstringen and Walchern had become refuges for Viking bands wanting to go on plundering campaigns, and these groups were now beyond both Lothar’s and Harald’s control. c hap ter 6
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The devastation of Paris and Hamburg Back home in Denmark, Hårek was beginning to lose control of the warrior aristocracy, who wanted to take part in acquiring wealth from the continent. They demanded that the king himself, or someone from his family, should lead an expedition. Hårek bowed to the pressure in 845 and despatched a large fleet to plunder in Friesland and the Frankish Empire. The expedition was led by a man called Ragnar, almost certainly a member of the Danish royal family and possibly the original of the legendary Ragnvald Lodbrok who features in several sagas. At the beginning of March Ragnar’s fleet of 120 ships proceeded up the Seine, plundering along both banks as they went. Ragnar set up his base on the island of Jeufosse, upstream from Veron, and started planning an attack on Paris. Although not yet a capital city, Paris was a sizeable and important town. Most of the buildings were concentrated round the Île de la Cité, the big island in the middle of the Seine. Here stood the royal palace, and here stood the cathedral with all its churchly goods. The town is first mentioned in Julius Caesar’s De Bello Gallico (58–50 BC) as Lutetia Parisiorum. After the Romans took over the region, a Roman colony grew up on the south side of the river and the town eventually became a Roman provincial capital. In 508 the Merovingian King Klodvig made it his capital. It lost its political importance under the Carolingian dynasty, but was still an important church and trade centre when Ragnar approached with his Viking fleet. When news of the Viking invasion reached the monasteries around Paris, the monks fled. Only a few who were too old or too sick or who were seeking martyrdom remained. At St Bertin’s monastery only four monks remained, three of whom are described in the annals as ‘elderly, thin and fragile’. These were picked out for humiliating and painful handling. In addition to being subjected to verbal insults and scorn from the Vikings, they suffered ‘water right up into their nostrils so that their stomachs swelled up’. This was a common method of punishment used regularly by the Romans and others. The monks may have been tortured to 308
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persuade them to reveal where they had hidden their valuables. The fourth monk was in better condition, and the Vikings wanted to take him in the hope of getting ransom money. He resisted strongly, screamed, stripped off his clothes, lay on the ground and insisted on dying on the spot, so that he could be martyred and buried among his ancestors. Apparently from pure irritation, the Vikings began hitting him with the butt ends of their spears. This game eventually got out of control and it ended with the fulfilment of the monk’s wish to be martyred. Contemporary chroniclers and later historians have used this story as evidence that the Vikings were militant heathens who took pleasure in torturing and killing monks. There is much evidence that this was inaccurate. It is clear that the Vikings eventually developed a respect for the Christian institutions and often went out of their way to prevent unnecessary attacks on the clergy. The event was rather an expression of the Vikings’ coarse sense of humour, which is clearly expressed in the saga literature. The story also relates that as compensation for the death of the monk, the Vikings paid a large sum of silver to the monastery, and that when some of the more uncivilised members of the group tried to steal the silver back they were killed by their own people and hanged at the monastery gate. The monasteries had become regular users of intelligence, and the monks often got early warning of enemies approaching up the rivers. The monks in the Monastery of St Germaine outside Paris were among the first to be warned of Ragnar’s invasion, and they sent word to the archbishop in Paris and to King Charles the Bald. Charles soon arrived with his troops to cut off the fleet before it reached Paris. He posted troops on both sides of the Seine to prevent the Vikings from landing, but his plan failed. Ragnar landed on the side where Charles’s troops were weakest and drove them to flight. In front of the horrified Franks on the opposite bank he had 111 of his prisoners killed and hanged as a warning. The Franks took the hint and withdrew, leaving the route to Paris open. On Easter Saturday, 28th March the Vikings surrounded the town, and on Easter Sunday they started their assault. Paris lacked any significant
Denmark falls apart Dissatisfaction among the warrior aristocracy in Denmark led to the plundering of Friesland and southern England reaching pandemic proportions throughout the 9th century. The kings in both England and the Frankish Empire laid the blame on the Danish kings, but after the big Viking attack on Paris in 845 the Danish kings could no longer exert any real influence over the chieftains. Under Hårek
defensive works, and the town was plundered and burnt. King Charles had to seek refuge with the monks in the monastery of St Denis. Charles had come to power two years previously and had totally ignored the Viking threat. His solution was to buy them off. He offered Ragnar 7,000 pounds of silver to leave the country. The only effect of mentioning such a totally unheard of sum was to stimulate many more Vikings to invade the kingdom. The old Roman roads in France, Belgium and the Netherlands were soon full of refugees trying to get away from the coastal and river regions. Ragnar’s report to King Hårek didn’t help the situation for the Franks. He reported that the country was fertile and rich in goods, and that the inhabitants were cowardly. On the way home the fleet plundered Hamburg, which was then a small and almost insignificant centre of population. What made the place potentially important was that in 830 the emperor and the pope had made it the seat of an archbishop, and that it was the base for attempts to convert Scandinavia to Christianity. When the Vikings attacked, the leader of the town was a monk named Ansgar, who later came to be known as ‘The Apostle of the North’. Ansgar’s church and monastery were burnt down, together with the library containing priceless manuscripts which the previous emperor, Louis the Pious, had presented to the church. Several clergymen were taken to Denmark as hostages. Most of the towns visited by the Vikings shared Hamburg’s fate. The attack on Hamburg may have been part of a direct attack on Louis the German, who controlled that region. Hårek’s planning and equipping of Ragnar’s expedition gave him a chance
and his successors, royal power was progressively weakened and the chieftains who had plundered their way to wealth and power demanded shared or even complete royal status for themselves. This came to a head in a violent rebellion in 854 in which many of the royal family were killed, including King Hårek himself. Denmark was again divided into several petty kingdoms.
to take revenge on Louis. The Abodrites, who had again become allies of the Danes, had been attacked the year before. The excuse had been that they were thinking of ‘seceding from the East Frankish Kingdom’. Their king was sent into exile and Frankish dukes took power. Hårek had been unable to intervene, because a full-scale invasion to free the Abodrites would have brought the Danes into a war with the militarily strong Franks. Hårek could make use of raids on strategically important points instead. The strategy probably succeeded. At any rate, we know that the Franks sent two diplomats to Hårek to negotiate release of hostages. One of these diplomats was Count Kobbo, who negotiated a political solution to the conflict. The other was Ansgar, who negotiated about sending missionaries to Denmark. Hostages taken from Hamburg were released in exchange for major concessions by the Franks, probably including the future of the Abodrites. Ansgar’s attempt to convert the king didn’t go so well, though. Hårek did not want to convert to Christianity, but he did allow Ansgar to establish a little church in Hedeby. Ragnar died soon after returning to Denmark, possibly a victim of internal conflict. However, the accounts of his amazing and violent feats live on in the sagas. After Ragnar’s successful campaign Hårek lost all influence over the Danish Viking chieftains, and his relationship with Louis, Lothar and Charles gradually went from bad to worse. By 847 the situation had become so serious that the usually divided brothers came together to threaten a combined invasion of Denmark if Hårek didn’t c hap ter 6
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Pippin of Aquitaine Pippin II was the son of Louis the Pious’ second son, Pippin, who died in 838. After losing the struggle for power against his uncle Charles, he was appointed as an abbot in 848 and sent to a monastery against his will. In 857 he fled and allied himself with the Loire Vikings on Noirmoutier in an attempt to regain power over Aquitaine. The following year he parti-
put an end to the plundering raids. This was however an empty threat. An invasion of Denmark was as unlikely to succeed as an attempt by Hårek to stop the raids. Harald Klak’s nephew, Rørek, had controlled west Friesland and Dorestad since 837. After Louis the Pious died, Rørek fell into disfavour with Lothar. Unlike his uncle, he had been consistent in his support for Louis. Lothar deprived him of his fiefdom and imprisoned him. Later, when he managed to escape, he turned to Louis the German and offered his services. Under Louis’ protection he settled in Holstein in 845. From here he attacked both Hårek’s Denmark and Lothar’s Middle Frankish Kingdom. When he plundered Dorestad for the second time in 850, Lothar took notice of him. However, instead of giving him a thrashing, Lothar gave control of west Friesland back to Rørek in exchange for defending the mouth of the Rhine against other Vikings in the future. The result of this was that for many years the Vikings had to sail beyond Lothar’s kingdom and assail Charles the Bald’s Western Kingdom instead. Rørek’s Dorestad gradually became the centre of an independent little Viking kingdom which survived till c. 885. In the 25 years he was in power there, other Vikings broke through his defences only twice. When Harald Klak died in 852, Lothar took back Walcheren and Harald’s son Gudrød started his career as leader of an itinerant band of warriors. During the next two years he led so many attacks up the Seine that Charles the Bald asked Lothar for help to stop him. Gudrød Haraldsson was probably on the island of Oissel with his fleet when the Franks surrounded him, with people on both banks of the river. Charles the Bald was not there to crush 310
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cipated alongside the Vikings in the plundering of Poitiers. This event enraged the Frankish nobility, and the mood was not improved by rumours that he had forsworn the Christian faith and taken to the heathens’ lifestyle and religion. In 864 he was captured, condemned for treachery and apostasy, and executed.
the Vikings; he just wanted to get them to stop attacking his kingdom. They made an agreement whereby Gudrød and his Vikings were offered land along the Seine in exchange for protecting the inland regions against attack by other fleets. The Vikings settled in the region which later came to be known as Normandy. Gudrød himself travelled back to Friesland and settled there with his cousin Rørek. Rørek and Gudrød defended the mouth of the Rhine against plundering Viking bands for many years, though a couple of fleets did manage to slip past the defences. Dorestad and several other towns along the river were plundered in 863. These attacks caused a popular uprising and led to Rørek being deposed as master of Friesland, but in 865 with help from the Franks he was back again as ‘Protector of the Rhine’, and he continued in this role till his death in 870. Since the early 820s Vikings had been making raids right along the French coast as far as the Loire and Aquitaine. At first there were just small groups attacking only in summer, but in the 840s the number of attacks increased dramatically. Bands of Vikings streamed to the all-year base on Noirmoutier hoping for opportunities to join lucrative expeditions up the rivers. The Vikings soon extended their plundering to Aquitaine. The rivers Garonne and Charente, which run into the Bay of Biscay, got their own contingents of Vikings and a base was set up on the big Isle of Re off La Rochelle, north of the mouth of the Garonne. It is said that the Vikings brought building materials from the mainland and built houses on the island. Each group had its plundering territory, and if other Vikings overstepped the boundaries
this often led to fighting between the groups. They also had local allies. Pippin II, Charles the Bald’s nephew and a supporter of Lothar, probably paid them to attack Bordeaux in 848. Pippin wanted to carve out a kingdom for himself and Lothar wanted to undermine his brother’s power in the region. The Vikings were an integral part in the political game between the Frankish kings. All parties used them as mercenaries. The mutually ruinous wars between the Frankish kings not only provided many undefended targets for the Vikings, but also allowed them to settle on the land and make territorial demands. At the same time, many chieftains were awarded fiefdoms for supporting the various parties in the civil war. This yielded much silver for the Vikings’ treasure chests, but at the same time it prevented them from having a common, coordinated influence. From the mid-850s, however, the attacks changed character. The simple plundering attacks against more or less random targets seem to have become fewer, and single individuals were more and more seldom taken prisoner for release on payment of ransom. The new attacks were more like strategically planned campaigns.
The struggle for the Loire Valley The monastic island of Noirmoutier was not a safe place. At low water it was connected to the mainland and vulnerable to attack, and it was impossible to maintain watch throughout its 55 km2 extent. The Vikings soon started looking at other islands suitable for bases. Opposite the monastery of St Florent-le-Vieil there are several small islands in the river Loire. One of these, probably today’s Île Batailleuse, became the Vikings’ new base in the region. Many of the Vikings who didn’t want to settle and lead a quieter life along the Seine or the Rhine eventually found themselves by the Loire. Among these was Gudrød Haraldsson. He settled on Île Batailleuse with the chieftains Åsgeir and Hallstein. Here they built a fortified harbour and camp where they kept all the prisoners they planned to sell or hold to ransom, and from here they undertook many plundering raids both up the river by ship and throughout the land on horseback. They followed the old Roman roads to the towns of Poitiers, Tours, Orleans and Angers, which were all plundered. The populations of the towns and rural settlements were soon living in constant fear of attack. c hap ter 6
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Île Batailleuse in the Seine was an important base for the Vikings, where they established a large camp. There were many such islands in the French rivers from which the Vikings could operate relatively safe from the Franks.
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The Duke of Brittany, Erispoë, was among those who tried to flush out the Viking lair. In 855 the Loire Vikings were attacked by a Viking chieftain called Sigtrygg (Sidroc). Sigtrygg had been operating around the Seine and in Ireland, and had in the past sailed with Gudrød. He was now allied with Erispoë, who had paid him to get rid of Hallstein, Gudrød and Åsgeir. We don’t know whether the king was backing this enterprise and paying Erispoë’s expenses, or whether Erispoë was operating independently of Charles. Erispoë’s relationship with the king was sometimes strained. They both wanted control of Nantes and the region bordering Brittany, and the Vikings on the Loire were also a threat to Erispoë’s dominance over Nantes and the surrounding countryside. Sigtrygg commanded a fleet of 105–120 ships and probably 3,500–4,000 warriors, while the alliance between Hallstein, Åsgeir and Gudrød mustered about 40–50 ships, which would correspond to 1,500–2,000 warriors. vi k i ng i n va s ion s
Sigtrygg encamped on a neighbouring island to Île Batailleuse and began a siege. Île Batailleuse is about 3.2 km long. The Viking base was at the tip of one end of the island and so could be attacked both directly from the river and from land. Sigtrygg sent a message to Erispoë asking for help to attack the Vikings, but he couldn’t manage to restrain his warriors and fighting broke out between the Viking armies before Erispoë could mobilise and arrive on the scene. The fighting may have started in either of two ways. Either the armies made an agreement to meet in open battle to decide matters, or Sigtrygg’s Vikings launched an attack on the base on Île Batailleuse. The sources say that the battle lasted all day and into the evening. So it is more likely, and more consistent with what we know of Viking defensive tactics, that Sigtrygg started an attack. The defenders would hardly have abandoned a favourable position when they were so obviously outnumbered.
Sigtrygg’s warriors were being shot at and had to overcome several pitfalls and defensive works before they won through to the earth wall with its surmounting palisade. We don’t know what sort of equipment Sigtrygg had at his disposal for the attack, but he certainly didn’t have heavy weapons such as siege engines or battering rams. However, he would have had scaling ladders, ropes and hooks with which to access or tear down the palisades. The defensive works must have been well built and the defenders determined, for Sigtrygg’s men had to withdraw and by the evening he himself had been wounded in the fighting. He had no choice other than to send word that he was willing to go away – in return for compensation. He requested half of the booty the allies had amassed on the island, took his share and sailed away downriver with his fleet. When the Vikings on Île Batailleuse learned that Erispoë was behind this attack, they swore revenge. Gudrød led a revenge expedition to Brittany. Their target was probably the undefended town of Redon, but bad weather prevented them from reaching the mouth of the river Vilain and they were forced instead to land on the coast, where they plundered and took prisoners and hostages, among them the bishop of Vannes. After this relatively unsuccessful expedition Gudrød was called home to Friesland by Rørek. He set course northward accompanied by many of the Danish Loire Vikings. In 856, when Charles the Bald was already fighting against an alliance between the Loire Vikings and Pippin II, news reached him that Paris was again under attack. Sigtrygg had united with Bjørn Ironside’s22 fleet, and together they sailed up the Seine towards Paris, ravaging the countryside as they went. Among those taken hostage was the abbot of St Denis. Nor was Paris spared from plundering. After this attack the town’s authorities decided to build a defensive town wall. It was October by the time Charles could mobilise a counter-attack, and by then Sigtrygg and Bjørn had drawn back to the fortified winter camp on the island of Oissel. As well as having to defend the Seine against Sigtrygg and Bjørn, and Aquitaine against rebellious counts, Charles also faced threats from the Loire Vikings who plundered Orleans and were a
danger to all the surrounding towns. So he made an agreement with Erispoë to cede Maine in the province of Neustria to the Bretons in return for making an alliance against the Vikings. However, Erispoë was killed in an internal uprising soon after, and Salomon, the new Duke of Brittany, promptly broke the alliance with Charles and offered his support instead to Charles’s opponents. Duke Robert the Strong led an uprising in Neustria in 857, supported by Louis III the Younger, son of Louis the German. Charles’s position was so threatened that he sought help from the king of Wessex in England, but Wessex had its own problems and was unable to help. In a desperate attempt to regain control of the situation, Charles bought a settlement with Bjørn Ironside. Bjørn received an enormous ransom of 686 pounds of gold and 3,250 pounds of silver for the release of the abbot of St Denis, and swore to help Charles expel Sigtrygg from Oissel, but little happened. When Bjørn Ironside went with Hallstein to Spain and Italy in 858 (see page 341), Sigttrygg was still on Oissel. Charles the Bald decided to try to expel the Vikings from Oissel himself. He came to Rouen with his son Charles the Young and the whole French army. He drew his army up on the west bank and offered the Vikings safe passage to cross from the island and fight in open battle. They chose not to, and Charles had neither boats nor any other means of reaching them out on the island. Even the arrival of Lothar II and Pippin II failed to persuade them to leave. Charles’s offensive was in danger of collapse. The siege of the Vikings on Oissel ended completely in September 858, when the counts in Neustria rebelled and Charles had to send his troops against them.
Vemund the Wonderviking The region around the river Somme and today’s Belgium had seen neither hide nor hair of a Viking for four years. Then suddenly they were back in force, when a large Viking fleet of around 200 ships appeared in 859, led by Vemund (Weland). Unlike many of the other Viking chieftains, Vemund had no known connection to the Danish royal family. He probably came from Norway. His fleet encamped by c hap ter 6
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Seal with portrait of Charles the Bald (823–877).
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the mouth of the Seine and plundered and devastated the monastery of St Valery sur Somme, who appeared to be their nearest neighbours. Then they proceeded upriver to plunder and burn A miens. Rumours of this new threat soon reached Charles the Bald in Aachen. He contacted Vemund in 860 in the hope that he would accept payment to expel Sigtrygg from the Seine. To remove the Vikings from their well-fortified bases on Oissel and Jeufosse would not be easy or cheap. Vemund quoted a price of 3,000 pounds of silver, the equivalent of 720,000 silver coins, plus large supplies of food and wine. Charles accepted this quotation, and the sources say that he imposed new taxes on all the churches, traders and poor people to meet the cost. But despite squeezing his own people in this way he didn’t manage to gather the required sum before the deadline for payment expired. Vemund then demanded compensation, took hostages from the king and went over to England with his fleet, returning a year later. In January 861 Sigtrygg’s Vikings attacked Paris again. Monasteries and churches also suffered. Wealthy merchants and nobles were systematically hunted down and captured, to be released only on the clink of silver coins. The Seine Vikings had become experienced bargainers, and every town and church, every monastery and house, had its price for the enforcers of protection payments. In
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desperation, Charles turned again to Vemund. Vemund was more than willing to help if Charles coughed up an extra couple of thousand pounds of silver and increased the quantity of wine. Once they had been paid, Vemund’s fleet headed up the Seine and surrounded Sigtrygg’s Vikings on Oissel and Jeufosse. A further 60 ships arrived to join Vemund’s fleet. The force besieging Sigtrygg would have numbered 8,000 men, if the sources are to be believed. The Vikings on the islands became desperate and wanted to negotiate with Vemund. Vemund’s loyalty to Charles was not deep enough to prevent him from being open to better offers if such should arise. So he agreed to lift the siege and allow them to sail away, on payment of the tidy sum of 6,000 pounds of silver. As winter was approaching, he allowed Sigtrygg to settle by the mouth of the Seine until spring. Without unsheathing his sword, Vemund had established dominance over the other Viking armies and extracted tribute from them. Now he really was a sea king to be reckoned with. He led his own fleet up the Seine and set up camp on the big river promontory of St Maur des Fossés, a few kilometres upstream from Paris. He later set up another camp slightly further up the river Marne. This was not quite what Charles had intended, but so long as the Vikings remained peaceful under a strong leader, something had been achieved and Charles could
concentrate on dealing with his rebellious counts and dukes. Charles eventually understood that the only way to keep the Vikings out of his kingdom was to deny them access up the rivers. Paying them to go away had not worked. In 862 he began constructing a series of bridges across the Seine to block off the fleets, but the Vikings pulled these down before they were even finished. So he built a bridge over the Marne, east of Paris but downstream from where Vemund’s fleet was based. Heavily protected castles and fortifications were raised on either side of the bridge, so that the Vikings could not circumvent the bridge or tear it down without massive opposition. Vemund’s fleet was now trapped on the Marne with no possibility of reaching the coast, and skirmishes with the guards showed that it would be difficult to get past. This led Vemund to enter new negotiations with Charles. He offered to free all the hostages the Vikings were holding and swore to leave the Seine, taking with him the other fleets which were operating in the region. Vemund then went in person to Charles’s camp and swore an oath of loyalty to the king. He also promised to give Charles military aid if any of the fleets refused to leave. The fleet was then granted passage. Vemund sailed down towards the mouth of the Seine and set up camp on the river promontory of Jumièges, downstream from Rouen. Here the ships were overhauled before the fleet was demobilised and everybody went their own way. In 863 Vemund came to Charles a third time. His luck appeared to have changed. Not everybody had approved his homage to Charles, and the Vikings had replaced him with a new leader. When he approached Charles this time he had with him only a few men plus his wife and children. He requested baptism, and must have expected to be granted a fiefdom as other Viking chieftains had been before. Soon after the baptism, where Charles himself was sponsor, three of Vemund’s own men accused him of disloyalty to Charles. Vemund denied this categorically. There are no accounts of what this disloyalty consisted of, but the most likely accusation would be that he had received money from Emperor Louis II or some of the other family members with whom Charles was in dispute. It was decided that Vemund should show his innocence by
holm-going. One of the accusers faced Vemund in a duel and killed him in the presence of King Charles. The Vikings’ times of greatness on the Seine were over for the time being. At the time of Vemund’s death, Friesland was the only part of the Frankish Empire exposed to Viking attacks. A fleet sailed up the Rhine against Rørek’s will and encamped not far from Neuss, but King Lothar II drove it back with help from the Saxons. The remainder of Vemund’s old fleet went on to Brittany, where they became mercenaries for Duke Salomon and took part in his war against the count of Anjou, Robert the Strong. They must have been well paid, for not even Robert’s tempting offer of 6,000 pounds of silver could persuade them to change sides.
The total humiliation of the French Charles’s respite was short, however. Two years later the Vikings were again active throughout his kingdom. The Loire Vikings attacked and plundered Orleans and Poitiers, and Aquitaine was harried by a Viking called Sigurd (Sigfred) from his base on the river Charente. On the Seine the Vikings broke down Charles’s bridges, and in 866 a large fleet again advanced on Paris. Charles’s troops followed, ready to attack if the Vikings set foot on land. Count Odo and his brother, Robert the Strong, commanded the biggest section of the army. With his forces split between the north and the south banks of the river, Charles took a big risk. If it came to a major confrontation, the Franks would have difficulty coming to each other’s aid. Near the castle of Melun, south-east of Paris, the Vikings landed on Odo’s and Robert’s side of the river where the Franks apparently were strongest, and drew up in battle order. To everybody’s amazement the only fighting consisted of minor skirmishes, before the Frankish soldiers fled from the field. Morale within the once-efficient Frankish war machine had reached a low ebb, and Charles again had to dip into his purse. He offered the Vikings 4,000 pounds of silver to leave the Seine. The Vikings imposed humiliating demands before accepting the offer. Some of the prisoners c hap ter 6
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they had taken in the region had fled, and the Vikings demanded to have them returned. Some of those who had escaped were bought free by Charles, but many despairing souls were handed back to the Vikings. Charles also had to agree to pay compensation for the Vikings who had fallen in the fighting with Odo and Robert’s troops, and to hand over all the Scandinavian prisoners he had in his possession. In June 866, when their demands had been met and Charles had handed over the silver and the prisoners, the fleet turned and sailed west. Charles soon regretted having allowed himself to be so humiliated. In a last, desperate attempt to achieve a victory he tried to get his soldiers to block the river at Pitres, but the fleet slipped through and on 1st July the Vikings were at the mouth of the Seine. After repairing their ships they sailed north and landed on Walcheren, where they tried to make an agreement with Lothar II but Lothar and Rørek both refused them access to the Rhine. Emperor Louis II died in 875 and Charles the Bald at last became emperor. Charles could again concentrate on building blockades across the Seine. He had been trying since 862 to complete a fortified barrier at Pont de l’Arche near Pitres, slightly down from Rouen, but the Vikings had repeatedly destroyed the construction before it could become operative. In 865 the Vikings had even taken over the installation and used it as a base. The building work now resumed, and in 870 the structure was finally ready. It prevented the Vikings from going up the Seine for the next 15 years. Similar works were done on the Oise and the Marne, blocking access to the inland parts of the kingdom. He could now concentrate on domestic politics in relative peace from the Vikings. The land below Pont de l’Arche was however still Viking territory, where several chieftains sat firm, waiting for an opportunity to break through Charles’s defences.
The Vikings in Brittany Viking activity in the independent Dukedom of Brittany increased significantly after 866. Brittany varied between being allies and opponents of the Frankish kings. Also, the population still had a 316
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strong Celtic component who often looked more to Wales and England for contact and support than to the Franks. Since his first alliance with Hallstein and the Vikings in 862, Duke Salomon had been weaving a complicated political web. He sometimes fought against the Franks with help from the Vikings on the Loire, sometimes against Vikings with help from other Vikings and sometimes against Vikings with help from Franks. In 865 he had hired in a group of Vikings from the Loire and allowed them to plunder Le Mans. The following year he made a new alliance with Hallstein. Together they invaded and plundered the regions of Poitou, Anjou, Maine and Touraine and the town of Le Mans. The army that Charles had sent to restore order was defeated and put to flight in a battle at Brissarthe. Salomon, who was now beginning to entitle himself as king, was able to negotiate an agreement with Charles giving him control over the church properties in the region – an important source of revenue. In 868, once Hallstein and his Vikings were of no further use to him in his struggle against Charles, Salomon boldly made an offer to the Franks to lead a joint campaign against them. He was probably hoping to be rewarded with even more land. If he could gain control of Nantes, he could perhaps manage to create a powerful Breton kingdom in the region. Probably seeing this as an opportunity to be rid of Salomon once and for all, Charles agreed to the offer. Confident of victory, Salomon declared war on the Loire Vikings. But instead of standing at the head of an invincible army of Franks and Bretons, Salomon soon found himself desperately defending Brittany against the Vikings. Charles had abandoned him to fight the Vikings alone, hoping that they would put an end to the troublesome duke. Hallstein himself led the Loire Vikings to war. The former allies faced each other in a battle south of Redon in Brittany in May 869, when neither side managed to gain the upper hand. The conflict ended with a peace agreement, by which the Vikings got 500 cows and various other things and the Bretons got a share of Anjou’s wine harvest, which the Vikings had secured for themselves. Charles would be very disappointed that neither of his enemies had managed to eliminate the other.
Hallstein tries to settle In 873 Hallstein sailed to Angers to plunder, but when the Vikings reached the town they found it abandoned. The inhabitants had packed up and left when they heard that the Vikings were on their way. Angers had high town walls and would make a perfect refuge for the Vikings. So they set the houses in order and fetched their wives, children and slaves from the windswept islands on the Loire. The defensive works were strengthened and extended and a moat was dug around the town. Hallstein must have seen this as a golden opportunity to have a settled home at last, hopefully with concessions and privileges from the king enabling him to be established as a feudal lord. Charles had no such ideas, however. When he heard that the Vikings had not only taken over an intact fortified town but that they even appeared to be planning to settle there, he put his whole effort into getting them out. He sent a message to Salomon that they now really would have to stand together against the Vikings. Salomon agreed. If the Vikings settled in Angers in addition to Nantes, they would control a large region and constitute a significant threat not only against the West Frankish Kingdom but also against Brittany. In autumn 873 the Franks and the Bretons together laid siege to Angers. Monk Reginos’ chronicle relates that the battles lasted day and night and that the Franks had brought siege engines to break down the town walls. But Charles had again underestimated the Vikings. There were many more of them than he had been told, and they fought determinedly to defend their new home town. Meanwhile, the siege engines became bogged down in mud and were out of action. Charles and Salomon had assembled a much bigger army than the Vikings, but this was also their Achilles’ heel. They had gambled on a quick conclusion, but instead they had to settle into a long siege. It was already late autumn. Sanitary conditions were dreadful. Supplies were running out. Hunger and disease soon broke out in the overcrowded military camps. Desertion and mutiny seemed imminent. Something had to be done. Salomon came up with a plan to deny the Vikings access to the river and therefore to water,
food and a potential escape route. He set the army to work digging a canal to divert the river upriver from the town. Then they would be able to attack and destroy the Vikings’ fleet. Panic spread among the Vikings when they realised what was going on. Without the boats they would be stranded in Angers with no possibility of either excursions or escape. Hallstein offered Charles an enormous sum and swore to leave the kingdom if he would raise the siege and allow the fleet to sail away. To everyone’s surprise, Charles accepted the offer. He was often criticised for this later, but in reality he had no choice. The army was disintegrating, he could not keep them in the field much longer and a regular battle against desperate Vikings would more than likely result in defeat. Charles’s main aim was to get the Vikings out of Angers, so that the population could return. In addition to silver, the Vikings had given Charles hostages. They had been given permission to settle on the island of St Florent-le-Vieil, on condition that they desisted from plundering in future and prevented other Viking fleets from plundering. From now on they were expected to turn their hands to peaceful trade and their souls to Christianity. Many Vikings had already been baptised and many others now accepted baptism so that they could remain on the Loire. If Charles believed that the Vikings would change overnight from warmongering heathens into peaceful and god-fearing merchants, he was deluded. For most of them, baptism was a political act of little practical significance.
The Great Army comes to France Charles the Bald died in 877. His son, Louis the Stammerer, now became king of the Western Frankish Kingdom. After a prolonged interregnum Charles the Fat, king of the Middle Frankish Kingdom, became emperor in 881. This led to a new civil war, allowing the Vikings to harry freely throughout the Western Frankish Kingdom. Rørek, who had defended the Rhine, was also dead and many Vikings from the fully exploited regions along the Loire and the Seine, including Hallstein, were tempted to head north by the prospect of virgin plundering territory. c hap ter 6
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Hallstein’s miraculous escape There is a story about Hallstein which illustrates how important and how vulnerable the leader was in a conflict situation. In 866 Hallstein was leading a group of 400 Vikings on a raiding expedition around Brissarthe in the countryside north of Angers when they realised they were being followed. A source says that Count Robert of Anjou and Duke Ramnulf of Poitiers had been leading a local troop when they came across the Vikings and gave chase. The Vikings’ first reaction was to try to return to their base on the Loire, until they realised that they would never reach it. So they went into the little village of Brissarthe and barricaded themselves in the church. Count Robert could have used the same method as the Vikings often used in such situations and burnt down or stormed the church, but as a Christian he chose to lay siege to it instead. He set up camp and started building an earth wall around the church. It was a scorching summer day, and the Franks soon became tired and thirsty. Hallstein probably understood that when evening came he and his men would be imprisoned in the church and that
Charles the Fat (839–888) became Frankish emperor in 881 but was deposed by the Eastern Franks after giving in to the Vikings at Paris. He died soon after.
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their only possibility of escape was to attack before the surrounding earth wall had been completed. Hallstein and his warriors charged screaming out of the church door and attacked the unsuspecting Franks. Robert and his men were taken completely by surprise, but nevertheless managed to organise a counter-attack, forcing the Vikings back into the church in man-to-man fighting. Robert carelessly threw himself into the fight without either helmet or coat of mail. He pursued the Vikings right to the church door, but there he was killed. The Vikings dragged his dead body into the church and barricaded themselves in again. Duke Ramnulf was on horseback, clearly visible, just a few metres away from the church. One of the Vikings shot an arrow in his direction and Ramnulf fell. Completely demoralised by the loss of both their leaders, the Franks raised the siege and went away, and Hallstein and his men were able to make a triumphant exit from the church a few hours later.
In England at this time, King Alfred had pacified the Great Heathen Army. Those Vikings who did not wish to adapt to the peace terms crossed the Channel in 879 under the leadership of Gudrød Haraldsson. The fleet made landfall between Calais and Boulogne, sailed north to Ghent and established a winter camp. In February 880 the fleet entered the river Weser. This part of the Frankish Empire is referred to as ‘The River Lands’, a huge delta formed by the rivers Somme, Rhine, Weser and Elbe together with numerous small and large tributaries. Here were some of the richest agricultural areas in the whole empire. On the bank of the Weser the Vikings defeated Bruno of Saxony in a big battle in which Bruno was killed along with thousands of his men, all his aristocratic officers and nine bishops. This victory opened up the River Lands to the Vikings, and the Great Heathen Army terrorised the area for the next 13 years. The army had often used horses as a rapid means of transport in England. They also used horses in Saxony and Flanders, but expanded this to the use of fighting cavalry. In 880 Gudrød had a narrow escape, when he happened to meet unexpectedly with Louis III, who ruled the Eastern Frankish Kingdom. Their vi k i ng i n va s ion s
courses collided at Thiméon, near the river Dyle in present-day Belgium, when the Vikings were on their way back to their camp with booty and prisoners. Everybody grabbed their weapons, and violent fighting developed. Louis’ men significantly outnumbered Gudrød’s. They had victory in sight when Hugo, the king’s son, was wounded and captured. The Vikings retreated under cover of dusk and barricaded themselves in a nearby farmyard. Louis III suspended the attack in the hope that his son would be allowed to survive. However, Hugo died during the night and the Vikings snuck away. Louis swore vengeance, enlisted more troops and took up the hunt against the Vikings. In 881 Gudrød captured the royal town of Nijmegen in the province of Gelderland on the west bank of the river Waal. Charles the Great had built the town specifically as a link in his defences against the Vikings. When Louis came and laid siege, Gudrød asked for talks and promised to leave the kingdom in exchange for being allowed free passage out of the town. The Franks were not minded to storm the strong defences, and they agreed to the request in the hope of being able to deal with the Vikings later in open battle. Louis III did not get his revenge, and he could not
prevent the Vikings burning the town before they withdrew. Louis III died in January 882 and his brother, Charles the Fat, who was already both Frankish emperor and king of the Middle Frankish Kingdom, now became king of the Eastern Frankish Kingdom also. He too failed to eject the Vikings when he attacked their fort at Ascloha, south of Nijmegen. Between 880 and 885 there were three large Viking fleets operating in the River Lands: the remains of the Great Army under Gudrød; Hallstein’s Loire Vikings who were now on the Rhine; and the Vikings from the Somme who settled first on the river island of Courtrai and later extended further inland. In the Western Frankish Kingdom, Louis the Stammerer had died in 879 and had been succeeded by his two sons Louis III and Carloman. Carloman was only 16 when he became sole king in August 882, and so it was up to the local leaders to combat the Vikings. Rørek’s grandson Sigurd (Sigfred) was asked to negotiate with the Somme Vikings in their headquarters in Amiens. They swore to stay away from the country for 12 years, on payment of 12,000 pounds. They then moved north to eastern France and settled in Louvaine. In 863 Count Henry succeeded in chasing Hallstein and the Loire Vikings away from the Rhine, by various means including blockading the river. They went first to the Somme Vikings’ camp in Louvaine and later back to the Loire, where they managed to recapture Nantes in 886. Times were hard for the Vikings in the north also. In 884 the Friesians won a battle against parts of the Great Army on the island of Norden in today’s Lower Saxony, and they too eventually drew back to Louvaine. Gudrød, who led the remains of the Great Army, managed to negotiate a personal agreement whereby he married into the East Frankish royal family and undertook to guard the Rhine as Charles’s vassal and prevent any further plundering raids up the Rhine, but it was not long before he himself was leading raids. There were many thousands of Vikings in the region, and Gudrød realised that he couldn’t possibly hold them back without being defeated. So he tried to get hold of the goodies before anyone else did. But his luck ran out when
he was killed in a dramatic encounter with Count Henry. Two years later Carloman was also dead, and the Somme Vikings set course back to Amiens. They were accused of reneging on their agreement, but they got off by maintaining that their agreement had been with Carloman and that they would willingly make a similar new agreement with his successor – so long as the price was right. To underline this point they killed all the hostages they had been given by Carloman two years earlier. The West Frankish aristocracy then turned to Charles the Fat and asked him to take over the throne of the West Frankish Kingdom, in the hope that he could stop the Somme Vikings. Charles accepted the offer, and for the first time since Louis the Pious the Frankish Empire was again under one leader.
The big battle for Paris Charles the Fat did not have his predecessors’ military talents or political intuition. The internal boundaries of the kingdoms didn’t disappear just because the countries were under a common leader. The Vikings just moved their base from Louvaine further north, to the borderlands between c hap ter 6
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the kingdoms. From here they could continue plundering in both kingdoms without great risk. When Charles’s troops came for them, they just disappeared over the border. On the Seine things went dramatically from bad to worse. Sigurd, who had taken over command of the remainder of the Great Army after Gudrød’s death, made an alliance with the chieftains at the mouth of the Seine, among them a young man called Rollo (Rolf) (see page 329). The plan was to combine the Viking groups and launch a big expedition up the Seine and into the interior. The target was either Paris itself or the countryside around Burgundy, where the Vikings had already spread death and terror and there were several potential targets for plunder. Paris was no longer a poorly defended, sleepy backwater. The town was in process of becoming one of the kingdom’s main centres. It had a new town wall round the whole Île de la Cité and Grand Pont, the bridge over the widest part of the Seine, was finally ready after 25 years under construction. Together with Petit Pont it linked the town to both banks of the river. The bridges were protected by turrets at both ends and created an effective barrier against anybody wanting to enter the town or sail upriver. The river Oise runs into the Seine downstream and to the west of Paris. At Pontoise, several kilometres up the Oise, the Franks had built a bridge blockade with a turret as links in the defence of the inland regions against the Vikings. If the Vikings’ ultimate target was Burgundy, there was no reason to attack this fortification, but that is what they did. In November the fleet sailed up to Pontoise, laid siege and forced the defenders of the turreted bridge to surrender. Then they plundered and burnt it. Only then did the fleet sail further up the Seine, to Paris. Perhaps the Vikings were undecided about their real target at that time, and perhaps their easy victory over the fortifications at Pontoise encouraged the leaders to try their luck against the bigger fortifications around Paris. The huge fleet arrived at Paris on 24th November 885 and lay to downstream from Grand Pont, where the Louvre stands today. The following day Sigurd arranged a meeting with Bishop Joscelin to negotiate through passage for the fleet. Bishop
Joscelin and Count Odo, the town’s governors, categorically refused to allow the fleet to pass. The monk Abbo, who was probably present at the negotiations, recorded what happened when Joscelin and Sigurd met: After bowing his head before the bishop, he (Sigurd) said: ‘Joscelin, have sympathy for yourself and the congregation in your protection. In your own interest you should listen to what I say. We ask only to be allowed to travel past the town. We shall not enter the town, and we shall do our very best to ensure that neither your nor Odo’s property is damaged.’
The bishop replied that he could not entrust Charles’s kingdom to the hands of the Vikings and that Paris must protect the nation. He would be disgraced if he handed over the fortress to the Vikings or allowed them to pass. Sigurd concluded the conversation by warning the bishop: ‘If you will not grant my request, I must tell you that our war-machine will send poisoned arrows into the town at crack of dawn and that at the end of the day you will starve. That is how it will be, we shall not surrender.’ The foundations and defensive towers of the north bridge, Grand Pont, were built of stone and brick, but the south bridge, Petit Pont, and its tower were timber constructions. So one would expect an attack on the Petit Pont to be more feasible. However, an attack on the Grand Pont could open the way for ships to pass. Without control of this bridge, the whole fleet would need to be portaged round the town. The tower protecting the bridge was not quite complete. A whole level was missing, but it was fully provided with arrow embrasures. Storming assaults on fortifications seldom resulted in victory, but the Vikings must have thought that they could relatively easily gain control of the half-finished tower, a strategically important part of the bridge. Sigurd attacked on the morning of 26th November, directing the first wave of attack towards the half-finished north tower. The wall was several metres high, but low enough for the Vikings to attempt to scale it with ladders. An eyewitness told that it was as if a peal of thunder went over the town c hap ter 6
Opposite: Man’s head carved in elk horn and found at Sigtunna in Uppland, Sweden. The conical helmet with a nose protector resembles the helmets pictured in Norman and AngloSaxon sources from the second half of the 11th century, including the Bayeux Tapestry.
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After the defence of Paris against the Vikings, Odo (c. 860–898) was declared king of the Western Frankish Kingdom. Illustration showing Odo’s coronation, from Grandes Chroniques de France.
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when the attack started, and that the inhabitants were paralysed with fear. But many of the Parisians were well prepared. Under Count Odo’s leadership they charged out to the north tower to assist the defence. Oil was heated up and boulders, baulks of timber, barrels, old wagon wheels and anything else that could be thrown down on the Vikings’ heads was brought across the bridge to the north tower. Protected only by their colourful round shields, the Vikings charged in under the tower, accompanied by resounding horns and supported by sling-throwers, archers and spear-throwers raining their projectiles over the enemy. The defenders responded by throwing stone blocks, boiling oil, hot wax and pitch down on top of them. Burnt warriors threw themselves screaming into the Seine in their death throes, to the sound of scornful laughter and shouts of victory from above. A lifting wheel resembling a big treadmill wheel, used for raising heavy stone blocks, was tipped over the edge and cut a devastating shaft through the mass of attacking Vikings. Six men got caught up in its descent and added to the bloodbath at the foot of the tower. Viking bands who had been plundering round about threw themselves into the fight. The sources say they were like mad dogs. The women, standing by the boats, raised war cries which could be heard right inside the city and openly taunted
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the exhausted, bloody and confused warriors who withdrew from the inferno. The defenders on the tower were shocked to see the women chasing the men back into the fray with slaps, kicks and jeers. When evening came, the Franks still had control of the turret and the Vikings withdrew with their dead and wounded. Damage to the tower was repaired overnight using timber and planks brought across the bridge from the town. An extra level was added, so that the top could no longer be accessed by scaling ladders. At the same time, the defenders dug a moat to make it more difficult to attack the massive oak gates with battering rams. Over the following days, the Vikings tried various tactics. They tried to pull down the halffinished tower by digging under it with picks and shovels in a desperate attempt to undermine the foundations, while their archers and sling-throwers peppered the defenders with poisoned arrows, stones and lumps of lead. The defenders again rained huge stones and boiling oil down on top of them. Then the tower was peppered with fire arrows in attempt to set it alight, but the defenders quickly drew water up from the river to extinguish the flames and falling rain ensured that fire never took hold. Sigurd and his Vikings realised that it was altogether not as easy as they had thought. They could obviously just have portaged their boats overland, but it was now a matter of revenge and prestige. They would plunder the town at whatever cost. The Vikings built a big, semi-circular fortified camp at the monastery of St Germaine l’Auxerrios, where the Louvre stands today. As supplies were low, groups were sent out to the surrounding countryside to gather in livestock, empty the barns and bring anything edible they could find into the camp. Among the Vikings or possibly among their prisoners were a father and son skilled in the building of siege engines. They were set to work to construct three large battering rams. The monsters which appeared at the beginning of January 886 must have given the defenders the shivers. They were like big houses on wheels. A battering ram tipped with forged iron plates was suspended under a strong roof covered with rawhide. Under the protection of the roof there was room for 60 warriors. Manoeuvring these monster machines into position
in front of the oak gates would require the route to be unobstructed and the moat filled in. A number of protective shelters were constructed, consisting of rawhide roofs carried on poles, like what today might be called a ‘gazebo’. Each of these was big enough to protect four or five men against missiles from above as they set to work filling in the moat. On 1st February a swarm of these ‘gazebos’ began moving and the base of the tower was soon totally obscured by them. This improvised overhead armour was not adequate to withstand the hail of stones and logs which fell on them. The defenders had also been busy, constructing a fearsome device in the form of a big, heavy length of timber on which were mounted iron ‘teeth’. When this was dropped on the attackers, it crushed the rawhide roofs and the men under them. Then it was hoisted up and dropped again. Monk Abbo, who witnessed the fighting, relates that they ‘squeezed the brains out of the heads of these unfortunates’. The Vikings didn’t want to go on risking their own lives in this fatal toil. So they started instead to send prisoners of war in towards the base of the tower with baskets full of stones and gravel. When they reached the moat they were ‘executed with arrow shots’. The moat was soon full of corpses and gravel. Count Odo then directed his archery and throwing machines against the battering rams and the people around them. In one such deadly bombardment both the master machine builders were killed. Two of the monster machines were already complete. The Vikings tried to roll these forward towards the tower, but they stayed hopelessly stuck in the mud. All attempts to dislodge them were opposed by massive showers of projectiles from the tower, and eventually they were abandoned. As they lay there like dying elephants, a blitz of fiery arrows put an end to them. The Vikings also used fire as a weapon, in an attempt to burn down the bridge. Three big ships were portaged round the town and re-launched upstream of the bridge, to be set on fire and carried down to the bridge by the current. The Vikings used ropes to try to steer them in under the wooden bridge, but the current caught them and they came to rest against the bridge’s stone foundations instead. The ships had been filled with leaves, twigs
and other combustible materials. This gave rise to a dense pall of smoke which enveloped the whole bridge and tower. The Parisians thought that the bridge had fallen, and panic broke out in the town, but out on the bridge the defenders were easily able to climb down to the boats and sink them before they could do any serious damage. The smoke soon drifted away, and another Viking tactic had come to nothing. On the south side of the Seine, however, the bridge and the tower were both built of wood. Sigurd changed his tactic, to try to get into the town that way. On 3rd February Sigurd moved his headquarters to the monastery of St Germaine des Prés on the south side of the Seine. Two days later the town was hit by a huge spring flood and parts of the Petit Pont were torn apart by the pressure of water. This left the defenders in the tower isolated from the town. Repair works were started immediately, initiating a race between Sigurd from one side and Bishop Joscelin and Count Odo from the other to be first to gain control of the tower. Early next morning the Vikings brought out a wagon filled with hay and other combustible material and launched it fully aflame against the tower. The defenders fled out of their burning turret and out onto the stump of the bridge. Those who didn’t throw themselves into the water were swallowed by the flames. The Vikings had won their first victory, but as they now couldn’t come into the city this way either, they turned their attention back to the stone and brick tower. About the same time, the bishop sent a message to Count Henry, asking him to come to relieve the town. The count came as requested, but he did not have enough troops to take up the fight against the Vikings and he left again, leaving the business unfinished. As the situation was starting to become desperate, Bishop Joscelin initiated negotiations with Sigurd for a truce. Before anything could come of this initiative the bishop died of disease and his successor, Abbot Ebolus, plucked up courage to urge continuing the fight against the heathens. When the siege of Paris had been going on for almost a year, Count Odo managed to come out of the besieged town and travel to the emperor to plead for help. Towards autumn, Charles’s army advanced c hap ter 6
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Opposite: This extraordinary treasure includes a trefoil brooch from France and a large gold neck-ring from Russia, together with Arabian, Byzantine and English coins and other contents. The hoard may have been put together in Paris as part of a ransom for insurance against attack by the Vikings. It was later deposited as a sacrifice in a bog in Hoen, Norway. The number of treasure hoards left by the Vikings indicates that burying treasure was part of the Vikings’ religious and social customs. 324
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slowly and carefully towards Paris, under Count Henry’s command. The Vikings got early warning that the army was on its way, and they extended and reinforced the defensive works around their main camp. They dug a broad moat and a spread of traps intended for the feared Frankish cavalry. Pitfalls one foot broad and three feet deep were dug all round the fortified camp and covered with straw and twigs. A group of Vikings rode to meet Count Henry and induced him to pursue them. He and his men spurred their horses and followed the Vikings into the field of pitfalls. The horses tripped in the ditches and the riders were thrown off. Then the Vikings attacked and drove their spears into the unseated riders. The dount’s body was plundered for weapons and armour before the Frankish infantry who were coming to the rescue managed to recover his remains. Charles now rode to Paris himself and took over command. In October he set up a big camp at the foot of Montmartre, but he made no attempt to attack the Vikings. From the top of Montmartre he could look down over Paris and the Viking camp. Neither the Vikings nor the Parisians could make a move. The Parisians were plagued by diseases caused by rotting corpses and lack of food. The same was happening to the Vikings. In anticipation of the coming struggle they had clustered together inside their fortifications. Charles’s soldiers controlled the surrounding countryside and killed anybody who came out of the camp to gather food. The heaps of unburnt corpses laid a pall of decay and death over the valley and made everybody sick. Charles perhaps caught the stench right up on Montmartre and resolved not to send his troops into the embrace of the pestilence. In Paris, Bishop Ebolus’ hard line lost ground against those who wanted peace talks. Sigurd also realised that only an honourable settlement could save the situation. Charles also wanted an agreement. With the loss of his leading general, Count Henry, he couldn’t even depend on his own soldiers if things came to such a stage that he had to storm the Vikings’ fort. The Viking leaders were invited to come to Charles’s camp for talks, but they refused to leave their own camp without guarantees and hostages. Moreover, many of the chieftains felt that they had vi k i ng i n va s ion s
the upper hand. They had more men than Charles and an advantageous position. It was Sigurd himself who broke the deadlock. He had become tired of the year-long siege and he must have wanted to get something out of the situation for himself and his men. After many years in the service of Frankish princes he knew how to negotiate with Charles, and when hostages had been handed over and he had received the emperor’s guarantees of safe passage, he went up to Montmartre with his retinue. First, Sigurd swore under oath that he personally would not plunder in the emperor’s realm so long as the emperor lived. Then he submitted to baptism, with the emperor himself as sponsor. He stayed as the emperor’s guest for two days, and according to eyewitnesses they enjoyed each other’s company. Sigurd then released all his Frankish hostages. The Parisians and the Frankish army were greatly shocked that in addition to an enormous sum of silver and gold as a personal gift, Sigurd was also given permission to take his fleet beyond Paris and sail up to Burgundy, where his Vikings could plunder freely. This sounds mad, but when set against the context of a recent rebellion against Charles in Burgundy, it makes some sense. Charles wanted to use the Vikings to punish an unfaithful population. However, the leaders in Paris were so shocked by the agreement that they refused to let the fleet pass upriver. So some of the Vikings began to drag their boats around the town. Others who were dissatisfied with the agreement wanted instead to continue the attempt to take the town. Sigurd had personally undertaken to stop the plundering, but he couldn’t prevent the other chieftains from doing as they wished. So some stayed on and continued the attacks on the town. After a while another chieftain was bought off for 60 pounds of silver and left the area, but it was not until three years later that the last Vikings left the Paris area, driven away by famine. Emperor Charles retired to his hunting palace in Alsace, more unpopular than ever. There he stayed, hoping that all his problems would disappear of their own accord. In 887 he was deposed by the East Frankish aristocracy and replaced by his nephew, Arnulf of Kanteren. The Western Franks
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also wanted to be rid of Charles, but before they could serve notice on him he died on 13th January 888. Odo was selected as the new West Frankish king, and made Paris his capital. Some minor victories against the Vikings increased his heroic status among his subjects, but the policy of military resistance didn’t work out in the long run and eventually even he, who had solemnly sworn that the Vikings should be expelled from the country by force, had to begin buying them off. Nor did Sigurd benefit from the agreement for long. He sailed out of the Seine and north to the Great Army’s headquarters in Louvaine in Friesland. King Arnulf attacked him here in 891 and he was killed alongside 50 of his closest warriors. After passing through Paris, the fleet divided. One group went on to Burgundy, where they plundered many monasteries and towns including Verdun, Toul and Troyes. The town of Meaux suffered particularly badly. Meaux lies on the river Marne, c. 40 km north-east of Paris. As the bridge at Trilbardou had never been rebuilt after the Vikings’ previous visit they could easily come past and reach Meaux a little further upriver. The Vikings besieged the town and captured it by damming the river and using siege engines. These can only have been simple throwing machines, but the outcome was that the Vikings overcame the town’s defenders and made an agreement with the bishop that the inhabitants would have safe passage out of the town before the Vikings plundered it. Well outside the town, the inhabitants were nevertheless attacked and slaughtered. Humiliation at Paris had probably made the Vikings thirst for revenge. Every town, village and monastery was a potential target. The defeat at Paris was just the first in a long series of defeats the Vikings suffered at this time, and they became more and more confused as victory continually eluded them. Sigurd, who had united them in a shared enterprise, was gone. They roamed the land in smaller groups, plundering at random. In 888 a group sailed back to Paris and made yet another unsuccessful attempt to take the town. In 889 King Arnulf had made a series of peace treaties with the Vikings and their allies the Abodrites in Friesland and Saxony. Now he could concentrate on pushing the Seine Vikings westward. Many of them moved to Normandy and 326
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Brittany, but the inland parts of the West Frankish Kingdom would not feel free from terror for many years yet, until the last of the Viking bands left the inland areas and sailed down the Seine and back out to sea in 892.
Alain saves Brittany from the Vikings In the mid-880s a civil war developed in Brittany between the Dukes Alain and Vidicheil. This led to the Vikings becoming active on the Breton peninsula again. By 888, Hallstein and the Loire Vikings had taken control of the western part. Hallstein’s aim was no less than the creation of a Viking kingdom. In contrast to what happened in many other parts of France, the farmers and the agricultural areas in Brittany were not attacked and destroyed. Nor was any attempt made at colonisation beyond the settlements around the fortified camps which appeared in various places. The new Viking offensive forced Alain and Vidicheil to join forces, but in 889 Vidicheil attacked a Viking army on the march and was killed. The Vikings did not come away from this encounter without some losses, and when Alain attacked them at Questembert they did not manage to hold him off and Hallstein had to retreat to his ships with great losses. At the same time, a fleet of Seine Vikings arrived at the northern part of the peninsula. The fleet sailed into the rivers Orne and Vire in present-day Normandy and the river Couesanan in St Malo Bay. Alain allied himself with Count Bregnar of Rennes to meet this new threat and two Breton armies marched to face the Seine Vikings. The first major encounter took place at St Lô, where Alain and Bregnar defeated the Viking army and burnt part of the Seine Vikings’ fleet. Only a handful of ships managed to come away safely. Alain’s Bretons then defeated the Vikings on the river Couesanan in 890. The damaged Viking fleets left the peninsula and went to the Great Army’s new headquarters in Boulogne. Hallstein also abandoned Brittany in 892 and incorporated his 80 ships into the Great Army. After a long series of defeats in the Frankish territories, in Friesland and in Brittany, and subject to the worst period of drought in Friesland in living
memory, the remains of the Great Army gathered in Boulogne in 892. Here it was reinforced by several Viking groups from Brittany and the Seine, enabling a revitalised army to sail to England. In under a year, Alain had united the Bretons and ejected the Vikings from the whole of Brittany. Alain the Great, as he later came to be called, gave the peninsula and the Loire valley four years of relative peace until his death in 897. Only a single Viking attack was reported in 893, when the Loire Vikings plundered Tours.
Hundeus challenges Charles the Simple In the Western Frankish Kingdom, King Odo was challenged by Charles the Simple,23 son of Louis the Stammerer. When Charles was crowned by a faction opposed to Odo at Reims Cathedral in 893, the nobles split into two parties each under their own king. With Arnulf ’s support, Charles emerged as victor in this power struggle, though
he only became the effectual monarch when Odo died in 898. Where possible, Charles chose a peaceful, diplomatic approach rather than war against the Vikings. In practice, this meant buying himself out of conflict situations. A good example of Charles the Simple’s reluctance to use force is the case of the Viking chieftain Hundeus, who had been chosen as leader of a Viking band in Friesland after Gudrød’s death. This was a relatively calm period, from the Vikings’ point of view. While Charles was busy suppressing rebellious counts, Hundeus took advantage of the opportunity to sail up the Seine with five ships and around 150–200 men. The little fleet sailed up from the Seine into the Ouse, as far up as the region of Choise. They set up camp here and went plundering round about. When Charles eventually reacted, he opted just to scare them away and they were able to make their way back to the Seine, where they were less vulnerable. Charles didn’t pursue them, and plundering soon resumed. c hap ter 6
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Summer 886 was a good time for Hundeus’ Vikings. Rumours of his profitable raids soon reached the Seine Vikings, and those who were bored with life as farmers wiped the dust off their battleaxes and made their way to join Hundeus. Charles responded to this threat by requesting a meeting with Hundeus. As was usual when Viking chieftains found themselves in a tight corner, Hundeus consented to baptism, thereby obtaining large concessions from Charles. Converting heathens was a virtuous Christian action, and Charles himself stood as sponsor. However, if he thought that he had solved the problem by converting the Vikings, he was mistaken. Charles’s obvious respect for the Vikings combined with the big inflow of fresh warriors just spurred them on. The plundering continued so much that Charles had to ask for a new meeting with Hundeus. This time he offered outright to buy them off. We don’t know what sum changed hands, but the result was that Hundeus sailed south to the Loire, joined up with the Loire Vikings and started a new wave of plundering there. Hundeus faced Charles’s army again at Vemeux. This time the army had clear orders to defeat Hundeus and punish him for disloyalty. After a
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short fight the Vikings fled back to their ships, but they quickly reorganised, travelled into Burgundy and settled there for the winter. They were not allowed to stay there in peace either. Duke Richard, Odo’s brother, attacked their camp between Christmas and New Year and Hundeus had to flee again. This time he headed for the mouth of the Seine, the only place that was still safe for him. Here, Hundeus disappears from the sources. He had tried again and again to achieve advantageous settlements with the Franks, but greed had brought an end to his career. From around 900 the Vikings became more and more vulnerable. Their greatest strength lay in the mobility provided by their ships, but the Franks’ extensive programme of bridge building was blocking the navigable rivers. The Vikings tried to use horses to travel around the country but they were soon caught and defeated by the French cavalry. The towns and fortresses were being defended with more determination, and people were no longer allowing themselves to be duped by Viking promises in exchange for free passage and offer of hostages. Far too many had experienced the Vikings’ regular use of trickery and knew that they seldom kept their promises to foreigners.
Who was Rollo? The origin of the Viking chieftain Rollo is uncertain and the subject of much debate. Strong feelings on both sides are connected to the origin of the mighty Dukes of Normandy. Rollo’s descendants were great political players in the shaping of Europe in the 11th and 12th century. So who was he and where did he come from? Many sources identify him as a Norwegian, while others maintain that he was of Danish origin. Dudo from St Quentin (born 965) says that he was a son of a great Danish chieftain who was banished by the Danish king after his brother was killed. The Norman poet Wace (c. 1115–c. 1183) also tells of two brothers, Rou (Rollo) and Garin, as does The Orkneying Saga from c. 1230. William from Jumièges (born c. 1000) writes that he was from the Danish town of Fakse. Norwegian and Icelandic storytellers and saga writers, on the other hand, identify Rollo with Gange-Rolf, a son of Ragnvald Earl of Møre in Norway. Gange-Rolf was banished from Norway by King Harald Fairhair at the end of the 9th century, and had stayed on the Orkneys before settling near Rouen. The oldest Norwegian source about Gange-Rolf is Historia Norwegiae, from the end of the 12th century. The question of Rolf’s origin has engaged Norwegian and Danish historians for hundreds of years, and will probably continue to do so.
The birth of Normandy The towns had slowly but surely been making themselves more secure. Town walls and fortifications were built in the wake of the plunderings. Local populations no longer expected a distant king or an even more distant emperor to come to their rescue, but initiated building works themselves. The feudal lords defended their local populations and were gaining more and more power at the expense of a diminution in royal power. This worked both ways for the Vikings. Where the king’s power was weak, the Vikings could often expect strong resistance from the local princes. On the other hand, if the local nobility was too strong and independent the Vikings could use to their advantage the conflict which then developed between the nobles and the king. Charlemagne’s old idea of building up the coastal defences was reactivated at the beginning of the 10th century. Seven big round forts were built in Friesland and Flanders between the river Aa and the island of Schouwen. Two of these, Souburg and Middelburg, were in Harald Klak’s old fiefdom of
Rollo (c. 860–c. 932) gained control in 911 over a region which later came to be known as Normandy. He was ancestor of the famous Norman ruling family. Here he is being baptised, with Charles as a witness. Illustration from Chroniques de Saint-Denis, around 1350.
Walcheren. The Franks didn’t want the Vikings to settle here again. Two old Roman forts were also restored and put into operation. This chain of fortifications would prevent the Vikings from sailing into the rivers or settling on the islands. The forts also functioned as safe refuges for the local population. These measures gradually forced the most warlike of the Vikings by the Rhine, Somme and Seine to move south to the Loire. Viking groups had been congregating around the lower part of the Seine for many years, and around 900 they became permanent settlers. We see the same tendency around the mouths of the Loire and the Rhine. At the mouth of the Seine a Viking chieftain called Rollo (Rolf) led several thousand warriors and specialised in the trade of booty and slaves. Even though Rolf and the Vikings had lived here for many years, their encampment had not until now shown features of permanent colonial settlement. That now changed. This development must have worried Charles the Simple, because in 900 he convened a meeting of the country’s leading men of power, with the c hap ter 6
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question of what to do about the Vikings on the Seine as an item on the agenda. We don’t know what the result of the meeting was, other than that nothing concrete happened for over ten years. The Franks had probably not felt strong enough for a direct military confrontation with the Viking chieftains. Moreover, the Vikings were relatively peaceful and Charles had a kingdom to rule with many other matters demanding his attention. Something happened in 911 which changed the situation. Perhaps Viking raids on the Seine had resumed? According to the historian Dudo, it was the arrival of a new Viking fleet which forced Charles to negotiate in 911. He tells that Charles turned to Hallstein, who was elderly and was now in the king’s service, and asked him to go to negotiate with the fleet. Hallstein set off unwillingly, accompanied by two Frankish knights, and met the Vikings. Dudo relates in his Historia Normannorum that the conversation went as follows: ‘We are knights sent by the king of the Franks and we demand that you tell us who you are, where you come from and what you want.’ The Vikings replied: ‘We are Danes, we come from Denmark, and we want to conquer France.’ ‘What is the name of your leader?’
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‘Nothing,’ they replied, ‘for we are all equal.’ Then Hallstein spoke: ‘Have you ever heard of Hallstein (Hasting) who was your lord and sailed here with many warriors?’ ‘Yes, that man started well but ended badly.’ Hallstein continued: ‘Will you submit to Charles, king of the Franks, enter his service and receive rich fiefdoms from him?’ ‘We will never submit to anybody. We prefer the income we gather ourselves with our weapons and deeds.’ ‘So what will you do?’ The Vikings broke off the talks by saying: ‘Hurry away from here as soon as possible! We don’t like all this talk, and we would prefer not to tell you what we have in mind.’ Dudo wrote this 100 years after the talks took place, but the tone and form of the dialogue is typical of the Vikings. The view that the Vikings have of themselves in his account accords well with what we know of the mentality of Viking times and the equality which prevailed in the warrior collectives. Dudo may have been passing on and building upon a Norman tradition. The fleet went inland to plunder. They bypassed the barriers at Pont de L’Arche and went into a tributary, the Eure. From there they rowed right up to Chartres and laid siege to the town. Charles and Rolf faced each other near Chartres in a battle which did not go well for the Vikings. Rolf ’s request for a truce elicited an unexpected offer from Charles. He would let Rolf continue ruling the lower Seine if he would consent to baptism, become Charles’s vassal and prevent fleets from entering the Seine in future. The defeat at Chartres cannot have weakened the Vikings significantly, because Charles needed a strong chieftain if a buffer like this was to be effective. According to the treaty24 agreed between Rolf and Charles, Rolf was appointed as jarl (‘earl’ or ‘count’) with responsibility for defence and justice, and was given control of Talon, Caux, Roumois and parts of Vexin and Everecin. The region eventually became a mighty dukedom called Normandy.
In his account of the meeting between Rolf and Charles, Dudo says that Rolf refused to kneel before the king and instead got one of his men to kneel for him. This sounds authentic. A great Viking chieftain could easily lose his men’s respect if he appeared to be submissive. Rolf took the Frankish name Robert as his official Christian name. It was usual to have two names, one Norse and one Frankish. The settlers included diverse groups, and in the first phase several of these fought between themselves for land, power and status. Surviving place-names indicate that the settlers came from throughout the Vikings’ world: from Scandinavia, England, Ireland and possibly the Orkney Isles and the Hebrides. The Cotentin peninsula and the Channel Islands were added to the dukedom in 933.
The last frontier The most aggressive and ambitious of the Seine Vikings, who did not want to conform to the new regime, went to the Loire Valley and Brittany, where the leadership structure was more fragmented. Brittany again became a gathering place for heathen warrior brotherhoods who did not want to become Christians or to colonise land but who needed new places to plunder and new safe bases for their operations. The peninsula had been subjected to a number of Viking attacks since the death of Alain the Great. Ragnvald from Dublin ravaged the land in 904. In 910 a large fleet sailed over from England to Brittany under the leadership of the Viking Earls Ottar and Harald, who were looking for a safe place after the Vikings in Northumbria had suffered a heavy defeat at the hands of King Edward at Tettenhall in England. We can assume that there was good contact between the Vikings in England, Ireland and Normandy and that they exchanged information about the political situations in the various countries. Ottar and Harald stayed in Brittany for four years before they travelled back to England and Wales and later to Ireland. They left behind a terrorised population and a Brittany where the church institutions and the aristocracy had been deliberately hunted down and virtually exterminated.
Carolingian noblemen and feudal lords ruled their land as independent petty kings, often in conflict with the king and the emperor. The Vikings were willing participants in conflicts between them. Illustration from Charles the Bald’s first bible, dated 846.
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The death blow against Brittany came in 919, when a large fleet led by a man called Ragnvald arrived from Norway. Their first target was Nantes, which had become a centre for trade along the Loire and in the surrounding area. They captured the town, and Ragnvald started a relentless hunt against anyone who could oppose his rule in Brittany. The remaining nobles fled. Some went to England, such as Alain Barbetorte (Wrybeard), grandson of Alain the Great. Others went to Aquitaine and Burgundy. The last groups of monks and clergy fled too, and by the 920s there were only a few monastic communities remaining. Robert of Neustria attempted to recapture Nantes in 921. Neustria was squeezed between the Seine Vikings to the north, the Loire Vikings to the south and Charles to the east. Under Robert’s leadership, Neustria was trying to establish itself as a powerful region. He besieged Nantes for five months, hoping to drive the Vikings out, but the Vikings were well prepared. They had built big new defensive works both around the town and around the harbour where their boats lay. Eventually, Robert had to abandon his attempt to drive them out. Instead, he made a peace treaty with Ragnvald, whereby Ragnvald consented to being baptised in exchange for being allowed to keep the town. Ragnvald’s agreement with Robert did not however restrain him from plundering Charles’s territory, and in 923 Ragnvald attacked Aquitaine and Auvergne prior to sailing his fleet up to Normandy and into the Seine. At the Seine, Ragnvald and Rolf joined forces for a plundering expedition up the Seine and its tributary the Oise. This expedition may seem strange in the light of Rolf ’s treaty with Charles, but Ragnvald and Rolf were probably acting at Charles’s request. The king was in conflict with Herbert of Vermandoise, whose territory they were plundering. The following year Rolf and Ragnvald were again on a joint expedition on Charles’s orders. This time they sailed up the Loire and plundered around Burgundy. After this expedition, Charles gave Rolf possession of the regions of Le Mans, Bayeux, L’Huernin and Bessin, provided Rolf himself took them from Robert of Neustria who had fallen into disfavour with the king. 332
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Things did not go so well for Ragnvald. In autumn 924 he suffered defeat in Burgundy in a big battle against an army led by Dukes Herbert of Vermoise and Hugo of Paris. During spring 925 they drove him back to Nantes and besieged the town. Not until he had received a generous payment from the dukes did Ragnvald flee into Brittany and disappear from record. However, the Loire Vikings were back in Nantes as soon as Herbert and Hugo departed for home, and in 927 the two dukes again stood before the walls of Nantes. After five weeks of unsuccessful siege the Vikings were allowed to keep the town, in return for swearing to refrain from plundering the rest of the kingdom. After many years of fragmented Viking leadership and numerous defeats, in 931 two men called Felekan and Incon gathered Vikings from the whole of the Loire and Brittany into a large Loire army and prepared for a major invasion of France. The leaders’ names are unusual for Scandinavians, and they may have been Bretons. After so many years of occupation, it would be strange if native Bretons could not establish military careers with ‘the enemy’. Another theory is that the names are Irish, and that these men may have been Gall-Gaedhil, Celtic-Norse Vikings. Before the army had a chance to achieve anything at all, it was shocked by the news that the Bretons had rebelled. The remaining Vikings throughout the peninsula were taken by surprise and suffered several defeats in minor battles, in one of which Felekan was killed. Incon quickly launched a massive counter-attack and the Bretons were slowly but surely overcome. Reinforcements came from the north when William Longsword, Rolf ’s son, led a group of Normans to Incon’s rescue. William and his men invaded the Cotentin peninsula and Avranchin and suppressed the Breton uprising there. William had taken over from his ageing father in 925, prior to Rolf ’s death in 932, and he continued Rolf ’s expansionist policy. After they had suppressed the rebellion, William kept control of the Contentin peninsula and Incon took control of the Breton peninsula. Incon could now turn his attention again to the big invasion of France, but the ambitions for a magnificent campaign
Glass beads and silver cross from a grave find near Bikjholberget, Kaupang, Norway. c hap ter 6
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against the Franks fell apart in 935 when William Longsword changed sides and made an alliance with Hugo of Paris. William was already more a French prince than a Viking, and his first loyalty was to his county of Normandy. From his exile in England, Alain Wrybeard was carefully following the political developments in Brittany. In 936 he invaded Brittany with an army of exiled Bretons, supported by troops on loan from the English king. Alain’s expedition took the Vikings by surprise and he recaptured the whole peninsula in a series of campaigns over two years. Incon was probably killed in one of these battles. In 937 Alain and his army stood in front of the Vikings’ main base at Nantes. The town itself was no more than a shadow of its former greatness. The streets and paths were overgrown. The town walls and most of the buildings lay in ruins. The sacred basilica of St Felix was just a burnt-out shell, unused for 19 years. Nantes was a ghost town and a monument to the Vikings’ devastations. However, the Vikings were not defenceless. They had built a big new fortified camp outside the town, by St Aignan where the rivers Loire and Erdre meet. The camp may have been just where the 14th-century castle, Le Chateau des Ducs de Bretagne, stands today. It was stifling hot the day Alain’s soldiers and the Vikings put on their battle gear and took up their weapons in anticipation of the coming fight. Sweat poured down under leather shirts, chainmail, caps and helmets. Inside the fort, women and children ran round with vessels of water for the men to drink. The Bretons had a different solution; in full armour, they immersed themselves in barrels of water. Alain’s Bretons stormed the fort, only to be stopped at the wall. Bruised and exhausted, they drew back. The Vikings, full of arrogance and roused by the prospect of victory after the Bretons’ unsuccessful assault, launched a counter-attack and charged out of the fort with wild yells. The dust which was stirred up clung to sweaty faces and eyes, obscured vision and added to the confusion. Now it was the Vikings’ turn to run themselves to exhaustion in the heat, and they had to draw back to the fort. The battle lasted all day with varying intensity until the Bretons managed to enter the 334
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fort in late afternoon. Those Vikings who still had the strength to do so fled down to join the women and children, who had taken refuge by the boats, and sailed out to safety on the Loire. The tattered remains of the great Loire army sailed up the river Vilaine, reassembled in Rennes and built a new fort in Tarans. Cut off from a retreat into Normandy and with Alain and Hugo of Paris hard on their heels, their future didn’t look bright. The conclusion came in 939 when Alain and Hugo, with the support of local leaders, besieged and stormed the Vikings’ last bastion in Brittany. With the defeat at Tarans, the glory days of the Vikings in Brittany were gone for good. When Alain Wrybeard died in 952, he had kept the Vikings out of Brittany since 937. There were however occasional Viking incursions in the coming years and the last time Brittany was attacked by Vikings was as late as 1014. Not long afterwards, Brittany ceased to be an independent domain, and the Norman rulers in Rouen took control of the Breton peninsula. By the 930s the Vikings in Brittany were the last fully heathen warrior Vikings remaining in France. The others had either consented to Christian baptism and settled down as farmers in Normandy, or tried to settle elsewhere. We see neither of these tendencies in Brittany, where the Vikings settled not as farmers but as warrior collectives. There are no place names surviving from that time on the Breton peninsula. The whole campaign in Brittany appears to have been carried out purely from lust for warfare. The opportunities for men like these were now becoming very limited, not just in France but also elsewhere. Even the Scandinavian homelands were becoming organised into kingdoms which did not want warrior collectives who made their living from plundering and trade along their own coasts. In Normandy, Rolf ’s successors continued to integrate with the French aristocracy. William Longsword married Liégard, daughter of Herbert of Vermandois, and his sister Gerloc married William of Poitiers. Rouen eventually became so Frenchified that William’s son Robert was sent to Bayeux to receive a more Viking upbringing. The settlers in Bayeux had maintained a more Nordic lifestyle than prevailed at the ruling court in Rouen.
Settlers continued to stream into Normandy. Many of them were heathen, and in the 940s there was a real danger of the whole province regressing into heathenism. However, the newcomers were quickly assimilated into the French cultural milieu. Ten years later Normandy was no longer a Viking colony but had become an integral part of the Western Frankish Kingdom. Robert completed the process of integration by marrying into the royal family and was given the title of Duke. Rolf ’s successors soon established monasteries and presented themselves as good feudal rulers. The Vikings by the Seine also achieved what the Loire and Somme Vikings did not; they settled
in the land which they came increasingly to regard as their homeland. The Scandinavian identity was not always equally deep, and the Vikings readily allowed themselves to be assimilated into French culture. They had always been opportunistic, flexible and open to new influences provided these served their main aims of wealth and honour. The future would still provide challenges to the French and the Germans, for the Vikings continued to visit. But the terror of the times of Viking occupation was gone. The Vikings who didn’t want to adapt to the new lifestyle soon found their way to England.
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The Iberian peninsula In the Viking Age there were Christian kingdoms and a big Muslim kingdom on the Iberian peninsula. The Vikings set their course to exploit the riches of both Muslim and Christian Spain and left suffering and death in their wake.
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Opposite: Northern Spain was a favourite area for the Vikings in the 9th century. They gradually travelled further and further south, to the Muslim kingdom of Al-Andalus where slaves from the north could be exchanged for silver, silk and luxury goods. Picture stone from Smiss on G otland. 336
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n 711, Muslim forces from North Africa seized large areas of the Iberian peninsula from the Visigoths, who in turn had seized the land from the Romans. The Muslim advance was stopped only in the north, where a number of small and mainly Christian kingdoms survived. Al-Andalus, southern Spain, was the only Muslim kingdom in Europe in the Middle Ages. In the 9th century it contained at least 80 towns of varied sizes. The biggest was Córdoba, with almost 100,000 inhabitants. At the end of the 8th century, kingdoms and towns throughout the Iberian peninsula became subject to Viking attacks. However, the first area to be visited by the Vikings was the heathen Basque region in the Bay of Biscay. According to Arab sources, Vikings and Basques had fought together against the emir of Córdoba’s army outside the town of Astorgas in 795, probably for control of the old Roman road between Bordeaux and Mérida. This was also known as the ‘Silver Road’, and it carried much of the trade between the Iberian peninsula and France. At that time it was possible to sail right into Guernica, and for many Vikings this became the doorway to the riches of Spain. vi k i ng i n va s ion s
The next time we hear of the Vikings here was in 816, when they took part in a 13-day conflict between Emir Al-Hakam and the Christian prince of Pamplona, Inigo Arista. According to the sources, the chieftain who led the Vikings in 816 was called Saltan (Halvdan), and he fell in the fighting. On both these occasions the Vikings participated as allies of the Basques. They were probably operating as mercenaries, which suggests that the relationship between the Basques and the Vikings was mainly collaborative rather than violent. In this region there are still many myths and local legends which probably refer to the relationship between the Basques and the Northerners. These Vikings may have been part of the group which settled in parts of the Basque country about 814 and stayed until 825, when they were defeated by the Moors in a battle in Altamira. This battle took place by the foot of a mountain that the Moors called Djabal al-Madjus. A madjus was a fire-worshipper, or heathen, and this was the term used by the Muslims to refer to the Vikings. The site of the battle was probably beside Mount Sollube, north-west of Guernica. The Vikings had established a lucrative trading centre beside the Urdaibai Estuary, where there
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Along the Urdaibai Estuary there were good sailing conditions and access to beech and oak timber and iron – vital materials for shipbuilding and repair. The Vikings established a lucrative trading centre here.
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were good sailing conditions and access to beech and oak timber and iron – vital materials for shipbuilding and repair. They must have used this as a base for plundering raids into Muslim territory for many years, which was probably what provoked the Muslims to expel them. Although the relationship between the Vikings and the population of northern Spain was not at first characterised by conflict, this situation eventually changed. The plundering raids in France had increased in the 830s and 840s, and accommodation was becoming tight on the monastic island of Noirmoutier from which the Viking fleets operated. Vikings from Vestfold, Denmark and Ireland had crowded together on the 10 km long strip facing the mouth of the Loire. There were too many Vikings fighting over the remaining raiding targets vi k i ng i n va s ion s
in the Loire Valley, and a big group of around 2,000 warriors on 60 warships with an unknown number of auxiliary vessels moved to Galicia and then on to Al-Andalus in 844. This is the first time we hear of a Viking expedition targeting the Muslim territories. There was a trade route from southern Europe via the monastery at Noirmoutier and onward to Ireland. Some Irish sources call this the ‘Wine Route’. Whoever controlled the Wine Route could acquire unimaginable wealth and status. This may have been why the Vikings tried their luck so far south. During their stay in the Basque country they would surely have heard many reports of the wealth in Al-Andalus, which also had the biggest slave markets in Europe. The fleet of warships and smaller support ships followed the coast southwards round the Bay of
Al-Madjus – the fire-worshippers The Muslim sources refer to the Vikings as al-Madjus, al-Majus or al-Magi. This means ‘fire-worshippers’, and it was the usual word for ‘heathens’. It was a particularly appropriate name for the Vikings, who considered fire an important means of destroying evil spirits. They made a point of burning down
Biscay and continued along the windswept north coast of Galicia. The first attack recorded in the sources took place on 1st August 844 and was directed against the little harbour town of Gijon in the Kingdom of Asturias. A few days later the Vikings landed near the old Roman lighthouse, the Farum Brecantium (‘Tower of Hercules’), 2.5 km from La Coruña. Ramiro, king of Asturias, was in the town with his soldiers, who drove the Vikings back to their ships and succeeded in sinking several of them with fire arrows. The Vikings made another landing raid before reaching Muslim Spain. At the village of Villaneuva de Arosa in Pontevedra province their despoliations included the burning down of a church. The main purpose of these coastal raids was probably to acquire provisions, plus prisoners who could be sold in Al-Andalus. On 20th August 844, 54 warships and a similar number of auxiliary vessels reached Lisbon. The Vikings landed and set up camp on the wide plain in front of the town. This ancient Phoenician trading town had its origins back in 1200 BC. It also had a well-preserved Roman town wall. The Vikings spent 13 days trying to break into the town. The sources appear to differ about whether or not they succeeded.25 In Roman times, Lisbon was noted for the export of beautiful horses, wine and salt, but especially for the valuable fish sauce, garum. The Vikings had plenty of fish at home and were more interested in the wine and the silver. The fleet’s next target was Cádiz. This small, strategically placed harbour town was plundered and burnt. The location appears however to be well suited as a base for the Viking fleet. The long peninsula is connected to the mainland only by a narrow tongue of land, and it was easy to defend.
buildings they had plundered, to protect themselves from being pursued by vengeful spirits and the like. The word is also related to the Greek magos, ‘a Persian priest’, from which we have the English word ‘magus’ (plural ‘magi’).
At Cádiz, the fleet divided. The main army sailed up the river Guadalquivir towards Seville. A smaller flotilla headed south towards Gibraltar. After a minor skirmish with the local population in this area then known as Medina Sidonia, the flotilla sailed over to the west coast of Morocco and landed at a place which later came to be called Arzila. At Arzila the Vikings deposited a big cargo of millet which they had acquired along the way. This strange episode has caused much speculation among historians. Did the Vikings cross the Strait of Gibraltar and create a provisions depot in order to furnish an escape route lest things should go wrong? The flotilla then sailed back to Cádiz and followed the main army inland. At the end of September the main army of about 2,000 warriors settled on the big island of Menor, halfway up the river towards Seville. Here they built a base for the fleet and acquired horses and provisions. Then small groups went north on reconnaissance and plundering expeditions. The people in the villages of Coria del Rio and Tablada were the first victims in this area. News of the Vikings’ arrival had spread. After the attack on Lisbon the emir of Córdoba, Abd alRahman II, had already started mobilising his army and calling in his elite forces. The mobilisation took time, and when the Vikings stood before the gates of Seville the emir’s army was still several weeks away. Some of Seville’s inhabitants had fled to Carmona, but most of them had trusted the defensive works and could only watch in terror as the Vikings came into the town easily and plundered unhindered for seven days. The great mosque was set on fire with fire arrows, and many other buildings were burnt down. Despite the wave of plundering that followed, provisions must have been hard to come by, as c hap ter 6
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the Vikings started freeing their prisoners not in exchange for silver as was usual but in exchange for provisions, in addition to silk and other expensive materials. They were probably already planning their homeward journey. The Vikings were able to harry relatively freely for a couple of weeks, before Abd al-Rahman’s elite soldiers arrived. Seventy Vikings lost their lives in one skirmish, and the campaign culminated in a decisive battle in mid-November outside the village of Tablada. The Vikings, who had by then been in the region for 42 days, suffered a dreadful defeat. Five hundred of them were killed, including one of the chieftains, and four ships were set on fire. The emir had the heads chopped off 200 of the corpses, including the chieftain’s, and sent them to his ally in Tangier to emphasise the scale of his victory. This was the first real military engagement between the Vikings and the Arabs, and even
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though the Vikings had come off badly this time the emir realised that they were a fighting force to be taken seriously. He set up an arsenal in Seville and posted an elite unit of marines there, then set about building a fleet to patrol the rivers. The Viking fleet fled to Azila, to access their depot and fetch the provisions. Back in Spain, they passed by the mouth of the Guadalquivir and sailed instead into Rio Tinto, where they encamped on the island of Saltés, not far from Huelva. From here they made a number of daring raids for slaves and provisions. Their next stop was at the mouth of the river Guadiana, which today marks the boundary between Spain and Portugal. They probably carried out some raids upriver towards Beja, but this barren landscape cannot have been very tempting and they soon moved on. The sources mention a stop in Ossónoba (modern Faro), beside the lighthouse on the south coast of Portugal, and another by Almada
Left behind in Spain There is a lot of evidence that a small group of Vikings was left behind on Menor Island in 845, and that they converted to Islam and settled on the island as cheese makers. The Arab sources also
on the opposite bank from Lisbon. By now it was late autumn, and the winter storms cannot have been conducive to further sailing. So they probably set up a winter camp somewhere on the coast of Portugal. We hear no more about them until they attacked Bordeaux in autumn 845. It is said that of this enormous fleet, only 30 ships returned to Noirmoutier intact, with booty of silver, silks, slaves and wine and exciting reports of valorous deeds and great achievements. The relatively great loss of personnel and ships in the expedition of 844–845 must have caused others with ambitions on the south to think twice, for it would be 15 years until the next time anybody assembled a fleet and set course towards Al-Andalus.
Hallstein’s and Bjørn’s great journey Sometime in the early summer of 858 the Viking chieftains Bjørn Ironside and Hallstein sailed from France with 2,200 men and a fleet of between 65 and 80 ships, setting course for Spain. Al-Andalus may not have been their main goal; they may have been aiming for Rome or Byzantium, or they may have wanted to take control of a new and lucrative trade route that had been established between Verdun, the Rhone Valley and Al-Andalus. The Arab sources also seem to confirm that the Muslim heartlands in the Guadalquivir Valley were not the target, as only smaller, undefended towns in Al-Andalus were plundered. Things were different for the Christians in Navarra in the north, though. In Pamplona the Vikings took the leader of the town prisoner and held him to ransom. The sources say that they eventually got 70,000 silver denarii, an unheard of sum that took a long time, possibly several
claim that the Vikings gave the local emir advice about shipbuilding and that they served as oarsmen when he built a fleet to defend Seville and Córdoba against future Viking attacks.
weeks, to gather together. The Vikings’ behaviour in Pamplona induced the Kingdom of Navarra to form an alliance with the neighbouring Kingdom of Asturias, and it was this alliance which finally drove the Muslims out of Al-Andalus in 1492. Pamplona lies about 60 km inland. To get there, the Vikings must have left their ships at a secure place on the coast, possibly in today’s Irún, where there was a very good harbour and the fleet could lie safely protected for a long time. From here they could have made their way either on foot or on horseback along the old Roman road through Valle de Baztán, winding their way through the sparsely populated countryside to Pamplona. Alternatively, they might have come from Guernica, travelling across the Álava plain and through the Barranca Valley. Considering the time needed to collect such a large ransom and the distance of Pamplona from the coast, we can assume that the Vikings must have been in northern Spain for much of the summer of 858. The fleet reached the coast of Galicia in July and carried out coastal raids against La Coruña and Santiago de Compostela, probably hunting for provisions or slaves. They remained in the area over the winter. Some of them settled more permanently in the Spanish countryside and left traces of their presence in local place names in the Tagus Valley. In 1892 there were still three villages along the Tagus called Lordemaõ, which is one of the names the Spaniards used to refer to the Vikings. Even though this area was politically within Muslim control, the region was so geographically and politically complex that the Vikings could easily have lived here for a long time without the authorities in the capital city of Córdoba becoming aware of their presence. In March/April 859 the rest of the fleet set course south towards Lisbon. According to the c hap ter 6
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Muslim reports, it then consisted of 62 large ships. Lisbon’s defences had been strengthened since the previous visit. The fleet sailed past the town and along the Algarve coast. Two Viking ships were overpowered by ships from the Muslim fleet outside Beja. The sources tell us that they were full of silver, gold, prisoners and provisions, but we don’t know the fate of the crews. The rest of the fleet sailed unopposed into Cádiz Bay and towards the mouth of the Guadalquivir. The emir’s fleet lay blockading the entrance to the river. So the Vikings set course for Gibraltar instead. Bjørn and Hallstein may have intended to go to the old base in Menor Island, where many Vikings had been left behind in 845. They may have wanted to see if there were any still there, or they may have wanted to exchange Christian slaves and Muslim prisoners for ransom money in Seville. Perhaps they had both these objectives in mind. Although both Olav the White and Ivar the Boneless were also associated with expeditions to Spain at this time, it is unlikely that they were in the Mediterranean with Hallstein and Bjørn. Their interests were in Ireland and in maintaining the trade routes from Noirmoutier to Ireland. In Algeciras the Vikings burnt down the great mosque in the town and plundered the surrounding countryside. The town then became the fleet’s base, from which a group of ships sailed over to Morocco, hunting for slaves. Their target was the Princedom of Nakur, which was an important trading centre. The town lay several kilometres from the coast, near today’s Al-Mazimma. The Vikings terrorised the inhabitants for several days and took Prince Said ibn Idris and numerous women and children prisoner, to be released later in return for ransom money. They also captured several Africans to be sold in Spain. The ‘Blue men’, as the Vikings called the Africans from south of the Sahara, were exotic and sought-after goods in the slave markets of Europe. From Algeciras, the fleet sailed into the Mediterranean along the Costa del Sol. Their first stop was the little port colony of Almeria, which was little more than a harbour for the small trading centre of Pechina, which had been equipped as a watch post after the Viking raids of 844. Pechina had little resistance to offer against a fleet of 60
ships, but on this occasion the Vikings just wanted to trade. The journey then continued past the old Carthaginian port of Cartagena, from which Hannibal had launched his campaign against the Romans a thousand years earlier. The historic parallel was probably lost on Hallstein and Bjørn. They set up a small base by the mouth of the Rio Segura. The inhabitants of the little town of Orihuela, 12 km up the river, were not as fortunate as the population of Almeria. The Vikings reverted to their old ways and plundered the town. This was not a particularly wealthy district, and the Viking fleet was back at the coast within a week. The Balearic Islands lie 60 km out in the Mediterranean, with Formentera and Ibiza nearest to the mainland. All or parts of the fleet headed out to these islands and plundered them, before setting course for Mallorca. Back on the mainland they set up a base for the fleet in the Ebro Delta, probably where El Cava stands today. This base was furnished with a defensive earth rampart and palisade, which suggests that they had intended to stay there for some time. From this base, they undertook several raids out to Mallorca, along the coast and into the Ebro Valley, in search of booty and slaves. The Ebro Valley was densely populated, with big towns such as Zaragoza and Tudela along the river. Tortosa, one of Al-Andalus’s most important marine bases, lay to the north, slightly upriver from the delta. The Vikings cannot have failed to notice the shipping traffic on the river, and it is unlikely that they could have sailed up the river without being attacked at Tortosa. However, there are no accounts of attacks or plundering in this region, and the Vikings may have restricted their activities there to trading. From the Ebro Delta, the fleet continued northwards along the Costa Brava and into the river Tech, near the modern boundary between Spain and France. Here they plundered a monastery in the province of Septimania, which loosely corresponds with modern Languedoc-Roussillon. They then attacked the towns of Perpignan and Narbonne. We don’t hear of particularly great resistance in this region. The inhabitants were accustomed to living far from war zones and heathens, and they were totally unprepared for the coming of the Vikings. c hap ter 6
Opposite: Sometime in the early summer of 858 Bjørn Ironside and Hallstein sailed from France and set course for Spain. Hallstein eventually attacked the Italian towns of Luna, Pisa and Fiesole. This figure of an aristocratic man’s head from the Oseberg burial well illustrates the resources needed to challenge the powerful southern kingdoms around the Mediterranean.
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The Vikings attack Luna After a long time harrying (in Spain and France) the Vikings were called together to decide what they should do now. The most villainous of them all, the leader himself, Alstignus (Hallstein), said: ‘Let us go to Rome and conquer it as we have done with the towns in France.’ They all agreed to this. They hoisted sail and drew away from the French coasts, landing here and there on the way until they came with their ships to a town which was called Luna. The local chiefs were horrorstricken when they saw an invasion by so many armed men, and therefore they armed the warriors against them. Alstignus understood that the town would not allow itself to be invaded so easily. So he laid a plan to deceive the warriors who were guarding the walls. A message was sent to the bishop in the town to say that Alstignus had met contrary winds and had therefore come to their town reluctantly – not to plunder and kill. The message also said that Alstignus was sick and wanted to convert to Christianity. Would the bishop anoint him, and bury him if he died? The bishop and the count both agreed to this plea immediately, and Alstignus was then carried into the town, followed by his men. He was baptised by the bishop and then carried out of the church, pretending to be a helpless invalid. Back down at the ships he said to his men: ‘Tonight you shall report to the bishop and the count that I am dead. You shall weep and ask that I may be buried in their town, as a new convert.’
The men did this – asked that their chieftain Alstignus be buried in the large monastery in the town in exchange for the Vikings giving all their valuables to the church. The bishop and the count consented to this too. Alstignus then said to his men: ‘Lay me on a bier, with my weapons hidden in the shroud. Follow me weeping and wailing through the streets, show them how you grieve. Wave jewellery and spices ahead of the bier; decorate it with axes and swords inlaid with jewels and gold.’ And so it happened; crowds of people were to be seen in the streets when the bier was carried through, the abbey church was thronged when the ‘dead’ Viking was carried in. The bishop stood ready to begin celebrating high mass to mark the passage of a great man. The choir and all the priests were there. Then, when the body was to be carried out to the grave after the mass was over, Alstignus sprang up from his death-trance, swiftly unsheathed his sword, attacked the bishop who was standing there with Bible in hand, and murdered him. Then he murdered the count too and ran amok among the priests. The Vikings had closed the doors, nobody could escape and the massacre was complete. The foreigners killed everyone there with great violence, like wolves in a sheep-pen. Wailing and shrieking, men, women and children were mercilessly mown down. The fighting continued out in the town, crowds of the townspeople fell. The town gates were opened, new Vikings streamed in and started cutting people down mercilessly. At the end, everybody was dead. DUDO OF ST. QUENTIN
There was probably no military power in this region that could challenge them. At the Rhone Delta, the fleet established a base in the Camargue, where they overwintered in 859/60. They raised buildings and defensive works at the base, which continued in use for at least eight months. From here, Bjørn and Hallstein launched several attacks, including assaults on the towns of Arles and Nîmes and a raid as far upriver as Valence, not far from the Rhone Alps. These raids must have yielded many goods and slaves to be gathered together in the Camargue, but not all the excursions fared so well. In a letter from that time, Abbot Lupus of Ferrières praises Count Gerard of Provence for defeating the Vikings during one of their raids and driving them away. Children were probably one of the Vikings’ preferred trading commodities. Boys and girls were desirable goods in the Muslim slave markets, and the most important slave market in Al-Andalus 344
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was in Tortosa, just a few days’ travel distant. From their bases in the Camargue and the Ebro Delta, the Vikings could promptly and reliably satisfy the Muslims’ demands for child slaves captured in France and Italy.
Onwards to Rome After the initial attacks on the southern fringes of the Frankish territories, part of the Viking fleet sailed onwards to Italy, led by Hallstein. Bjørn may have stayed behind in the Camargue to administer the sale of slaves and the ransom of hostages. After taking part in the Mediterranean expedition, Bjørn travelled north, suffered shipwreck in the English Channel and later died somewhere in Friesland. Hallstein’s fleet sailed into the Gulf of Genoa and down along the coast of Tuscany. When they came to the mouth of the river Magra, not far from the big marble quarries at Carrara, they proceeded
to what they thought was Rome, according to the legend. The ancient Etruscan and subsequently Roman harbour town of Luna was still an imposing sight when the Vikings arrived. It must have seemed to them to be very impressive, a worthy target for Hallstein. We don’t know if the Vikings really thought that this was Rome. Such a misunderstanding would have been strange but not entirely impossible. Did the Vikings know what Rome looked like? Here was a big town of white marble, with an impressive harbour, town walls, churches and an amphitheatre; a Rome as good as any other. The accounts of the attack on Luna were re-told by Dudo of St Quentin over 150 years later, in his History of Normandy. Dudo tells of a gruesome trick which the Vikings used to get into the town. This was not unusual for the Vikings, but the account has so many resemblances to other stories that it is difficult for us to credit. The Christian chroniclers were in the custom of presenting the Vikings as mass murderers to emphasise that they were heathens, and therefore uncivilised and barbaric. Dudo goes on to say that when the Vikings finally realised that this was not Rome and that they therefore had not become masters of the universe after all, they were so furious that they started a completely devastating orgy of plundering throughout the area. Several ships were sent back to the base in Camargue, fully laden with slaves and goods from the wrecked town of Luna. The rest of the fleet continued south in search of the real Rome. Their search took another wrong turn when they anchored in the river Arno. The ancient Etruscan city of Pisa was strategically placed where the Arno and Auser rivers ran out into the Mediterranean. Today, the river Auser has disappeared and Pisa is an inland town, but for the Vikings this was a strategic location to build a camp and another opportunity to enrich themselves. The Vikings followed the river Arno to the neighbouring towns of Florence and Fiesole. These towns were constantly at war with each other, but had been united under the same ruler in 854. Florence was down on the bank of the Arno and would have been the Vikings’ natural target, but instead it was Fiesole, on the mountain slope behind Florence, which was plundered and burnt. Did the enmity between the towns cause the
Florentines to set the Vikings on Fiesole? Whatever may have happened, that is the last we hear of Hallstein’s expedition until the return journey. A few sources claim that the Vikings continued to the Dardanelles and visited Constantinople and possibly Alexandria. What we do know for certain is that the greater part of the fleet sailed back through the Strait of Gibraltar in 861. After an attack on Málaga the fleet ran into bad weather. Several ships sank, with some sources claiming that as many as 40 ships went down in the storm. The remaining 22 ships passed through the Strait of Gibraltar and up the coast of Medina Sidonia, where they were attacked by the emir’s fleet. A further four ships were lost in this engagement. The Vikings would have had to overwinter on the way home. The most likely location for this is the island of Saltés near Huelva, where they had been earlier. The people here produced iron – evidence of the casting of anchors has been found – and this was a place well equipped for repairing the ships. Of the approximately 65–80 large ships that set sail in 858, fewer than 20 came back to Brittany in April 862, four years after the Vikings had set out on their eventful and bloody voyage. Other ships probably followed later, but these are not recorded in the sources. In Brittany, the fleet split up for the last time. Some of the ships went to Ireland with slaves. The Irish annals tell that a son of a man called Ragnall from Lochland (the Irish name for Norway) came from Spain and North Africa with blåmenn (Africans from south of the Sahara). That must have been a remarkable and exotic innovation on the international slave market in Dublin.
The return to Spain Spain would be free from major Viking attacks for the next hundred years, until 965 when at least two Viking fleets sailed to Spain and plundered extensively. Al-Andalus was mostly spared from the attacks this time, but the situation was correspondingly worse throughout the Christian kingdoms in the north, and Asturias was particularly terrorised. c hap ter 6
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One of the fleets consisted of about 30 ships which set off from Normandy. Following a peace treaty with the French that summer, Duke Richard probably allowed many of his mercenaries to go raiding in Spain. According to Dudo’s history, they destroyed 18 towns and fought against dark-skinned people. These dark-skinned troops were probably elite units of Ethiopian soldiers who at that time fought for the Muslim rulers in Spain and North Africa. The fleet cannot have reached Spain before late autumn, and it probably overwintered somewhere in the north. Raiding started in 966 with an attack on Iria, slightly south of Santiago de Compostela. The local governors were concerned that the apostle Jacob’s grave in Santiago might be plundered, and following this attack they started constructing a line of defensive works along the coast. Outside both Lisbon and Silves the fleet came into conflict with Muslim warships, and two ships were lost. They stopped at Alcácer do Sal, south of Lisbon, in June 966 and established a base which continued in use certainly until 968 and possibly until 972. In 968 a fleet of about 100 ships with 3,000–4,000 warriors landed in Galicia, under the leadership of a man called Gudrød (Gunderedo). Plundering was the order of the day for this fleet, which consisted of groups from Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Hebrides and perhaps also the Orkney Isles. The first reported landfall was near Ría de Betanzos, not far from La Coruña. The raiders systematically plundered the town before moving further south, to Ría de Arousa. Bishop Sisenand commanded the defence and faced them in a battle on 29th March 968 at Fornelos, south-east of Santiago de Compostela. Sisenand was struck by an arrow and died, and the Galicians were put to flight. The whole of Galicia now lay open to plundering, and many prisoners were taken, either to be sold as slaves or released on payment of ransom. A group of Vikings went to Santiago de Compostela, but they failed to force the town walls. Instead, they were well paid to go away. The sources say that the chieftains were not satisfied with this. They wanted to capture the town, dig up the saint’s remains and take them away. This is probably just a 346
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tall story. The Vikings were not generally interested in relics. What they were out for was the valuables which were often associated with the relics. This was something they were very familiar with, from their own burial customs. The Vikings set up several fortified bases during their three years in this region, which can explain the enormous spread and intensity of the attacks. When the local leaders at last managed to mobilise a defence, the fleet moved south. They set up another base near Rio Minho, north of Porto, and organised attacks as far inland as Lugo in Castile. Several sources mention these raids. A surviving testament from the late 960s tells that the Countess Mumadona of Guimarães built the fortress of San Mamede specifically for defence against the Vikings. To reach Guimarães one has to travel 24 km up the river and then follow the land route north for several km. In 970 the Count of Astorga in the Kingdom of Leon sent a report to Córdoba about a failed attack. There are also surviving place names in this area which can be connected with the Vikings’ visit. Between Zamora and Astorga, about 280 km from the mouth of the river Douro, there is a little village called Lordemanos. It has been suggested that this village originated from a group of Vikings who settled there.
The Vikings’ last visit to Spain The Vikings went to Al-Andalus again in 970. A fleet passed through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean and stopped in Almeria, which in addition to being an important export harbour for the slave trade was also a production centre for textiles and luxury goods. The Vikings probably wanted to exchange slaves from Galicia for luxury goods. As there are no reports of military engagements, it is likely that this was purely a trading expedition. When the Vikings sailed south again in June 971 the Muslim fleet sailed to Seville to stop them, but the Vikings went no further than the Algarve coast and the caliph’s fleet remained at the mouth of the Guadalquivir. In June 972 the combined Muslim fleet sailed to the Algarve coast to defeat the Vikings once and for all, but by then the Vikings had left Spain. The Vikings then stayed away from Spain for
Olav the Holy in Spain Olav and his foster father Rane took part in Torkjell the Tall’s invasion of England in 1009. Later, in 1015, Olav was in Spain. He attacked La Coruña in Galicia and then sailed into the mouth of the river Minho, set up a camp and continued up to the bishopric of Tui. At Tui, he demanded 12,000 gold shillings (4 kg of gold) for not destroying the town. The bishop and his family were taken prisoner, but released on payment of ransom money. The town was destroyed regardless, and lost its status as an independent diocese. Olav was probably campaigning in conjunction with other Vikings, as his own fleet consisted of not more than about five ships. In late autumn 1015 Olav arrived at Cádiz and overwintered in anticipation of sailing through the Strait of Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean. He was in conflict with the Muslim fleet in Cádiz Bay, though there are no reports of major engagements. Olav’s main purpose in the region was probably to trade in Galician slaves and the gold from Tui.
Olav the Holy, as portrayed in the Middle Ages. Section from an altar front in Trondheim.
many years, but from 1008 onwards they were back in Christian north Spain and Galicia. In 1015–16 Olav Haraldsson (the Holy) and a fleet from Normandy were active both in the north and along the coast as far south as Cádiz. There are also reports of a series of attacks on the Christian lands of north Spain in 1028, 1032 and 1038, and the Christian kingdoms in the north commonly used Vikings as mercenaries in their internecine wars. The caliphate in Córdoba was too powerful for Muslim Spain, Al-Andalus, ever to be an attractive target for plunder. Time and again the Muslims
showed that they could respond to the Vikings’ tactics and hit back with violent force. The fact that the Muslim leaders never paid Danegeld limited the number of Vikings going south. We can also assume that the warm climate of southern Spain did not suit the Northerners for long. Voyages to Al-Andalus were still being undertaken in the 11th and 12th centuries, but the purpose of these was mainly either trade or, in Christian times, to sail via the Mediterranean to Rome, Constantinople or Jerusalem on pilgrimage or crusade.
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The lands in the East In 1240, while the historians on Iceland were writing down the tales of the Vikings’ journeys in Russia and Ukraine, Kiev was captured by the Mongols. This meant the end of a Viking kingdom which in the course of its 400-year history had extended from the Gulf of Finland in the north to the Black Sea in the south and laid the foundations of the later Russian Empire.
I
Opposite: A garrison soldier from Birka, c. 930. His equipment has Eastern charac teristics. The sword, shield, spear, axe and body armour are based on finds at Birka. The helmet is based on a find at Gnezdovo in Russia, which was an important military base for the Vikings in the East. 348
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n his chronicles, written in the early 12th century, Nestor states that the state of Russia was born in 859, when a group of Vikings from today’s Sweden conquered the tribes who lived along the Russian and Baltic rivers. They started by defeating the peoples along the south coast of the Gulf of Finland, before sailing up the river Neva to take control of the trading centre of Ladoga. This was probably not achieved without resistance, for there was much profit to be made by whoever controlled the trade in furs, hides, honey, wax and especially the goods which arrived via the Silk Road – Arab silver and Chinese silk. From Ladoga (Aldeigjuborg), the Viking chieftains spread ambitiously throughout the surrounding countryside. One group travelled up the river Svir to Lake Onega and then south via the river Kovša where the Finnish people the Vepsers lived. Then they went south via the river Šeksna and down to the Mererer people who lived along the upper stretches of the Volga. Another expedition went down the river Volkhov, through the Slovenes’ land and then to the river Lovat, which brought the fleet to the Krivičernes’ territory. vi k i ng i n va s ion s
The Vikings’ plundering raids in the East must have shocked and terrified people just as they did in the West. The biggest difference in the East was that there were no monasteries to be plundered for silver and little wealth to be gained by extortion or ransom. What the Vikings found as they rowed along the various rivers was a chain of small local communities trading in furs and natural products. The raiding of these trade and tribal centres was followed by imposition of taxes. To keep control of access to these luxury goods the Vikings had to set up permanent, fortified bases in the towns and villages they captured. From these bases they could control the people and the trade and send goods home to Scandinavia. This gradually became a lucrative business for enterprising warrior chieftains, and it was not long before others also wanted a share in the wealth. The trade along the Russian rivers to Scandinavia was at first controlled by the great Khazar Empire. The Khazars were a Turkish people who bred and rode horses and who had converted to Judaism around 740. From the towns of Kiev, Sarkel and Itil the Khazars controlled the peoples around the
Gardarike Gardarike is one of the names the Icelandic sagas use for Russia. It probably comes from a Russian word for the fortified towns there, gorod, which in turn comes from the Norse garðar, meaning ‘strongholds’, ‘enclosures’ or ‘settlements’ depending on
rivers Dnepr, Don and Volga. Itil, on the shore of the Caspian Sea, was their eastern capital and Kiev was their western capital. The Khazars’ power was based on control of the Silk Road from China to western Europe through the towns of Staraja Ladoga, Birka, Hedeby and Dorestad.
Seeking wealth in the East The first Scandinavians to take control of parts of this trade network had probably been part of a large Swedish fleet which operated in the Baltic in the 850s under the leadership of Olav, king of the Svea. After a successful expedition against the Curonians in what are now Latvia and Lithuania and against the towns of Seeburg (Grobin) and Apulia (Apuolé), part of the Viking fleet sailed north and east into the Gulf of Finland. The trade goods coming from this region showed that there was great wealth to be found. Scandinavian traders had already been acquiring furs, wax, honey and slaves here for centuries. There was also a steady supply of Arab silver, known as kufic coins. All these were attractive commodities for the Vikings. Twenty years before Olav’s great expedition against the Curonians, several groups of Vikings had already travelled via the rivers of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine to Constantinople, capital city of the Eastern Roman Empire. Arab texts also tell of Scandinavian traders travelling as far as Baghdad via the Black Sea, the Don and Volga rivers and the Caspian Sea. This was the profitable trade network that the Vikings sought to control. According to Nestor’s chronicle, these first groups of Vikings were driven out by the local tribes after just a few years. The ‘war of liberation’ was followed by chaos, according to the chronicle, as the tribes who had united against the Vikings fought internally 350
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context. Another name for the land was Svitjod det store (‘Greater Sweden’), because of the connection with Sweden, which was known as Svitjod in the sagas.
about who should lead the alliance. Eventually they decided to look for a leader from abroad to unite them. The chronicle says that representatives travelled to ‘a tribe of varjagere who called themselves Rus, and asked them to come to rule over them’. The varjagere, or Vikings as we call them, willingly accepted this offer from the combined Slavic tribes. Three brothers settled each in his own corner of the country. Rørek (Rurik), the eldest, settled in Ladoga and later in Novgorod (Holmgard). Blåskjegg (‘Bluebeard’, Sineus) and Torvard (Truvor) settled in the towns which are now Belozersk and Izborsk. Behind this brief historical account there undoubtedly lay a story of much conflict and suffering. We can assume that this was not a peaceful transfer of power. We should rather think of it as a re-conquest of the small Viking chiefdoms which had been set up during the previous years. The three brothers may indeed have existed, either as real brothers or as members of a warrior brotherhood, but they should be seen as personifications of the new and stronger control over the realm. The Vikings spread throughout the region and created fortified sites so that they would not risk being driven out again. From these strongholds they demanded taxes and controlled the transport arteries. After his ‘brothers’ died, Rørek took overall control. The chronicle says that from his base in Novgorod he expanded his kingdom to the south and east. Strongpoints were established in Polotsk by the river Dvina and in Rostov, south of the upper reaches of the Volga. An immediate benefit of Rørek taking over power from the other chieftains was that the local tribes were less exposed to plundering by other Vikings. We cannot ignore the fact that some of the upper strata of local society were able to benefit from
the new order. The Vikings married into the oldestablished Slavic ruling classes, who thereby also eventually became part of the new governing class.
A voyage to Constantinople Rørek and his ‘brothers’ were not the only Vikings who came to the region. At the end of the 850s, two other Scandinavian chieftains, Hoskuld (Askold) and Dyre (Dir) led a big fleet along the river system from Novgorod and over to the river Dniepr, which was the main transport artery between Scandinavia and south-east Europe. The expedition’s ultimate aim was probably to plunder Constantinople (Miklagard). Very few Scandinavians had been to Constantinople at that time, but those who had
been there told exciting tales of wealth. The city became an irresistible temptation to the silverseeking Vikings who thought that the Russian villages were not yielding enough profit. Returning travellers could also tell that Constantinople was one of the world’s best protected cities, surrounded by enormous double walls and defended by a formidable fleet and army. A small Viking army without siege engines, catapults or scaling ladders could not possibly hope to take the city. Either the Vikings didn’t know this, or there must have been another reason for them to go south. One theory is that the expedition was brought about by an internal power struggle in the little Viking realm. Many of the chieftains may have felt sidelined, as there was simply not enough land
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Rus – the Vikings in the East The term ‘Rus’ gave Russia its name. Rus was the general description of Vikings in the East, but the origin of the word is probably Ruotsi, the old Finnish name for Sweden. This term travelled east and became Rus among the Slavs and Rhos in Byzantium. The Swedish origin of the word may be ro∂R or ro∂z, which means ‘rowed’ and came to refer to somebody who rowed a warship.
and wealth for them all. The treasure hunt may also have been stimulated by the northward flow of Arab silver drying up from time to time. The Vikings reached Kiev by about 860. The town was strategically located on a height by the riverbank and was the Khazars’ focal point for trade in the region. The Vikings stormed the defences, and the Khazars were driven out for a time. The chronicle tells that Hoskuld and Dyre became the town’s new rulers.26 After a short stay in the town, they continued their journey towards the Black Sea and Constantinople. The Russian chronicle says that the Vikings had 200 ships. This is probably a great exaggeration, but it does contain a grain of truth. The ships which the Vikings used in the East differed from those used in the West in being significantly smaller. The big ships in the West could carry 50–100 warriors, whereas the ships in the East carried 10–15. The rivers were often shallow and narrow and had non-navigable stretches, which often required the ships to be carried. One thouasand warriors would need 75–100 ships, though even that sounds rather many. The Byzantine sources also say that the Vikings came in ‘countless small ships’. They may not have been ‘countless’, but they must have been many. Whatever the tally, it was a relatively large force by the standards of the time, though far short of what would be required to take Constantinople. As the emperor was absent from the town when the Vikings arrived, the defence was led by Patriarch Photios. He later described in vivid language the terror which gripped the inhabitants at the sight of ‘the swarm of barbarians’ in front of the town walls. The Vikings did not manage to enter the 352
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Some sources use the terms Varjager and Rus interchangeably, but the Arab sources make a clear distinction between them. Rus refers to a population of men, women and children who created a society based on trade and warfare, whereas the Varjager were warriors who served as mercenaries for different rulers.
city, but plundered the surrounding villages instead. Photios records that they were heavy-handed and brutal. Numerous people and masses of livestock were slaughtered before the Vikings disappeared as suddenly as they had come. Even though the Vikings were unable to threaten the city itself, the emperor was concerned for all his subjects in undefended towns and villages throughout his realm. It was decided to try to forestall future attacks by converting the Vikings. A delegation of ambassadors and missionaries was sent north. We have no reports of how they were received, but by 867 Photios was able to claim that he had succeeded in converting the Rus, ‘who excelled everybody else in murderous villainy and who after having enslaved the people round about them were seized with arrogance and took up arms against the imperial authority.’ The rejoicing was premature; it would be many decades before the Rus Vikings consented to baptism. Disappointed in their grandiose ambitions, and realising that they would not be able either to take or to pass the imperial city, many of the Vikings decided to travel up the river Don and over to the Caspian Sea. The Muslim realms along the southern shore of the Caspian Sea, along with the countries around the Black Sea, were the starting point for nearly all the trade of Arab silver, spices and silks to Scandinavia. This made them very attractive targets. During the time when the Vikings had contact with the Muslim states, these were ruled by the Abbasids, an Iranian dynasty who came to power around 750. Soon after the attack on Constantinople in 860, a Viking fleet was seen in the Caspian Sea for the first time. To reach the Caspian Sea, the Vikings
Viking graffiti A runic inscription on the handrail of the balustrade on the upper gallery on the southern side of Hagia Sofia Cathedral provides remarkable evidence of the Viking presence in Constantinople.
‘Halvdan carved these runes.’ A Northerner visiting Hagia Sofia left runic graffiti on the balcony of the cathedral.
sailed up the river Don, dragged their ships overland to the Volga and sailed down the Volga, then out into the Caspian Sea near the town of Itil. To reach the Caspian Sea they had to pass the grand fortress of Sarkel, located along the Don River. It was built in the 830s by a joint team of Greek and Khazar architects. Its Turkic name, sar-kel (‘White Fortress’), derives from the white limestone brick used in its construction. It seems remarkable that such a warlike people as the Khazars would just let a large foreign fleet pass unhindered through their kingdom, but we have no reports of what happened when the Vikings and the Khazars met. So we must assume either that the Vikings won a confrontation, which seems unlikely, or that they paid to be allowed to pass. We know little about the fate of this first expedition, other than that they plundered the town of Abaskun, near the modern town of Gorgan in Iran. They acquired food, slaves and whatever property they could take with them, but the local ruler, Hasan ibn Said, pursued and defeated them.
A Viking kingdom takes shape When Rørek died in 879, control over the chiefdom centred on Novgorod passed in name to his underage son Ingvar (Igor) but in practice to Ingvar’s uncle, Helge (Oleg), who was Ingvar’s mother’s brother.27 Helge was an ambitious ruler who worked tirelessly to expand the kingdom. First he captured Gnezdovo, not far from modern Smolensk. Several chamber burials and high-status military burials have been found in Gnezdovo. These may have been members of the guard retinue, the družina as it
was called in Russian. Gnezdovo differs from other towns in the area where Vikings settled, in that no trace of Scandinavian women has been found here so far. This is thought to have been a town inhabited by warriors. Trade was a central part of the local economy, as Gnezdovo was strategically situated in the upper reaches of the river Dniepr, which was navigable from here right down to Kiev. This was a good starting point from which to take control of the trade to and from Constantinople. The town also controlled the main routes north to Novgorod, Ladoga and the Baltic. Helge then captured Ljubeč, further south, and finally in 880 Kiev itself. Nestor’s chronicle tells that Helge used a stratagem to gain control of Kiev. He pretended to be a trader and when the rulers of the town (who the chronicle maintains were still Hoskuld and Dyre) came to view the goods on offer, Helge’s men rushed out of hiding and overwhelmed them. Helge then paraded Ingvar before the inhabitants and declared that Rørek’s son had come to claim authority over the town. With its strategic location, Kiev soon became the kingdom’s new capital. Even though it may not have come about in exactly this way, the combination of the Scandinavian chieftainships led to the foundation of the princedom based on Kiev. The country’s regular forces consisted of the local chieftains and their warrior retinues. The chieftains could also call up a people’s militia if necessary. The semi-independent chieftains controlled their areas in exchange for shares in the taxes which they collected on behalf of the rulers in Kiev. The prince himself also had a standing guard retinue of around 400–500 men. c hap ter 6
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The Russian rivers were navigable by small ships, which gradually became a familiar sight for the tribes inhabiting the land round about. The Vikings set up fortified outposts at strategic points, so that they could tax the population and control the river traffic.
The Slavic tribes dwelling between Gnezdovo and Kiev were forced to pay tribute to Helge. He also imposed on the citizens of Novgorod an obligation to pay an annual tax to Viking chieftains in Scandinavia.28 This ensured him military support from the homelands if necessary in future, but perhaps the most important reason for this extra tax was to prevent powerful Scandinavian chieftains from challenging his authority if they felt that not enough profit was coming their way.
Helge’s great expeditions In 907, after almost 30 years in power, Helge felt strong enough to attempt an attack on Byzantium. The sources say that he equipped 2,000 ships. That would mean that he had 20,000 warriors. This is obviously quite impossible. Even with help from all the tribes he controlled, the total could only have been a fraction of that. All we can say is that he had a big enough force for the emperor to take him seriously, because Byzantium and the Princedom of Kiev made a peace and trade agreement in 911. Nestor’s chronicle says that Helge plundered the surrounding countryside as the Vikings had done 50 years earlier, and then sailed towards Constantinople itself. The Golden Horn, the bay leading into the 354
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imperial city, was blocked by a huge chain, which the Vikings easily circumvented by carrying their boats round the barrier. The chronicle goes on to say that Helge demanded of the emperor a payment to every man in the fleet and to several towns in his territories. The emperor apparently agreed to this, and ‘the fleet sailed home with sails of silk and holds full of gold, silk, fruit and wine’. Even though they hardly had silken sails or masses of gold, the adventurers must have considered the expedition a great success. The journey had enabled Helge to establish diplomatic relationships with the Byzantine Empire, which would increase the status of his own princely court. The trade agreement also gave the Vikings the right to enter profitable and honourable military service for the emperor, which greatly strengthened Helge’s position in relation to the chieftains in Scandinavia. The Vikings were sighted on the Caspian Sea this time too. The Arab Ibn Isfandiyar wrote that in 909 Vikings came to Abaskun in 16 ships and harried the land. Just as in 860, they were defeated by the local ruler. The survivors were taken prisoner and ended on the slave markets. We can but wonder what sort of fate awaited them. Many probably became rowers on the Muslim galleys, while others met their end in the silver mines in today’s Iraq and
Iran. The Vikings’ pragmatic attitude to religion probably enabled many of them to achieve an easier life by converting to Islam. There is no report of how the fleets managed to get by the Khazars, but the Khazars were accustomed to doing deals and probably allowed the Vikings to slip past in exchange for payment. That was exactly what happened in 912, when they stopped a large fleet of Vikings on their way up the river Don to cross over to the Caspian Sea. In the fortress at Sarkel the leader of the fleet, probably Helge himself, negotiated with the Khazar prince. The condition for allowing passage was that the Vikings would share with the Khazars the booty they acquired by plundering along the Caspian coast. From what is now Volgograd, the boats were dragged or carried overland to the Volga. To spare time, the fleet divided when they came to the Caspian Sea. Some travelled down the east coast to Tabaristan, others to the Baku region in the west. Their common mission was the hunt for booty and slaves. After the raids, the fleet reassembled on some islands outside Shirvan in today’s Azerbaijan. The local prince, Ali ibn al-Haitam, brought together a number of trading ships and other vessels in an improvised fleet for an attempt to expel the Vikings from the island. He crewed the ships by forcibly enlisting local farmers, who were not trained in naval warfare. He must have reckoned on confronting the Vikings on land, but things did not
work out that way. As the Muslim fleet approached, the Vikings were ready to attack them. The Viking ships were small and easy to manoeuvre, and we can imagine that a few of them could easily outmanoeuvre the slower Muslim trading ships and board them. The Vikings were in their proper element on the sea, and the sources tell us that the disorganised Muslim fleet was defeated with heavy losses. The Vikings could then sail back to the Khazar capital of Itil, by the mouth of the Volga, and share their booty with the prince as agreed. Many of the Khazar prince’s bodyguard were Muslim warriors. When they heard of Ali ibn al-Haitam’s defeat they went to the prince to ask to be allowed to take vengeance on the Vikings. The prince couldn’t stop them, but he managed to send a warning so that the Vikings were able to prepare themselves for the attack. According to the Arab sources the fighting lasted for three days. The prince’s bodyguards were supported by both Christians and Muslims who came to join in the attack on the Vikings. They also had cavalry at their disposition. Helge and many of the Viking army lay dead on the battlefield. The survivors fled up the Volga but were attacked by the Burtas, a tribe who lived in the forests along the Volga. Those who did not fall here were killed by the Volga Bulgars in what is now Tartaristan. It is not known whether anybody at all made it back to Kiev.
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A witness account Following Helge’s death, Ingvar came to power in Kiev. The best descriptions of the Vikings in the East are from his time, and the most important and best known of the writers was the Arab, Ibn Fadlan. He met a group of Vikings in the territory of the Volga Bulgars around 922 and witnessed their behaviour, appearance and burial customs. He wrote: They come from their country in the North, anchor their ships in the Volga River, and build large wooden houses on its banks. In every such house there live ten or twenty, more or less. Each man has a couch, where he sits with the beautiful girls he has for sale.
They are clearly traders and warriors. Ibn Fadlan met the Vikings in summer, which is why they were lightly clad: I have never seen people with such perfect bodies. They are as tall as palm trees, blond and ruddy cheeked. They wear neither tunics nor kaftans, but a cape which covers half the body and leaves one hand free. Each and every one of them has an axe, sword and knife which they always carry with them. From nails to neck they are tattooed with green trees and other patterns.
Opposite: In an account of his travels, the Arab writer Ibn Fadlan describes one of the Rus he met somewhere near the river Volga in 922. This man is equipped in accordance with Ibn Fadlan’s description. Many of his weapons show Eastern characteristics. 356
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The most interesting parts of the description refer to the weapons and the extensive tattooing. The weapons are the same as are found in burials in Scandinavia. Decorations in the form of animals and trees, as described by Ibn Fadlan, are found on rune stones, ships, houses, sleds, weapons and textiles. We don’t know whether tattooing was customary, whether it was associated with a particular warrior class or whether it was part of religious concepts and rituals. It was probably a more widespread custom than has generally been thought. Ibn Fadlan also describes life in what may have been Ingvar’s court in Kiev: The prince has 400 of his bravest men, who are willing to be killed alongside him and who want to die for him. They all have places around his vi k i ng i n va s ion s
throne, which is enormous and is inset with precious stones. Around him there is also space for 400 women slaves, and he often has intercourse with these in the presence of his brother warriors.
The 400 warriors referred to are surely the prince’s Scandinavian guard retinue. The description may be based on second-hand knowledge combined with a little fantasy. Ibn Fadlan himself can hardly have been in Kiev or at a Viking prince’s court.
Ingvar challenges an empire One of the tribes Helge had subdued, the Drevlians, rebelled as soon as Ingvar took power. Ingvar responded quickly, suppressing the Drevlians and subjecting them to even greater taxes than Helge had imposed on them. At the same time, a new and more dangerous enemy was pushing forward from the East. The Pechenegs were a nomadic Turkish people who had migrated northward through the Caucasus. In the 920s they attacked the southern border of the Kiev princedom. Ingvar drove them back first time round, but they would come to be a constant threat for the next hundred years. Even though the Princedom of Kiev had been benefitting from the trade agreement with Byzantium for over twenty years, Ingvar wanted to launch an expedition himself. The reason for this is uncertain. Helge’s agreement with the emperor may have expired and Ingvar may have wanted to force a renewal. Perhaps he just felt strong enough to be able to challenge the emperor. Emperor Romanos Lekapenos was constantly preoccupied with war, first against the Bulgars and then against the Muslim Abbasids. The constant warfare was eroding the empire’s resources and causing the fleet and the army to be mostly absent from the capital. Perhaps Ingvar thought that the empire had been weakened. Nestor’s chronicle says rather fancifully that Ingvar travelled south with 10,000 ships. As before, we have very little indication of how many men the princes in Kiev could muster for a big campaign such as this. According to the Arab sources, which are often more reliable on numbers, Ingvar had 400 Vikings in his service. This must refer to his
Johannes Skylitzes’ chronicle, from mid-12th century, includes a series of illustrations of the Byzantines’ meetings with the Rus. Here it is probably the Rus who are getting close experience of ‘Greek fire’, the Byzantines’ secret weapon which halted Viking attacks on several occasions.
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extended guard retinue. We can add to that a good number of Scandinavian fortune hunters who were not directly connected with the regular retinue. It had become customary to send word to Scandinavia in good time before major campaigns, so that anybody who wished to take part would have time to join. In addition to the Vikings, the army included a relatively large number of Slavs, recruited from Kiev and from the tribes who paid tax to the prince in Kiev. Altogether, this may have amounted to 2,000 warriors divided among 100–150 ships. There was only a small unit of discarded ships in Constantinople when Ingvar and the Vikings arrived in 941, and nobody was able to prevent the Vikings from plundering the countryside. The galleys were rapidly recomissioned and equipped with the Byzantines’ secret weapon – Greek fire. This mysterious weapon was the main reason why the Byzantine fleet was the most feared in the whole Mediterranean. A long copper pipe sprayed a burning fluid, probably an oil product, over the enemy ship. When the burning fluid hit the target, it immediately ignited a raging fire which was reportedly impossible to extinguish. Just as the fleet was ready to sail the Byzantine army returned, led by General Johannes Kourkouas. The Vikings drew back towards the coast, only to discover that the Byzantine fleet was blocking the retreat. The sea was calm, and the flame throwers worked perfectly. Every ship they were directed against was sprayed with burning oil. Plumes of coal-black smoke were soon rising above burning Viking ships as crewmen struggled for a moment in the burning sea before sinking into oblivion. The surviving ships retreated into shallow water out vi k i ng i n va s ion s
of reach of the deeper galleys and set course north towards the Dniepr and home to Kiev. Ingvar swore vengeance and sent messages to Scandinavia with pleas for help and promises of silver and booty. Hundreds of Vikings were soon streaming east to enter service with Ingvar. This time, Ingvar had also bought support from the Pechenegs. The Greek settlers on Crimea were the first to warn the emperor of the new Viking fleet. At the same time, the Bulgars reported that the Pechenegs were marching south. With his army occupied in Mesopotamia and his fleet either out on operations or laid up, Emperor Romanos was frightened of what might happen. He sent a delegation of his senior advisers to Ingvar to negotiate a treaty. The emperor offered approximately the same conditions as Helge and his men had accepted previously: coin for the warriors, trade rights for the merchants and recognition of princely status for Ingvar. Ingvar consulted with his retinue, accepted the terms and returned to Kiev with valuable gifts of gold and silk. When the treaty was formally signed the following year, Ingvar accepted an obligation to send troops to the emperor if asked. At the same time, tight restrictions were imposed on the Vikings’ access to the capital. They were no longer allowed to stay in the city overnight. The Byzantines were probably worried about possible trickery and breaking of the treaty by the Vikings. Limits were also placed on the quantity of luxury goods they could buy; this would certainly not be popular.
Glorious death in Azerbaijan Many of the warriors had come all the way from Scandinavia in search of wealth and honour. They were not satisfied with the outcome of the campaign, and many of them went to the Caspian Sea to plunder. In 943 the fleet was off the coast of Azerbaijan. The Vikings had probably again agreed rights of passage with the Khazars who, despite the arrival of the Pechenegs in the area, still controlled the land round the Don and the mouth of the Volga. The fleet sailed south along the west coast of the Caspian Sea, rounded the Baku peninsula, sailed up the river Kura and went into the province of Arran. They continued up the Terter, a tributary of the Kura, until they came to the fortified town of
The funeral of a Viking Ibn Fadlan describes an elaborate and somewhat gruesome burial ceremony for a dead Viking chieftain. At the death of a rich man, they bring together his goods, and divide them into three parts. The first of these is for his family. The second is expended for the garments they make. And with the third they purchase strong drink, for the day when the girl resigns herself to death, and will be burned with her master. When one of their chiefs dies, his family asks his girls and pages, ‘Which one of you will die with him?’ One will answer: ‘I.’ From the moment he utters this word, he may not go back. Mostly, though, it is one of the girls who volunteers. Regarding the man of whom I spoke, one girl answered ‘I will.’ She was then entrusted to two other girls, who kept watch over her and accompanied her everywhere she went. The people were preparing the dead man’s funeral clothes, and this girl gave herself over to drinking and singing, and was cheerful and gay. When the day had come that the dead man and the girl were to be committed to the flames, I went to the river where his ship lay, but found it had already been drawn ashore. The dead man lay at a distance in his grave, from which they had not yet removed him. Next they brought a couch, placed it in the ship, and covered it with Greek cloth of gold, wadded and quilted, with pillows of the same material. A woman, whom they call the ‘Angel of Death,’ came and spread articles on the couch. It was she who was to slay the girl. They drew the dead man out of the grave and clothed him. They carried him into the ship, seated him on the quilted covering, sup-
Barda. News of the approach had preceded the fleet, and a Muslim force of 5,000 men, mostly farmers and volunteers, was assembled on a wide plain outside the town, ready to oppose the intruders. They were uncertain who these strangers were or what they wanted, and so they allowed the Vikings to land and organise themselves. The Muslims probably thought that this was just a little advance parry. Both the Byzantines and the Armenians, whom they knew well, tended to divide their forces into an advance party and a main army which would swoop on the enemy and overwhelm them while they were preoccupied fighting the advance party. Not wanting to fall into such a trap, the Muslims quietly held their position. Then, when they realised that the Vikings really were as few as they appeared, and that they were neither Byzantines nor Armenians, they attacked with
ported him with the pillows, and brought strong drink, fruit, and herbs to place beside him. Finally they brought a cock and hen, slew them, and threw them in, too. The girl meanwhile walked to and fro, entering one after another of the tents which they had there. The occupant of each tent lay with her, saying ‘Tell your master I did this only for love of you.’ It was now Friday afternoon, and they led the girl to an object they had constructed which looked like a door-frame. They lifted her and lowered her several times. Then they handed her a hen, whose head they had cut off. They gave her strong drink and admonished her to drink it quickly. After this, the girl seemed dazed. At this moment the men began to beat upon their shields, in order to drown out the noise of her cries, which might deter other girls from seeking death with their masters in the future. They laid her down and seized her hands and feet. The old woman known as the Angel of Death knotted a rope around her neck and handed the ends to two men to pull. Then with a broad dagger she stabbed her between the ribs while the men strang led her. Thus she died. The family of the dead men drew near, and taking a piece of wood, lit the ship. The ship was soon aflame, as was the couch, the man, the girl, and everything in it. At my side one of the Northmen was talking with my interpreter. After their conversation I asked my interpreter what he had said. The Northman had said: ‘You Arabs are stupid! You would take him who is the most revered and beloved among men and cast him into the ground, to be devoured by creeping things and worms. We, on the other hand, burn him.’
full force. The Vikings, who probably numbered no more than 500 men, had had plenty of time to dig ditches, build barricades and organise and arm themselves. They successfully resisted the attack. After the fighting had been going on for several hours, the Vikings launched a counter-attack from their improvised fortress. Yelling wildly, they charged forward in a boar’s head formation and drove a deep wedge into the Muslim ranks. Overwhelmed, the conscripted peasant army fled in panic. Only 300 elite soldiers resolutely faced the Viking attack and stood their ground. Any who were without a horse and unable to flee, fell. The Vikings pursued the remnants of the conscripted army into the town. The town gates were then shut, and many feared a bloodbath. However, the Viking leaders and the leading citizens negotiated a settlement. The Vikings agreed to accept c hap ter 6
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The feared Varangians The word ‘Varangian’ comes from the Old Norse væringjar, which is the plural of the noun várar (a promise, an oath). The term is used to describe men who were in the service of the princes in Novgorod and Kiev or the emperor in Byzantium. It usually referred to Scandinavians, but can refer
the townspeople’s submission – and doubtless their valuables – in return for refraining from further violence. This truce appeared to hold for several days, but when Muslim troops from nearby towns began to gather round Barda, the townspeople became agitated. People soon started to attack the Vikings by throwing stones at them. At the same time, the Muslim troops started to attack the town. Despite having to defend themselves on two fronts, the Vikings managed both to control the townspeople and to defend the town walls. The people continued their harassment of the occupying forces, and eventually the Vikings lost patience with them. The inhabitants were given three days to leave the town, but only a few had done so when the deadline expired. The Vikings then began a wholesale slaughter of the population. Hundreds of men were killed. Women and children were herded together and packed into the town fort. The prominent citizens were assembled in the mosque and given a choice between purchasing their freedom or being killed. Many paid up, but more refused to pay and were killed. Women of all ages and the youngest boys were enslaved. The sources say that the Vikings compelled the women to become sex slaves. It was particularly humiliating for a Muslim ruler to have his towns occupied by an infidel enemy. The ruler of Azerbaijan was al-Marzuban ibn Mohammed. In spring 944 he personally came to Barda at the head of an army of 30,000 men. They made several attempts to storm the city, but failed to force the walls and managed to enter the city in only a few places. Ibn Miskawayh, who later wrote about the events, told of a little group of five Vikings who were surrounded by Muslim soldiers in a garden in the town: 360
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to anybody from western Europe, including for example the Anglo-Saxons who fled to seek service in Constantinople after the Norman occupation of England in the late 11th century. Slavs and Byzantines did not distinguish between different northern Europeans.
They tried to take some of the Vikings prisoner, but failed because the Vikings refused to surrender. Nor were they able to kill the Vikings until several of the Muslims had been killed. At last there was only one left, a beardless youngster, fair of face and son of one of the chieftains. But they didn’t manage to take him either, for when he realised that he was in danger of being taken alive he climbed a tree, stabbed himself with his knife and fell dead on the ground.
Such a description can only come from an eyewitness. The Vikings knew that if captured their fate would be torture and slavery, but perhaps most significant was the prospect of loss of honour. Death would be preferable. Al-Marzuban’s troops were unable to break through by direct attack, and resorted instead to besieging the town. Al-Marzuban was prepared to sacrifice his own people in order to get rid of the Vikings. Disease soon spread through the town, affecting citizens and Vikings alike. Disease often follows in war’s wake. Unburied corpses spread further death in a population weakened by famine. The situation soon became so desperate that the Vikings sought peace talks with Al-Marzuban. He offered them free passage if they left the town, but this was a ruse. Once the Vikings were out of the town hundreds of them were killed including the chieftain, whose name we don’t know. The survivors fled back into the town for refuge, but disease continued to decimate them. Eventually they saw no other option but to flee. Under cover of night they took whatever booty they could carry, together with a number of slaves, crept back to their ships and disappeared along the river. We don’t know what befell them after that.
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When the Muslims entered the town they opened the Viking graves and took the weapons that had been buried. Ibn Miskawayh wrote that they were looking for Frankish swords which they admired and coveted. Alongside the dead warriors they also found many other weapons, murdered women, tools and many valuables.
Helga’s journey to Constantinople In 945, Ingvar was killed while collecting taxes from the Drevlians. He had a son by a Scandinavian woman called Helga (Olga). Their son’s name, Svjatoslav, indicates how far the Scandinavians in Russia had come in adapting to Slavic society and customs. As Svjatoslav was just a young boy, Helga governed on his behalf with help from his foster father Åsmund (Asmud) and a chieftain called Svenald. In 946 Svenald led a successful campaign against the Drevlians, and for the next ten years the Princedom of Kiev enjoyed relative peace. The only serious threat was from the Pechenegs, who regularly raided and plundered the territory. Helga used this time to consolidate her power and to establish relationships with the Byzantines. Relationships between Kiev and Byzantium were so good that the intellectual Emperor Constantine Porphyrogennetos (Constantine VII) wrote about them in his great work about imperial administration, De Administrando Imperio. He describes the Rus’ annual routine of demanding tribute from the Slavs in winter and travelling to Constantinople on trading expeditions in summer. In 957, Helga decided to make a journey to visit the emperor, who is said to have received her kindly. Everything was done in accordance with the complicated ceremonial protocol which prevailed within the imperial city. First came days and weeks of patient waiting, initially outside and then within the city gates. Then she experienced the pomp and circumstance surrounding the emperor, which was without parallel in the Western world. The court ceremonies in Constantinople had three purposes. The most important was to protect the emperor against potential cloak-and-dagger murderers, the second was to emphasise the emperor’s supreme authority and the third was to make a strong 362
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impression on the visitors. A visitor got the feeling of being in the presence of a divine being. Helga and her train allowed themselves to be impressed. Several of them, including the regent herself, agreed to be converted to Christianity. The patriarch himself instructed Helga in the Christian faith and when she returned to Kiev she took priests with her. She also tried to have a church built in the town and to persuade several of the leading citizens to be baptised.
Svjatoslav, the warrior prince Svjatoslav, who was now in his teens, would not accept conversion to Christianity and was very scornful of those who had come back from the imperial city with the new faith. He lived for war and his warrior brotherhood, but there the similarity with the Vikings ended. He was more like a Cossack warrior from the steppes. The Byzantine historian Leo Diakonos described him as of middle height and blue-eyed, with a well-proportioned body. His chin was shaven, but his moustaches hung far down on either side. His head was also shaven, apart from a thick lock of hair hanging down from one side as a status symbol, showing that he was a prince. This type of hairstyle is found among the Cossacks as late as the 16th/17th century. From one ear hung a big gold ring embellished with a ruby flanked by two pearls. When Leo Diakonos met him, Svjatoslav was wearing loose-fitting, white clothes which ‘distinguished him from the others in the retinue just by their cleanliness’. Vikings from Scandinavia still made up the hard, professional core of the retinue, but they were volatile and considered more like mercenaries. Slavs were the young prince’s new, reliable power base. In a series of campaigns, Svjatoslav expanded his territory to the north-east, south and east. Soon he was facing a conflict with the Khazars, who at that time were shutting the Rus and Vikings off from the Don and Volga rivers and from raiding around the Caspian Sea. In 965, Svjatoslav attacked the Khazars’ northern allies, the Volga Bulgars, and plundered Bulgar, their capital town. Then the army moved south along the Volga and defeated the Viatichs who live around the upper reaches of the Don and Okas rivers. From there he marched on the White
Vikings serve in Dagestan In 987 a group of Vikings arrived at the coastal town of Derbent in what is now Dagestan and willingly took part in an internal conflict between the Emir Maymun ibn Ahmed and the local chieftains. The emir was unpopular and had been blockaded in his palace. The security of the blockade was rather lax, and he was able to receive news in and send messages out. When he got news of the Vikings’ arrival, he sent a message asking for their help. The Vikings were happy to sell their services and they freed the emir from his imprisonment. The population didn’t appreciate this interference. A furious mob attacked the Vikings, killing several of them. The others thought it best to go away for a while. They sailed south to plunder around the mouth of the river Kuras, but were soon back in Derbent as the emir’s lifeguard. The inhabitants of the town were not the only people to regard the emir’s mercenaries with suspicion. A fanatical imam named Musa al-Tuzum who had arrived in the town from the south stirred up the population. He demanded that the emir hand over the Vikings so that they could be compelled to choose between conversion to Islam and execution. When Maymun ibn Ahmed refused to hand over his loyal mercenaries, a furious mob besieged his palace. Eventually it was agreed that Maymun and the Vikings should be granted safe passage to come out of the fortified palace. The Shah of Shirvan was called in to take over as governor in Derbent, but his relationship with the emir and his Viking guard was tense from the start.
Fortress in Sarkel. The Khazar’s leader, the khan, mobilised to stop Svjatoslav but was defeated in a big battle on the plain in front of the castle. This meant that Svjatoslav could now invade the Khazar capital unopposed. Itil was plundered and burnt. A visitor to the town described what he saw after Svjatoslav’s ravages: ‘The Russians attacked and not a grape, raisin or blade of grass remained’. A short campaign had ended centuries of Khazar dominance over the region and over the trade routes north from the Black Sea. If Svjatoslav’s aim was to make it easier for Rus and Vikings to travel up the Don and the Volga, he missed the mark widely. The vacuum created by the fall of the khan from power was filled by the aggressive Pechenegs and other nomadic peoples rushing in. The journey became even more dangerous than before. Trade with the Arab countries around the Caspian Sea came to a complete stop, which
Relationships became so poor that the Vikings eventually fell upon the shah openly in the street and hit him on the back of the head with an axe. The shah then considered it wise to flee back to Shirvan. Maymun ibn Ahmed could take up residence again in his fortress in Derbent, protected by his loyal Vikings. The Vikings remained in the emir’s service for ten years. The last we hear of them was in 997, when the emir was dead and one of his Vikings killed Muhammed ibn Ahmed, the late emir’s brother and successor. Perhaps he was unwilling to offer them the same employment conditions as his brother had. We can only speculate about what happened after that. Did they return laden with wealth to a little Swedish village with their Dagestan women and children, or did they live out their days in their new homeland?
This coin is from the time of Harun-alRashid (786–809). It has a runic inscription on one side which can be read as ‘God’. Perhaps Allah was also an important god for some of the Vikings travelling in the East.
reduced the supply of silver to Scandinavia. This had major consequences elsewhere and especially for England, which now became the Vikings’ new source of silver. The Bulgars had constantly been threatening the western borders of the Byzantine Empire. Now they had crossed the Danube and settled in the Balkans. Emperor Nikephoros Phokas desperately asked the Rus for help. This was music to Svjatoslav’s ears, and in 968 he went to war against the Bulgars. As the emperor had hoped he soon managed to expel them from the south side of the Danube, but worrying news from Kiev put an end to the campaign. In Svjatoslav’s absence the Pechenegs had besieged Kiev. Helga, who was now an old lady, had barricaded herself in the town with Svjatolslav’s sons Jaropolk, Helge (Oleg) and Vladimir. When news of Svjatoslav’s imminent return reached Kiev, the Pechenegs raised the siege and moved east to the c hap ter 6
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Steppes, pursued by Svjatoslav. In the meantime the Bulgars had crossed the Danube again and taken back what they had lost. Helga kept Svjatoslav at home for the rest of her life, worried that the Pechenegs might come back again, but after Helga died on 11th July 969, Svjatoslav resumed the campaigns. Before leaving, he installed his sons as regents: Jaropolk in Kiev and Vladimir in Novgorod. Helge was set the task of governing the Drevlians. This time, Svjatoslav did not content himself with just driving out the Bulgars but invaded the whole Bulgar territory, both south and north of the Danube. When the emperor asked to be given control of the Bulgars’ lands, Svjatoslav refused. Now it was he who threatened the Byzantines, with support from the Bulgars. The Byzantine town of Philippopolis was attacked and plundered, and before long Svjatoslav was threatening Adrianopolis, not far from Constantinople. Instead of ridding himself of a troublesome and rebellious neighbour, Emperor Nikephoros had acquired a new and much more dangerous enemy. Panic spread through the corridors of the imperial palace, and power games and treachery came into play. Nikephoros didn’t manage to mobilise his forces before he was assassinated in his own bedchamber. One of the participants in the palace plot, the experienced military strategist Johannes Tzimiskes, was declared the new emperor. The Byzantines now had a leader who could handle Svjatoslav. In 971 the Byzantine forces attacked the Bulgars and Svjatoslav both by land and sea. The army stormed the town of Preslav, and Svjatoslav had to retreat to Dorostolon (Silistra) on the Danube. The Byzantine army followed and started laying siege to the well-fortified harbour town. At the same time the Byzantine fleet moved up the Danube, blocking flight towards the sea. A long siege led to starvation within the town, and Svjatoslav eventually made a peace treaty with the Byzantines. He promised to maintain peace with the emperor and his successors and never again attack their land. Johannes Tzimiskes and Svjatoslav met face to face on board one of the emperor’s galleys to seal the treaty. The Dniepr was the Rus’s main route between Kiev and the Black Sea. On the river there were some 364
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dangerous stretches round which the ships had to be dragged or carried overland. The Pechenegs had encamped near one of these sections, lying in wait for Svjatoslav. Either arrogance or a sense of honour prevented him from finding an alternative route, and during an attempt by his forces to fight their way past, Svjatoslav was killed. Nestor’s chronicle says that his skull was made into a drinking vessel. The Pechenegs had much to celebrate.
The country of the Rus Svjatoslav’s death led to a power struggle between his sons. Jaropolk’s and Helge’s armies met northwest of Kiev in 977. Helge’s army was defeated, and during the panic-stricken flight he was trampled underfoot together with many of his men. When news of Helge’s death reached the youngest brother, Vladimir, in Novgorod, he travelled to Scandinavia to seek support against Jaropolk. At the end of three years in Sweden he had gathered around himself enough Vikings to be able to challenge his brother. The first stop was Novgorod, which surrendered without much resistance. Jaropolk’s men fled back to Kiev and reported Vladimir’s return. Vladimir’s band of Vikings was not strong enough to threaten Jaropolk in Kiev, but there were potential allies in the region. When central rule was weak, as now, autonomous groups of Vikings tended to settle in places which normally would be controlled by the princes in Kiev. Such groups now flowed in to join Vladimir’s force. A Viking chieftain by the name of Ragnvald had settled in the fortified town of Polotsk by the river Dvina, approximately in the middle of Jaropolk’s territory. Vladimir tried to make an alliance with Ragnvald, but Jaropolk had had the same idea and got there first. Nestor’s chronicle relates rather fancifully that it was Ragnvald’s daughter, Ragnhed, who concluded the deal. She declined an offer of marriage from Vladimir because of his mother’s humble ancestry and accepted Jaropolk on account of his mother’s high status. In reality, a person’s status in Viking society was determined only by their father’s status. The chronicler was probably interpreting events from a Christian point of view. Ragnvald probably chose to ally himself with Jaropolk because Jaropolk appeared to be the
stronger of the two brothers. A dynastic marriage would ensure him admittance to the princely family in Kiev and advance his own position and esteem. Vladimir reacted violently when he heard of Ragnvald’s and Jaropolk’s alliance, and was soon on his way towards Polotsk. Preparations for the wedding were well underway when Vladimir’s men fell upon the town. Ragnvald, his wife and two sons were killed in the ensuing bloodbath, but not before they had been forced to watch Vladimir raping Ragnhed. Reports of ritual rape are found in the sources, especially in the context of burial ceremonies, and it is not unlikely that it occurred in other circumstances too. With control over Polotsk, Vladimir got increased support from the neighbouring tribes and was able to recruit troops from them ahead of the final showdown with Jaropolk. Vladimir’s strengthened army then marched on Kiev and besieged the town. Jaropolk had lost the capacity to mount an effective defence against his brother when one of his generals, a chief called Blud, was induced to switch over to Vladimir’s side. Jaropolk fled with his closest retinue to Rudnja, 30 km from modern Smolensk. Vladimir installed himself as prince in Kiev. In the meantime, the population of Rudnja was starving and Jaropolk’s former general, Blud, persuaded him to surrender. Despite warnings, Jaropolk travelled to Kiev in 978. As soon as he entered Valdimir’s hall, two Vikings from Vladimir’s retinue struck him down with their spears and killed him.29 Vladimir’s position was now secure. He no longer needed to surround himself with powerful troops, and he wanted to demobilise most of the Vikings who had helped him to power. The chronicle says that they were to be paid in marten skins, which they could then exchange for ready money in the markets at home in Scandinavia. However, he had difficulties acquiring enough skins and he encouraged the Vikings instead to go to Byzantium and enter military service there. He sent the emperor prior word of their arrival and advised him to be on his guard against them and spread them throughout different parts of his realm. He was worried that they might be tempted to plunder if they stayed together. These troops became the basis of the famous Varangian Guard.
The conversion of the Rus Vladimir ruled in Kiev with the support of his Nordic retinue. Unlike his father, he looked back to his Scandinavian roots. They were alike in one respect, however. He too liked waging war on his neighbours. The Yatvingians and the ljačerne (Polans) were incorporated into the Princedom of Kiev and the Bulgars were defeated again. By 987 Vladimir was at the peak of his power, and he wanted to formalise his relationship with Byzantium. The relationship had been tainted with suspicion since Svjatoslav had threatened the empire. Vladimir sent a message to the joint emperors, the brothers Basileios and Constantine, bluntly requesting permission to marry their sister, Anna. ‘Otherwise it will go for you as for the Bulgars’, the message read. To emphasise that he was serious, he captured the Byzantine port of Kherson on the Crimean peninsula. The emperors didn’t want to open a northern front. They had enough on their hands with wars against the Muslims in the east and the Bulgar tribes in the west. So they accepted the request but added an absolute requirement that Vladimir would allow himself to be converted to Christianity. The wedding of Anna and Vladimir and the subsequent baptism took place in Kherson in 988, the same year as a large group of Vikings entered service
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Earl Eirik in Vladimir’s lands
After the master of the sword In a growing storm of blades Harried Valdemar’s lands With flaming swords You, Lord of the warriors, Broke Aldeigjeborg. We know that Hild was hard on the farmers When you came East in Gardar From ‘Bandadråpa’, in honour of Earl Eirik, by Eyolv Dådaskald, c. 1000
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for the emperors. Was this part of the wedding package? Vladimir was soon back on the warpath. In 992 he attacked the Croats in Galicia on behalf of the emperors. At the same time, the Pechenegs threatened the Princedom of Kiev again. Vladimir had to break off his campaign to travel east. He faced the Pechenegs in a big battle at Perejaslav, not far from Poltava where another Scandinavian warrior king, Karl XII, suffered his great defeat in 1709. Before the battle started, a gigantic warrior challenged Vladimir’s men to a duel. One of the young warriors in the guard retinue took up the challenge. To the great delight of the Vikings and the Slavs, the Pecheneg warrior was killed in the ensuing duel. This story is very similar to the Norse sagas’ accounts of the Icelander Bjørn Hitdølakjempe. Bjørn won a duel against the giant Kaldimar while in Vladimir’s service, and it is possible that one event forms the basis of both tales. Many stories found their way back to Scandinavia and became part of the Scandinavian narrative tradition. Contact with Scandinavia was revitalised in Vladimir’s time. This led to a steady stream of Scandinavian fortune hunters seeking service as warriors. One of these young men was the subsequent Norwegian king, Olav Tryggvason. He fled east as a young boy and was taken into Vladimir’s retinue, and it was from here that he received support and equipment when he went west to England around 990. When Olav took power in Norway in 995 his enemies, the Earls Eirik and Svein, fled to Sweden, where they gathered together a big group of exiled Norwegians and went raiding around the Baltic. They also plundered the northern part of Vladimir’s lands. Among others, they captured and burnt the trading town of Staraja Ladoga. Earl Eirik kept control of this part of the Kievan territories for several years without Vladimir being able to stop him. Some historian have suggested that these raids were a vengeance for Vladimir’s support of Olav Tryggvason, but this is uncertain. From around 1000 Vladimir lived at relative peace with the neighbouring peoples, and the relationship with Byzantium was stabilised. He focussed on spreading Christianity throughout his country. On account of this, he was later canonised. Right until his death in 1015, adventurous Vikings vi k i ng i n va s ion s
from Scandinavia still comprised his closest retinue of warrior brothers.
Power struggle in Kiev After Vladimir’s death his eldest son, Svjatopolk, took power in Kiev. The chronicle describes him as totally ruthless, and one of the first things he did was to have his half-brothers Boris, Gleb and Svjatoslav killed. Another half-brother, Jaroslav – one of Vladimir’s sons by Ragnhed – was ruling in Novgorod. Jaroslav had assembled a great force of Vikings, led by a man called Edmund Ringsson about whom a saga was later written. The presence of these Vikings deterred Svjatopolk from assaulting Jaroslav. However, the Vikings became impatient and began taking liberties with the townspeople especially, according to the sources, with the women. The townspeople soon came out in open rebellion against these mercenaries, and several of them were killed on the farm which served as their barracks. As a punishment for the popular uprising against his troops, Jaroslav had some of the town’s leading citizens executed. In Södermanland in Sweden there is a rune stone which may refer to this precise incident: ‘Ingefast had this stone cut in memory of Sigvid, her father. He fell in Holmgard as a ship’s captain with his crew.’ Holmgard was the Vikings’ name for Novgorod, and the stone dates from the early 11th century. Jaroslav needed to keep his Vikings busy, and he decided to get involved in the struggle for his father’s inheritance. He set out for Kiev at the head of an army of a thousand Vikings and three thousand Slavs. Svjatopolk responded by allying himself with his arch-enemy, the Pechenegs. The two armies sat for three days on either side of the river Dniepr near where Ljubeč is today, north of Kiev, egging each other to make the first move by crossing the river. Finally, Jaroslav took the initiative. In cover of darkness the army crossed the river and drew up in battle order on the bank. Svjatopolk’s personal guards were in their own camp a little distance away from the main army. The sources add that they had been partying all night and were quite unprepared for the attack. The Pecheneg camp was on the other side of two
The tragic journey of Ingvar the Far-Travelled Spread around eastern Sweden there are still at least 25 rune-stones in memory of Vikings who all took part in the same expedition. This is remarkable, in relation to the innumerable Vikings who fell or disappeared on various expeditions over the years and who are not remembered on rune-stones. The event which left such large and lasting traces was Ingvar the Far-Travelled’s tragic expedition to the Caspian Sea in 1040–41. In 1036, 20-year-old Ingvar Emundsson led a fleet of 30 ships and between 500 and 1,000 men east from Sweden to enter the service of Prince Jaroslav of Kiev. When their employment contract was coming to an end, Ingvar and his Swedes joined a combined plundering and trading expedition to the Caspian Sea. When they reached the Black Sea in1039, the normal route up the Don, over to the Volga and down to the Caspian Sea was closed. They decided instead to follow the ancient Roman trade route which went through modern Georgia and Azerbaijan and the rivers Rioni and Kura. After travelling up the river for several weeks the Vikings came to the town of Bashi. The old Georgian chronicle Kartlis tsovebra has this entry for the year 1040: ‘… and varangi (Vikings) came, three thousand men, and he set them at Bashi, he took seven hundred men over with him’. Bashi is about 20 km south-west of the old Georgian capital Kutaisi (Citopolis in the saga). Among the people they met in Kutaisi was the king’s mother, Mariam, who is called Silkesic in the saga. Silkesiv also features in the later OrvarOdds saga, which may also be partly based on accounts of Ingvar’s journey. As the old chronicle relates, the main army was installed at Bashi while a smaller group continued the journey. Ingvar and his 700 warriors must have got permission to travel through Georgia. After two weeks they came to Tiflis (Tblisi). Below the town they came to an area which was ruled by King Bagrat IV’s enemies. The fleet was attacked by ships equipped with flame throwers, probably a Muslim variant of the Byzantine’s dreaded weapon, ‘Greek fire’. Several of Ingvar’s ships were set ablaze, but they responded by shooting fire-arrows at the enemy ships and driving them back. After several weeks of relatively peaceful cruising down the river, the fleet came out onto the Caspian Sea several kilometres south of Baku. They then sailed south along the coasts of today’s Azerbaijan and Iran and up the east coast to a lagoon which is now called Kara Bugaz, a small inland sea which lies three metres lower than the Caspian Sea. The place where water from the Caspian Sea falls into the Kara Bugaz is described in Ingvar’s Saga as ‘the Gap’ and the lagoon itself as ‘the Red Sea’. This is the only geographical description which the saga provides in this region, and it is part of the evidence that the Vikings did indeed come to the Caspian Sea.
After sailing round the Caspian Sea for several months the fleet returned to Tblisi. Here they were met by King Bagrat IV, who now expected them to support him in the conflict with his enemy, Lipareti. The battle between Bagrat, supported by the Vikings, and Lipareti took place at Sasireti, just north of the town. Bagrat lost the battle but the Vikings held their ground even after the king had fled and Lipareti chose to make a peace treaty with Ingvar. The Georgian chronicle says that the Vikings got a guarantee of safe passage over the mountains and a number of female servants to take with them. According to the saga, these women were the cause of the expedition’s downfall. The men obviously made free sexual use of the women, who in return smote them with a deadly disease. The authors of the sagas wrote from a Christian perspective and considered the sinful behaviour as the cause of the disease which afflicted the Vikings. Obviously, we cannot now identify the disease. The saga says that it was contagious, rapid and fatal. Perhaps it might have been a type of malaria, which one could easily catch in the warm, moist river deltas, or a form of dysentery. Ingvar himself was one of the victims, and only 12 ships with around 120 men made it back to the main army in Kutaisi. As Ingvar and many of the Swedish adventurers were now dead, the army disbanded and left Georgia. Some went back to Kiev, others to Constantinople. The remainder eventually returned to Sweden, where news of the expedition’s fate was met with great grief and the romanticised accounts of Ingvar’s expedition started a life of their own.
The Gripsholm stone near Gripsholm Palace in Södermanland in Sweden is one of the best known of what are called ‘Ingvar’s stones’, commemorating those who died on the chieftain Ingvar the Far-Travelled’s expedition to the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. This stone was raised in memory of Harald, Ingvar’s brother, by Harald’s mother, Tola.
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small lakes, and so they too were unable to come to Svjatopolk’s assistance at short notice. Jaroslav won the victory, though Svjatopolk survived. Svjatopolk first fled east with the Pechenegs, but eventually ended up with his father-in-law, Prince Boleslaw, in what is now Poland. He managed to persuade Boleslaw to support him in his campaign against Jaroslav. Svjatopolk and Boleslaw won a bloody battle against Jaroslav in 1018 and succeeded in recapturing Kiev. Boleslaw received tracts of the lands neighbouring his previous border, as payment for his support. Jaroslav fled with the remains of his army to Novgorod, where he imposed an extra tax on the population and managed to amass enough goods to tempt a new group of Vikings to join him. In Kiev, Svjatopolk and Boleslaw soon had a disagreement and the Poles went back home, leaving Svjatopolk undefended. Having lost help from this quarter, Svjatopolk had no option but to flee back again to his old allies the Pechenegs when Jaroslav and the Vikings came to Kiev. Svjatopolk came back the following year at the head of an army of Pechenegs, and the two brothers again faced each other in battle. Jaroslav won the ensuing battle. Svjatopolk fled once again, but died a short time later. A new conflict arose in 1021, when Jaroslav’s nephew Brajačislav invaded and plundered Novgorod. On his way back he was intercepted by Emund’s Vikings, but he managed to escape in the tumult which followed. According to the rather fanciful Emund’s Saga, Emund and his men changed sides halfway through this war. Jaroslav could no longer pay them what they demanded, and they took service with Brajačislav instead. Brajačislav was then able to dictate conditions to Jaroslav. They agreed to divide the country between them. Brajačislav would get Kiev, Jaroslav would get Novgorod and Emund would get Polotsk. This does not entirely correspond with what we know today, but is good evidence of how transient alliances among the Vikings and the princes could be. What we do know is that Brajačislav became Jaroslav’s loyal vassal and lived until 1044.
Earl Håkon in Gardarike In 1024 another of Jaroslav’s half-brothers invaded his territory. Harald (Mstislav) had his power base 368
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in Tmutorakan on the Kerch Strait in the Black Sea. Tmutorakan had been under Kiev since the 960s. Jaroslav was in Novgorod when he heard that Harald was besieging the capital. He immediately sent messengers to Scandinavia to request mercenaries for the forthcoming campaign. Harald failed to take Kiev and settled instead in Černigov, 100 km north of Kiev. A large contingent of Vikings soon arrived at Novgorod. Their leader, Jakun (Håkon) was described as very handsome and wearing a blue cape inset with gold thread, an obvious sign of high rank. This was probably the young Earl Håkon, son of Earl Eirik. After being forced out of Norway by Olav Haraldsson in 1016, Håkon had been with Canute the Great in England. When he appeared in Gardarike, it was as leader of about 1,200 Vikings. Håkon and Jaroslav faced Harald’s army at Lisven, several kilometres north of Černigov. The Vikings were positioned in the middle of the line, with Jaroslav’s Slavic warriors on the flanks. The Severians, who had allied themselves with Harald, stood in the middle of his line facing the Vikings, with Harald’s own troops from Tmutorakan on the flanks facing the Slavs. It was night, and the chronicle says that there was rain and thunder when Harald attacked. The Severians, who were fearsome warriors, soon pressed Håkon’s Vikings back. Harald quickly understood the situation and sent his own troops against the Vikings’ flanks. When Jaroslav’s Slavs saw that the Vikings in the centre were being overwhelmed, their anxiety grew into a full panic and they were soon in full retreat. Håkon and Jaroslav were forced to flee. Back on the battlefield lay Håkon’s gold-embroidered cape and hundreds of dead Vikings. The ignominy of this defeat was more than most Vikings could bear, and a big group of about 800 men decided to travel to Byzantium to seek service with the emperor rather than returning home shamefully. Håkon went back to King Canute in England with the remains of his retinue. He died four years later, on his voyage from England to take power in Norway. The rest of the mercenary army didn’t fare much better. When the Vikings arrived at Constantinople the emperor required them to lay down their weapons before they would be allowed into the city. They refused to do this, and went on a Mediterranean plundering cruise instead. The
Byzantines defeated them at an unknown location and they disappeared from history. Jaroslav stayed in Novgorod until 1026, when it was agreed that he and Harald would divide the country between them.
A stronghold for Norwegians In 1028 the Norwegian King Olav Haraldsson came to Jaroslav after fleeing from Canute the Great. Olav and Jaroslav were brothers-in-law, each married to a sister of the Swedish King Anund Jakob. So Olav was able to recruit many of Jaroslav’s men, both Vikings and Slavs, in his attempt to recapture Norway. After Olav’s defeat at Stiklestad in 1030, his younger half-brother Harald Sigurdsson (later King Harald Hardråde) came to Jaroslav with other refugees from the war in Norway. Snorre wrote that despite his youthfulness Harald was appointed leader of Jaroslav’s mercenaries in Kiev. His second-incommand was Eilif, son of Earl Ragnvald Ulfsson, who now governed Ladoga for Jaroslav. Ragnvald had been earl of Götaland and had supported Olav in the struggle against Canute the Great and Olav Skötkunung. He too had fled to Jaroslav after Olav’s downfall. Also in Kiev was Olav’s under-age son Magnus, later King Magnus the Good. Boleslaw had died in 1025, and the Kiev princes saw an opportunity to recover some of the territory they had lost in 1019. Harald Sigurdsson led the Viking army when Jaroslav and his brother Harald attacked the Wends. The campaign went unusually well. Not only were all the lost lands recovered, but many Poles were taken prisoner. These were now resettled inside the Princedom of Kiev beside the river Ros, a tributary of the Dniepr. The Ros had long formed a sort of boundary against the fearsome Pechenegs. Jaroslav had started a policy of forced migration and territorial expansion as a defence against future raids by the Pechenegs. The Poles would have to toil on the defensive works and stand in the front line when the attack came. Jaroslav also strengthened the nation by extensive legislation and by developing the church institutions. From the 1030s onwards the fleet was refurbished and equipped. Even though the Vikings still comprised the nucleus of Jaroslav’s retinue, few of them had
permanent employment in Kiev in the years after Harald Sigurdsson led the last large mercenary army to Byzantium in 1035. This changed early in the 1040s, when Jaroslav was preparing for a display of power against Byzantium and sent word to Scandinavia that he needed mercenaries. At the same time, Harald came back to Jaroslav after finishing his service with the emperor and would be able to contribute useful intelligence about the Byzantines’ strengths and weaknesses.
The final attack In 1043 an incident occurred in Constantinople which gave Jaroslav an excuse to act. A trader from Kiev had been killed in the city, and when the parties were unable to agree about compensation Jaroslav used this as a pretext to start an attack. In June 1043 his fleet arrived at Constantinople and anchored in full view of the town. A message was sent to the emperor saying that Jaroslav would refrain from attacking in exchange for a substantial payment of money for each of the ships in the fleet. The emperor’s response was to set his galleys against them. Just as the fleets clashed, a fierce storm blew over the Black Sea, preventing the Vikings from using their light ships effectively. The emperor’s galleys were heavier and better able to ride the waves. They set fire to all the Viking ships that came in range, and Jaroslav’s fleet was soon scattered by the wind. The remains of the army sought safety on land, where many of them were taken prisoner. The unlucky ones were taken to Byzantium to be publicly maimed or blinded, as was the custom. When the situation stabilised three years later, the surviving prisoners of war were allowed to travel back to Kiev. Jaroslav had now come to be known as ‘Jaroslav the Wise’, and the Princedom of Kiev never again tried to challenge Byzantium. When Jaroslav died in 1054 at the age of 74, the tradition of recruiting Vikings from Scandinavia expired with him. Over the following centuries relationships with Scandinavia came to consist mainly of dynastic marriages. Even though mercenary service was no longer available with the princes in Kiev, however, many Vikings continued to travel through the princedom on their way to Constantinople in search of adventure. c hap ter 6
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Byzantium The first time the Vikings are mentioned in relation to the Eastern Roman Empire, Byzantium, is in a source from 839. That year, a group of Vikings appeared at the court of Louis the Pious in Ingelheim, alongside ambassadors from the Byzantine emperor.
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Opposite: Parts of the once-mighty walls of Constantinople as they are today. When the Vikings visited Constantinople, these walls prevented them from getting in. When they started serving in the Byzantine army, they were only allowed into the city in small, unarmed groups. The Vikings later became important supporters of the Byzantine emperors. 370
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he Vikings appearing before Emperor Louis had been sent by ‘their King Chaganus’ on a friendship mission to Emperor Theophilus and had joined the Byzantine imperial delegation to the Frankish Empire as a means of getting home to Sweden. The Franks were shocked when they realised who they were dealing with. Vikings had been harrying the coast for years, and Louis immediately suspected these men of being spies. He decided to detain them until he found out whether they really were spies or not. We don’t know what eventually happened to them. We can only speculate about who had sent the Viking delegation to Byzantium. The Svea king, Bjørn, had earlier invited Frankish missionaries to Birka, and he may also have been behind the delegation to Byzantium. The delegates must have followed the ancient trade route along the Russian rivers. This was a dangerous route at that time, and it would be a long time before other Scandinavians settled in the region and made the journey a little safer for Northerners. The peaceful relationship with Byzantium did not last long, however. When the Vikings next appeared in Constantinople, in 860, they had come to plunder. vi k i ng i n va s ion s
The Vikings become mercenaries Sometime in the course of the next fifty years the Vikings, or Varangians as they were called in the East, began serving as mercenaries in the Byzantine army. In 902 there were 700 Varangians serving alongside seamen from Dalmatia in the Byzantine fleet under Emperor Leo VI in his attempt to recapture Crete from the Muslims. In 949, 629 Varangians took part in another unsuccessful attempt to take Crete, and in 964 a group was sent with the fleet to Sicily. These mercenary troops undoubtedly came from Scandinavia via Kiev. They may have been sent by the prince in Kiev as part of an agreement with the emperor, or they may have been independent groups who came directly from Scandinavia via Kiev. The treaty which Prince Helge of Kiev agreed in 907 stated that when the Vikings visited Constantinople they would live in St Mamas, a suburb of the city itself. They were not allowed to take weapons into the city, and they were only allowed in under supervision and in groups of not more than fifty at a time. During the 10th century the Varangians became an increasingly common sight on the streets of the city, where they must
Under Emperor Leo VI the Wise (emperor 886– 912) the Vikings fought as mercenaries in many of his campaigns against the Muslims.
have been a remarkable sight with their exotic Scandinavian appearance. The number of Vikings entering service was still limited, but the emperor wanted more. They were loyal and fearless in war, and the emperor’s enemies had learned to fear the Varangian divisions. Even though the Vikings were more than welcome as members of the emperor’s army, at that time they had no special status relative to other ethnic groups serving the Byzantines. They were not part of the emperor’s lifeguard. They had however distinguished themselves enough to be mentioned in several Byzantine documents. In Emperor Nikephoros Phokas’ military handbook from 969 they are referred to as rhos. The only other ethnic groups named specifically were the romaioi (Byzantine Greeks) and the Armenians. The Vikings are referred to in the sources by several different names. Leo Diaconos refers to them in a 10th-century text as Scythians and others refer to them as Tauri Scythians. The Scythians were an ancient ethnic group who lived around the Crimea (Tauris). There were also Rus inhabiting that region at that time. The Byzantine writers deliberately used archaic descriptions, which often makes it difficult to distinguish the Vikings from other groups. Another text which refers to the Vikings (and other groups) as Scythians is the anonymous About Military Matters which was written in about 980.
In the emperor’s service The Byzantine army was originally a citizens’ army, into which land-owning farmers were recruited for military service. Mercenaries had always been used, mainly Goths, but the greater part of the army had always been made up of Byzantine citizens. In the 7th century the military had been reorganised to be able to enlist troops from specific areas called themata. The soldiers had been given land in these areas, with a requirement to enrol for military service as part of the tax system. By the 10th century the number of soldiers available from this pool had dwindled dramatically, as big landowners had bought up and combined smaller parcels of land. The small farmers who had been the foundation of military recruitment were disappearing, and the emperor was becoming more and more dependent on mercenaries. 372
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The Varangians got their breakthrough as an important component of the Byzantine army in 988, when an army of 6,000 men came to the aid of Emperor Basileios II at a time when he was hard pressed. Basileios had failed to suppress an uprising among the Bulgars in the western part of his empire, while it was also facing civil war. Two big landowners in Asia Minor had rebelled, supported by large parts of the Byzantine army. At the same time, Vladimir in Kiev had attacked the town of Kherson and the Crimean peninsula. Basileios made an alliance with Vladimir, which gave him access to troops. The Vikings came to Constantinople by the overland route, through Bulgar territory, avoiding the disturbances that were taking place on the eastern shores of the Bosphorus. In 989 the Varangian army, led by Basileios himself, landed at Khrysopolis to suppress General Bardas Phokas who was leading the rebellion. Bardas died of a stroke or heart attack on the battlefield, in full view of his troops and the bystanders. This put a complete stop to the rebellion, as Bardas’ soldiers fled in all directions. The brutality of the Varangians as they pursued the fleeing army was particularly noted. One source says vividly that they ‘gleefully hacked them into small pieces.’ The Varangians were active in the war against the Bulgars between 991 and 994, and in 995 and 999 they operated with the Byzantine army in the campaigns against the Muslim rulers. They were there when the emperor’s army liberated Aleppo and when it invaded the Orontes valley. Then they took part in the invasion of Syria and the plundering of the towns south of Tripoli. When the regular Byzantine farmer-soldiers were occupied with building and farming between campaigns, the Varangians became one of the most important active divisions in the army. We must assume that this close-bonded unit was replenished with new groups of mercenaries arriving regularly from Scandinavia while others returned home with honour and wealth as opportunity arose. After the campaigns of 1000, when they took part in several successful operations in Armenia and Georgia, we hear nothing more of the Varangians until 1016 when they took one third of the booty from a campaign, the same proportion as the emperor himself.
In this 12th-century illustration from Johannes Skylitzes’ chronicle of the Byzantine emperors, we see the Varangians with their long axes.
We can assume that they also took part in the new war against the Bulgars which broke out in 1001 after the Bulgars had become a serious threat to the whole empire, expanding their dominion to the Adriatic and plundering Greece. In the years to 1005 the Byzantines made several successful advances against the Bulgars. The conclusion came in 1014, when Basileios’ troops managed to out-manoeuvre the Bulgars at the battle of Kleidion and are said to have taken 15,000 prisoners. The warfare against the Bulgars was particularly vicious and earned Basileios II the nickname ‘the Bulgar Slayer’. The Varangians were probably particularly active in the horrible mutilation of the Bulgars. In one incident, several thousand prisoners were blinded and sent back home to become permanent burdens on their communities. The Varangians were probably responsible for the blinding. The Varangians had gradually become important in supporting the emperor. They were well paid and received generous shares of the war booty, and there was a steady flow of new groups arriving from Scandinavia wanting to serve in the imperial
army. In 1045 around 3,000 Varangians took part in campaigns against the Seljuks in Armenia and in 1048 another large force fought alongside Normans in Bulgaria. In 1055 they defended the eastern boundaries against the Muslims, and in 1057 they are again mentioned in association with the Normans. This time they were part of a rebel army led by a man called Isak Kommenos. This shows that they were linked not particularly to the emperor but to whoever would buy their services. The last big group of Vikings to take service in Constantinople appeared in 1034/5 under the leadership of Harald Sigurdsson. Harald and his troops spent most of their time in Byzantium as part of the standing army, often fighting far away from the capital. Harald is said to have taken part in as many as 18 battles in his time as a mercenary. Among others, he fought against the Arabs in Anatolia, on Sicily under General Georgios Maniakes and in Bulgaria and Southern Italy. His contribution earned him the title akolouthos (corps commander), the highest rank a non-Byzantine officer could achieve. However, his career ended in imprisonment for embezzlement of plundered goods. c hap ter 6
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The Varangian Guard
Mikael V Kalafates (emperor 1041–1042) brought new ethnic groups into his guard troops. Among these were the ‘Scythians’. This may have been the first time Varangians were used in the emperor’s bodyguard.
Empress Zoe (c. 978–1050). According to the sagas, Harald Hardråde was closely connected to Empress Zoe.
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One of the most mythical and heroic tales of the Viking Age is that of the Vikings serving as imperial bodyguards for the Byzantine emperors in the Varangian Guard. This is the highest honourable status any Viking warrior could dream of achieving. In the Norse sagas Harald Sigurdsson is presented as a central figure in this elite imperial bodyguard, but there is nothing in the Byzantine sources to indicate that Harald and his troops were part of an elite guard unit serving directly under the emperor, or that such a troop existed at all at the time he was in service. We do however know for certain that there was a Varangian Guard late in the 11th and 12th century, but this bodyguard was by no means the emperor’s only or most important guard troop. The most important bodyguards were recruited from among young men from the Byzantine upper class, and the inner core consisted of the emperor’s ministers and their followers. There is great uncertainty about when the Varangian Guard was established. It has normally been assumed that the guard was started in the reign of Basil II (976–1025) and was part of his Grand Hetaira (bodyguard), but the Vikings were auxiliaries in the army of Basil II, not bodyguards. The romfaia-carriers are named as part of the emperor’s bodyguard for the first time in 1042–1043. On one occasion they are named as part of the bodyguard around Zoe (empress 1028–1050) and her sister, Empress Theodora. In another instance they are named as imperial bodyguards in a victory parade. Romfaia has been interpreted as meaning ‘two-handed axe.’ Large axes were one of the distinctive features of the Varangians in the Byzantine army, and we may therefore assume that this is a reference to the Varangian Guard. In the period 1047–1049 the commandant of the imperial bodyguard had a subordinate officer with responsibility for a contingent of mercenaries. This was a small unit of mercenaries, mainly used on ceremonial occasions, as watchmen or on escort duties. The source doesn’t say whether they were Varangians, but they may have been. In 1057 the outer bodyguard of the rebel Isak Kommenos included, alongside Normans, vi k i ng i n va s ion s
‘Scythians from Tauros’. This has been interpreted as referring to the Varangians. The question is whether they were there as mercenaries or because Isak wanted to copy an existing tradition from the real imperial court. Later sources make clearer reference to a bodyguard of Varangians in Byzantium. In 1071 Mikael VII Dukas deposed his stepfather, Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes, with help from the palace guard, the so-called romfaia-carriers. So the guard seems to have emerged as an established force sometime between 1042 and the 1070s. The very earliest, vague reference to the Varangian Guard is probably from 1041. That year, the new Emperor Mikael V Kalafates brought new ethnic groups into his bodyguard. Among these were ‘Scythians’. There are no references to Varangians or Scythians as part of the Byzantine emperor’s bodyguard prior to this. So it probably was Mikael V who brought a contingent of Scandinavian mercenaries into the imperial bodyguard for the first time. Mikael was the son of a middle-class citizen. He lacked support from the aristocracy and had to depend on mercenaries to maintain his authority. The bodyguard had traditionally been recruited from among the powerful Byzantine military families, but at that time their position was weakened in relation to a more socially and economically powerful middle class. This new class was a valuable support to the emperor, but had no tradition of military service in the bodyguard. The solution was to appoint the notorious Varangians as a bodyguard. The bodyguard was an important instrument in Mikael V’s efforts to create new political order in the empire. They were actively deployed to get rid of political opponents and to keep the aristocracy in check. Eventually, however, not even the Varangians could save the emperor. Things went badly for Mikael when he tried to banish his wife, Empress Zoe, who was a legitimate heir to the imperial throne and also his adoptive mother, and at the same time get rid of the empire’s supreme religious leader, Patriarch Alexios. The patriarch escaped and became leader of a popular uprising. The mercenary bodyguard joined the mob which was plundering the palace. The story of the loyal Varangian Guard who were willing to give their lives for the emperor is just a myth. Mikael
was imprisoned and blinded, by none other than Harald Sigurdsson himself, if we are to believe the sagas. The writer Mikael Psellos, who witnessed the blinding, said that it was carried out by ‘strong, resolute men’. He doesn’t mention the palace guard as participants in the uprising, but that doesn’t mean that they were not active participants. We know from the sagas and from Byzantine sources that Harald was in the Byzantine army at the time the guard was set up, and that he had connections with Empress Zoe and was involved in other events. It is therefore very likely that he, with his position, would have been one of the first officers of the guard. If so, his period of service was short. The year after the uprising, Harald was back in Kiev. The Varangian Guard outlived Harald and continued as a watch troop, mainly on ceremonial duties. They eventually got a more prominent role among the bodyguard troops, but they were never an exclusive imperial bodyguard. Until 1066 the Varangian guard consisted mostly of Scandinavians, but when England was invaded by the Normans many Anglo-Saxons came to Byzantium via the Mediterranean. One source says that on one occasion 4,350 men arrived in 235 ships to serve as mercenaries. Most were taken into the regular army, but some were also taken
into the imperial guard where they became such a feature that they came to be called englinbarrangoi (Anglo-Varangians). In the 11th century the Varangian guardsmen were best known for their long axes and their heavy drinking. There are countless stories of Varangians drinking beyond their capacity or being drunk on or off duty. The Danish King Erik Ejegod on a visit to Constantinople in the 12th century is said to have ‘admonished the Varangian Corps to live a more sober life and not abandon themselves to drunkenness’. Another 12th-century reference describes the Varangians as ‘the emperor’s wine bags’. The swansong for the Varangian Guard and for the Varangians as mercenaries came with the fall of Constantinople to the crusaders in the Fourth Crusade, in 1202. The Varangians are said to have been the only group in the Byzantine army who managed successfully to defend parts of the city against the crusaders. But even they had to give up at last, and they fled with the rest of the administration. Even though the corps was apparently disbanded after the fall of the city, there are some indications that it was re-established for a short time when the empire was being administered from Nikea, and again by the emperors of the Palaeologos dynasty after the administration returned to Constantinople in 1261.
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Greenland and America After Iceland was colonised in the 9th century, it would be many years before anybody took the next leap, over to the big island of Greenland and further on to America where the Vikings soon came in conflict with the Native Americans.
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Opposite: The last written source about the Norse population on Greenland reads as follows: ‘One thousand four hundred and eight years (1408) after the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ we were present, saw and witnessed on Hvalsøy in Greenland that Sigrid Bjørnsdatter was married to Thorstein Olafson.’ The picture shows the ruins of the church on Hvalsøy. Christianity came to Greenland around the year 1000. 376
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he Norwegian chieftain Eirik Raude (950–c. 1003) is recognised as the founder of the first Norse colonies in Greenland. The road to the seeming riches of Greenland was littered with death. Charges of manslaughter had driven Eirik’s father out of Norway to settle in Hornstrandir in north-west Iceland around 960. Eirik was also a violent man and the Icelanders sentenced him to exile due to ‘some killings’ he committed around the year 982. Eirik then decided to explore the lands in the West that had been discovered sometime after 900 by a man called Gunnbjörn Ulfsson who had unsuccessfully attempted to establish a settlement. Eirik’s expedition eventually reached a part of the coast of Greenland that seemed ice-free and where conditions promised growth and future prosperity. According to Eirik Raude’s Saga, he spent his three years of exile exploring this land. After returning to Iceland Eirik led a relatively big group of 25 ships, 14 of which made the journey successfully to settle in Greenland in 985. The large island of Greenland was uninhabited before the Vikings came, and the settlements they established appear to have been relatively small. There were probably never more than 190 farms in the Western Settlement, 90 in the Eastern Settlement vi k i ng i n va s ion s
and only a handful in the Middle Settlement, amounting to nearly 5,000 inhabitants spread over a considerable area along Eriksfjord and neighbouring fjords. The economy was based on livestock and on export of luxury goods such as polar bears, white falcons, narwhal tusks, walrus teeth, skins and furs to the markets in Iceland and Norway. At the end of the 12th century, migration of Inuits from the north led to conflicts with the Norse settlers, first about the hunting grounds around Disko Bay and eventually about the settlements themselves. There were reports of several violent conflicts, but we can assume that peaceful coexistence and trade probably existed between the populations too. The settlements had neither a central ruling power nor sufficient profit from trade and livestock farming to enable overseas military adventures. However, the settler communities on Greenland, as elsewhere in the Norse world, were characterised by internal conflicts with killings and revenge killings. In 1960 a mass grave was found beside the ruins of Tjodhilds church in the Western Settlement. Several of the individuals had suffered fatal axe or sword cuts to the head. One of the men had survived his wounds long enough for some healing to have taken place. In another grave, a man was
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The Greenlanders attack the Inuits There is an Inuit story about a conflict between the Greenlanders and the Inuits in the Middle Ages. An Inuit girl who was working as a domestic help on one of the Greenland farms stirred up discord between the two groups by saying that one of them would attack the other. This led eventually to the Greenlanders attacking the
Inuits in the neighbouring area, and killing women and children. The Inuits responded by attacking the chieftain’s farm and burning it down. Following this conflict, the Greenlanders abandoned the Western Settlement. The sequel to the story tells that the girl was killed by her own people for having brought about the conflict.
Illustration by Aron of Kangeq in 1850, showing the Greenlanders’ attack on the Inuit camp.
found with a knife blade between his ribs. We will never know what happened, but this is clearly evidence of a relatively violent society where people did not hesitate to kill each other. There were no trees on Greenland to provide wood for shipbuilding, nor significant quantities of iron ore for the manufacture of tools and weapons. Such goods must either have been imported or acquired by trading. We know from archaeological finds that military equipment beyond simple hand weapons was available. Fragments of chainmail have been found on the tip of Ellesmere Island in north Canada. These could be either from the Viking Age or from the Early Middle Ages. The fragment 378
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which was found could also have been used as a protective amulet.
The Vikings in America It may have been the hunt for resources which eventually led some of the Greenland population to explore further, towards the American continent. When the expeditions returned with supplies of timber and reports of a fertile land, others made their way to North America to settle there. There are few traces of Norse settlements along the coast of North America, other than the buildings
at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, which were discovered in the 1960s. A coin from the time of Olav Kyrre (1067–1093) has been found in the remains of a Native American dwelling. This may be evidence of trade between the Vikings and the indigenous population sometime towards the end of the 11th century or later. The first European to discover the American continent was an Icelander by the name of Bjarne Herjolvsson. He was driven off course on a voyage from Iceland to Greenland and saw the land but did not go ashore. When he and his crew did reach Greenland, the story spread. The first person to fit out an expedition to find this land was Eirik Raudes’ son, Leiv. He bought Bjarne’s ship and set off with 35 men. When Leiv and his crew arrived, they built a few simple houses and overwintered on an island with good timber, good grazing and wild grapes. They called the place Straumfjord.
They called the places they had discovered on the way there Helluland (‘Stoneland’), Markland (‘Forestland’) and Vinland (Wineland). Leiv returned home to Greenland the following year. He never went back to the new country, but several other expeditions followed in his wake, both to the island where Leiv had overwintered and to other places in America. However, archaeologists are unlikely to find traces of the Viking habitations on the American mainland. Modern building and soil erosion have eradicated the original coastline and the places where such attempts at colonisation might have taken place.
On the windswept northern end of Newfoundland the Vikings established an outpost for expeditions further south to Nova Scotia and East into the Bay of St Lawrence. Modern travellers can visit a reconstructed dwelling in the place where Leiv Eiriksson once encamped for the winter.
Where is Vinland? The coast of modern Labrador matches the description of Helluland in the saga. It is stony and c hap ter 6
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inhospitable, with little arable ground and few trees. On Newfoundland, remains have been found of a large Norse settlement with three large buildings and a smithy. This may be Straumfjord as described in the saga. In Eirik Raude’s Saga, Straumfjord is described as lying ‘north in Vinland’ and as the starting point for expeditions to the south. Also,
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the remains of the settlement are beside a strait with strong currents, a Straumfjord. Today the northern part of Newfoundland is relatively windswept and inhospitable, but around the year 1000 large parts of the island were covered in coniferous forest and birch trees. Several explorers who came here in the 15th and 16th centuries
Hibbert Newton Binney painted this Mi’ kmaq camp around 1820. These are the people who drove the Vikings out of Vinland 800 years earlier.
describe the trees as ‘of mast height.’30 At that time the island had a large population of Beothuk native North Americans, who may have been the descendants of the skrælingene described in the sagas. The word skræling is the only word surviving from the Old Norse dialect spoken by the medieval Norse Greenlanders. It’s a negative word describing a barbarian or foreigner and is applied both to the Inuits of 12th-century Greenland and to the Native Americans in the sagas. Newfoundland closely matches the sagas’ description of Markland, the land of forests. The settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows was probably a base for logging and hunting. The local Native Americans would not have entirely welcomed the intruders, and conflicts certainly occurred. The location and plan of the settlement buildings were clearly chosen with defence in mind. The buildings form a semicircle which could easily comprise part of a defence work. Despite the forests and the opportunities for hunting, Newfoundland was not a place for permanent settlement. The climate was too cold, the winters too snowbound, the growing season too short and the soil too thin for cultivation.
However, you don’t have to travel far south before the climate becomes significantly better and you can find the wild grapes that are mentioned in the saga. The bay between Nova Scotia and Cape Cod is such a place. Could this be Vinland? This area is now the site of the great city of Boston and of other modern developments, and any traces of the Vikings will long since have disappeared. New Brunswick and the coastal strip around the Miramichi river’s outflow into the Bay of St Lawrence have also been suggested as possible locations for Hop, the other of the saga’s large settlements.
War in America The biggest known expedition to Vinland was led by Torfinn Karlsevne and consisted of around 160 men and women, one cow and several other domestic animals. Just after the year 1000 the Vikings built two timber houses and named the place Hop. They thought they were the only people in the area until one morning they caught sight of a group of Native Americans paddling towards c hap ter 6
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A penny from the reign of King Olav Kyrre (1067–1093) was found at Naskeag Point, Maine, during the excavation of a Native North American dwelling. It probably came to be there as a result of trade between the natives and the settlers.
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them in small round boats made of skins. Torfinn and his men armed themselves, took at least one white-painted shield as a peace offering and went to meet the visitors. The first meeting was amicable. The strangers offered furs in exchange for goods that were novel to them. They particularly fancied strips of red cloth, which they bound round their heads. The sagas say that they also wanted weapons but that Torfinn forbade trade in these. The inhabitants of the areas around Hop at that time were probably hunter-gatherers who did not cultivate the land. The tribal groups living in New Brunswick and the whole of Nova Scotia and its surrounding region in the 11th century were the Mi’kmaq, who lived from hunting and fishing. Their weapons were made of stone, bone and wood. They dwelt along the coast each summer, and it was probably on one of their annual coastward migrations that they came upon the Vikings. The first, peaceful meeting came to an abrupt end when the Vikings’ cow came running out of the forest, bellowing loudly. The locals were terrified at the sight of the animal, ran to their boats and rowed away. They soon came back offering their wares again, but one day things went wrong. When one of them picked up one of the Viking’s weapons, this was seen as attempted theft, and he was killed on the spot. The killing came as a shock to the natives, who fled in panic, abandoning their wares. They came back before long, brandishing their weapons and shouting war cries. The peaceful times were over. Torfinn and his men drew up in battle formation. The saga says that they held red shields, a literary expression for battle. They were drawn up in the yard in front of the longhouse when the natives stormed out of the forest and charged at them. The saga says that Torfinn had anticipated an attack after the killing of the suspected thief and had drawn up a plan that included the cow that had caused terror at the first meeting. The Vikings had built a temporary palisade round part of the yard so that they could draw the natives in to the place they wanted to fight. This tactic worked, and the natives came face to face with a defence line which cut and stabbed them with weapons they had never before seen or experienced. Instead of the small cuts and bruises the locals were used to, the foreign vi k i ng i n va s ion s
intruders’ weapons caused major injuries. The saga says that many skrælings were killed. However, the Native Americans greatly outnumbered the Vikings and they used slings to pepper the Vikings with stones from a distance. They also produced a fearsome weapon: a big, dark blue ball on the top of a long stick was hurled at the Norsemen. When it hit a target or hit the ground, it emitted a terrifying sound. We know that the saga description of this weapon is not just a fantasy, because it is also described in a 19th-century source. It was a stick with a stone on the end wrapped in wet rawhide which became stone hard when it had dried, and was then painted in different colours. This weapon was capable of sinking a canoe or of inflicting severe injuries when thrown among people. We can assume that the Vikings had their solid shields, axes, spears and a few swords, together with knives and other small cutting weapons. They also had hunting bows, but a serious shortage of arrows. They had little head and body protection. As chainmail and helmets were not things that ordinary farmers could hope ever to afford, hardly any of the American settlers would have them. The attackers appeared to come from all sides, and the line broke under the pressure. Torbrand Snorrason got a stone axe in his head and fell dead on the spot. Several of the settlers, men and women, began to flee. Frøydis, Eirik Raude’s daughter, urged the men to resist, but to no avail. Then she picked up Torbrand’s sword from beside his corpse, bared her breasts and her pregnant belly to show that she was a woman, and beat her breasts with the flat of the sword. When the attackers saw this they stopped fighting, ran back to their boats and rowed away. Neither Frøydis nor any of the others had expected such a reaction. Her intention had been first and foremost to show that she was a woman, but at the same time she was showing that she was pregnant and was prepared to defend herself and her child. We know today that some of the North American tribes have strong taboos about dealings with pregnant women. It was probably a taboo of this sort which chased the attackers to flight. The saga also tells that the natives several times abandoned the battlefield and then returned to the attack. The saga says that this was because of fear and cowardice, but in fact it was quite a common
tactic among the North American tribes to attack suddenly, kill a few people, take prisoners or booty and then disappear. Torfinn and his settlers must have realised quite quickly that they could not withstand such an aggressive enemy for very long and that they would not be able to colonise the land as they had thought. So they packed their belongings and left. On their way they came across five sleeping natives, whom they promptly killed. After this misdeed, they went straight back to Greenland. Shortly after Torfinn’s expedition Torvald Eiriksson equipped a smaller venture with the object of finding a hunter by the name of Torhall, who had vanished. Torvald’s expedition was shipwrecked sailing south along the coast of North America. They repaired the ship and then sailed north, probably into the Bay of St Lawrence. Torvald and his men landed on a wooded headland. Here they came upon three skin boats lying upside down on the sand. Under each of these were three natives who had turned the boats over to protect themselves from the sun while they rested. Torvald and his men split into groups and hunted and killed eight of them. The ninth got away in his boat. Quite soon, a mass of skin boats appeared. Torvald and his men set up their shields along their ship’s sides as a barricade. The natives bombarded them briefly with missiles and then went away. An arrow hit Torvald in the armpit and he died of blood loss. His companions buried him hastily and then drew back to Leiv’s old settlement site, where they overwintered before going home to Greenland. Another unsuccessful expedition followed, in an attempt to find Torvald’s body and bring it back to Greenland. Leiv’s sister Frøydis also equipped her own expedition to Vinland, which met a tragic end when internal conflicts led to the death of several of the participants. There are no further reports of violent encounters with the Native North Americans.
Why Vinland was abandoned Many people have wondered why Vinland was abandoned after just a few decades. There was fertile ground, plenty of game, walnuts, grapes and timber. You would think these were sufficient incentives for permanent colonisation, but at the time of the expeditions the population of Greenland consisted of three small settlements with a combined population of about 500 people. Greenland simply could not spare many people for colonisation elsewhere, and the Greenland Vikings had not yet fully exploited the resources to be found at home. They were already far away from their relatives on Iceland and in Norway. Vinland could not provide goods for trading on the European markets. Europe already had grapes, timber and nuts. The only commodity of interest was walrus and narwhal ivory, which could be found on Greenland. Vinland could not provide salt, precious metals, textiles or other luxury goods. The only commodity seriously lacking on Greenland was timber, which could be obtained from both Helluland and Markland and from collecting driftwood. Hostility between the Norse and the Native American population also contributed to the failure of colonisation. If the colonists had had a different view of humanity, they might have been able to coexist with the Native North Americans, under certain conditions. But meetings that seem invariably to have ended in senseless killing would never have been a good basis for peaceful relations. On the other hand, it is not certain that the Native Americans would have allowed their land to be colonised, once their initial fascination had passed and even if their meetings with the settlers had gone otherwise. Vinland was never totally forgotten, though. It continued its existence in the world of the sagas.
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Notes 1. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles: 54–55. Some researchers consider that this event was entered in the chronicles at a later date, to portray Wessex as the first place to have been a victim of the Vikings. The Annals of St. Neots say that the island they landed on was called Portland. 2. There are several rune stones which use the word viking in one or more forms. U 617 from Bro Church in Uppland says: ‘Ginnlaug, HolmgæiRs dottiR, systiR SygrødaR ok pæiRa Gauts, hon let gæra bro dessa ok ræisa stæin denna æftiR Assur, bonda sinn, son HakonaR iarls. SaR vaR vikinga vordr med Gæiti(?). Gud hialpi hans nu and ok salu.’ (Ginnlaug, Holmgeir’s daughter, Sigrødr and Gautr’s sister raised this bridge and this stone in memory of Ôzurr, her husband, Earl Hákon’s son. He was Viking together with Geitir (?). May God help his soul. G 370 from Hablingbo Church: Hvatarr ok HæilgæiRR (?) ræistu stæin aftiR Hæilga, f (a) dur sinn. Hann var (v)estr farinn med vikingum. (Hvatarr and Heilgeirr (?) raised this stone in memory of Helgi, their father. He journeyed to the West with the Vikings.) Sm 10 from Växjø: (T)oki, Toki vikingR, ræsti stæin æftiR Gunnar, sun Grims. Gud hialpi salu hans! (Tóki, Tóki Viking raised this stone in memory of Gunnar, son of Grim. May God help his soul!) 3. The cult of Odin may be fashioned on a Roman model. The cult of Mithras was popular among the legionaries in the German regions. This may have influenced the Germanic mercenary soldiers in the Roman army. Odin and Mithras have several similarities. Both were war gods linked to a masculine, military ideology which idealised the fearless warrior in a hierarchical group. The Scandinavian military brotherhood of berserkers, as a form of elite soldiers with initiation rituals in the form of animal masks, resembles the Mithras cult where the candidate was symbolically killed and honoured. Both Odin and Mithras carried the dead up to heaven 384
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4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
in a chariot. The figurative language is also similar, in that both the gods were surrounded by dogs/wolves and ravens. The oldest form of the name Norge (‘Norway’) is found in writings from the 9th century. In Durham’s scrapbook from c. 840, Norway is called Nortuagia and Nordðweg (alongside Nordðmannaland). In Ottar’s account of his travels from c. 880 the country is called Nort(h) wegia, and Norwegia is used in a French chronicle from c. 980. Researchers usually associate the term with norðr (‘north’), corresponding to terms such as austrvegr, vestvegr, suðrvegar (the countries to the east, west and south). Sweden appears first in the 10th-century Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf as Swēorice. In Swedish sources the name appears in the 13th century as Swerike. The earliest occurrence of the name Danmark (‘Denmark’) is in a runic inscription on the small Jelling stone, known as Gorm’s stone, from c. 930. It is derived from the name of the people, daner (‘Danes’). The second component of the word is from Old Norse mark, with the meanings of ‘cultivated and uncultivated land’ and ‘land overgrown with forest’. A military society is a society where there is no clear distinction between soldier and civilian, or between a military leader and a civil leader. The society’s supreme leader is also the supreme military commander. All free citizens have the right to carry weapons. Some people because of their class background have an expectation of taking part in the military, the education of the young includes military training and the symbols of war are conspicuous in public and private life. War and heroic deeds are glorified. (James 1997: 19). We do not know whether Odin was perceived as a sort of king of the gods by the Vikings themselves, or whether this has been attributed to him later by Christian writers to make the system of Norse gods appear more hierarchical, as they were used to.
9. Félag, a west Norwegian term for a company of financial adventurers set up for a specific objective. 10. There are obviously many exceptions. To cross from western Norway to the Faeroe Islands or from Jæren to Skagen or make other long sea voyages, one would have to travel by night. 11. Richly ornamented container for the presentation of the consecrated communion bread in the Roman Catholic Church. 12. The word used to describe the piece of cloth is skaut, which simply means ‘a piece of cloth.’ The use of this in the sharing out of goods also appears in ‘Gulating’ law 87 and ‘Frostating’ law XIV 4. The skaut, which also means a headscarf or a piece of a dress, has also been used in connection with conveyance of land by sale, whence the modern Norwegian skjøte, which can mean ‘to convey’ or ‘a conveyance document.’ 13. There are two mentions of women as military leaders in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. In 772 Queen Ethelburga laid waste to Taunton, and Alfred the Great’s sister, Ethelfleda, led West Mercia’s struggle against the Vikings at the beginning of the 10th century. However, these women did not personally take part in the fighting. 14. The sound between the Orkney Isles and Scotland is called the Pentland Firth. This name dates from before 844. ‘Pentland’ is of Old Norse origin, and originally meant ‘Pictland.’ Scotland is first named in a poem by the skald Glum Geirason from about 900. 15. There are indications of Norwegian settlers in Northumbria as early as 788, from an Irish source which speaks of a church meeting in Finn-Gall in England that year. Finn-Gall was the Irish people’s name for the Norsemen – ‘The White Foreigners.’ 16. The story as told in Snorre’s saga about Harald Hårfagre is that Ragnvald Earl of Møre and Harald Hårfagre were the best of friends and allies and that it was Harald who was behind the
expulsion of the pirates from the Orkney Islands. Ragnvald and his sons were to be Harald’s allies in the struggle. The true story may possibly be of a bitter power struggle between Hordaland/ Rogaland (Harald’s domain) and Møre and Romsdal (Ragnvald’s domain). It has been suggested that it was probably Ragnvald Earl of Møre who first set out to expel the pirates from the islands, not Harald. This could explain the high level of conflict between Ragnvald’s sons and Harald in the years which followed. 17. Blodørn is the term for a method of execution which may have been used in Viking times. The condemned man’s back was cut open and the ribs cut and folded out so that they resembled a bird’s wings. Then the lungs were pulled out of the chest cavity. However, it is very uncertain whether this ritual really was performed in Viking times, or whether it really ever existed. It is probably a result of fantastic folklore finding its way to the authors of the sagas many centuries later. 18. Some historians claim to have identified Turgis with the Thorgils whom the saga writer Snorre Sturlason says was one of Harald Fairhair’s sons. (Harald Hårfagres saga, ch. 34). In that case the chronology is quite wrong. In 844 Harald had not yet been born. Others consider that Turgis and the semilegendary Ragnar Lodbrok may be one and the same person, but the Ragnar who is thought to be the subject of the Lodbrok legend was on his way to Paris in 844. Turgis has also been presented as a possible founder of the first fortified harbours in Ireland, including Dublin. 19. Olav White’s origins have been much debated. According to some sources he was the son of the King of Laithlinn (‘Lochland, Fjordland’). This has been interpreted as Norway, but ‘Lochland’ may also have been somewhere in Scotland. Some historians think that he was the son of Gudrød, one of the kings in Vestfold. According to others he was the son of another Gudrød who was one of the sons of Ragnvald Earl of Møre. The Icelandic Landnåmabok presents a third possibility, that Olav was the son of Ingjald Helgason, son of Helgi, son of Olav, son of Halvdan Whiteleg, one of the Yngling kings from
Vestfold. According to Eyrbyggja saga Ingjald’s mother, Thora, was daughter of Sigurd Snake-eye who was one of Ragnar Lodbrok’s sons. On a purely chronological basis, the Icelandic sources do not make good sense. Olav disappeared from the story about the same time as Harald Fairhair defeated a Danish-East Norwegian alliance in a big sea battle in Hafrsfjord in Rogaland, Olav may have been killed in that battle. The truth is that we don’t know who he was, where he came from or what happened to him. 20. This matter is much debated. For example, how could the chroniclers know that the attackers were from Hordaland in Norway? ‘Heredaland’ and ‘Haerethaland’ as they appear in the chronicle can certainly also be interpreted differently. Did the intruders give out this information before they killed the bailiff, and if so, who passed on the information? Moreover, the south coast seems a strange place to meet Vikings from Norway at that time. We may be dealing here with Danish Vikings, who we know were operating on the other side of the Channel at the time. Or maybe the chroniclers did get it right. The Irish name for Norway, Ioruaith or Hiortha, is probably a version of Haerethaland. 21. It is uncertain whether Olav Trygvasson led this fleet, or whether he was still with Svein. Some of the sources name him as leader and some do not. It is also possible that Svein was with the fleet, even though he is not mentioned in any of the annals. Svein is mentioned in a legal document from between 995 and 999 which indicates that Svein was in Essex when the Vikings attacked Maldon. Source: Scragg, Donald 2006, The Return of the Vikings, The Battle of Maldon. 22. Bjørn Ironside is described in the Franch sources and elsewhere as one of the innumerable sons of the saga character Ragnar Lodbrok, and as Hallstein’s tutor. The historian William of Jumièges in his work Gesta Normanorum ducum from c. 1060 explains that he would have got the nickname ‘Ironside’ because of his apparent invulnerability to weapons. His origins are uncertain, but he was probably Danish.
23. Charles was the son of Louis the Stam merer and was declared king in 893. He is usually referred to as ‘Charles the Simple’, but this is a misunderstanding of the meaning of his original nickname. Charles was neither stupid nor naïve. The expression indicates that he follow ed a simple, almost ascetic lifestyle. 24. The account of this treaty comes from the historian Dudo of Saint Quentin who refers to it in his Gesta Normannorum. There is speculation that he may have invented it to show that the Dukes of Normandy had a solid contract with the king. In a chronicle from the monastery of Saint-Germaine-des-Pres, dated 918, it is said that the land has been granted: Nottmannis Sequanensisibus videlicet Rolloni susisque comitibus pro tutela regni. (‘To the Norsemen on the Seine, namely Rollo and his followers, for the defence of the realm.’) Dudo may have embellished his account of the treaty a little to give Rollo’s successors a closer link to the Frankish kings and increase their legitimacy as feudal lords. 25. The chronicler al-Udri says that they captured the town, but an older source, Ibn al-Qutiya, just says that they besieged it. 26. It is now thought that the Vikings first took full control over the town around 880, which tallies with the traditional dating. However, according to other serious researchers the fall of Kiev can also be dated to the beginning of the 10th century. 27. The details of time lines, invasions and family relationships during the first 50–60 years of the Viking presence in the East are all based on very weakly authenticated sources. So the outline of political and family developments during this period is offered with reservations. 28. The spread of the Borre decorative style indicates that there was close contact between the chieftains in Novgorod, Birka and Vestfold at that time. 29. This story is very similar to the account of how the Trønder Earl, Einar Tambarskjelve, died. He and his son were cut down as soon as they entered King Harald Hardråde’s hall in Norway. 30. Jaspar Corte Real described the island thus around 1500. He took 57 Beothuk Native Americans prisoner and captured some polar bears. John Cabot named the island Newfoundland in 1497. v ikings at war
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People Abbo, chronicler and monk 321, 323 Abd al-Rahman II, emir in Cordoba 339–40 Adam of Bremen, missionary and chronicler 17, 28, 32, 34, 86 Adils, King of Uppsala 86 Aed Finnliath, Supreme King of the Northern Uí Néill 228 Aella, King of Northumberland 249, 251 Agmund (Ingimund, Øgmund) 263 Aífe, Irish warrior woman 100 Alain Barbetorte (Wrybeard), Duke of Brittany 332, 334 Alain the Great, Duke of Brittany 327, 331, 332 Alcuin of York, monk 242, 244 Alexios, Patriarch 374 Alfred the Great, King of Wessex 87, 252–54, 258–61, 302, 318 Alfred, brother of Edward the Confessor 286 al-Hakam, emir 336 Ali ibn al-Haitam, local ruler in Azerbaijan 355 al-Marzuban ibn Muhammed, ruler of Azerbaijan 360 Al-Tartushi, merchant in Cordoba 115 Anna, sister of the emperor 365 Ansgar, missionary 309 Anund (Anwend) 249, 254 Anund Jakob, Swedish King 285, 288, 369 Are Torgilson Frode, chronicler 219 Arnkjell (Einarson), Earl of Orkney 211, 270 Arnulf of Kanteren, East Frankish King 324, 326–327 Åsgeir, chieftain from Vestfold 306–307, 311–12 Åskjell (Oscytl) 249, 254 Åsta Gudbrandsdatter 288 Athulf, chieftain 263 Aud (Torkil’s wife) 226 Aud the Deep-minded 207 Bagrat IV, King of Georgia 367 Bagsecg, Viking king 249, 252 Bardas Phokas, rebel general 372 Basileios and Constantine, brother Emperors 365 Basileios II, Emperor 372–73 Beaduherd, steward in Wessex 8, 10 Benoît, chronicler 261 Beorhtric, King of Wessex 8, 10, 16 Beowulf, saga character 16 Bjarne Herjolvsson 379 Bjørn Hitdølakjempe 366 Bjørn Ironside 58, 313, 341, 343–44 Bjørn, King of the Svea 370 390
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Blacaire Gudrødsson 232–34 Blåskjegg (Sineus) 250 Blathmacc Mac Flaind, monk on Iona 224 Blud, general 365 Boleslaw, Wendish prince 216, 368–69 Boris, a Rus 366 Brajacislav, a Rus 368 Brian Boru, Irish Supreme King 83, 210–12, 232, 234–238 Brodir, Earl on Isle of Man 213, 214, 237–40 Broka-Aud (Trouser-Aud) 103 Bruno of Saxony 318 Bruse (Sigurdsson) 214–15 Burgred, King of East-Mercia 251, 254, 264 Byrhtnoth, ealdorman 272 Canute the Great 15, 29, 44, 46–47, 87, 146, 164, 213, 215, 240–41, 276, 280–86 Carloman of the Western Frankish Empire 319 Ceolwulf, King of Mercia 253–54 Cerball mac Dúnlainge, King of Osraige 228 Cerball. King of Leinster 229 Chaganus, Scandinavian king 370 Charlemagne 18, 160, 196, 236, 242, 244, 296, 298–301, 304, 329 Charles the Bald 22, 196, 305–17 Charles the Fat 317–19, 321, 323–24, 326 Charles the Simple 327–32 Congalach mac Máelmiting, King of Northern Brega 233 Constantine II, Scottish King 232, 267–69 Constantine Monomakhos, Emperor 365 Constantine Porfyrogennetos, Emperor 362 Dicuil, chronicler 218–29 Dio Cassius, chronicler 100 Diodorus Siculus, chronicler 204 Donnchad mac Brian 239, 241 Donnchad mac Domnaill Remair, King of Dublin 214 Dudo fra St. Quentin, chronicler 58, 329–31, 344–46 Dyre (Dir), a Rus 351–53 Eadburh, King Offa’s daughter 16 Eadric Streona, ealdorman 283–85 Ebo, Archbishop of Rheims 304 Ebolus, Abbot in Paris 323–24 Echmaracach ‘Horseman’ (Ragnvaldsson) 213 Edgar, Prince of Wessex (1069) 211, 294 Edmund Ironside, King of Wessex 282–85, 290, 294
Edmund, King of East Anglia 249, 251 Edmund, King of Wessex 268–69 Edward the Confessor, King of England 285–87 Edward the Elder, King of Wessex 260–64, 267 Edwin, Earl of Mercia 288–90 Egbert, King of Northumbria 251, 264 Egbert, King of Wessex 268–69 Egil Skallagrimson 61, 63, 97, 109, 142, 268–69 Eigil, King in York 263, 265 Eilif Jarl, son of Ragnvald Ulfsson 369 Einar (Sigurdsson), Earl of Orkney 214–15 Einar Skålaglam, poet 123 Einar Tambarskjelve 63 Eirik Blodøks (Bloodaxe), King in Norway and York 37, 50, 94, 144, 211, 269–70 Eirik Jarl (Håkonsson), Earl of Lade 119, 141, 146, 276, 283, 285, 366, 368 Eirik Raude 103, 376, 379–80, 382 Elfheah, Bishop 274 Ellisiv, Jaroslav’s daughter 288 Elric, ealdorman 273 Emma of Normandy 275, 283–86 Emund Ringsson, general 368 Erik (Eohric), King in Colchester 263 Erik Ejegod, Danish King 375 Erik Seiersæl, Swedish King 116, 271, 274–75 Erispoë, Duke of Brittany 312–13 Erlend (Einarson), Earl of Orkney 211 Erlend (Torfinnson), Earl of Orkney 288, 293 Erlend, Earl of Orkney 270 Erling Skakke 194 Erling Skjalgsson 144 Ethelfled, Queen of Mercia 253, 261–62 Ethelmær, ealdorman 280 Ethelred the Unready, King of Wessex 272–83, 285 Ethelred, King of Wessex 212, 216, 248, 251–52 Ethelred, King of West Mercia 261–62 Ethelstan, King of Wessex 50, 211, 232, 258, 261, 267–69 Ethelwod, Prince of Wessex 265 Ethelwulf, ealdorman, d. 870 252 Ethelwulf, King of Wessex 248 Eyolv Dådaskald, poet 366 Felekan, Viking chieftain in Brittany 332 Finn Arneson 217 Floke Vilgerdarson 220 Fredrik, Bishop from Saxony 221 Fridlev, King 93–94 Frøydis Eiriksdatter 103, 382–84
Gange-Rolf (see Rollo) Gard Svåvarsson 219 Gerard Count of Provence 344 Gerd the Happy 102 Gerloc, daughter of Rollo 334 Gilli of Colonsay 212 Gleb, Rus 366 Godelaib, Wagrian King 298 Godwin, Earl of Wessex 287 Gorm (Guthrum), general and King of East Anglia 249, 252–55, 258–59 Gorm the Old 120, 278–79 Gormflaith Murchada MacFinn, king’s mother 236–238 Grim Kamban 218 Gudmund from Norway 271, 274 Gudrød Crovan (Haraldsson) 212, 213–14, 241 Gudrød Haraldsson (son of Harald Klak) 310–13, 318–19, 321, 327 Gudrød Hardeknutsson, King of East Anglia, York and Dublin 259, 264–65, 267–68 Gudrød Sigtryggsson (son of Sigtrygg the Squint-eyed) 229–31 Gudrød Sigtryggsson, Earl of Man 213, 234, 241 Gudrød Sigurdsson (Godfred), Danish King 49, 115, 120–21, 296, 298–301 Gunnar from Lidarende 63 Gunnar from Norway 307 Gunthard, Bishop of Nantes 307 Guttorm (Sigurdsson) 209 Håkon Adelsteinsfostre (the Good) 49–51, 53–54, 80, 94, 211, 269 Håkon Eiriksson, Earl 368 Håkon, Earl 36, 123, 218, 270 Hall Torsteinsson 221 Hallad (Ragnavaldsson) 209 Hallfred Vandrædaskald, poet 216 Hallstein 58, 93, 259–61, 311–13, 316–19, 326, 330, 341, 343–45 Halvdan (Gudrødsson) 230–31 Halvdan Hålegg (Haraldsson) 209 Halvdan of York (909) 263–65 Halvdan, Danish chieftain in Ireland 229 Halvdan, leader of The Great Army, King of York 249, 251–53, 255, 259, 263–65 Harald (Mstislav), Rus 367–69 Harald Bluetooth 51, 80, 112, 115–16, 121, 124– 26, 128, 216, 270, 272, 278–79, 287, 302 Harald Fairhair 50, 80, 97, 144, 206, 209, 211, 216, 218, 229, 269, 329 Harald Gille 63 Harald Harefoot 286 Harald Hildetann 62, 65, 76, 102 Harald Klak 22, 245, 300–307, 310, 329 Harald III Sveinsson 294–95 Harald Sigtryggsson 211, 233
Harald Sigurdsson (Hardråde) 15, 51, 58, 71–72, 75, 79–80, 88–89, 93, 97, 116, 133, 141, 143, 194, 213, 217–18, 241, 286–94 Harald the Black 213 Hardeknut Knutsson 286 Hardeknut Sveinsson (King of Jutland) 278 Hårek Gudrødsson, Danish King 301, 304–305, 308–10 Harold Godwinsson 79–80, 89, 164, 286, 287–94 Harun-al-Rashid, Caliph 363 Hasan ibn Said, ruler of Abascun 353 Hede, warrior woman 102 Helga (Olga), Princess in Kiev 362, 364 Helge (Oleg), son of Svatjoslav 363–64 Hemming (jomsviking) 278–80 Hemming of Walcheren 305 Hemming, Harald Klak’s brother 299–300 Henry, Count 93, 319, 323–24 Henry IV 295 Herbert, Duke of Vermandoise 332, 334 Hjørleiv, foster brother of Ingolv Arnason 220 Hoskuld (Askold), Rus 351–53 Hugo, Duke of Paris 332, 334 Hugo, Prince of East Frankish Empire 318 Hundeus, Viking chieftain 327–28 Ibn Fadlan, chronicler 196, 356, 359 Ibn Isfandiyar, chronicler 354 Ibn Miskawayh, chronicler 360, 362 Ibn Rustah, chronicler 31 Incon, Viking chieftain in Brittany 332, 334 Ingebjørg Finnsdatter 217 Ingolv Arnarsson, early settler on Iceland 220 Ingvar Emundsson (the Widely Travelled) 367 Ingvar (Igor) Rørekson, Prince in Kiev 355, 358, 360, 362 Inigo Arista of Pamplona 336 Isak Kommenos, rebel 373–74 Ivar from Northumbria 263 Ivar Haraldsson 241 Ivar of Limerick 212, 234 Ivar of Waterford 235–36 Ivar Ragnvaldson (Earl of Møre) 206 Ivar the Boneless (Ragnvaldson) 207, 227–30, 249, 251, 253, 255, 265, 270, 343 Jaropolk, Prince in Kiev 363–65 Jaroslav the Wise, Prince in Kiev 46, 63, 89, 96–97, 217, 288, 366–69 Jernkne Olavsson 235–36 Johannes Kourkouas, Byzantine General 358 Johannes Skylitzes, chronicler 100, 358, 373 Johannes Tzimiskes, Emperor 364 John Asser, chronicler 248 Jordanes, chronicler 26, 28, 86 Joscelin, Bishop of Paris 321, 323
Jostein, Olav Tryggvason’s uncle 271, 274 Kalv Arnesson 217–18 Kalv Skurva 209 Karl (Olavsson) 235 Kenneth MacAlpin, Pictish and Scottish King 207, 228 Kjetil Flatnose 206–207, 228 Klodvig, Merovingian King 300, 308 Knut Sveinsson 71, 123, 276, 280, 282, 295 Knut, King of York 265 Kobbo, French Count 309 Kveldulv 97, 269 Lagmann (Gudrødsson) 212 Leiv Eiriksson 379, 383 Leo Diakonos, chronicler 75, 362, 372 Leo VI the Wise, Emperor 370, 372 Liégard 334 Lipareti 367 Ljot (Thorfinnson) 211 Lodve (Thorfinnson) 211 Lothar 22, 305–307, 311–11, 313, 316 Louis III (see Louis the Stammerer) Louis III of France 318–19 Louis the Younger 313 Louis the German 22, 305–307, 309–10, 313 Louis the Pious 22, 301, 302–305, 309–10, 319, 370 Louis the Stammerer 315–17, 319, 327 Lupus, Abbot of Ferrierés 344 Macbeth, Scottish King 215–16, 218 Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill, Irish Supreme King 234–40 Máel Sechnaill, Supeme King of the Southern Uí Néill 226–28 Máelmorda mac Murchada 237–39 Magnus Barefoot 33, 214, 218, 294 Magnus (Maccus) Haraldsson 211–12 Magnus Haraldsson 286, 294 Magnus the Good (Olavsson) 63, 107, 163, 196, 215–18, 286–88, 369 Malcolm II 212, 214–15 Malcolm III 218 Malcolm of Scotland 285, 288 Mathgamain 334 Maymun ibn Ahmed, Emir in Derbent 363 Melbridge Tooth 93, 208–209 Mikael Psellos, chronicler 375 Mikael V Kalafates, Emperor 374–75 Mikael VII Dukas, Emperor 374 Morcar, Earl of Northumbria 388–90 Muddan 215 Muhammed ibn Ahmed 363 Muirchertach mac Niall 230–32 Murchad mac Brian 237–40 Murchad mac Diarmata 213, 241 v ikings at war
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Murchad mac Finn 238 Musa al-Tuzum, imam 363 Naddodd 219 Napoleon 90 Niall Glúndub 230 Nikephoros Phokas, Emperor 363, 372 Odo, Count of Paris, later King of Western Frankish Empire 315–16, 321–23, 326–28 Offa of Mercia 8, 15–16, 18, 242, 245 Olaus Magnus 64 Olav (Skötkunung) 369 Olav (King of the Svea, c. 850) 350 Olav Geirstadalv (Gudrødsson) 40, 87, 158, 231–32, 268–69 Olav Haraldsson (the Holy) 15, 42, 46, 63, 72, 74, 78–79, 82, 88–89, 93, 97, 118–19, 141, 163, 215, 217, 278–83, 285, 287–88, 347, 368–69 Olav Kvåran (Cuaran) 87, 212, 233–36, 269–70 Olav Kyrre (Haraldsson) 293–95, 380, 382 Olav Sigtryggsson, son of Olav Silkybeard 87, 236, 238–39, 265, 267–68 Olav Sinful-head 231 Olav the Black 363 Olav the White (Gudrødsson) 207, 211, 227–29, 235, 343 Olav Tryggvason 15, 42, 63, 73, 80, 107, 141, 143, 146, 212, 214, 216–17, 221, 271–76, 280, 366 Osberht of Northumbria 249, 251 Osferth Sannsiger (‘The Truth-sayer’) 263 Oswulf of Bamburgh 269 Othre (Ottar), Earl 263–64 Ottar from Hålogaland 302 Owen of Strathclyde 267–68 Øyolv, Icelander 103 Øystein Orre 293 Pål (Torfinson) 218 Pål, Earl of Orkney 288, 293 Pallig (Danish general) 275–76 Photios, Patriarch in Byzantium 352 Pippin 305 Pippin II 305–306, 310–11, 313 Pliny 202 Plutarch 100 Procopios 28, 97, 100 Pytheas 204, 218 Radigis 100 Ragnall from Lochland 345 Ragnar (Lodbrok?) 255, 308–309 Ragnar Gudrødsson 269 Ragnar Ivarson 235–36 Ragnhed Ragnvaldsdatter 364–66 Ragnhild (Eiriksdatter) 211 Ragnvald (Brusason) 215–17 392
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Ragnvald (Eiriksson) 144 Ragnvald from Norway (919) 332 Ragnvald Gudrødsson 212–13, 241 Ragnvald of York 230, 265, 267 Ragnvald Ragnvaldsson (of Waterford) 240 Ragnvald Ulfsson, Earl 369 Ragnvald, Earl in Polotsk 364–65 Ragnvald, Earl of Møre (Ragnvald Mørejarl) 206–207, 209, 329 Ramnulf, Duke of Poitiers 318 Reginfred 300–302 Richard of Normandy 275 Richard, Duke of (Paris?) 328, 346 Ring, King 102 Robert (see Rollo) Robert of Neustria 313, 332, 334–35 Robert, Count of Anjou 315–16, 318 Robert, Duke of Normandy 330 Roedwulf of Northumbria 248 Rollo (Rolf) 321, 329–32 Romanos Lekapenos, Emperor 356, 358 Romanos lV Diogenes, Emperor 374 Rørek (Rurik) 302, 350–51, 353 Rørek, Defender of the Rhine 304, 310, 313, 315–17, 319 Said ibn Idris 343 Salomon, Duke of Brittany 313, 315–17 Saltan (Halvdan) 336 Saxo Grammaticus 55, 62–63, 65, 76, 93, 101– 102, 120, 131 Scáthach 100 Scurfa (Skule) 263 Shah of Shirvan 263 Sigrid Bjørnsdatter 376 Sigtrygg (Sidroc) (855 on the Loire) 312–14 Sigtrygg Silkybeard 213–14, 236–41, 285 Sigtrygg the Squint-eyed 230–31, 265, 267 Sigurd (Sigfred) on the Charente 315 Sigurd (Sigfred), Rørek’s grandson, leader at Paris in 885 265, 319, 321–24, 326 Sigurd Ring 296 Sigurd Syr 288 Sigurd the Great 207–209, 211–12, 215, 218, 237–39 Sigurd the Strong 85, 87–89, 93, 214 Sigurd, King in York (Earl of Dublin) 260, 298 Sigvalde, Earl (leader of the Jomsvikings) 278 Silkesic (Mariam), Queen in Georgia 367 Sisenand, Bishop of Galicia 346 Siward, Earl of York 294 Skallagrim Kveldulvsson 97, 269 Skarphedin 63 Skule (Torfinnsson), Earl of Caithness and Orkney 211 Snorre Sturlasson 28, 36, 61, 63, 82, 86, 105–107, 116, 118, 144, 146, 168, 184, 206, 269, 369
Sote, Viking 102 Strabo, chronicler 100 Styrbjørn the Strong 287 Sumarlide (Sigurdsson), Earl of Orkney 214–15 Svein Åsleivson 71 Svein Estridsson, Danish King 92, 116, 123, 286–88, 294–95 Svein Forkbeard 73, 115–16, 126, 146, 212, 216, 270–76, 278–82, 285 Svein jarl (Håkonsson), Earl of Lade 80–82, 283, 366 Svend Aggesson 47 Svjatopolk, Prince in Kiev 366, 368 Tacitus, chronicler 46, 57, 77, 97, 100, 103 Tangbrand, priest 221 Theodora, Empress 374 Theophilus, Emperor 370 Thrasko, King of the Abodrtites 298–300 Thyra Danebot 120–21, 123 Tjodolv Arnorsson, poet 196 Torarin Nevjolvsson 139 Torbjørn Hornklove, poet 98, 144 Torbrand Snorrason 382 Tord, Icelander, husband of Broka-Aud 103 Tore Hund 72, 143 Tore Treskjegg 209 Torfinn Hausakljuv (‘Skullsplitter’) 211 Torfinn Karlsevne 281–83 Torfinn the Great 214–18 Torgeir from Ljósavatn 221 Torgerd Holgebrud 36 Torgils, founder of Dublin 226–27 Torhall, hunter 383 Torkjell the Tall 276, 278–83, 285 Torkjell, fosterfather of Torfinn the Great 215–16 Tormod Helgasson 230–31 Tormod Kolbrunarskald, poet 105 Torolv Mosterskjegg 37 Torstein Raude (Olavsson) 207 Torvald Eiriksson 283 Torvald the Widely Travelled 221 Torvard (Truvor) 350 Torv-Einar (Ragnvaldsson) 209, 211, 216 Tostig (Danish general in 1006–1007) 276–77 Tostig Godwinson 79, 287–93 Tryggve Olavsson 216 Ulf (Ubba), Viking King 87, 239–41, 250, 252, 255, 258, 276 Ulfkjell Snilling 276, 279–80, 285 Uhtred, Earl of Northumbria 280, 283 Valdemar the Great 123, 366 Vebjørg, warrior woman 102 Vemund (Weland), Viking chieftain 248, 313–15
Vidicheil, Duke of Brittany 326 Visna, warrior woman 102 Vladimir the Great, son of Svatjoslav 216, 363–66, 372
Widikund, Saxon chieftain 296 William from Jumièges 329 William Longsword, Count of Normandy 332, 334 William of Normandy (The Bastard, The Conqueror) 286–88, 294–95
William of Poitiers 334 Wulfhere, Archbishop of York 264 Zoe, Empress 374–75
Places Aa (river) 329 Aachen 299, 314 Abaskun 353–55 Adelsö 118 Adrianopolis 364 Agder 30, 219 Aggersborg 124, 126–27 Álava plain 341 Alcacer do Sal 346 Aldeigjuborg 119, 348 Aleppo 372 Alexandria 26, 345 Algarve coast 343, 346 Algeciras 343 Al-Mazimma 343 Almeria 343, 346 Alney 285 Alsace 324 Alskog 37 Amiens 314, 319 Andover 274 Angers 311, 317–19 Anglesey 211–12, 222, 263 Anjou 315–16, 318 Annagassan 129 Apulia (Apuolé) 350 Aquitaine 304, 306, 310, 313, 315, 332 Ara Tiere 228 Argyll 207 Århus 115, 118, 158 Armagh 224, 226, 230–32 Armenia 362 Arno (river) 345 Arzila 339 Ascloha 319 Astorgas 336 Asturias 339, 341, 345 Ath-Cliath (see also Dublin) 226 Auser (river) 345 Auvergne 332 Avaldsnes 50, 139, 147
Axholme 294 Azerbaijan 355, 358, 360, 367 Baghdad 350 Båhuslen 26 Baku 355, 358, 367 Ballateare 187, 202 Ballinderry 182 Barda 359–60 Barranca 341 Bashi 367 Basques 336 Battle Flats 291 Bay of Biscay 310, 336, 339 Beja 340, 343 Belozersk 350 Benfleet 260 Berkshire 252, 259, 278 Bermondsey 283 Bessin 332 Birka 28, 46, 86, 88, 112, 114–18, 158, 164, 167, 181, 183, 185, 193–98, 348, 350, 370 Birsa 218 Black Sea 196, 348, 350, 352, 363–64, 367–69 Bordeaux 311, 336, 341 Borg (Sarpsborg) 115, 118–19 Borgby 127 Borre 147, 228, 302 Bosphorus 372 Boston 381 Boyne (river) 227, 228 Brissarthe 316, 318 Brittany 130, 216, 263, 265, 296, 312–13, 315–17, 326–27, 331–32, 334, 345 Brough of Birsay 206, 208 Bruges 286 Bulgar 362 Bulgaria 373 Burgundy 321, 324, 326, 328, 332 Byzantium 17, 93, 217, 221, 341, 352, 354, 356, 360, 362, 365–66, 368–70, 373–75
Cádiz 339, 347 Cádiz Bay 343 Caithness 16, 202, 207, 211, 215, 218 Calais 318 Camargue 344–45 Cambridge 254, 262–63, 295 Canada 378 Canterbury 111 245, 248, 278 Cape Cod 381 Carlingford 227, 230 Carlisle 264–65 Carmona 339 Carrara 344 Cartagena 343 Caspian Sea 6, 350, 352–55, 358, 362–63, 367 Caux 330 Cernigov 368 Charente (river) 310, 315 Chartres 330 Cheshire 271, 283 Chester 211, 259, 263 Chippenham 258 Choise 327 Clonkeen 232 Clonmacnoise 226, 232 Connaught 222, 226, 237, 239 Contentin Peninsula 332 Cordoba 115, 336, 339, 341, 346–47 Coria del Rio 339 Costa Brava 343 Couesanan (river) 326 Crimea 358, 365, 372 Cuerdale 264 Cumberland 275 Cumbria 265, 267 Dagestan 363 Dalmatia 370 Danube (river) 363–65 Deerhurst 285 v ikings at war
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Deerness 215 Derbent 363 Devon 245, 254, 258–60, 275–76 Devonshire 87 Disko Bay 376 Djabal al-Madjus 336 Dniepr (river) 351, 353, 358, 364, 366, 369 Dol 327 Don (river) 21, 350, 352–53, 355, 358, 362–63, 367 Dorchester 8 Dorestad 299, 305, 310, 350 Dorostolon (Silistra) 364 Douro (river) 346 Dublin 85, 93, 109, 128–29, 152, 202, 207, 211– 14, 217, 222, 224, 226–41, 251, 253, 255, 259, 263–65, 267–70, 275, 277, 285, 331, 345 Dumbarton 351, 355 Dumbarton Rock 265 Dunfermline 288 Dunkeld 228, 265 Dvina (river) 350, 364 Dyflin (see also Dublin) 226 Eamont 267 East Anglia 245, 248–49, 251, 253, 255, 258–61, 263, 268, 276, 279–81, 283–85, 295 East Kenneth 277 Eastern Settlement (Greenland) 376 Ebro Valley 343 Eider (river) 30, 300–301, 304 Elbe (river) 30, 299, 301, 318 Ellesmere Island 378 Ems (river) 299 England 51, 67, 70–73, 82, 84–87, 89–90, 92, 104, 109, 202, 204, 216–18, 224, 226, 228–30, 232, 240–95 Ermine Street 251, 290 Esesfelth (fortress) 301 Estonia 14, 28 Everecin 330 Exeter 16, 129, 245, 254, 260, 277 Faero Islands 16, 218, 219 Fens 295 Fiesole 343 Flanders 303, 318, 329 Florence 345 France 12, 18, 296–335 Friesland 23, 86, 270, 274, 278, 298–300, 305, 308–10, 313, 315, 326–27, 329, 344 Fulford Gate 289–90 Fyn 28, 97–98, 127–28, 131, 139, 147 Fyrkat 112, 125–27 Gainsborough 280–81 Galicia 338–39, 341, 346–47, 366 Galloway 206, 212, 228, 237, 241, 270, 285, 294 394
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Gardarike 350 Garonne (river) 310 Gelderland 318 Georgia 367, 372 Gernika (Guernica) 336, 341 Gibraltar Strait 339, 343, 345–47 Gijon 339 Gjermundbu 154, 188–89, 192 Glendalough 231 Gloucester 254–55, 264 Gloucestershire 285 Gnezdovo 348, 353–54 Gorgan 353 Götaland 28–30, 369 Gotland 20, 28, 36–37, 71, 139, 144, 161, 164, 167, 173, 177, 188, 190, 238 Great Glen 207 Greenland 103, 107, 139, 141, 202, 204, 211, 376, 378, 379, 381, 383 Greenwich 278–79, 283 Guadalquivir (river) 339–41, 343, 346 Gulf of Finland 348, 350 Gulf of Genoa 344 Gulf of St. Lawrence 379 Hälsingland 28 Hamburg 308–309 Hampshire 258–59, 275, 278 Hebrides 16, 71, 97–99, 202, 204–207, 211–14, 217–18, 222, 224, 228–30, 237–39, 241–42, 245, 286, 331, 346 Hedeby 88, 112, 114–17, 120–21, 123, 141–42, 146, 149, 163, 181–82, 185, 197, 298–299, 302, 309, 350 Hedmark 26, 58, 159 Helluland 379, 383 Hexham 264 Hjaltland 202 Holmgard 119, 350, 366 Holstein 30, 298, 301, 310 Hop 381 Hordaland 8, 16, 29, 163, 204, 242 Huelva 340, 345 Humber 251, 262, 264, 267–68, 273, 280, 288– 90, 294–95 Hvalsøy 376 Iceland 16, 21, 32, 36, 61, 63, 96, 103, 107, 139, 141, 202, 204, 206–207, 211, 216, 218–21, 269 Ile Batailleuse 311–13 Ile de la Cité (see also Paris) 308, 321, 330 Illerup 14 Inchmarnock 227 Inishbofin 222 Inishmurray 222 Iona 205, 211–12, 216, 222, 224, 235, 244 Iran 352, 355, 367
Iraq 354 Ireland 16–17, 22, 33, 67, 71, 85, 87, 92, 109, 124, 128–29, 131, 152, 182, 202–45, 249, 251, 255, 259, 264, 265, 267, 269 Iria 346 Isla Menor 339, 341, 343 Islay 204, 206, 212–14 Isle of Ely 295 Isle of Lewis 97–98 Isle of Man 187, 202, 206, 211–14, 216–18, 222, 228, 237–38, 241, 245, 265, 275 Isle of Sheppey 245, 248, 259, 273, 284 Isle of Thanet 248 Isle of Wight 129, 273, 275–79, 281, 283 Itil 348, 350, 353, 355 Izborsk 350 Jämtland 29 Jarlshof 206 Jelling 125, 270, 278–79, 302 Jerusalem 6, 347 Jeufosse 308, 314 Jorvik (see also York) 351 Jumiéges 315 Jutland 14, 23, 29–30, 49, 100, 112, 118, 126, 131, 133, 138, 142, 190, 270, 278, 298, 301, 304 Kara Bugaz 367 Karmøy 138–39, 141, 147 Kaupang 104–105, 115, 133, 148, 302 Kerry 224 Kexby 292 Kherson 365, 372 Kiev 46, 72–73, 89, 100, 120, 216–17, 272, 288, 348, 350, 352–56, 358, 360, 362–70, 372, 375 Kura (river) 358, 363, 367 Kutaisi 367 La Coruña 339, 341, 346–47 La Rochelle 310 Lambay Island 222 Languedoc-Roussillon 343 L’Anse aux Meadows 379, 381 Latvia 185, 350 Le Chateau des Ducs de Bretagne 334 Le Mans 316 Lerwick 205 Liffey (river) 128, 226, 238–39 Lim Fjord 131–33 Limerick 129, 211–12, 228, 230–32, 234–36, 238–39 Lincoln 255, 259, 267, 280 Lindholm Høje 142 Lindisfarne 10, 15, 202, 222, 242, 244, 246, 264, 296 Lisbon 339, 341, 343, 346 Lithuania 350
Ljubec 353, 366 Loch Lochy 208 Loch Ness 208 Loire (river) 230, 296 London 129, 133, 248, 251, 253, 258, 260, 273, 278–81, 284–86 Lordemaõ 341 Lorraine (Lothringen) 300 Lough Erne 226 Lough Owel 227 Lough Ree 232 Louvaine 319, 326 Louvre 321–22 Lower Saxony 319 Luna 93, 343–45 Maine, USA 380 Maldon 79, 372 Markland 379, 381, 383 Marne (river) 314–16, 326 Meaux 326 Mecklenburg 298 Medelpad 28 Medina Sidonia 339 Melun 315 Mercia 15, 229, 242–95 Méridia 336 Middle Settlement (Greenland) 376 Miramichi (river) 381 Montmartre 324 Moray Firth 207, 215 Morocco 339, 343 Mull 204, 206, 213 Munster 207, 212, 222, 228, 230, 234, 236–37, 239–41, 267 Nakur 343 Nantes 307, 312, 316–17, 319, 332, 334 Narbonne 343 Naskeag Point 382 Navarra 341 Nesjar 80–82 Neuss 315 Neustria 313, 332 New Brunswick 381 Newfoundland 379–81 Nidaros 115, 141–42 Nijmegen 319 Noirmoutier 95, 296, 304, 307, 310–11, 338, 341, 343 Nonnebakken 127–28 Normandy 130, 196, 211, 222, 275, 280, 285, 286, 288, 294, 310, 326, 329–32, 334–35, 345–47 North Louth 224 Northampton 262, 280 Northumbria 12, 209, 229, 242–95, 331 Norwich 276
Nottingham 130, 251, 255, 259 Nova Scotia 379, 381 Novgorod 350–51, 353–54, 360, 364, 366, 368–69 Offord 284 Oise (river) 316, 321, 332 Oissel 129, 306, 310, 313–14 Old Sarum 276 Onega 348 Oppland 26, 216, 288 Orleans 311, 313, 315 Orne (river) 326 Orontes Valley 372 Oslo Fjord 17, 30, 152, 278 Osmundwall 214 Östergötland 28, 123–24, 146 Ouse (river) 251, 258, 289 Oxford 280 Oykel (river) 207–209 Pamplona 336, 341 Paris 31–32, 93, 129, 133, 306, 308–309, 313–15, 318–19, 321–25, 326, 332, 334 Pechina 343 Pentland Firth 215, 217 Peran 130 Perejaslav 366 Perpignan 343 Philippopolis 364 Pisa 343–45 Pitres 316 Poitiers 310–11, 315, 318, 334 Polotsk 350, 364–65, 368 Pontevedrar 339 Pontoise 321 Portland 8, 202, 242, 245 Porto 346 Portugal 340–41 Preslav 364 Quentovic 306 Questembert 326 Rathlin 222 Re 311 Redon 313, 316 Ree (Lough) 232 Rennes 196, 326, 334 Repton 92, 130, 229, 249, 253–56 Rerik (Gross-Strömkendorf) 115, 298 Reykjavik 220 Rhine (river) 129, 299, 310–11, 315–19, 329 Rhone Delta 344 Ria de Betanzos 346 Ribe 115 Riccall 289–93 Ringerike 26, 29, 41, 154, 192, 288
Rio Minho 346 Rio Segura 343 Rio Tinto 340 Roden 53 Rolvsøy 147 Rome 300, 341, 344–45, 347 Ros (river) 369 Roskilde 128, 136, 141, 143, 149, 152, 270, 279 Roskilde Fjord 50, 131–33, 141–42, 152 Ross 207–208, 215, 218 Rouen 93, 133, 275, 277, 280–81, 306, 313, 315–16, 329, 334 Roumois 330 Rudnja 365 Russia 6, 17, 20–21, 46, 63, 88, 96, 118–19, 187, 190, 194, 221, 271, 324, 348, 350–54, 362–63, 370 Rüstringen 245, 304–305, 307 Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme 314 Salisbury 276 Saltés 340, 345 Samsø 49, 51 Sandwich 248, 276, 280, 283, 286 Santiago de Compostela 341, 346 Sarkel 348, 353, 355, 363 Saxony 221, 249, 270, 296, 298, 300, 305, 318, 326 Scarborough 289, 291 Scattery 212, 234–35 Schouwen 329 Seeburg (Grobin) 350 Seine (river) 93, 129, 133, 248, 303–35 Šeksna (river) 348 Septimania 343 Seville 343, 346, 339–41 Shaftesbury 286 Shannon (river) 212, 226–27, 230, 232, 234–35 Shetland 16, 202, 204–206, 209, 218, 245 Shropshire 283 Silk Road 118, 348 Sjælland 29, 97, 124, 127–28, 149, 270 Skåne 28–30, 124, 127, 131, 146, 300 Skara 28 Skuldelev 131–33, 136, 139, 141, 152 Skye 204, 206, 213, 222, 244 Slien 121, 298, 301, 304 Smolensk 353, 365 Somme (river) 129, 248, 258, 313–14, 318–19, 329, 335 St. Germaine des Prés 308 St. Germaine-L’Auxerrios 322 Staffordshire 283 Stamford Bridge 72, 75, 79, 88–89, 97, 213, 218, 241, 290–91 Staraja Ladoga 119, 350, 366 Steinmore 270 Stockholm 46, 133 v ikings at war
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Straumfjord 379–80 Sussex 245, 275, 278 Sutherland 207, 215 Svealand 28–29, 53 Svir (river) 348 Svitjod det store 350 Syria 372 Tabaristan 355 Tablada 339–40 Tadcaster 291 Tagus Valley 341 Talon 330 Tangier 340 Tarans 334 Tartaristan 355 Tech (river) 343 Tees (river) 267, 283 Terter (river) 358 Teutoburg Forest 12 Thanet 129, 248, 271, 273 Thetford 249, 251, 261, 276 Thiméon 318 Thurso 215 Tiflis (Tblisi) 367 Tipperary 228, 234 Tmutorakan 368 Tønsberg 80, 147 Torksey 253
Tortosa 343–44 Toul 326 Touraine 316 Trent (river) 130, 253, 255 Trilbardou 326 Tripoli (Palestine) 372 Troms 26 Trøndelag 26, 44, 89, 138, 142, 173 Troyes 326 Tudela 343 Tui 347 Tuscany 344 Tynemouth 244, 288 Tynwald 211, 214 Ui Néill 222, 226, 228, 230–31, 234–36 Ukraine 21, 120, 348, 350, Ulster 222, 240, 255 Uppåkra 41 Uppland 12, 28–29, 158, 321 Urdaibai (fjord) 336
Vilaine (river) 334 Villaneuva de Arosa 339 Vinland 105, 379–81, 383 Vire (river) 326 Volga (river) 21, 348, 350, 353, 355–56, 358, 362–63, 367 Volkhov (river) 119, 348 Waal (river) 318 Walcheren 216, 305–306, 310, 316, 329 Wales 206, 212, 216, 229, 258–61, 263–65, 268, 271, 285, 294, 316, 331 Wash 255 Waterford 129, 230, 231, 234–36, 240, 265, 267 Weser (river) 304, 318 Wessex 8–10, 65, 93, 242–94, 302, 313 West Götaland 28 Western Settlement (Greenland) 376 Wiltshire 252, 258, 276 Winchester 8, 248, 263, 274, 277–78, 280, 284, 286
Valence 344 Vemeux 328 Verdun 326, 341 Vestfold 22, 30, 133, 140, 143, 147–49, 200, 226, 228, 300–302, 306, 338 Vestmanna Islands 220 Vexin 330
York 40, 87, 89, 112, 174, 188, 190, 207, 209, 211, 229–33, 235, 242–95
Baton 54 Battering ram 313, 322 Battle at Illerup 14 Battle of Bråvalla 65, 118 Battle of Hjørungavåg 36 Battle of Stiklestad 72, 74, 79, 97, 105–106, Bayeux Tapestry 84, 89, 136, 138, 144, 186–87 Beacon 53–54 Beacon watch 54 Bearded axe 163–64 Bearded prow 146 Beowulf 16 Berserker 40, 78, 80, 97–99, 183, 269 Blodørn 209 Blue men 343 Borre Ship 149 Bow 156–57, 180–83, 194 Broadaxe 156, 162–65 Brodd/broddr (stridspilspiss) 180 Bulgar Slayer 373 Bulgars 355–56, 358, 362–65, 372–73
Busse (ship) 141
Zamora 346 Zaragoza 343
Subjects Abbasids 352, 356 Abduction of women 32 Abodrites 298–299, 301, 305, 309, 326 Adelryger 26 Ægir 36 Al-Andalus 336, 338–39, 341, 343–47 Allting 216, 221 Al-madjus 16–17, 232 Armour 183 Arms trade/weapon export 210 Army Road 30, 126–27 Arrows 196 Åsgard 34, 36 Ask (ship) 142 Åskekärr Ship 149 Autumn viking 71 Axe 183, 185 Baldishol Tapestry 24, 48 Ballateare Man 187 Barons 48 396
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Camp de Peran 130 Candle-bearers 49 Castle 115 Cavalry 84 Chaidenoi 26 Chainmail 54, 188, 190, 192–94, 196–97, 227, 291–93 Christ 36, 40–42, 95–96, 98–100 Circular fort 112, 114, 124–28 Coastal district providing a ship 51 Coastguard 53 Column 75–76, 78–79 Comitatus 44 Coppergate helmet 188 Courage 41, 57, 62 Coward 55 Curonians 350 Cuthbert, Saint 242
Dál Cais 234, 239 Dalriada 206 Danegeld 94, 216, 273, 276, 285, 347 Danes 10, 16–17, 22–23, 98, 101, 209, 216, 220, 222, 224, 226–27, 270, 274, 278–79, 281, 283–84, 294–95 Danewall 112, 114, 116, 118–21, 123–24, 126 Decorative grooves 176–77 Disease 109 Doctor 105–106, 110 Woman doctor 31, 106–107 Dragon banner 88–89 Dragon’s head/Dragon ship 88, 141, 143–44, 146–47, 276 Drake 143 Drevlians 356, 362, 364 Drop forging 161 Druzina 46, 353 Dub Gall 16 Dublin-York axis 251, 265, 269–70 Duty 31–32, 46, 106 Earth wall 115, 117, 119–20, 123, 130 Egder 26 Emblem 86–89 Englinbarrangoi (Anglo-Varangians) 375 Farum Brecantium (Tower of Hercules) 339 Félag 53 Fenrir, wolf 36–37, 41 Ferrule 174, 176, 180 Finn Gall 16, 222 Finnish bow (Two-wood bow) 181 Fleet base 112, 128–29, 131, 249, 293, 339, 343, 346 Folkvang 34 Follower 24, 44, 72 Formation 74–78 Fortress 112–30 Freed slaves 27, 29, 103 Frey 34, 37, 41, 157–58 Freya 34, 36, 157–58 Friendship 24, 26, 71 Fyrd 50, 272 Gall-Gaedhil 205–207, 211, 226–28, 230, 241, 268 Garrison in Birka 46, 88, 117, 167, 193, 348 Garum 339 Generosity 47 Gjermundbu helmet 188 Glima wrestling 63 Gokstad Ship 69, 139–41, 143–44, 147, 158, 185 Gold ring 26, 47, 94, 362 Götavirke 123 Grave finds/Weapon burials 158, 168, 255 Greek fire 358, 367 Grener 26 Guest 49
Gungne 41, 84 Hague Dyke 130 Håløyger 26 Hardening 160 Hasnæs Ship 149 Hauld 26–27 Hedeby Ships 149 Heimskringla 61, 65, 116 Hel (realm of the dead) 36 Helmet 158, 187–90 Herul 97 Hilt, swordhilt 159–74, 197 Hird 44, 46 Holm-going 55–57, 221, 315 Honour 22, 31–33 Horder 26 Horned composite bow 181 Hundred 30–31, 53 Inscriptions on swords 172 Intelligence information 73, 89–90, 230, 249, 263, 286, 308 Inuits 376 Jelling Dynasty 270, 279 Jomsvikings 278 Jotun Giants 36, 41, 157 Jotunheimen 36 Kanehave Canal 49 Kartlis tsovebra 367 Karv/Karfi 142 Kenning (poetic metaphor) 168, 176, 184 Khazar Kingdom 116, 118, 194, 348 Kiev 348–75 Killing 32, 103 King Ine’s law 65 King John’s Castle 129 Kingdom of Man and The Isles 211 Klåstad Skip 142, 148 Knarr 141–43, 148–49, 152 Kvalsund Ship 146 Ladeby Ship 144, 146–47 Lamellar armour 194 Landøyda 89 Lendmenn (‘landed gentlemen’) 48 Levy law, conscription law 49, 298 Levy organisation, conscription 44, 49, 51, 53 Lið 46, 70–71 Little Dane Wall 123 Lochland 229, 345 Logistics 89–92 Long Saxon knife 166 Longbow 181 Longphort 128–29, 226 Longship 143
Lordemanos 346 Loyalty 26–27, 32-33, 47, 70, 72, 95, 200, 217, 238, 280, 305, 314-15, 334 Luxury goods 12, 21, 94, 234, 235, 244, 277, 305, 336, 346, 348, 358, 376, 383 Marine barrier 117, 118, 124 Marshal 47 Mercenaries 86, 89, 95–96 Midgard Serpent 36–37 Miklagard 351 Mi’kmaq 381 Missile attack 76–77, 80 Moat 112, 115, 120–121, 123, 127 Myklebust Ship 147 Naglfar 142 Navigation 139 Njå’ls Saga 63, 238 Njord 34 Oath 36, 41, 46-47, 253-54, 258–59 Oath breaker 36 Odin 34, 36–37, 62, 64, 72, 76, 79–80, 84, 87, 89, 97–98, 107, 109, 123, 157–58, 176, 183–84 Odin Cult 40–41, 99 Ormen Lange 141, 143 Orvar-Odd’s Saga 367 Oseberg Ship 18, 36–38, 61–62, 64, 91, 139, 143–44, 146, 148 Outlaw 36, 55, 103, 162 Palisade barrier 130–31 Pattern forging 172 Pechenegs 356, 368–69 Peran Camp 130 Phalanx 74–79 Pictland 207, 242 Picts 204–206 Pig’s head formation 76–78 Pincer movement 208 Pirate 15, 17, 22 Pitfall 324 Preparing for battle 90 Pygmies 206 Ragnarok 34, 36–37 Ran (goddess) 36 Ranrikinger 26 Ransom money 18, 73 Rape 32, 365 Raumer 21 Raven 32, 40, 88 Raven banner 88–89, 215–16, 239, 284 Raven motif 242 Ravenlandeye 88–89 Realms of the dead 34, 158, 163 v ikings at war
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Red Sea 367 Rigging 139, 146 River Lands 318 Robbery with murder 32 Rogne Ship 147 Romerikinger 26 Romfaia-carriers 374 Roskilde Skip 149 Rostad Ship 148 Round shield 183 Runestone 17, 32 Rus 352 Sail 136 Sax (knife) 166 Scabbard straps 174 Scurvy 105 Scythians 17, 372, 374 Seaman’s chest 141–42 Settler 17 Shaft, arrow-shaft 180–81 Shaft, axe-shaft 163–65 Shaft, knife-shaft/knife-handle 165 Shaft, spear-shaft 175, 177 Shame, humiliation 32, 62, 105 Sheath, scabbard 160, 167–68, 174, 197 Shield 183 Shield column 76 Shield fortress 75 Shield-boss 183 Shield-maiden 101 Ship technology 20 Ship-building 143 Single-handed farmer 53 Skeide 143, 152 Skræling 381 Skuldelev Ships 136 Slav 27, 29 Slave market 68 Sleipner 84 Snekke 143
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Social status 32 Souburg 125 Southern Isles 204, 206 Spear 197 Spirits of the dead 232 Sports field 61 Spring viking 71 St. Brice’s Day Massacre 275 St. Columba 225 St. Denis Monastery 309, 313, 329 St. Kevin Monastery 231 Standard bearer 86 Stratagem 93–94 Strategy 67, 73, 79–80, 93 Strathclyde Britons 229, 264, 268 Sword 181–88 Sword scabbard 174 Taking by storm 318, 321 Tattooing 356 Tauris Scythians 372 Textile armour (våpentrøye, panser) 196 The Five Boroughs 256, 259, 262, 268–69, 280 The Great Army 84, 87, 89, 92, 129, 229, 249, 317, 319, 321, 336–27 Thor 34, 36–37, 41, 141, 157–58, 255, 226 Thor cult 41 Thor’s hammer 36, 158, 255 Throwing spear 168 Thyra Danebot’s Work 120 Thyraborg 123 Ting 234 Decision at the Ting 32 Ting legal system 31, 234 Tjodhilds Church 376 Town walls 112, 114, 248, 307, 317, 329, 334, 345–46, 352, 360, Trial by combat 55–57 Tune Ship 147–48 Turret (on ship) 146 Tynwald (Thingvollr) 211, 214
Tyr 34, 37, 41 Utgard 36 Valfader 40 Valhalla 35, 37, 40, 62 Valkyrie 34, 36–37, 40 Valle Ship 148 Vaner 34 Varangians 16–17, 360, 370, 372–75 Varjager 17, 350, 352 Vellekla 123 Vengeance 32, 209, 217, 269, 318, 355, 358, 366, ‘Viking’ 16, 139 Viking Ship 18, 50, 65, 67, 68–71, 84, 125, 131 Visigoths 336 Volga Bulgars 355–56 Vow Work 114, 121–22 War booty 94–97 War cry 72 Warrior brotherhood 44, 46, 48, 70, 96, 97 Warrior woman 100, 102, 104 Weapon knife 166 Weapon poetry 154 Widsith 16 Wild Boar Islands 204 Wind vane 144 Wine Route 230, 338 Winged spear 176 Winter camp 112, 129–30 Wolfskin 87, 97–98 Woodman’s axe 163, 165 Wotan 41 Yngling Saga 24, 28, 36, 86 York Kingdom 267
Major battles Ailech (939) 232 Altamira (825) 336 Ara Tíere (858) 228 Ashdown (870) 252 Ashingdon (1016) 87, 284 Bamburgh (992/93) 273 Basing (870) 252 Bråvalla (750) 65, 118 Brunanburh (937) 232, 268–69 Burgandy (924) 332 Buttington (892) 259 Chartres (911) 330 Clonkeen (c. 940) 232 Clonkeen (943) 232 Clontarf (1014) 214, 238–40 Constantinople (941) 358 Contisbury Hill (878) 258 Deerness (1035) 215 Dorset (983) 271 Dublin (917) 30, 264, 267 Dublin (938) 232 Dumbarton Rock (870) 265 East Kenneth (1006) 277 Eddington (878) 258 Englefield (870) 252 Exeter (1003) 276 Fimreite (1177) 84
Fulford Gate (1066) 289–90 Fyrisvollen (980) 72 Geule (891) 85 Hafrsfjord (872) 80, 97–99, 131, 144, 229 Hastings (1066) 72, 89, 164, 284, 294 Hingston Down (838) 245 Hjørungavåg (960) 36 Hop (1002) 381–82 Ipswich (991) 272 Islandbridge (919) 230 Killoderry (869) 235 Kleidion (1014) 373 Limerick (967) 234 Ljube (1017) 353 London (842) 248 London (993) 273 London (1013) 278 London (1014) 92, 283 Luna (860) 343–45 Maldon (991) 79, 272–73 Merantun (870) 93, 252 Munster (856) 207, 228 Nantes (919) 332 Nantes (921) 332 Nantes (937) 334 Nesjar (1016/17) 80–82 Nisså (1062) 80
Norden, Lower Saxony (884) 319 Paris (845) 308–09 Paris (862) 315 Paris (885) 32, 321–26 Pentland Firth (c. 1044/45) 215 Perejaslav (992) 366 Pilton (893) 259 Ree (936) 232 Ros Melion (905) 263 Sasireti (1040) 367 Skyhill (1075) 213 Solloghed, Tipperary (967) 234 Stamford Bridge (1066) 72, 75, 79, 88–89, 97, 213, 218, 241, 290–94 Steinmore (954) 270 Stiklestad (1030) 44, 72, 74, 79, 93, 97, 105–106, 217, 288, 369 Strathclyde (904) 265 Svolder (1000) 80, 141, 146, 276 Tara (980) 235 Tarans (939) 334 Tarbat Ness, ‘Torvneset’ (c. 1035) 215 Tettenhall (910) 263, 265, 331 The Fenlands (904) 263 Vemeux (997) 328 Wilton (871) 252
The Battle of Clontarf 239 The Battle of Fulford Gate 289 The Battle of Maldon 272 The Battle of Stamford Bridge 291 The Dane Wall 121 The Earldom of Orkney 210 The Fall of Danelaw 262 The Great Heathen Army 250, 260 The Invasion of England 277 The Islands in the West 204 The Jelling Kingdom 278 The Kingdom of Man and the Isles 213 The River Lands 319 The Roman Empire 15
The Viking Kingdom of York 266 The Vikings in America 379 The Vikings in Brittany 327 The Vikings in Greenland 377 The Vikings in Iceland 220 The Vikings in Ireland (795-873) 225 The Vikings in Ireland (914-1014) 233 The Vikings in Normandy 328 The Vikings in Russia 351 The Vikings in Spain and Italy 340 The Vikings in the East 361 The Vikings on the Loire 311 The Vikings on the Seine 314
List of Maps Attacks on the Frankish Empire (799-890) 303 Canute Invades England 282 Denmark (799-800) 299 Harald Hardråde (1066) 287 Harald Klak’s Denmark 304 Ketil Flatnose’s Island Kingdom 207 Olav and Svein in England 271 Round Forts in Denmark 124 Samsø Naval Base 51 Scandinavia in the Viking Age 27 Svein Estridsson’s Invasion of England 295 The Attack on Paris 322 The Battle of Ashdown 252 The Battle of Brunnanburh 268
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Image credits t = top b = bottom c = centre h = right hand column v = left hand column 9 Kulturhistorisk museum; 9 Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; 13 Museum of History in Stockholm; 14 Anders Kvåle Rue; 18 Scanpix; 20 Antikvarisk-Topografiska Arkivet (S); 25 Anders Kvåle Rue; 33 Nasjonalmuseet, Danmark; 35 Kulturhistorisk museum, Oslo; 38 Illustrert historie; 37t AKG, London; 38–39 Anders Kvåle Rue; 41st Danmarks Nasjonalmuseum; 45 Anders Kvåle Rue; 47 Kulturhistorisk museum, Oslo; 50 Vikingeskibsmuseet i Roskilde; 52 Anders Kvåle Rue; 56 Anders Kvåle Rue; 59 Kulturhistorisk museum, Oslo; 60 Kulturhistorisk museum, Oslo; 62 Etter Sofie Kraft; 64–65 Kulturhistorisk museum, Oslo; 66 Anders Kvåle Rue; 69 Vikingeskibsmuseet i Roskilde; 70 Anders Kvåle Rue; 73 Anders Kvåle Rue; 74 Anders Kvåle Rue; 75 Anders Kvåle Rue; 76 Anders Kvåle Rue; 77 Anders Kvåle Rue; 77 Anders Kvåle Rue; 78 Anders Kvåle Rue; 81 Anders Kvåle Rue; 82–83 Anders Kvåle Rue; 85 Scanpix; 86 Kulturhistorisk museum, Oslo; 88t Kulturhistorisk museum, Oslo; 89 Musée de la Tapisserie, Bayeux; 90 Musée de la Tapisserie, Bayeux; 91t Kulturhistorisk museum; Oslo; 91b Kulturhistorisk museum, Oslo; 94 Kulturhistorisk museum, Oslo; 96 Scanpix; 98 Scanpix; 97hb Etter Sofie Kraft; 102 Etter Sofie Kraft; 101 P. N. Arbo; 107 den antikvariske samling i Ribe, Danmark; 108 Kulturhistorisk museum Oslo; 113 Scanpix; 114 Archäologische Landesamt Schleswig-Holstein; 116b Anders Kvåle Rue; 117 Scanpix; 118b Anders Kvåle Rue; 120 Archäologische Landesamt SchleswigHolstein; 122 All: Andres Kvåle Rue; 125t Anders Kvåle Rue; 126t Illustrert historie; 126b Løgstør kommune, Danmark; 127s Etter:
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Nørlund 1948; 131 Anders Kvåle Rue; 132 All: Anders Kvåle Rue; 137 Vikingeskibsmuseet i Roskilde; 138t Musée de la Tapisserie, Bayeux; 140 Illustrert historie; 142s K. Sognnes/Norsk Arkeologisk selskap; 142t Illustrert historie; 145 Kulturhistorisk museum, Oslo; 146st Illustrert historie; 146sb Archäologische Landesamt Schleswig-Holstein; 148 Kulturhistorisk museum Oslo; 157 Anders Kvåle Rue; 160 Foto/medie afdelingen Moesgård, Rógvi N. Johansen (silver sword), Statens historiska museum, Stockholm (remaining miniature weapons); 161 Kulturhistorisk museum, Oslo; 162 Kulturhistorisk museum, Oslo; 163t Vegard Vike; 163s Vegard Vike; 164 Tromsø Museum; 165 Vegard Vike; 166 Museum Østjylland, Randers, foto: Hans Grundsøe; 167 Niels Elswing, Nationalmuseet, København; 168s etter Lorange 1889, litography by J. G. Bach, modified by Vegard Vike; 168b Vegard Vike; 169 Statens historiska museum, Stockholm; 170 Vitenskapsmuseet NTNU; 171 Vegard Vike; 172 Vitenskapsmuseet NTNU (sword nr. 4), Kulturhistorisk museum, Oslo (remaining swords); 173t etter Lorange 1889, litography by J. G. Bach, modified by Vegard Vike; 174t etter Lorange 1889, litography by J. G. Bach, modified by Vegard Vike; 174b Vegard Vike; 175t Vitenskapsmuseet NTNU; 175b Statens historiska museum, Stockholm; 176b Vegard Vike; 177 Vegard Vike; 178 Vegard Vike; 179 Vegard Vike; 180-181 Vegard Vike; 182 Vitenskapsmuseet NTNU, Kulturhistorisk museum, Statens historiska museum; 183 Vegard Vike (arrow nr. 1), Vitenskapsmuseet NTNU (arrow nr. 2 og 3); 183 Vegard Vike; 184 etter Paulsen 1999, modified by Vegard Vike; 186 Vegard Vike; 187 Vegard Vike; 188 Foto/medie afdelingen Moesgård, Rógvi N. Johansen; 189 Vegard Vike; 191 Kulturhistorisk museum, Oslo; 190b after Grieg 1947, drawn by Mary Storm, modified by Vegard Vike; 190 Yorkshire Museums Trust (Yorkshire Museum);192t Arnold Mikkelsen, Nationalmuseet,
København; 192c Gotlands Museum, Fornsalen, foto: Raymond Hejdström; 192b Praha slotts bildearkiv; 193 Bildarchiv Foto Marburg; 194 Vegard Vike; 195 British Library (MS Cotton Cleopatra C VIII, f.18v og f.27v); 196t British Library (Harley MS 603, f.73v); 196b Vegard Vike; 197t Vegard Vike; 197b Vegard Vike; 201 Kulturhistorisk museum Oslo; 203 Anders Kvåle Rue; 205 RCAHMS, Edinburgh; 208 Chmee2, via Wikimedia Commons, https:// commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARuins_ of_village_on_the_Brough_of_Birsay_in_ summer_2012_(4).JPG; 219 Illustrert historie; 223 Kulturhistorisk museum Oslo; 224 National Trust of Scottland; 231 Headland Archaeology Ltd.; 231h Dagfinn Skre; 240 Kulturhistorisk museum Oslo; 241 Margaret Gowan; 243 Anders Kvåle Rue; 246–47 Anders Kvåle Rue; 254 Illustrert historie; 255 Martin Biddle; 256–257 Anders Kåle Rue; 274 British Library; 279 Illustrert historie; 281 Anders Kvåle Rue; 284 British Library; 288 Anders Kvåle Rue; 292 Kulturhistorisk museum Oslo; 297 Anders Kvåle Rue; 302 Midgard Historiske senter; 305 Kulturhistorisk museum Oslo; 306 Bibliotheque Nationale de France; 312 Scanpix; 320 Statens historiska museum, Stockholm; 325 Kulturhistorisk museum Oslo; 331 Bibliotheque Nationale de France (MS lat. I, f.423r); 333 Kulturhistorisk museum Oslo; 337 Werner Forman Archive, London; 342 Illustrert historie; 347 Nidarosdomen; 349 Anders Kvåle Rue; 353: Einar Gjærevold; 354 Illustrert historie; 357 Anders Kvåle Rue; 363 Kungl. Myntkabinettet, Sverige; 371 Scanpix; 379 Scanpix; 382 Maine State Museum, Augusta, Maine.
GEORGIA
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