Vikings

I

Introduction

Vikings, collective designation of Nordic peoples—Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians—who spoke a language they called Danish and experts now call Old Norse (see Danish Language; Norwegian Languages; Swedish Language). The Vikings ranged beyond Scandinavia by sea and land during an extended period of dynamic expansion within the Middle Ages, from around ad 750 to 1100. Called the Viking Age, this period has long been popularly associated with unbridled piracy, when longships appeared without warning along the coasts and rivers of Europe, disembarking fierce pagan warriors who burnt, pillaged, and seized slaves. Their fiercest warriors were the beserkers, whose immense aggression put great fear into their enemies. Contemporary European chroniclers were particularly horrified by their attacks on monasteries and churches. The traditional and popular view is now recognized as an oversimplification. Modern scholarship instead emphasizes the achievements of the Viking Age, in Scandinavian art and craftsmanship, marine technology, exploration, and the development of commerce and towns. The Vikings are seen as traders and not simply as raiders (see Viking Art; Viking Exploration).

II

Viking Expansion in the West

The derivation of the word “Viking” is still disputed. It may derive from Old Norse vik (a bay or creek) or from Old English wic (a trading place, not usually fortified), which survives in placenames such as Ipswich in Suffolk and in Quentovic, near Étaples, in northern France. Not every Scandinavian was a professional warrior or Viking, and not every Viking was a pirate. The underlying causes of Viking-Age expansion are complex and probably included land shortage, especially within Norway, improved iron extraction and production, and the opportunities to develop new markets that occurred with the expanding economy of Western Europe in the 8th century.

The first recorded Viking raid in the West was the attack of 793 by Norwegian sea raiders on the monastery at Holy Island (or Lindisfarne), off the north-east coast of England. After their initial hit-and-run raids, Danish armies started to settle on islands over winter, so that they could continue their campaigns. Then they became still more ambitious, forming ever-larger fleets and armies, which could switch their attacks from one country to another with ease. They relied on surprise and the speed of their attacks, using their shallow-draughted ships to sail and row far up rivers. Local horses were captured, or they brought horses with them on their ships, to provide a similar mobility on land. When they were cornered by a superior army, they would build fortifications and wait for their opponents to disperse before moving on themselves.

The Great Army, between 865 and 874, successively conquered the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Northumbria, East Anglia, and Mercia. Archaeological excavations have revealed one of their fortified winter camps at Repton in Derbyshire, which was occupied over the winter of 873-874. Although this same Danish army failed to crush the West Saxon kingdom in southern England, and its leader was forced by Alfred the Great to accept Christian baptism in 878, the West Saxons were forced to recognize Danish occupation of most of eastern and all of northern England. This was the Danelaw and, though it was to be systematically conquered by the kings of Wessex during the first half of the 10th century it was to retain its Danish character for several centuries. Alfred and his successors had been forced to develop a network of forts and fortified towns (burhs, the origin for the English word borough) to keep the Vikings at bay. These controlled river bridges to prevent Viking raiders penetrating far inland and were permanently garrisoned. A navy was also created, so that Viking fleets could be attacked at sea. Nevertheless, it was the towns created by the Vikings in the Danelaw that seem to have been the more dynamic, emphasizing the success of the Danes in England as entrepreneurs and not simply as warriors. Archaeological excavations in Lincoln and York have revealed much about the international trade network developed by the Vikings.

At the same time as they were attacking England, Danish fleets were mounting attacks on the monasteries, ports, and cities of the Carolingian Empire from Hamburg in the east to major trading ports further west such as Dorestad and Quentovic. In France they attacked major cities such as Rouen, Paris, Nantes, and Bordeaux. They took advantage of the civil wars fought between the successors of the Holy Roman Emperor, Louis I (the Pious) in the 9th century, and in some cases Viking bands were hired by Frankish kings to attack the subjects of their rivals. Apart from the treasure stored in monastic churches, the Vikings sought to capture wealthy individuals who could be ransomed back for hefty sums. They also demanded payments for desisting from looting monasteries or towns and quite often they got what they sought. On the whole, they do not seem to have been interested in acquiring slaves. A sea raid on Arab Spain in 859, which saw an attack on Mediterranean North Africa, stands out as exceptional. As was also the case in England, their armies could be bought off with cash payments, but granting Frankish territory to them was exceptional. It did happen, particularly in Frisia, as in 841 when the island of Walcheren was granted to Harald by Lothair I.

On the other hand, the settlement of “Northmen” in the River Seine basin in 911 seems to have been an attempt to use one group of Vikings to defend Rouen and its region from other Vikings. Over several decades, this particular arrangement led to the creation of Normandy (the land of the Northmen), largely because the Viking leader Rollo survived until 927 and was able to pass on to his son a defined territory centred on Rouen. Aquitaine was another region under frequent attack from the 840s, as was Brittany. Then the Great Army, which had previously campaigned in England, came over to the River Meuse and lower Rhine Valley regions in 879. It caused much disruption during the 880s, taking advantage of the fact that this territory was no longer in the heartland of one of the great Frankish kingdoms. Overall, in their attacks on the Frankish realms, the Vikings proved themselves to be master opportunists, who knew when to unite their individual groups into larger armies or to disband. They also engaged in trade almost as much as they did in war, and the Frankish realms were not nearly as devastated as we used to believe was the case. The Viking legacy in Western Europe, however, was a much more militarized world in which local fortifications were essential. These fortified places could be used by local lords against their kings in the future, as well as for local defence.

Norwegians rather than Danes were involved in early raids on monasteries followed by colonization of the northern isles of Scotland (the Orkney Islands, the Shetland Islands, and the Hebrides), together with much of mainland Scotland. They also settled on the Isle of Man, Cumbria in north-west England, Wales, and parts of Ireland. Their successful raids on Ireland increasingly involved camps over winter and the capture and transport of slaves overseas. The permanent forts they built by river beaches to protect their ships developed into the first trading towns in Ireland at Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, Wicklow, and Limerick. Extensive archaeological excavations in Dublin have shown a comparable picture of international trade and the manufacture of goods to that revealed by archaeology in Lincoln and York. Viking success in establishing themselves in Ireland had relied on the fact that the major kings there had not united to meet the military threat. This changed from 845 onward and, as a result, the Vikings never succeeded in seizing large territories as they did in Scotland and England. They did control small coastal kingdoms centred on towns, but the Irish ensured that their influence was limited. Sometimes Irish kings made war with them and other times used them as allies or hired them as mercenaries. The Vikings were even expelled from Dublin in 902, but a great Viking fleet reappeared at Waterford in 914, and by 917 Dublin was retaken. Dublin came under Irish control during the 11th century and it became the Irish capital, but nevertheless long retained its “foreign” Viking character.

Western Europe as a whole still had reason to fear Scandinavian military adventurism in the 10th and 11th centuries. Major raids and invasions of England restarted in the late 10th century and were usually bought off by huge payments of silver coins (see Danegeld). Briefly, in the first half of the 11th century under the Danish Cnut II (Canute II), a Scandinavian Empire was established uniting England, Denmark, and Norway. The disputed succession to the English throne in 1066 saw a Norwegian army land in Yorkshire under Harald Hårdråde (Harold III), which was defeated by the English at Stamford Bridge. After the Norman Conquest of that year, the new king, William I, had to maintain a standing army in eastern England to defend against more than one Danish invasion attempt. By the 12th century the Viking Age was over, however, and the Danish threat to England had diminished.

III

Viking Expansion in the East

There is evidence for Scandinavian settlement from around 750 in the eastern Baltic Sea lands, exploiting trade links between the peoples of the northern forests of European Russia with Central Asia, Caucasia, and the Byzantine Empire. These Scandinavians were referred to as “Rus”, probably derived from Ruotsi, the West Finnic name for Sweden, modified by the East Slavs further south as Rus (see Finno-Ugric Languages). Another name of “Variagi” or “Varangians” may have been developed later than “Rus” to describe Scandinavians in the military service of Rus princes and Byzantine emperors. A small trading settlement with a minority Scandinavian presence was established around 750 at Staraja Ladoga a short distance south of Lake Ladoga. It provided a base for Swedish merchants, who acquired furs and other items, then took them to trade at the Khazar capital near the Caspian Sea, or as far south as Baghdad, obtaining Arabic silver dirham coins in exchange. Hoards of dirhams appear in Staraja and on Gotland in Sweden as early as the 780s.

Around the middle of the 9th century a new trading settlement was founded to the south at Riurikovo Gorodische (near the later town of Novgorod), and other trading settlements were being developed both to the south and the east as well. Swedish entrepreneurs were proving very successful at using intimidation to obtain the goods they wished to trade and removing local rulers when it suited them. A major centre of the 9th to 10th centuries was located at Sarskoe on the upper reaches of the River Volga, and its equivalent on the River Dnepr was Gnezdovo, near Smolensk. Dirham coin hoards indicate an increase in trade between the 860s and 880s, a brief decline up to 900, followed by a vast expansion up to around 960. This 10th-century trade was with the Samanid state of Central Asia, and the Rus and Moslem merchants met at Bulghar and Khazar markets on the Volga. An Arab traveller, Ibn Fadlan, visited these markets in 922. He provides us with a fascinating account of the funeral of a wealthy Rus trader, involving feasting and the selection of a female slave, who was killed and accompanied her master in death when his ship was set alight.

The development of Kiev on the Dnepr as a major town began in the late 9th century and was associated with a Rus takeover of the region. Initially Kiev’s trade was mainly with the Khazars to the east, but during the 10th century this was replaced by trade with Constantinople. Although Rus fleets attacked the Byzantine Empire on several occasions in the 9th and 10th centuries, the Kiev Rus were sending annual fleets of merchant ships to Constantinople around the middle of the 10th century. Vikings were also recruited to form the elite bodyguard of the Byzantine emperors, the famous Varangian Guard. To the north in the 10th and 11th centuries, Novgorod replaced Staraja Ladoga and Riurenko as the centre of Rus power, just as its merchants reacted to the collapse of the Samanid state by directing their trade with Central Asia to the Baltic region instead.

IV

Vikings Across the Atlantic

Ships such as those recovered from burials in Norway at Oseberg (c. 820) and Gokstad (895-900), and others recovered from the Roskilde Fjord at Skuldelev in Denmark, demonstrate the skill of shipwrights in the Viking Age. We have examples of both their merchant vessels and warships and we can appreciate their achievements in navigating across the Atlantic Ocean. They settled first in the Faroe Islands, then successively in Iceland and Greenland, followed by their exploration and attempts to settle on the eastern seaboard of North America. The colonization of Vinland proved a step too far, faced by unremitting hostility from indigenous Native American peoples. The precise location of Vinland as recorded in medieval Icelandic sagas remains uncertain, but traces of a Viking Age settlement used as a staging post at L’Anse-aux-Meadows in the north of Newfoundland represents a genuine find. Other supposed Viking discoveries in North America, such as the Kensington Stone and the Vinland Map, have been exposed as forgeries or hoaxes, or merely wishful thinking. Climate deterioration caused the eventual desertion of the Greenland settlement, but Scandinavian society prospered on Iceland. Its Landnámabók (Book of Settlements) records the families who first settled there, and later during the Middle Ages it produced Christian scholars who recorded its history and pagan traditions in a rich literature of sagas and poetry (see Icelandic Literature; Norwegian Literature). Our knowledge of the Scandinavian heathen gods, such as Odin, Thor, and Frey, is essentially derived from this medieval Icelandic heritage, which still inspires interest in our modern world (see Scandinavian Mythology).