Viking Age
On the 8th of June 793, the abbey on Lindisfarne, a centre of learning on an island off the north-east coast of England in Northumberland, was destroyed by raiders from the sea. Monks were killed in the abbey, thrown into the sea to drown, or carried away as slaves along with the church treasures. The Northumbrian scholar Alcuin of York wrote of it: "Never before in Britain has such a terror appeared." This attack is regarded as the beginning of the Viking Age, the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonising, conquest, and trading throughout Europe. Yet few of the Scandinavians of this period were Vikings in the sense of being engaged in piracy. So who were these people, voyaging from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden? What pushed them out of their homelands, and how far did their clinker-built longships actually carry them? The answers run from the rivers of eastern Europe to a settlement at the edge of North America.
A traditional but unattested prayer arose from the Lindisfarne attack: A furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine, "Free us from the fury of the Northmen, Lord." The men who inspired it were portrayed as wholly violent and bloodthirsty by their enemies. Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle, written around 1300, describes Viking attacks on the people of East Anglia in which the raiders are called "wolves among sheep."
Three Viking ships had beached in Weymouth Bay four years before Lindisfarne, though a scribal error dates this in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to 787 rather than 789. According to that chronicle, three Norwegian boats from Hordaland landed at the Isle of Portland off the coast of Dorset during the reign of King Beorhtric of Wessex. A royal official named Beaduhard, a king's reeve, mistook them for merchants and tried to force them to the king's manor. They killed the reeve and his men. That incursion may have been a trading expedition gone wrong rather than a piratical raid. Lindisfarne was different.
Judith Jesch has argued that the start of the Viking Age can be pushed back to 700-750. She reasons that the Lindisfarne attack was unlikely to have been the first, and archaeological evidence suggests earlier contacts between Scandinavia and the British Isles. The earliest raids were most likely small in scale, then expanded during the 9th century. Scholars outside Scandinavia did not begin to reassess the achievements of the Vikings until the 1890s, when they recognised their artistry, technological skills, and seamanship.
By 801, a strong central authority appears to have been established in Jutland, and the Danes began to look beyond their own territory for land, trade, and plunder. The picture in Norway was different. Mountainous terrain and fjords formed strong natural boundaries, and by 800 some 30 small kingdoms existed there, communities that remained independent of each other. The sea was the easiest way to communicate between them and the outside world.
Debate among scholars is ongoing as to why the Scandinavians expanded from the eighth through 11th centuries. Demographic models point to population growth, manifested in an increase of new settlements, though Anders Winroth has challenged the overpopulation thesis as "simply repeating an ancient cliche that has no basis in fact." According to Ferguson, the proliferation of iron increased agricultural yields, leaving many Scandinavians with no property and no status, who then took to piracy.
The economic model holds that growing urbanism and trade pulled the Vikings outward. As the Islamic world grew, wealth moved further north, and proto-urban centres such as the -wich towns of Anglo-Saxon England boomed during a prosperous era known as the "Long Eighth Century." In England, hoards of Viking silver such as the Cuerdale Hoard and the Vale of York Hoard offer insight into this draw.
The political model adds a push and a pull. The weakness of British and Western European polities, especially after the death of Charlemagne in January 814, made them attractive targets. At the same time, Scandinavia was undergoing a mass centralisation of power. Harald I of Norway, known as Harald Fairhair, had united Norway and displaced many peoples, who then sought new bases to launch counter-raids against him. Winroth argues that purposeful choices by warlords propelled the movement of people out of Scandinavia.
"If early medieval Scandinavians had not become exquisite shipwrights, there would have been no Vikings and no Viking Age," wrote Anders Winroth. Developments in sailing technology made it possible to attack lands farther away: larger sails, tacking practices, and 24-hour sailing. Piracy had existed in the Baltic before, but these advances extended its reach.
The clinker-built longships were uniquely suited to both deep and shallow waters. Because of their negligible draft, the Vikings could sail in shallow water and invade far inland along rivers. The ships were agile and light enough to be carried over land from one river system to another. Their speed was prodigious for the time, estimated at a maximum of 14-15 knots. For trade, a different vessel, the knarr, wider and deeper in draft, was customarily used.
These tactics earned the Vikings a formidable reputation. They performed highly efficient hit-and-run attacks, approaching a target then leaving as rapidly as possible before a counter-offensive could be launched. Battles at sea were rare, but when larger battles ensued, Viking crews would rope together all nearby ships and advance as a unit, hurling spears, arrows, and other projectiles before boarding with axes and swords. The roping kept them strong in numbers, but it created a problem. A ship in the line could not retreat or pursue without breaking formation and cutting the ropes, weakening the whole fleet. The use of longships ended when ships began to be constructed using saws instead of axes, resulting in inferior vessels.
In 850 the Vikings overwintered for the first time in England, on the island of Thanet in Kent, having previously raided during the winter of 840-841 from a base off Ireland. The following year a great deal of planning bore fruit. In 865, the Great Heathen Army, led by the brothers Ivar the Boneless, Halfdan, and Ubba, and by another Viking named Guthrum, arrived in East Anglia. They crossed into Northumbria and captured York, establishing a Viking community in Jorvik where some settled as farmers and craftsmen.
On the 8th of January 871, the Viking leader Bagsecg was killed at the Battle of Ashdown along with his earls. Alfred of Wessex managed to keep the Vikings out of his country, and he and his successors drove back the frontier and took York. A new wave appeared in 947 when Eric Bloodaxe captured York. Later, the Danish King Sweyn Forkbeard launched raids to avenge the St. Brice's Day massacre of England's Danish inhabitants, and was crowned king of England in 1013. His son, Cnut the Great, won the throne through conquest in 1016, and at his death in 1035 he was king of Denmark, England, Norway, and parts of Sweden.
In 795 small bands of Vikings began plundering monastic settlements along the coast of Gaelic Ireland. The Annals of Ulster record that in 821 they plundered Howth and "carried off a great number of women into captivity." From 840 they built fortified encampments, longphorts, the first at Dublin and Linn Duachaill. In 853 the Viking leader Amlaib, or Olaf, became the first king of Dublin. The Vikings founded settlements at Waterford, Wexford, Cork, and Limerick, which became Ireland's first large towns, and Viking Dublin grew into the biggest slave port in western Europe. Intermarrying with the Irish, they became the Norse-Gaels. Brian Boru eventually subdued these territories and made himself High King of Ireland, defeating the Dublin Vikings at the battles of Glenmama and Clontarf.
In 839 a large Norse fleet invaded via the River Tay and River Earn and reached into the heart of the Pictish kingdom of Fortriu. They defeated Eogan mac Oengusa, king of the Picts, his brother Bran, and Aed mac Boanta, king of the Scots of Dal Riata, along with many of the Pictish aristocracy. The sophisticated kingdom fell apart, and its leadership, stable for more than 100 years since the time of Oengus mac Fergusa, collapsed.
In 870 the fortress atop Alt Clut, the Rock of the Clyde, was besieged by the Viking kings Amlaib and Imar. After four months its water supply failed and the fortress fell. The Vikings transported a vast prey of British, Pictish, and English captives back to Ireland, who may have included the king Arthgal ap Dyfnwal. Afterwards the capital of the restructured kingdom was relocated about 12 miles up the River Clyde toward Govan and Partick, within present-day Glasgow, and became known as the Kingdom of Strathclyde.
The Jarl of Orkney and Shetland claimed supremacy over the Norse settlements in the islands. In 875 King Harald Fairhair led a fleet from Norway to Scotland to subdue rebels who had taken refuge in the Isles and were raiding Norway itself. Many of those rebels fled to Iceland. The Norse-Gaelic Kings of the Isles continued to act semi-independently, forming a defensive pact with the Kings of Scotland and Strathclyde in 973. In 1263 King Haakon IV of Norway arrived on the west coast with a fleet, and his forces met the Scots at Largs in Ayrshire. The battle proved indecisive, and Haakon died overwintering in Orkney. By 1266 his son Magnus the Law-Mender ceded the Kingdom of Man and the Isles to Alexander III through the Treaty of Perth.
The Varangians, often Swedes, migrated eastward and southward through what is now Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, mainly in the 9th and 10th centuries. They roamed the river systems and portages of Gardariki, reaching the Caspian Sea and Constantinople, engaging in trade, piracy, and mercenary activities. The eastern connections of these Varangians brought Byzantine silk, a cowrie shell from the Red Sea, and even coins from Samarkand to Viking York.
According to the Primary Chronicle, the Finnic and Slavic tribes rebelled against the Varangian Rus' in 860-862, driving them back to Scandinavia, then fell to conflict with one another. The disorder prompted the tribes to invite the Varangian Rus' back to "Come and rule and reign over us." Led by Rurik and his brothers Truvor and Sineus, the Varangians settled around the town of Novgorod. Rurik became ruler of Novgorod in 859, either by conquest or by invitation, and his successors founded the early East Slavic state of Kievan Rus' with its capital at Kiev, which persisted until the Mongols invaded in 1240.
The consensus among western scholars, disputed by some Russian scholars, is that the Rus' people originated in coastal eastern Sweden around the 8th century. According to Thorsten Andersson, the name Rus ultimately derives from the noun rother, meaning rowing, a word also used in naval campaigns in the leidang system of organising a coastal fleet. Swedish men later left to enlist in the Byzantine Varangian Guard in such numbers that a medieval Swedish law, Vastgotalagen, declared that no one could inherit while staying in "Greece," the Scandinavian term for the Byzantine Empire. Unlike in Normandy and the British Isles, Varangian culture did not survive to a great extent in the East, and the ruling classes of Novgorod and Kiev were thoroughly Slavicised by the beginning of the 11th century.
Between 990 and 1050 CE, according to carbon-dating of excavated remains, Vikings established a small settlement on the northern peninsula of present-day Newfoundland, near L'Anse aux Meadows. They had become the first Europeans to reach North America. Conflict with indigenous peoples and a lack of support from Greenland brought the Vinland colony to an end within a few years. The feat of reaching North America in 1021 was a date not determined until a millennium later. The archaeological remains are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Greenland itself had been pioneered by Erik the Red, who sailed west after being exiled from Iceland and settled at Brattahlid on Ericsfjord. The Greenland settlements occupied sheltered fjords across roughly 650 km of coast, in three separate areas. The remains of about 450 farms have been found in the Eastern Settlement alone. The microclimates allowed a pastoral lifestyle similar to that of Iceland, until the climate changed for the worse with the Little Ice Age around 1400.
Far to the south, a major long-distance expedition under the famed Vikings Bjorn Ironside and Hasteinn set out from their base on the Loire to sack Rome. They burned the mosque at Seville, passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, and plundered Nekor on the coast of Morocco. According to the Norman monk Dudo of Saint-Quentin, they landed at the Ligurian port of Luni and sacked it, then moved down the Tuscan coast to sack Pisa and the hill-town of Fiesole above Florence. Scholars have proposed different end dates for the whole age, but many place it in the 11th century. The death of King Harald Hardrada of Norway at Stamford Bridge in 1066 ended any hope of reviving Cnut's North Sea Empire, and it is for that reason, rather than the Norman conquest, that 1066 is often taken as the close of the Viking Age.
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Common questions
When did the Viking Age begin and end?
The Viking Age is generally dated from the attack on Lindisfarne on the 8th of June 793 to the 11th century. The death of King Harald Hardrada of Norway at Stamford Bridge in 1066 is often taken as its end, though scholars have proposed other dates and a "long Viking Age" may stretch into the 15th century.
What was the attack on Lindisfarne in 793?
On the 8th of June 793, raiders destroyed the abbey on Lindisfarne, an island off the north-east coast of England in Northumberland. Monks were killed, drowned, or carried away as slaves along with the church treasures, and the event is regarded as the beginning of the Viking Age.
Where did the Vikings settle during the Viking Age?
Voyaging from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, the Norse settled in the British Isles, Ireland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Normandy, the Baltic coast, and along the Dnieper and Volga trade routes in eastern Europe. They also briefly settled in Newfoundland, becoming the first Europeans to reach North America.
Why did the Vikings begin raiding and expanding?
Scholars cite demographic, economic, ideological, political, technological, and environmental factors. Wealthy towns and weak kingdoms drew them out, while overpopulation, lack of good farmland, and political strife from the unification of Norway under Harald Fairhair may have pushed them. Anders Winroth argued that without their shipbuilding skill there would have been no Viking Age.
Did the Vikings reach North America during the Viking Age?
Yes. Between 990 and 1050 CE, according to carbon-dating, Vikings established a small settlement near L'Anse aux Meadows on present-day Newfoundland. The feat of reaching North America in 1021 was a date not determined until a millennium later, and the remains are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Who were the Varangians in the Viking Age?
The Varangians were Scandinavians, often Swedes, who migrated eastward and southward through what is now Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine in the 9th and 10th centuries. Led by Rurik, they settled around Novgorod and founded the early East Slavic state of Kievan Rus', and many later enlisted in the Byzantine Varangian Guard.
All sources
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