Viking Age in Estonia

• 1. Introduction

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  The Viking Age in Estonia left its deepest traces in the records of strangers. In the year 967, Norwegian Queen Astrid was sailing toward Novgorod with her young son when Estonian Vikings attacked her ship. Some of the crew were killed. Her son was taken into slavery.

  His name was Olaf Tryggvason. He would eventually rule Norway as king. For six years he remained in captivity somewhere in the Baltic world. A Norwegian official named Sigurd Eirikson was traveling through Estonia to collect taxes on behalf of a ruler named Valdemar. He spotted Olaf in a market on Saaremaa and paid for his freedom. The episode survived only because a future king was involved. The people who took Olaf, who built the ships that caught his mother's vessel, wrote nothing down themselves.

  Ancient Estonia was not a unified country. Its territory was divided among loosely allied regions. Scholars today describe their understanding of this period as fragmentary and superficial, limited by how little source material has survived. Most of what we know comes from the ground: the remains of farmsteads and hillforts, burial sites, and a large body of excavated objects.

  Centuries later, 16th-century Swedish chronicles attributed the Pillage of Sigtuna in 1187 to Estonian raiders. Whether those accounts are accurate remains a matter of debate, but they suggest how far the reputation of Viking Age Estonia could travel.

• 2. What the Sagas Preserve

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  Saxo Grammaticus placed the inhabitants of Estonia and the Curonians at the Battle of Bråvalla, fighting on the side of the Swedes against the Danes. The Danes were aided by the Livonians and the Wends of Pomerania. The Baltic tribes, the Letts and the Lithuanians, go unmentioned in his account.

  The Ynglinga saga tells of a Swedish king named Ingvar Harra, son of Östen and described as a great warrior. He lived in the 7th century and was forced to patrol his kingdom's shores against pirate raids from Estonia. He led his own invasion of Estonia but fell in battle against an Estonian force that arrived in great numbers. His men buried him near the seashore and returned to Sweden.

  Njál's saga records a clash between Estonian and Icelandic Vikings off Saaremaa in 972 AD. Thirty-six years later, the Norwegian king Olaf II Haraldsson landed on Saaremaa around the year 1008. The local inhabitants first attempted to negotiate his demands, then assembled an army and confronted him. Olaf was only 12 or 13 years old at the time, and he won the battle. Around 1030, a Swedish Viking chief named Freygeirr may have been killed in a battle on the same island.

  In the winter of 1219, Saaremaa was invaded by Old Lithuanians who came for loot, cattle, and slaves. A historical rhymed source preserved their passage in verse: "Deluded by their bravery / They went through all the land … / All paths, and also tracks / Were covered rich in blood … / They taught folk how to die / Both men and women / If only they have failed to flee."

  The Livonian Chronicle described two kinds of vessels the Estonians used at sea. The liburna served mainly as a merchant ship. The piratica was a warship built to carry around 30 men. Its prow rose high, shaped like a dragon or a snakehead, and its sail was quadrangular.

• 3. The Salme Ships

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  In 2008, workers near the village of Salme on Saaremaa found the remains of a clinker-built ship of Scandinavian origin. A second vessel turned up in 2010, a short distance away. Excavations carried out in 2011 and 2013 confirmed that both had been used as ship burials, dated to around 700-750 AD.

  Inside were the remains of more than 40 warriors, all killed in battle, accompanied by numerous weapons and other artifacts. The objects were of typically Swedish types. This led researchers to conclude that the men had traveled to Saaremaa from Sweden. But that interpretation was later complicated by finds made 20 kilometres from Salme.

  A cult site at Viidumäe on Saaremaa, dated to the 7th and 8th centuries, was excavated beginning in 2014. Large numbers of weapons and items of the same types as those found at Salme appeared there too. They were recovered in a context that was clearly local. The site also contained dress pins of local design decorated in distinctly Scandinavian style.

  The finds at Viidumäe changed the picture. Around 650 AD, a new type of grave appeared on Saaremaa that otherwise existed only in Sweden. This suggests that Swedish cultural influence was reaching the island well before the Salme burials took place. By the 10th century, the weapons and attributes used by warriors on Saaremaa had become indistinguishable from those used in Sweden.

• 4. Silver, Iron, and Trade

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  Iron was the most definitive export from Viking Age Estonia. The raw material took the form of bog iron, accessible in several places across the territory. Scholars believe the export of iron from Estonia began even before the Final Iron Age.

  Petersen's K type blades were the most numerous weapon type found in Estonia during the 10th century. Swords and spears were manufactured locally throughout the era, and Petersen's M-type spearheads have also been recovered from Estonian sites.

  Arabic Dirhams from the 8th century make up the earliest coin hoards found in Estonia. Viking Age treasures from the territory consist mainly of silver coins and bars. Of roughly 1,500 coins published in scholarly catalogues, around 1,000 are Anglo-Saxon, pointing to trade connections that stretched well beyond the Baltic.

  The largest Viking Age hoards in Estonia have been found at Maidla and Kose. Saaremaa holds the richest concentrations of Viking-era silver in the region after Gotland in Sweden. Archaeologists rank Estonia among the richest territories in Northern Europe for hoards from the 11th and 12th centuries. Along the Saaremaa coast, a number of harbour sites served as transit points. None yet discovered is large enough to have functioned as an international trade centre.

• 5. A Landscape of Forts

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  Forty-one forts from the second half of the first millennium are known in Estonia. Thirty-seven of them were built or in active use during the Pre-Viking and Viking Ages. These were not isolated military outposts. They stood at the centres of settlements, keeping defense close to the communities that needed it.

  The fort at Iru in northwestern Estonia is the most thoroughly investigated Viking Age fort in the region. The beginning of the Viking Age is considered the most active period in Iru's history. The site's earliest fortifications were built from wood and sand. Later builders upgraded both ends with large stone ramparts.

  A clearly visible pattern connects the placement of forts to rivers throughout Viking Age Estonia. The terrain is relatively flat, so riverbanks provided the most reliable natural elevation for defensive structures. Rivers also served as the primary transport routes of the era, making their banks an obvious location for defense.

  From Rõuge in the south to Pada and Rakvere in the north, the named forts of Viking Age Estonia span the full territory. Saaremaa's hillforts were among those most intensively reinforced during the Viking Age and into the 12th century.

• 6. Two Worlds, One Shore

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  Ancient Estonia during the Viking Age divided into two distinct cultural areas. Northern and Western Estonia belonged to the Scandinavian cultural sphere. Southeastern Estonia formed a separate zone.

  The Scandinavian names for the regions of Northern and Western Estonia make this division concrete. Saaremaa carried the name Eysysla, Läänemaa was Adalsysla, Harjumaa was Refaland, and Virumaa was Virland. These were not loose descriptors. Scandinavian written sources distinguished the four areas clearly and used a separate name for each. The historic name Saaremaa also covered all the islands of Western Estonia, not just the single island the term refers to today.

  Northern and Western Estonia made up roughly two-thirds of the entire territory. That zone, encompassing what are now Saaremaa, Läänemaa, Harjumaa, and Virumaa, was densely populated. The population of the area around 1100 AD is estimated at 150,000, with upper estimates reaching 180,000. By comparison, the population of Norway between 1000 and 1100 AD is estimated at around 200,000. At around 400 AD, during the Roman Iron Age, the same territory held only some 30,000 people. Over roughly seven centuries, the population had grown roughly five-fold.

  Finnic tribes are thought to have lived in Northern, Western, and Southeastern Estonia around AD 1000. Historical sources mention the possibility of a Norse settlement in Harjumaa during the 11th century. Archaeologist Andres Tvauri has addressed the question of how to read this layered history: "I am convinced that the contemporary Estonian national identity is a product of the events and ideologies of the 18th-19th centuries. At the same time, there is no doubt that the people who inhabited Estonia in the second half of the first millennium are the direct ancestors of modern-day Estonians."

  By the close of the Viking Age, something scholars describe as Estonian peasant culture had come into existence for the first time.

• 7. After the Viking Age

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  The end of the Viking Age in Estonia registers in the archaeological record through a series of distinct changes. Fort-centred settlements were abandoned. Village settlements replaced them. New burial places appeared across the landscape, and cemeteries grew larger. Wheel-thrown pottery came into use, and Winter Rye appeared in the fields for the first time.

  Christianity spread through Scandinavia, and the rise of kings created a quasi-feudal system that left no room for raiding economies. Coastal defenses across the region grew stronger. Raiding became more dangerous and less profitable. The raids ceased.

  By the 11th century, the chronicles had shifted their framing. Scandinavians were now described as frequently clashing with Estonian Vikings, a group identified in the sources by the term Víkingr frá Esthland. Estonians were no longer subjects of raid accounts but recognized opponents.

  German, Danish, and Swedish forces arrived under the banner of the Northern Crusades. The local tribes were eventually overwhelmed, subjected to baptism, military occupation, and in some cases extermination. The term Víkingr frá Esthland, once a recognized category in Scandinavian writing, disappeared along with the world that had produced it.