Vikings

I

INTRODUCTION

Vikings, Nordic peoples—Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians—who raided and settled in large areas of eastern and western Europe during a period of Scandinavian expansion from about 800 to 1100.

The raids of the Vikings in the 9th and 10th centuries are among the best-known episodes of early medieval history. These fierce attacks from Scandinavia fell on the British Isles, the Atlantic and North Sea shoreline of the Carolingian Empire, which included most of what are now France, Germany, and the Low Countries, and to the east on what became Russia. They took a heavy toll on the fragile political development and stability of Europe, although the damage caused by the Vikings may well have been exaggerated by the main historians of the period. These historians were usually priests who looked upon the pagan Vikings with particular horror. In addition, the Church, as a wealthy and relatively defenseless target, may have suffered more heavily than many other sectors of European society. Despite the notoriety the Vikings attracted because of their ferocity, within a century or two they converted to Christianity and settled in the lands they had raided. At the same time, the Vikings were developing new outposts of settlement in Iceland, Greenland, North America, and the North Atlantic, and establishing kingdoms in Scandinavia along the lines of the European kingdoms to the south. As they became assimilated in their new lands, they became farmers and traders as well as rulers and warriors.

II

THE NORDIC PEOPLES

Few written records exist of the Vikings before their conversion to Christianity. As a result, knowledge of the Germanic peoples of Scandinavia in the pre- and early-Viking period is limited. It rests on chronicles and records created by those who were frequently their enemies and victims, on archaeological and physical evidence, and on their own later literary reconstructions of their heroic past.

The social structure of pre-Viking and Viking Scandinavia depended on the links of extended families and ties made by marriage. Blood feuds and diplomatic marriages were a part of upper-class life. Though slavery played a significant part in the economy, as it did in the domestic society of the great households, the basic social structure was that of small, free farmers who owed loyalty (along with taxes) to the headman or patriarch of the family, or to the regional chief or noble. Such chiefs and petty nobles differed from their followers in wealth and power, but the distinction was more of degree than of rigid social boundaries or of hereditary nobility. When the chiefs became Viking leaders, their client farmers became their sailors and, on land, their soldiers. Because of the harsh climate and the many enterprises that took men away from home for extended periods, free-born women possibly enjoyed a base of power and responsibility for family and economic affairs not matched by women elsewhere in Western Europe.

In the harsh climate of Scandinavia the thinly scattered population lived by farming, fishing, and trading—mostly by sea. Viking political organization resembled that of other early Germanic peoples: a society of warrior chiefs and loyal followers. However, the Scandinavian world had never come under Roman or Christian influence, and its population was small and dispersed. As a result, these groups did not consolidate into kingdoms until around the time the Vikings began to venture on their raids in about 800. For several generations after the raids began, the bands of Danes or Vikings or Northmen, as they were known in Western Europe, arrived mostly as separate and small-scale undertakings, not as royal expeditions or large invasions.

The pre-Christian religion of the Vikings was similar to that of other Germanic tribes. They worshiped a number of gods, including Odin, the god of war and leader of the Norse gods; Thor, the god of thunder; and Balder, the god of light. Viking warriors believed that if they died heroically they would be called to dwell with Odin in Valhalla, his palace in the realm of the gods. Opposing the Norse gods were a host of evil giants, led by Loki. Vikings believed that both gods and men would eventually be destroyed in the Ragnarok, a mighty battle against the giants, but that a new, peaceful world would emerge from this disaster.

The basic economy of Scandinavia was agricultural. The short growing season sufficed to meet the demand for grain, for cattle and stock grazing. Because the people of this world mostly lived along the coasts, fishing played a significant part in their lives, as did sea trade. Even before the Viking raids began, the markets of Europe to the south were always interested in the raw goods of the North Sea and the Baltic. Furs, timber, amber, and slaves (mostly from Slavic regions) were primary commodities.

III

VIKING INVASIONS

The Vikings began to raid their southern neighbors seriously and systematically around 800. These raids, and the subsequent invasions, took many forms and reached out in many directions. In the British Isles and the French parts of the Carolingian Empire, there was a fairly uniform evolution; raids gradually changed from hit-and-run attacks to larger and more ambitious forays in which bands of sailor-raiders carved out holdings or base camps where they might spend the winter. Eventually, by the mid- to late 9th century, the armies grew in size. Many of the men became settlers in the lands where they had first appeared as marauders and raiders. They began to convert to Christianity and either brought families from home or intermarried with the local people. In such areas as northern England and Normandy (Normandie), on the coast of what is now France, the combination of peoples and cultures that resulted from these settlements led to a new mix of ethnic stocks, languages, and institutions. Because of their interest in commerce, the Vikings fostered urban growth, founding many cities and towns. Cities founded by the Vikings, such as York in England and Dublin in Ireland, emerged as prominent trade centers.

The motives for the Viking raids are not stated in any explicit or authoritative text. The wealth of the south, long known from trade and travel, was an obvious attraction. By the 8th or 9th centuries population growth was taxing Scandinavia’s limited resources for food, unclaimed land, and opportunities for social mobility and internal migration. Additionally, it is possible that the brutal wars conducted by Carolingian ruler Charlemagne against the Saxons in Germany in the 8th century may have warned the Northmen of a powerful enemy to the south.

These raids may also have been affected by political changes. The emergence in Scandinavia of more centralized monarchies and political institutions may have pushed many lesser chieftains and family leaders, long used to independence and self-reliance, to look for new frontiers. Thus many leaders of war bands took to the seas. When they went they were apt to take their men and families with them.

Around 800, Vikings raided the coasts of the British Isles and the western portions of the Carolingian Empire. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded their arrival: “In this year [793] the ravages of heathen men miserably destroyed God’s church on Lindisfarne [Holy Island, off the northeast coast of England], with plunder and slaughter.” The Vikings landed on undefended coasts and attacked churches as well as isolated farmsteads, town, and villages. Their well-constructed longboats could carry 50 or more men, and because of their very shallow draft, these boats were able to travel up rivers to settlements that had seemed immune to maritime attack. Sieges of and raids on Paris from the 840s onward show how deep into the heartland of continental Europe the Vikings could strike. Additionally, the Vikings conquered much of northern England (the Danelaw) in the 9th century, and they established a kingdom in Ireland. The Viking hold on such North Atlantic islands as the Shetlands, Hebrides, and Faroes lasted through and beyond the Middle Ages. However, even in their most predatory days the Vikings had not always been fierce raiders; often a fortified harbor or the presence of soldiers caused them to fall back on their role as traders and merchants.

Until the Viking raids began, Christian Europe had not worried about an enemy from the sea. It took the better part of a century before leaders like Alfred the Great of Wessex (England) and Charles II the Bald and Louis III in France could command their resources to move to fortify their towns, station fleets and naval patrols along the coasts, and organize localized and mobile military forces. Some Christian leaders paid ransom to the larger Viking armies of the 10th and early 11th centuries. Taxing their people to pay the “danegeld,” the tribute to the Vikings, became a regular defensive strategy. But in return for the cash, the Vikings often negotiated peaceful coexistence and conversion. In 911 Charles III the Simple of France ceded Normandy (French for “territory of the Northmen”) to the Viking leader Rollo and his warriors, who became his Christian vassals. In turn they pledged to defend their new duchy against other Vikings.

These Vikings, now called Normans, adopted the French language and ways and organized a strong state in Normandy. In 1066 William, Duke of Normandy, led his followers across the English Channel to conquer England. In the same century the exploits of such Norman adventurers as Robert Guiscard created the Norman kingdom of Sicily, at the expense of the Muslims in Sicily and the Byzantine emperor in southern Italy. Normans from Sicily also took part in the Crusades against the Muslims in the Holy Land.

In addition to their role as invaders of settled, Christian lands, numerous bands of Viking adventurers reached Iceland in the mid-9th century, and by 900 their new home had become a center for settlement by Norwegians and Danes. Iceland was a launching point for expeditions and ventures farther out into the North Atlantic. Around 982 Erik the Red led an expedition from Iceland which settled in Greenland. His son Leif Eriksson later landed on North America, which he called Vinland, or Wineland, because of the large numbers of grapes that he and his men found. Archaeological work indicates that the original Vinland settlement was probably at what is now L’Anse aux Meadows in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Literary and archaeological evidence supports the existence of colonies in North America, supplied and populated for several generations before distance and climate proved too much.

The Vikings who went west, across the ocean, and south, to the British Isles and continental Europe, were mostly from Norway and Denmark. Expeditions from Sweden were no less aggressive and vigorous. They turned to the south and east, into and beyond the Baltic, away from the heartland of Christian Europe, and in a world of vast spaces and few people. These people were drawn by trading links rather than a thirst for empty land. They traveled through Russia via the Volga and Dnieper rivers to Constantinople and Baghdad. Along with the native Slavic peoples, the Swedish Vikings influenced the growth of the early Russian state around Kyiv (Kiev). The Swedish Vikings in Constantinople formed the Varangian guard of the Byzantine emperors in the 11th century. As in their western expeditions, they were soldiers, new settlers, and able traders and voyagers.

IV

INFLUENCE

There is no consensus on the extent of Viking migration and their contribution to the population in the lands where they settled. Estimates differ on whether hundreds or thousands settled abroad. There is also disagreement as to whether the settlers were primarily men, who intermarried abroad, or whether whole families came. In Iceland, of course, all life and social organization sprang directly from the Viking settlers, but the impact of the Viking settlers in the British Isles and in France is much harder to determine accurately.

It is also not possible to gauge how disruptive and hostile the Vikings were. Archaeological evidence reveals a culture that was the most advanced in Europe in the manufacture of arms and jewelry, as well as shipbuilding. Many styles of Viking ships were adopted by other European powers, most notably Alfred the Great of Wessex. The Vikings also displayed an ability to mobilize economic resources and to dominate a hostile landscape. These abilities can be seen in their great fortified camps, like that at Visby in Sweden, where hundreds of soldiers and traders lived. Additionally, the Vikings fostered commerce, founding many prominent trading centers in England and France.

In addition, the Vikings created a rich body of vernacular literature in which they celebrated their heroic past. The Icelandic sagas represent a vast collection of both stories and histories. Some concern the great leaders of heroic days and the kings of the 11th and 12th centuries; many others deal with the families, feuds, and changing fortunes of the petty chieftains of Icelandic farmsteads and valleys in the 13th and 14th centuries. The more historical sagas describe what is known about the colonization of Iceland, the voyages to North America, and the rise of the powerful kings who led the efforts toward conversion and political consolidation. The Poetic Edda of Snorri Sturluson, who wrote in the early 1200s, portrays pre-Christian Viking history and mythology. See Icelandic Literature; Norwegian Literature.

Signs of the Viking influence are found in the languages, vocabulary, and place-names of the areas in which they settled. These offer clues regarding the density of migration, the ease of assimilation, and the preservation of distinct northern institutions and usages. An early form of popular or open government can be seen in the open air Althing of Iceland, where the free farmers came to voice complaints, resolve feuds, and enunciate and interpret the law for free men and their families and dependents. Icelanders view this as the earliest form of parliamentary government in Europe. The jury of English common law was a direct outgrowth of Viking ideas about community obligations and sworn investigations, both vital steps in building a civil society.

The Vikings were one of several waves of attackers to fall on Europe in the centuries after the short-lived eminence of the Carolingian Empire. Others included the Magyars from Asia, who appeared on the eastern frontiers, and the Muslims, who worked outward from Spain and the Mediterranean. At first, the Vikings’ impact was primarily disruptive and destructive. Gradually the Vikings became part of the larger European community as they were attracted by a more settled life, and as Christian Europe’s ability to resist their attacks grew. The Vikings were great sailors and ferocious enemies, but also storytellers and workers of the highest level.