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.
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