Viking raids

Raids by seaborne Scandinavian pirates on sites in Britain, especially largely

undefended monastic sites, began at the end of the eighth century AD.

By the end of the ninth century there were large-scale settlements of Scandinavians in
various parts of Britain, and they had achieved political domination over a significant
territory.

Early in the 11th century the king of Denmark became king of England as well. And in
1066 there were separate invasions by the king of Norway, Harald Hardrada, and duke
of Normandy, William, the latter the descendant of Scandinavian settlers in northern
France.

Many monasteries in the north were destroyed, and with them any records of
the raids.

Yet the most significant development of the period was an indirect result of
Scandinavian involvement in the affairs of Britain - the emergence of two kingdoms of
newly unified territories, England and Scotland.

In 793 AD, an anguished Alcuin of York wrote to the Higbald, the bishop of Lindisfarne
and to Ethelred, King of Northumbria, bemoaning the unexpected attack on the
monastery of Lindisfarne by Viking raiders, probably Norwegians sailing directly across
the North Sea to Northumbria.

It is clear from the letter that Lindisfarne was not destroyed. Alcuin suggested that
further attack might be averted by moral reform in the monastery.

Over the next few decades, many monasteries in the north were destroyed, and with
them any records they might have kept of the raids. We know no historical details of
the raids in Scotland, although they must have been extensive.

Iona was burnt in 802 AD, and 68 monks were killed in another raid in 806 AD. The
remaining monks fled to Kells (County Meath, Ireland) with a gospel-book probably
produced in Iona, but now known as the 'Book of Kells'.

Other monasteries in Scotland and northern England simply disappear from the record.
Lindisfarne was abandoned, and the monks trailed around northern England with their
greatest possession, the relics of St Cuthbert, until they found a home in Durham in
995 AD.

England and Scotland

We cannot be sure of the impact the Vikings had on Scotland due to a real scarcity of
written material from the area. But the surviving place names show us that the Orkneys
and Shetlands, and the mainland of Caithness and Sutherland, were heavily settled by
Norwegians.

Those Norwegians were probably involved in the greatest political upset in the north -
the disappearance of the kingdom of the Picts.

The Vikings began to assemble larger armies with the clear intent of conquest.

In the eighth century, the Picts had one of the most important kingdoms in Britain. By
the end of the ninth century they had vanished. In their place was a kingdom of
Scotland, controlled by the Scots, who were the descendents of immigrants from
Ireland in the fifth and sixth centuries.

The Scots took advantage of the presence of the Vikings, and, above all under King
Cináed mac Alpín (Kenneth MacAlpine), they did so with considerable aggression and
intelligence. They promoted themselves as the kings of all those in northern Britain, or
'Alba'.

They wove a new national history, which emphasised (or invented) many links between
the Scottish and Pictish dynasties. They also promoted the idea that St Columba, the
founder of the monastery of Iona, was the apostle of all those in the north.

The Viking raids in England were sporadic until the 840s AD, but in the 850s Viking
armies began to winter in England, and in the 860s they began to assemble larger
armies with the clear intent of conquest.

In 865 AD they forced the East Angles to help supply an army, which in 866 AD
captured York and in 867 AD took over the southern part of the kingdom of
Northumbria.

Later traditions saw Ragnar Hairy-Breeks and his son Ívarr the Boneless as the two
main Viking leaders, responsible not only for killing Ælla, King of Northumbria in 867 AD
but also Edmund, King of the East Angles in 869 AD, and for destroying Dumbarton, the
fortress of the British kings of Strathclyde.

The normally reliable 'Annals of Ulster' recorded Ívarr's death in Ireland in 873 AD and
described him as 'king of the Northmen in the whole of Ireland and Britain'.

The man we then see more clearly in the sources as the Viking leader, Hálfdan, was
later believed to be Ívarr's brother. He led the Viking army to a conquest of Mercia in
874 AD, organised a parcelling out of land among the Vikings in Northumbria in 876
AD, and in 878 AD moved south and forced most of the population of Wessex to
submit.

The Vikings had conquered almost the whole of England.

Alfred's dynasty

An excerpt from the 'Parker Chronicle', the oldest surviving manuscript

from the 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle' (890 AD) ©
The idea that the Vikings had forced Wessex to submit may have been invented to
magnify the achievement of its king, Alfred, the only English king to be called 'the
Great'.

Famously, he hid in the marshes near Athelney (Somerset) in 878 AD, but then
emerged, re-formed his army, and defeated the Vikings later that year at Edington
(Wiltshire).

After the peace that Alfred forced on the Vikings, the Viking army seems to have moved
across the Channel (it established winter quarters in Paris in 886 AD), giving the king
some time to organise for war.

Æthelstan's victory did not end the Viking threat or the slow expansion by the
Scots.

He built fortresses, established a defensive strategy, and built up a navy. By the time
the Vikings returned in the 890s, the West Saxons were able to resist, leaving Alfred, at
his death in 899 AD, king of the only independent English kingdom.

Thanks to Alfred's own propaganda machine, we know more about him than about most
early medieval kings in Britain. He ordered the compilation of the 'Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle', a major source of information that was continued as contemporary
chronicles in various centres until the 12th century.

Under Alfred's auspices, the Welshman Asser prepared a 'Life of Alfred', after the model
of Einhard's 'Life of Charlemagne'. Like Charlemagne, Alfred was deeply interested in
promoting literacy and learning, and he sponsored (and perhaps even took part in) the
translation of various Latin works into English.
Alfred was succeeded by his son Edward the Elder (899-924 AD) and grandson
Æthelstan (924-939 AD). Both these rulers were in many ways even more important in
the history of England than Alfred himself.

In a few expeditions Edward (with the direct military help of his sister Æthelflæd, widow
of the Mercian king) conquered the south of England from the Danes, and incorporated
Mercia itself into his kingdom.

The 'Anglo-Saxon Chronicle' tells us that Edward built a fortress at Bakewell

(Derbyshire), and there he was chosen 'father and lord' by the king of the Scots, the
king of the Strathclyde Welsh, and the people of Northumbria.

All of them were perhaps in need of protection from aggression by the Vikings of
Dublin.

There was a similar submission to Æthelstan in 927 AD, at Eamont (Cumbria), when
Welsh kings as well as the Scottish king submitted to him. The great Welsh king Hywel
Dda (Hywel the Good) was apparently a close ally. In fact, he was so Anglophile that he
named one of his sons Edwin, and sponsored a written law code after the English
model.

Æthelstan's greatest success was the victory at Brunanburh, somewhere in the north. A
Viking army led by Olaf Guthfrithson, allied with the kings of Scotland and Strathclyde,
invaded Northumbria in 937 AD. Our source tells us that five kings and seven of Olaf's
earls died on the battlefield, as well as the son of Constantine II of Scotland.

Æthelstan's reputation was immense on the continent, and an Irish monk called him
'the pillar of the dignity of the western world'. But his victory did not put an end to the
Viking threat in the north, nor to the slow expansion of the power of the Scots.

The last Viking king of York, Eric Bloodaxe, was only expelled from Northumbria in 954
AD, after Æthelstan's rule. In that same year the Scots took Edinburgh from the
English.

Danegeld

After 955 AD there was a generation of peace on the island of Britain. As the 'Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle' says of Edgar, King of England (959 - 975 AD) 'without battle he
brought under his sway all that he wished'.

He issued laws for 'all the nations, whether Englishmen, Danes, or Britons', an
interesting recognition of the multi-ethnic character of England at the time.
Edgar took advantage of his strong position to foster the reorganisation of the church
that is generally known as the '10th-century Reformation'. New bishoprics were
established in the areas conquered from the Vikings.

Raids were on a large scale and their object was extortion.

But above all this reformation was about the re-establishment and strict reform of
monasticism.

Edgar relied on three men in particular - Dunstan (archbishop of Canterbury, 960 - 988
AD), Oswald (bishop of Worcester, 961 - 992 AD, and archbishop of York, 971 - 992
AD) and Æthelwold (bishop of Winchester, 963 - 984 AD).

The process was sealed by the 'Regularis Concordia' of 973 AD, a document of monastic
reform that relied heavily on continental models. It was cemented by the building of
some magnificent churches (mostly replaced by the Normans) and some lavish
illuminated manuscripts, such as the 'Benedictional of St Æthelwold'.

After Edgar's death, his successor Edward I reigned briefly. He was murdered in 978 AD
at Corfe (Dorset), possibly by the followers of his young half-brother Æthelred, and
possibly by his stepmother.

Edgar's half-brother, Æthelred II, who later would acquire the nickname 'the Unready',
started his long reign (978-1016 AD) at the same time as the emergence of Denmark.

The country was newly converted to Christianity and newly unified under Harald
Bluetooth. It was becoming a major power.

This was the dawning of the 'second Viking age', and it was very different from the first.
Raids were on a large scale, frequently organised by royal leaders, and their object was
extortion. In 991 AD the Danes acquired 4,500 kg of silver in return for going home.

By 1012, payments to the Danes, known as 'Danegeld', had increased to 22,000 kg.
England was wealthy, and it developed a taxation system that was probably more
sophisticated than any other in Europe, which was both a cause and a consequence of
the raiding.

Conquest and fall

 Silver penny of Cnut (Canute) ©
The extortion came to an end in 1013, when Harald's son, Swein Forkbeard, decided to
conquer England. He forced Æthelred into exile, although the definitive conquest of
England was only achieved under his son Cnut (or Canute).

In 1016, Cnut became king of England, and after further campaigns in Scandinavia he
could claim in 1027 to be 'king of the whole of England and Denmark and Norway and
of parts of Sweden'.

William won and the last English royal dynasty perished.

Cnut was a strong and effective king. He introduced some Danish customs to England,
but England also influenced Denmark. For instance, Cnut appointed several Englishmen
as bishops in Denmark, and even today most of the ordinary Danish words of church
organisation are English in origin.

In an attempt at reconciliation with the English he had conquered, Cnut married Emma,
the widow of Æthelred. She was the daughter of the duke of Normandy, himself the
descendant of Vikings or Northmen (Normans).

She bore Cnut a son, Harthacnut, but she had also had a son by Æthelred, who
succeeded Harthacnut as Edward II, the Confessor (1042 - 1066).

When Edward died without children, it was natural that Emma's great-nephew, Duke
William, should lay claim to the throne. It was just as natural that this claim should be
resisted by Harold, the son of Godwin, Edward's most powerful noble.

Harold II successfully beat off the invasion by Harald Hardrada of Norway, defeating
him at Stamford Bridge near York in September 1066. Even when he and his troops
arrived, exhausted, at Hastings three weeks later to face William's Norman invaders, he
nearly prevailed.

But William won, and the last English royal dynasty perished.

Eric Bloodaxe
What's in a name?
Eric Bloodaxe is probably one of the best-known names in Viking history, at least in the
British Isles. The favoured son of Harald Finehair, who was credited by the Viking sagas
(composed mostly in Iceland, in the 13th century) with the unification of Norway, he
became king of western Norway after his father. However, when his younger brother
Hakon claimed the kingship with the support of Athelstan of Wessex, Eric moved to the
British Isles.

There he divided his time between raiding in Scotland and around the Irish Sea, and
establishing himself as ruler of the Viking kingdom of Northumbria. His death in 954
brought the independence of Viking Northumbria to an end, but his sons later
succeeded in establishing themselves as kings in Norway.

Eric is mentioned briefly in a number of contemporary or near contemporary sources,

and he also left visible traces of his own - in the coinage issued in his name at York. He
also features in a number of later sagas, along with his wife Gunnhild, who is generally
portrayed as an evil witch.

The sagas use the 'Bloodaxe' nickname, and this is generally seen in the context of his
Viking raids in Scotland, and his glorious end as the last independent king of
Northumbria. Like his near contemporary, Thorfinn Skullsplitter of Orkney, the name
Eric Bloodaxe conjures up an immediate image of the archetypal Viking warrior; huge,
hairy and heroic, and the proud owner of a large axe.

... his wife Gunnhild ... is generally portrayed as an evil witch.

More careful examination of Eric's story suggests that things were rather more
complicated. Despite his reputation as a warrior, Eric apparently abandoned Norway to
his brother Hakon without a fight, and he was subsequently driven out of Northumbria
at least twice. The sagas represent him very much as a henpecked husband, and the
likely origin of his nickname is both murkier and less glorious than the obvious
explanation of his prowess in battle. So what do we really know about Eric Bloodaxe?

Exile to England
 Extensive excavations at the Coppergate, York, have provided us with a
good understanding of what Jorvik (York) would have been like at the time of Eric's rule ©Our
knowledge of Eric's life in Norway relies exclusively on the sagas, which are extremely
unreliable for the early tenth century. However, although we have to be sceptical of all
the details provided by the sagas, there is nothing inherently unlikely in their broad
outline of events.
Together with the sagas, there are two Latin accounts of the history of the kings of
Norway. Like the earliest of the sagas, they were written in the late 12th century, and
there are some textual relations between the Latin histories and the Icelandic sagas.
However, the Latin texts are both briefer and less fantastic than the great kings' sagas
of the early 13th century.

Eric was the favourite, and probably the oldest, of the many sons of King Harald
Finehair of Norway. The saga tradition credits Harald with a round total of 20 sons, as
well as the unification of Norway. Modern historians now agree that Harald's kingdom
was more limited, and probably confined to the west and south-west, although he may
have exercised some power in other areas through alliance with other rulers.

... Eric secured the succession ... by gradually murdering all of his brothers ...

Harald's kingdom was not sufficient to provide much of an inheritance for so many
sons, and Eric secured the succession for himself by gradually murdering all of his
brothers in turn. It was probably this that earned him his nickname. While the sagas
call him 'Bloodaxe', one of the Latin texts calls him fratris interfector(brother-killer), so
it seems likely that 'blood' in this context refers to family, just as today we refer to
'blood relations' as distinct from relations by marriage or adoption.

Eric's rule in Norway was apparently harsh and unpopular, and his kingship was
challenged by his one surviving brother Hakon. Hakon is said to have been brought up
in England at the court of Athelstan, and this fits well with Athelstan's recorded policy of
fostering the sons of potential allies. Hakon sailed to Norway to claim his inheritance,
and Eric fled to England. According to the sagas, he was welcomed by Athelstan,
because of the the friendship between Athelstan and Harald Finehair, and was made
sub-king of Northumbria under Athelstan's authority.

Invader or guest?

Coin of Eric Bloodaxe, first type, with an Anglo-Saxon style design.

©The suggestion that Eric first became king of Northumbria at Athelstan's invitation
seems at first sight to conflict with English and Irish sources. According to the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle and various Irish Chronicles, Eric was taken as king by the
Northumbrians in 947 or 948, some years after Athelstan's death, and in defiance of
Athelstan's brother Eadred.
Certainly the saga tradition is confused on some points. It places Eric's death in the
reign of Eadmund, who ruled between Athelstan and Eadred, and does not recognise
the existence of Eadred at all. However, confusion between two very similar names
does not mean that everything is wrong. It is also important to note that while there is
no mention of Eric in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle during the reign of Athelstan, there is
no mention of who did govern Northumbria on Athelstan's behalf during the later part
of his reign, so it could just as well have been Eric as anybody else.

... there is no mention of Eric in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ...

There is also some circumstantial evidence to support the saga accounts. A later
chronicle by William of Malmesbury recalls diplomatic relations between Athelstan and
Harald Finehair, which fits with the saga tradition. There is also a reference to Eric in an
account of the life of a Scottish saint, Caddroe, probably written in the late tenth
century. According to this, Caddroe visited Eric and his wife in York, and from other
details in this account, the visit seems to have taken place around 940-41. Certainly it
must have taken place some years before Eric's first appearance in the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle.
 Coin of Eric Bloodaxe (reverse) ©The
evidence of Eric's coinage is
ambiguous. The first of Eric's two coin types is of a standard Anglo-Saxon type used by
Athelstan, Edmund and Eadred. The same moneyers issued coins for the Anglo-Saxon
kings and the various Viking rulers of Northumbria, and Eric's first type could equally
well date from the late 930s or the 940s.

Conquest and reconquest

Coin of Eric Bloodaxe, second type. The sword design is copied from an
earlier type from Viking Northumbria. Eric's use of this design may have been designed to promote his
image as rightful ruler of an independent Northumbria. ©The
kings' sagas tell us that Athelstan
made Eric ruler of Northumbria to protect the land against 'Danes [ie Scandinavians]
and other marauders', and Egil's saga tells us specifically that his role was to defend
the land against the Scots and the Irish. Again, this is completely consistent with the
broader picture of Athelstan's reign. The expansion of the authority of the kingdom of
Wessex posed a threat to all the smaller kingdoms in the British Isles, and Athelstan
faced a repeated alliance between native rulers such as the kings of the Scots and
Strathclyde with Viking rulers of the Dublin dynasty.
... Northumbria changed hands frequently during the 940s as different factions
tried to control the kingdom.

The kingdom of Northumbria provided a useful buffer zone for both Athelstan and the
Scots, and both were anxious for it to be controlled by allies. In this context the
appointment of Eric as sub-king would make perfect sense. What is certainly clear is
that Northumbria changed hands frequently during the 940s, as different factions tried
to control the kingdom.
On Athelstan's death in 939, the kingdom was seized by Olaf Guthfrithsson of Dublin,
and thereafter the kingdom was contested between Athelstan's successors Edmund and
Eadred on the one side, and kings of the Dublin dynasty on the other. While both the
Anglo-Saxon and the saga accounts agree that, after Athelstan's death, Eric was acting
on his own account, rather than as a sub-king for the Wessex dynasty.

It seems clear that Eric's brief periods of rule c.947-8 and c.952-4 were the result of his
ability to contest the kingship of Northumbria with his rivals. And indeed the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle tells us that on both occasions he was 'taken as king' by the
Northumbrians. It is equally clear, however, that he lacked the force to maintain his
position in the face of opposition from both Dublin and Wessex.

The end of the story

A battle reconstruction: Eric's defeat and death at Stainmore in 954

brought an end to the independence of Viking Northumbria. ©While
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
makes it clear that Eric was periodically driven out by rivals, the sagas tell us that
Northumbria was not wealthy enough to support Eric and his following, so he often
went raiding in Scotland and around the Irish Sea. Although this may well have been
partly a desire for plunder, it also fits with Eric's ongoing contest for power with the
kings of the Dublin dynasty, who had influence all around the Irish Sea area.
Both English and saga sources agree that Eric was killed in battle. The sagas tell us that
Eric was accompanied by five kings from the Hebrides and the two earls of Orkney. This
receives some support from later English chronicles, although no such details appear in
contemporary sources. Later sources also tell us that Eric was killed in an ambush by
Maccus, son of Olaf. This Maccus is otherwise unknown, but the name Maccus does
appear in the dynasty of the kings of Man, probably an offshoot of the Dublin dynasty.
It is also possible that Maccus was a son of Olaf Cuaran, king of Dublin, and Eric's rival
as king of Northumbria in the late 940s.

... Eric's death at Stainmore in 954 brought an end to independent Viking rule
in Northumbria.

In either case, Maccus would appear to have been acting at least partially on behalf of
Eadred of Wessex, who was apparently using the established tactic of setting one Viking
leader against another. And whoever Maccus was, Eric's death at Stainmore in 954
brought an end to independent Viking rule in Northumbria. This is sometimes taken as
the end of the first Viking Age, although Viking raids on England resumed in the 980s.
However, raiding and settlement in Ireland, Scotland and Wales continued throughout
the period in between, so this date is only significant in a purely English context.

A final note on Eric is provided by the skaldic poem Eiríksmàl('The Lay of Eric'), which
describes Eric's heroic entrance into Valhalla and his welcome by the gods after his
death at Stainmore. However, since this seems unlikely to be a reliable eyewitness
account, it adds little to our understanding of the historical figure behind the legend of
Eric Bloodaxe.

Loot and Land

By Dr Anna Ritchie
Last updated 2011-02-17

The Vikings attacked Britain's holy places, slaughtered its monks and carried away
countless treasures. Well designed boats and convenient winds helped the Vikings come
and go as they pleased. Britain was devastated, as the raiders divided the land
amongst themselves.
Terror from the sea

In 789, three Viking ships arrived on the Wessex shore. The local reeve had been sent
to greet them but he was killed on the spot. This event was recorded in a short entry in
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. But worse was to come. Four years later, Lindisfarne, one
of Britain's most sacred sites, was sacked. Word of the Viking threat spread throughout
Europe.

'Lo, it is nearly 350 years that we and our fathers have inhabited this most lovely land,
and never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a
pagan race, nor was it thought that such an inroad from the sea could be made. Behold
the church of St Cuthbert spattered with the blood of the priests of God, despoiled of all
its ornaments; a place more venerable than all in Britain is given as a prey to pagan
peoples...'. Letter from Alcuin to Ethelred, king of Northumbria
The first Viking raids were hit-and-run affairs. There was no co-ordination and no long-
term plan behind them. Raids were not even a new hazard in a society well-used to
warfare on any scale from local skirmishes to great battles. The Vikings' sin was to
attack and pillage the holy monasteries, the sacred places of the Christian world. And
the leaders of that world were quick to condemn them. One of those leaders whose
words have come down to us was Alcuin of York.

Lindisfarne sacked

Alcuin was a scholar and monk living in Germany, who heard the
news of a devastating Viking raid on the monastery of Lindisfarne in Northumbria on 8
June, 793. He wrote long letters to the Northumbrian king and to the Bishop of
Lindisfarne, commiserating with their plight and blaming it on the sinful lives of their
people.
'Consider carefully, brothers, and examine diligently, lest perchance this unaccustomed
and unheard-of evil was merited by some unheard-of evil practice... Consider the dress,
the way of wearing the hair, the luxurious habits of the princes and people.' Letter from
Alcuin to Ethelred, King of Northumbria.
It was unthinkable that such a holy place should suffer attack from foreign
heathens.

The raid of 793 was the first recorded Viking raid on Britain. Alcuin's words express the
horror of his Christian world at the ferocity of pagan raiders, whose attack was sudden,
unexpected and devastating. Lindisfarne (Holy Island) lies just off the coast of
Northumberland and its monastery was revered for its link with St Cuthbert more than
a century earlier. It was unthinkable that such a holy place should suffer attack from
foreign heathens, that its monks should be slaughtered and its treasures taken. Yet this
was to happen again and again to other monasteries throughout England, Wales,
Scotland and Ireland. Alcuin's letters are just one piece of historical evidence for Viking
attacks. Other raids were recorded in the annals kept in monasteries at Iona and in
Ireland: 'devastation of all the islands of Britain' reads an entry for 794 in the Annals of
Ulster. Columba's famous monastery on the Scottish island of Iona was pillaged the
following year, and again in 802, in 806 and in 825. Nowhere was safe from the
Vikings.

Who were the Vikings?

The Ardagh Chalice - jewel of Celtic culture ©We

tend to think of the Vikings
as a single phenomenal race of Scandinavian warriors, but the reality is more complex.
Raids on the British Isles and the coasts of France and Spain were the work of Vikings
from Norway and Denmark (Swedish Vikings set out across the Baltic Sea into Poland,
Latvia, Lithuania and Russia). The word Viking means one who lurks in a 'vik' or bay, in
effect, a pirate.
The word 'Viking' has come to describe a whole new age in Europe between about 800
and 1150. This is despite the fact that Vikings were not just pirates and warriors but
also traders and colonists. But at the start of the Viking Age in the last decade of the
eighth century, loot and adventure were the main goals of the Norwegians who raided
in Scotland and Ireland and of the Danes who attacked England. Gold and silver
treasures accumulated by the great monasteries could be converted into personal
wealth, and thus power, and captives could be sold as slaves. What better way for the
young sons of good families to earn their way and see the world?

'The work of angels' were looted and taken home by Vikings.

The monks who recorded Viking activities could not know the origins of their
tormentors, but discoveries of precious metalwork from Britain in Norway and Denmark
are clues to their homelands. Decorative mounts from church plate such as the Ardagh
Chalice could be removed and made into brooches, the rest of the chalice could also be
melted down and the silver re-used. Such pieces have been found in pagan graves of
around 800 in Scandinavia. The Ardagh Chalice escaped this fate, but many other
beautiful examples of what has been called 'the work of angels' were looted and taken
home by Vikings. One exquisite reliquary box, made in the eighth century to hold a
saint's relic, became a Norwegian lady's jewellery casket in the tenth century, when an
inscription in runes was carved on its base: 'Ranvaik owns this casket'.

Top

Ships and navigation

 The sleek Viking Gokstad ship ©Successful
raiding and adventures
overseas required good fast ships, and that is exactly what the development of boat
technology had provided by the eighth century. The use of a sturdy keel meant that a
mast could be properly supported and that boats could be sailed as well as rowed. Long
sea voyages were possible even if navigation was still a matter of watching the
movement of the sun and of observing landmarks and seabirds.
Vikings preferred not to spend the night at sea if they could avoid it...

We know what their ships looked like because many Vikings were buried with their
worldly goods, and sometimes this included their boat. The Gokstad ship, from a burial
south of Oslo, is the sort of warship to which the Viking raiders aspired - an elegant 23
metres of curving oak planks that would skim the waves. Tree-ring dating has shown
that this particular ship was built towards the end of the ninth century, but its efficient
design was developed earlier - fast, flexible and, with its shallow draught, easy to
beach. Few warlords could afford to send such a magnificent vessel to the grave, and
no Viking boat of the size of Gokstad has been found in Britain. Smaller rowing boats
could be spared for funerary use, and the most recent discovery of a boat-burial at Scar
in Orkney contained a vessel some 7 metres long. But the existence of large warships
in British waters can be inferred from the historical evidence - Vikings preferred not to
spend the night at sea if they could avoid it and would rather camp in tents on shore.

A fair wind for raiding

The distinctive prow of a Viking ship ©Alongside

the efforts of boat builders
was a gradual improvement in climate and overall weather patterns. This led to calmer
seas and fewer storms in summer. There are many clues that point to this change in
climate. If you slice a tree trunk horizontally, you can see the rings that represent
annual growth: thick rings in good years and thin rings in bad years. If you dig down
into a peat bog, you will find that there are horizontal layers, caused by variations in
climate: in dry summers the surface of the bog will dry out and compact, whereas high
rainfall will encourage the peat to grow. Plants can also provide evidence. They have
different needs in terms of temperature and moisture, and the presence or absence of
the pollen of certain plants on an archaeological site can indicate what the climate was
like when people were living there. A cool and wet climate, for instance, will encourage
the growth of ferns.
So we know that the summers were getting warmer but that was not the whole story.
For Norwegians intent on reaching Scotland and the honeyed seaway to Ireland, the
wind was on their side too. The prevailing winds helpfully blew westwards into their
sails in springtime to take them to the Scottish islands, and eastwards in the autumn to
bring them home.

The need for land

Remains of Viking buildings ©Raids

and loot were not the whole
story. Land to farm was also a desirable commodity, especially for the families along
the western seaboard of Norway, where fertile land was in short supply. Younger sons,
political exiles, mercenary warriors and traders all had the option of becoming colonists
in the lands now familiar from the tales of returning raiders. Once based in the northern
and western islands of Scotland, they could farm and trade and still turn their hand to
raiding whenever convenient. And we know from the 12th-century Icelandic Sagas that
this is exactly what they did. Svein Asleifarson lived on the island of Gairsay in Orkney
in the 12th century, and his lifestyle was recorded in one of these sagas.
'This was how Svein used to live. Winter he would spend at home on Gairsay, where he
entertained some 80 men at his own expense. His drinking hall was so big, there was
nothing in Orkney to compare with it. In the spring he had more than enough to occupy
him, with a great deal of seed to sow, which he saw to carefully himself. Then when
that job was done, he would go off plundering in the Hebrides and in Ireland on what
he called his 'spring-trip', then back home just after mid-summer, where he stayed till
the cornfields had been reaped and the grain was safely in. After that he would go off
raiding again, and never came back till the first month of winter was ended. This he
used to call his 'autumn-trip'.' Orkneyinga Saga, chapter 105
Protection money had been extorted from the English.

The pattern of Danish colonisation in England was more organised, as had been Danish
raids after about 850. In that year a Viking army had spent the winter encamped on the
Isle of Thanet at the mouth of the River Thames, and protection money had been
extorted from the English. Large forces of warriors, winter camps and payments in
silver or food became the norm, even deep inland - a Viking camp of 873 has been
excavated at Repton in Derbyshire. In 876 a Viking leader shared out the farmlands of
Northumbria among his warriors. The Danish colonisation of England had begun.

The Viking image

A winged-helmeted Viking, introduced as a radiator cap figure on a new Rover car in

1920, marks a telling moment in the 400-year process of cultural rehabilitation of the
Vikings. The chronicles of medieval England had always portrayed this 'luther [wicked]
folc of Denemarch' as bloodthirsty, violent and rapacious - 'wolves among sheep'. As
such they hardly represented an image with which most car manufacturers would wish
to associate themselves. So how did a Viking end up on that radiator cap?

The first coherent challenge to the many anti-Viking images promoted by early
chroniclers emerged in the 17th century. Pioneering scholarly editions of what were
believed to be texts of the Viking Age began to reach a small but influential readership
in Britain. These works revealed an altogether more civilised profile of early
Scandinavian culture, with its coherent system of ethics, highly developed (albeit
pagan) spirituality, and discernibly democratic instincts and structures. During the 18th
century other colourful tales of Old Norse myth and legend also attracted readers.

The term 'Viking' was virtually unknown ...

And yet, for all such early stirrings of interest, it was Victorian Britain that really
invented the Vikings as we now know them. The term 'Viking' was virtually unknown
until the beginning of the nineteenth century (the first Oxford English Dictionary
reference dates from 1807), and yet during that century the figure of the Viking,
Vikingr, Vikinger, Vikingir, Vi-king, Vik-ing, Wiking, Wicking, Sea-King, Sea-Rover,
Northman and Norseman came to feature prominently in numerous paraphrased sagas,
prize essays, popular lectures, poems, plays, pious novels, papers in learned journals,
and the like.

Archaeologists, in turn, began to dig up and dust off Britain's Viking past: neglected
cairns were opened, fragmented grave slabs reassembled, and ancient jewellery pored
over. Dialect enthusiasts were now eager to identify a Viking-Age origin for rural idioms
and proverbs encountered in their fieldwork. Runic inscriptions yielded up (or had
wrenched out of them) their long-hidden secrets, real or imagined. New grammars and
dictionaries of the Old Icelandic language enabled the Victorians to grapple with
primary texts, supported on occasion by contact with distinguished Icelandic scholars
resident in Britain.

The Victorians

Queen Victoria ©These emerging Viking enthusiasts knew no

barriers of class or geography across the English-speaking world. We find a wealthy
American matriarch in Rhode Island, commissioning stained glass windows celebrating
the Norse discovery of America - designed for her new mansion by William Morris and
Edward Burne-Jones; or we come across a stout citizen of Middlesex, assigning an
exotic Old Norse mythological name to his modest suburban residence; or a
Lincolnshire vicar, earnestly tracing local rural songs back to pagan Danelaw traditions.
... the entire Hanoverian royal family was related to Ragnarr Hairy-Breeches ...

Queen Victoria's court did not go untouched by these northerly cultural breezes. There
were claims that Victoria was descended from Óõinn that the entire Hanoverian royal
family was related to Ragnarr Hairy-Breeches, a mighty Viking chief; and that King
Haraldr Bluetooth was an ancestor of the Danish-born Princess of Wales. The Queen's
principal physician, Sir Henry Holland, was a trail-blazing Iceland explorer, and under
his influence a native Icelandic scholar was received at court, where he recited an
eddic-style Icelandic poem. The poet claimed it was the first such performance by an
Icelandic 'skald' since Gunnlaugr Wormtongue visited King Æthelred the Unready in the
11th century.

We learn, too, that Victoria's principal organist at St George's Chapel at Windsor set to
music songs from The Pirate, Sir Walter Scott's haunting novel of 1821, about the still
powerful Viking voices and values in the post-medieval Orkney and Shetland Isles.
Earlier, one of the then Princess Victoria's chaplains at Windsor, the Reverend William
Strong, had dedicated his translation of Bishop Esaias Tegnér'sFrithiof's Saga (of 1834),
'a [Viking-Age] Scandinavian Legend of Royal Love', to the young Princess, 'a living
impersonation of the graces and attractions, of the inflexible rectitude and fine
sensibility, of the conscious dignity and patriotic devotion ...ascribed by the fiction to
the Royal Maiden of Norway'.

Frithiof's Saga

Illustration from 'The Song of Frithiof' Retold in Modern Verse'

©Frithiofs saga was a telling choice of text, for it highlights those real and mythic
Viking qualities to which Victorians so warmed, and with which they so identified. Based
on a 14th-century Icelandic saga, Bishop Tegné's poem did for the old north what
Tennyson was later to do for Camelot; it animated a previously neglected medieval
culture, making it seem arresting, attractive and (even) exemplary. Victorian and
Edwardian notions of Vikingism came to be substantially constructed around this (now)
long-forgotten poem which attracted, astonishingly, some 16 English language versions
during the 19th century.
Witches of the deep conjure up a tempest to destroy the hero's magic ship ...

Frithiof, worthy son of a loyal yeoman Viking, successfully wooed the daughter of King
Beli, his father's trusted friend. With the death of both patriarchs, the socially unequal
match is sabotaged by the demure Ingeborg's jealous brothers. As a token of peace she
is offered to an aged but predatory neighbouring king; and Frithiof is sent off on a
voyage - ostensibly to collect taxes, but in reality to perish at sea.

Witches of the deep conjure up a tempest to destroy the hero's magic ship, and during
the storm Frithiof reveals many of the qualities that the Victorians admired in, and
projected onto, their Vikings: he is bold, brave, laconic, poetic, and a source of
inspiration to his terrified crew. Moreover, safely back on dry land, 'stalwart' Frithiof
reveals other virtues: in his marriage to the (by now) widowed Ingeborg, in his defeat
of the royal princes, in his election to leadership, and in his willingness to accept the
new Christian religion, we find a paradigm of Victorian values. Frithiof the Viking
becomes the acceptable face of constitutional monarchy, democratic accountability,
social Darwinism, upward social mobility, and family values spirituality.

Vikings as role models

Detail of illustration from 'The Song of Frithiof Retold in Modern Verse',

showing a stylised Viking helmet. ©By
the beginning of the 20th century, children's book
illustrators had furnished Frithiof with all the necessary designer-label fashion
accessories of the successful Viking hero: long blond locks, decorated horned helmet,
flashing sword, elaborate cross-gartering, and a dragon-headed longship hinting at the
remarkable archaeological realities eventually revealed by the excavation of the
Gokstad and Oseberg Viking vessels. The engravings in George Stephens's 1839
translation of the Frithiof tale established the principal elements: the lavishly appointed
hall, the pagan temple (Victorian enthusiasts regarded old northern pagan piety as
preferable to modern scientific rationalism), the rune stones, and the longship (a
symbol of high-technological energy and enterprise). It was, of course, out of just this
cluster of positive images that Rover found their Viking 'sea-rover' radiator cap, and
(eventually) their trademarked longship, which flourishes to this day.
... Viking blood flowed in Victorian veins ...

Such symbols were also intended to signal the broader old northern virtues which some
enthusiasts identified at the heart of British nationhood. They believed that Viking blood
flowed in Victorian veins, and that the time had come to celebrate this. In the words of
George Dasent, assistant editor of The Times, Professor at King's College, London, and
in 1861 translator of The Story of Burnt Njal:

They [the Vikings] were like England in the nineteenth century: fifty years before all the
rest of the world with her manufactories, and firms and five and twenty before them
with her railways. They were foremost in the race of civilisation and progress; well
started before all the rest had thought of running. No wonder, then, that both won.
Such sentiments reached out to the young males of Middle England, challenging the
previously unquestioned supremacy of the nation's Graeco-Roman cultural inheritance.
We find them celebrated on the final page of RM Ballantyne's Erling the Bold: A Tale of
the Norse Sea-Kings (1869), one of several saga tales for Victorian schoolboys:

Yes, there is perhaps more of Norse blood in your veins than you wot of, reader,
whether you be English or Scotch; for these sturdy sea-rovers invaded our lands from
north, south, east, and west many a time in days gone by, and held it in possession for
centuries at a time, leaving a lasting and beneficial impress on our customs and
characters. We have good reason to regard their memory with respect and gratitude,
despite their faults and sins, for much of what is good and true in our laws and social
customs, much of what is manly and vigorous in the British Constitution, and much of
our intense love of freedom and fair play, is due to the pith, pluck, enterprise, and
sense of justice that dwelt in the breasts of the rugged old sea-kings of Norway!

Modern-day Vikings

A modern vision of a Viking ©Inevitably,

such perceptions of the
Viking Age have undergone significant transformation since then. Gone are the days
when A-level text books included digested versions of Njál's Saga(1917) or Old Norse
myths (as late as 1944). Also gone is the grim contemporary reality that lay behind the
bleak words of a British Museum-based correspondent, writing to a scholar in Iceland in
the dark days of 1941:
You must not expect me to share ...your high opinion of the Vikings. They were brave
and skilful men, but they were a nuisance in the world they lived in, as other brave and
skilful men are today.
Yet, precisely because of its capacity to undergo cultural transformation, reconstruction,
and reassessment, the old north retains its power to attract and intrigue. A number of
the qualities that once attracted Victorians to the Vikings remain stubbornly seductive,
and new emphases have also emerged. It has not harmed the modern Viking cause
that, in a devolutionary era, the old Norsemen exerted their greatest influence in the
highlands, islands and regions of Britain rather than in London - for once, Wirral,
Wigton or the Wash Estuary can be as important as Westminster.

A number of the qualities which once attracted Victorians to the Vikings

remain stubbornly seductive ...

Our modern sense of the Viking Age has embraced recent insights into old northern
narrative and poetic art, representations of women, runic inscriptions, attitudes to the
environment, and links between language and nationhood. We can also relish the
colourful redeployment of familiar Viking images within popular culture: from Viking
Heritage museums to websites promoting runic healing; from cartoons and children's
television to the advertising of products as diverse as axes, beer, bricks, bacon,
executive coaches, golf courses, liquorice, sailing tackle and water beds.

Happily, the stiff upper lips of the mythic Viking Age can still raise a modern smile.
Thomas Bartholin would certainly have approved. He was the 17th-century Danish
scholar and antiquarian who first set the standard for translating old northern culture
into comprehensible post-medieval shapes and meanings. Many Victorians and
Edwardians ran hard with the same popularising baton, and in the 21st century there
are still competitors aplenty, eager to explore the old north and make it their own.

Viking Weapons and Warfare

Ships

The Vikings were daring masters of the sea. Their swift wooden longships, equipped with both sails and oars,
enabled them to mount piratical raids on the coastal monasteries and settlements of the British Isles, western
Europe and beyond. The shallow draught of these ships meant that they were able to reach far inland by river
and stream, striking and moving on before local forces could muster.

Fearsome figureheads would be raised at stem and stern as a sign of warlike intent ...

Well preserved remains of Viking ships, like those found at Oseberg and Gokstad in Norway and Skuldelev in
Denmark, show they were clinker-built of overlapping planks and measured between about 17.5m and 36m in
length. They were steered not by a rudder, but by a single oar mounted on the starboard side. A few late
examples are said to have had iron-clad bows and sterns. An average speed of 10 to 11 knots could have been
achieved, or perhaps rather more in short bursts. Crews of 25 to 60 men would have been common, seated on
benches on open decks, although the largest ships could have carried as many as 100 or more. Packhorses and
provisions would also be included if needed.

Fearsome figureheads would be raised at stem and stern as a sign of warlike intent, underlined by rows of
shields mounted along the sides for defence or show. These could be removed while at sea. Raids in single
ships were quite frequent and, before around 850, fleets rarely comprised more than 100 ships. Much larger
fleets of 200 and upwards were recorded later, but it is difficult to know how accurate the reports were.

Actual sea-battles were rare, and even then were fought close to shore. Ships were roped together in lines to
face an enemy fleet and showers of arrows and missiles would have been exchanged. Each side then resorted
to hand-to-hand fighting as they attempted to board their opponents' ships. The warriors in the prow were
specially selected for this task. The aim was not to destroy enemy craft, but to capture them if possible, as they
represented a considerable investment in time, resources and labour.

Forts and forays

Mounted knight carrying a shield and lance, from the Isle of Lewis chess-set ©Before
the end of the
11th century the Vikings fought mainly on foot. Their horses were small and they had no real cavalry.
Documentary sources do report horses occasionally being used by Viking leaders in battle, but more usually
they served as a rapid means of transport to the battlefield, where their riders dismounted to fight.
Types of military engagement might range from small-scale family feuds or gang-raids to full-scale pitched
battles. At the battle of Stiklestad in Norway, St Olaf and his army of some 3,600 warriors were defeated by a
much larger force in 1030, and at Ashingdon, in Essex, the Danish king Cnut routed King Edmund in 1016.
The largest armies may have consisted of 4,000 to 7,000 men. But they would generally have dispersed after a
campaign and either returned to their lives as farmers, merchants or craftsmen, or joined up with other war-
bands.

According to sources such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Vikings on campaign abroad sometimes
constructed temporary winter camps. Only one English example has yet been identified, at Repton in
Derbyshire. There the Danish Great Army, which had landed in East Anglia in 865, took shelter over the
winter of 873-4.

But in Scandinavia itself we find the remains of ringforts constructed in the late tenth century, such as at
Fyrkat, Trelleborg and, the largest, at Aggersborg, in Denmark. They were precisely planned to a similar
design and their diameters range from around 120 to 240m. It is estimated that the buildings they once
enclosed could have housed between 6,000 to 9,000 inhabitants. It was formerly thought that they were
barracks prepared for an attack on England. But their date suggests rather that they were royal defensive and
administrative centres, possibly built by Harald Bluetooth to unify the country at a time of conflict with the
German Empire. They appear to have lasted for only 30 years or so.

Offensive weapons

Viking sword, spearheads and battle-axe, found in the London area ©Laws
of the late
Viking period show that all free men were expected to own weapons, and magnates were expected to provide
them for their men. The main offensive weapons were the spear, sword and battle-axe, although bows and
arrows and other missiles were also used. Weapons were carried not just for battle, but also as symbols of their
owners' status and wealth. They were therefore often finely decorated with inlays, twisted wire and other
adornments in silver, copper and bronze.
Weapons were not just for battle, but also symbols of their owners' status and wealth.

The spear was the commonest weapon with an iron blade on a wooden shaft, often of ash and 2 to 3m in
length. It was used for both thrusting and throwing. The blades varied in shape from broad leaf shapes to long
spikes. Skilled spearsmen are said to have been able to throw two spears at once using both hands, or even to
catch a spear in flight and hurl it back with deadly effect.

Swords were very costly to make, and a sign of high status. The blades were usually double-edged and up to
90cm, or a little over, in length, but early single-edged sabres are also known. They were worn in leather-
bound wooden scabbards. Early blades were pattern-welded, a technique in which strips of wrought iron and
mild steel were twisted and forged together, with the addition of a hardened edge. Later blades of
homogeneous steel, imported probably from the Rhineland, bore inlaid makers' marks and inscriptions, such as
INGELRII or ULFBERHT. Viking craftsmen often added their own elaborately decorated hilts, and many
swords were given names, such as Leg-biter and Gold-hilt.

Long-handled battle-axes might be used instead of swords, particularly in open combat. The famed, double-
handed broad axe is a late development, typical of the late 10th and 11th centuries. But as the owner could not
hold a shield at the same time, he would take cover behind the front line of warriors, rushing out at the right
moment to hew down the enemy.

Top

Defence
 Replica of a Viking helmet found in a man's grave at Gjermundbu, Norway ©For defence, circular
shields up to one metre across were carried. They were made of wooden boards and had a central hole for an
iron hand-grip, which was riveted to the back of the boards. A domed iron boss was fitted over the hole to
protect the hand. Viking shields were probably leather covered, with a rim binding also of leather, or metal in
some cases. The Viking sagas - mostly composed in Iceland in the 13th century - show that they could have
been painted with simple patterns, as in the case of those found in the Gokstad ship, or even possibly with
mythological scenes and heroes. Around 1000, the continental, kite-shaped shield was introduced, which gave
more protection for the legs.
Reindeer hide is said to have been used as armour ...

The sagas also mention 'byrnies' - long tunics of mail armour reaching below the waist - but surviving
examples are rare. The mail consisted of interlocking rings with overlapping ends, formed by coiling an iron
wire around a rod and then snipping it along the length of the rod. It took many hours to produce a mail shirt,
making it very expensive, so they were probably worn mainly by the leaders. It was essential to wear thick
padding underneath to absorb the force of sword blows or arrow strikes. Reindeer hide is said to have been
used as armour, too, and was reputedly more effective even than mail. Plate armour was not employed, but
scale or lamellar armour may occasionally have been obtained from the East, as pieces have been found at the
site of Birka, in Sweden.

Helmets were likewise probably worn only by the leading men, although the horned helmet is a modern myth!
Helmets required considerable skill to produce: an example of the tenth century from a man's grave at
Gjermundbu, Norway, has a spectacles-like visor, an iron dome consisting of four sections with a spike on the
crown, and possibly a mail neck-guard. Caps of hide may have been commonly worn, but have not survived.

Battles and tactics

 Swordsmen in berserk stance, biting the rims of their shields; warders
from the Isle of Lewis chess-set. ©The
Vikings had no professional standing army, and tactics
and discipline seem to have been fairly rudimentary. They did not fight in regular
formations, although the bonds of loyalty between men and their lords would have
given their armies some cohesion. Weapons training began in youth in hunting, sports
and raiding. Aspiring warriors sought armed service in the retinues of the famous, for
which they hoped to be rewarded with weapons and fame of their own. A leader
therefore needed to wage war frequently in order to keep his following and maintain
power against rivals.
The famous "berserks" ...would work themselves into a battle frenzy so
intense it is said ...they could even ignore the pain of wounds.

In preparation for battle the younger warriors would draw up in line, with their shields
overlapping in a 'shield-wall' for better protection; their chiefs were well defended by a
close bodyguard. The older veterans formed up in support behind them. Battle then
began by throwing a spear over the enemy line to dedicate them to Odin, it is said, and
this was followed by a shower of spears, arrows and other missiles.

If this was not enough to decide the outcome, each side then attempted to break
through and rout the opposition, capturing or killing their leaders if possible. The
experienced commander knew that the best way to achieve this was by forming a
wedge of 20 to 30 warriors, with its point towards the enemy line in what was known as
the svinfylking, or 'boar formation', and then charge, hoping to break through by sheer
weight of numbers.

The famous 'berserks', whose name suggests they wore bearskins, may have fought in
groups, and believed that Odin, the god of war, gave them both protection and
superhuman powers so they had no need of armour. They would work themselves into
a battle frenzy so intense it is said they bit on the edges of their shields, and could even
ignore the pain of wounds.

Viking Religion
The age of conversion

The Viking Age was a period of considerable religious change in Scandinavia. Part of the
popular image of the Vikings is that they were all pagans, with a hatred of the Christian
Church, but this view is very misleading. It is true that almost the entire population of
Scandinavia was pagan at the beginning of the Viking Age, but the Vikings had many
gods, and it was no problem for them to accept the Christian god alongside their own.
Most scholars today believe that Viking attacks on Christian churches had nothing to do
with religion, but more to do with the fact that monasteries were typically both wealthy
and poorly defended, making them an easy target for plunder.

...monasteries were typically both wealthy and poorly defended, making them
an easy target for plunder.

The Vikings came into contact with Christianity through their raids, and when they
settled in lands with a Christian population, they adopted Christianity quite quickly. This
was true in Normandy, Ireland, and throughout the British Isles. Although
contemporary accounts say little about this, we can see it in the archaeological
evidence. Pagans buried their dead with grave goods, but Christians normally didn't,
and this makes it relatively easy to spot the change in religion.

As well as conversion abroad, the Viking Age also saw a gradual conversion in
Scandinavia itself, as Anglo-Saxon and German missionaries arrived to convert the
pagans. By the mid-11th century, Christianity was well established in Denmark and
most of Norway. Although there was a temporary conversion in Sweden in the early
11th century, it wasn't until the mid-12th century that Christianity became established
there. As part of the process of conversion the Christians took over traditional pagan
sites. A good example of this can be seen at Gamle Uppsala in Sweden, where the
remains of an early church stand alongside a series of huge pagan burial mounds.

Pagan belief

Silver Thor's hammer amulet, possibly worn for protection while at sea
©We know almost nothing about pagan religious practices in the Viking Age. There is
little contemporary evidence, and although there are occasional references to paganism
in the Viking sagas - mostly composed in Iceland in the 13th century - we have to
remember that these were written down 200 years after the conversion to Christianity.
We know that chieftains also had some sort of role as priests, and that pagan worship
involved the sacrifice of horses, but not much more.
We know rather more about the stories associated with the pagan gods. Besides
occasional references in early poems, these stories survived after conversion because it
was possible to regard them simply as myths, rather than as the expression of religious
beliefs. The main sources of evidence are the Eddas, wonderful literary works which
represent the old pagan beliefs as folk tales. Even here there is some Christian
influence. For example, the chief god Odin was sacrificed to himself by being hanged on
a tree and pierced in the side with a spear, and this was followed by a sort of
resurrection a few days later - a clear parallel with Christ's crucifixion.

Even so, the Eddas provide a huge amount of information about the ®sir (gods), and
their relationship with giants, men and dwarfs. The most powerful god was the one-
eyed Odin, the Allfather, god of warfare, justice, death, wisdom and poetry. Probably
the most popular god, however, was Thor, who was stupid but incredibly strong. With
his hammer Miollnir, crafted by the dwarfs, he was the main defender of the gods
against the giants. He was also the god of thunder, and he was particularly worshipped
by seafarers. Amulets of Thor's hammer were popular throughout the Viking world. The
brother and sister Frey and Freyja, the god and goddess of fertility, were also
important, and there were many other minor gods and goddesses.

Gods and giants

Detail from the stone cross (below) ©The

great enemies of the
gods were the giants, and there were often conflicts between the two races. Among the
gods, only Thor was a match for the giants in strength, so the gods usually had to rely
on cunning to outwit the giants. Odin himself was capable of clever tricks, but
whenever the gods needed a really cunning plan, they turned to the fire-god Loki. Like
fire, which can bring necessary warmth or cause great destruction, Loki did many
things that benefited the gods, but he also caused them great harm, and often the
problems he solved had been caused by his mischief in the first place.
 A stone cross from the Isle of Man showing Odin (with raven) fighting the Fenris
wolf at the time of Ragnarok ©Despite
the tension between gods and giants, there was a fair
amount of contact on an individual basis, and a number of the gods had relationships
with giantesses. One of these was Loki, who had three monstrous children by his
giantess wife. His daughter Hel became ruler of the underworld. One son,
Jormunagund, was a serpent who grew so large that he stretched all the way around
the earth. The other son was Fenris, a wolf so powerful that he terrified the gods until
they tricked him into allowing himself to be tied up with a magical chain which bound
him until the end of time.
It was believed that the world would end with the final battle of Ragnarok, between the
gods and the giants. Loki and his children would take the side of the giants. Thor and
Jormunagund, who maintained a long-running feud with each other, would kill each
other, and Odin would be killed by the Fenris wolf, who would then be killed in turn. A
fire would sweep across the whole world, destroying both the gods and mankind.
However, just enough members of both races would survive to start a new world.

Pagan and Christian together

Silver 'St Peter' penny from York. The final 'I' of 'PETRI' takes the form of
Thor's hammer ©The raids on the Frankish kingdoms and the British Isles brought
increased contact with Christianity. Although Vikings often seem to have maintained
their beliefs throughout the periods of their raiding, there was considerable pressure to
convert to Christianity if they wished to have more peaceful relations with the
Christians. This could happen on a political level, as in the Treaty of Wedmore in 878.
The treaty bound the Viking leader Guthrum to accept Christianity, with Alfred of
Wessex as his godfather, and Alfred in turn recognised Guthrum as the ruler of East
Anglia.
...Christians were not really supposed to trade with pagans...

Another more or less formal convention applied to trade, since Christians were not
really supposed to trade with pagans. Although a full conversion does not seem to have
been demanded of all Scandinavian traders, the custom of 'primsigning' (first-signing)
was introduced. This was a halfway step, falling short of baptism, but indicating some
willingness to accept Christianity, and this was often deemed to be enough to allow
trading.

Further pressure came as Viking raiders settled down alongside Christian neighbours.
Although scholars disagree on exactly how extensive the Scandinavian settlement was
in different parts of the British Isles, few people would now accept that the Vikings
completely replaced the native population in any area. In particular, the settlers often
took native wives (or at least partners), although some settlers apparently brought
their families over from Scandinavia. The children of these mixed marriages would
therefore grow up in partially Christian households, and might even be brought up as
Christians. Further intermarriage, coupled with the influence of the Church, gradually
brought about a complete conversion.

The peaceful co-existence of pagans and Christians is suggested by some of the

coinage of Viking York. One coin type carries the name of St Peter, rather than the
ruler. This seems very obviously Christian, but on many of the coins, the final 'I' of
'PETRI' takes the form of Thor's hammer, and some of these coins also have a hammer
on the reverse. These coins seem to carry a deliberate message that both paganism
and Christianity were acceptable.

Conversion in Scandinavia
 Rune-stone from Jelling, showing the figure of Christ on the cross. ©Attempts to
convert Scandinavia began even before the Viking Age. The Anglo-Saxon St Willibrord
led a mission to Denmark in 725, but although he was well-received by the king, his
mission had little effect. The Frankish St Ansgar led a second wave of missionary
activity from the 820s onwards - with the support of the Frankish Emperor Louis the
Pious. Ansgar and his followers established missions in both Denmark and Sweden, with
the support of local rulers, but made little impact on the population as a whole.
Harald Bluetooth's famous runestone at Jelling tells us that he 'made the
Danes Christian'...

Archaeological evidence suggests that Christianity was adopted piecemeal in Norway,

with settlements converting or not depending on whether the local chieftain converted.
The same idea can also be seen on a larger scale. In the mid-tenth century Hakon the
Good of Norway, who had been fostered in England, tried to use his royal authority to
establish Christianity. However, when it became clear that this would lose him the
support of pagan chieftains, he abandoned his attempts, and his Anglo-Saxon bishops
were sent back to England.

Harald Bluetooth of Denmark was apparently more successful. His famous runestone at
Jelling tells us that he 'made the Danes Christian', and this is supported both by
Christian imagery on Danish coins from his reign and by German records of the
establishment of bishops in various Danish towns. This began the lasting conversion of
the Danes. Although there may have been a brief pagan reaction after Harald's death,
the influence of the Church became firmly established once Cnut became ruler of both
England and Denmark in 1018.

Further attempts by Anglo-Saxon missionaries in the late tenth century had only a
limited effect in Norway and Sweden. Olaf Tryggvasson of Norway and Olof Tribute-king
of Sweden were both converted, but this had limited effect on the population as a
whole. A further wave of conversion in Norway under Olaf Haraldsson (St Olaf) (1015-
30) was more successful and gradually led to lasting conversion. Sweden, however,
faced a pagan reaction in the mid-11th century, and it was not until the 12th century
that Christianity became firmly established.

Status and bullion

The Viking Age saw major changes in the economy of Scandinavia. At the beginning of the Viking Age, few
people in Scandinavia had any knowledge of coinage. Some foreign coins entered the region as a result of
trading contacts both with western Europe and the Islamic world to the east. However, except in major trading
centres such as Hedeby and Ribe, in Denmark, the idea of coinage as such was unfamiliar. Coins were valued
only for their weight in silver or gold, and circulated alongside many other forms of precious metal.

Precious metals were also a symbol of wealth and power.

This is what is known as a bullion economy, in which the weight and the purity of the precious metal are what
is important, not what form the metal takes. Far and away the most common metal in the economy was silver,
although gold was also used. Silver circulated in the form of bars, or ingots, as well as in the form of jewellery
and ornaments. Large pieces of jewellery were often chopped up into smaller pieces known as 'hack-silver' to
make up the exact weight of silver required. Imported coins and fragments of coins were also used for the
same purpose. Traders carried small scales which could measure weight very accurately, so it was possible to
have a very precise system of trade and exchange even without a regular coinage.

Sliver Brooch ©Precious

metals were also a symbol of wealth and power. Like many
peoples throughout history, the Vikings demonstrated their wealth and status by wearing beautiful jewellery, or
by having expensively ornamented weapons, which were their equivalents of the Armani suit or the Rolex
watch of today. In many cases, imported coins were melted down as the raw material for arm-rings, neck-rings
or brooches. In other cases, coins were even mounted as jewellery. The show of wealth was more important
than the idea of a coin-based economy.

Familiarisation
 Viking coin-weight from Wareham, with inset silver penny of Ethelred I of Wessex ©The
Viking raids of the ninth century brought the raiders into regular contact with the monetary economies of
western Europe. The Frankish Empire had a strong centralised coinage, which had been introduced by
Charlemagne around the time of the first recorded raid. Although the Empire was divided after 840, the
tradition of strong silver coinage continued in the various smaller kingdoms that replaced it.
The main Anglo-Saxon kingdoms each had their own coinage, and the wealth of Anglo-Saxon England was
probably one of the main causes of the Viking expansion. East Anglia, Kent, Mercia and Wessex all had silver
coinage, although the Kentish coinage disappeared after the kingdom was swallowed up by Wessex in the
820s. Northumbria also had a coinage, but unusually this was mostly made up of copper and bronze coins with
a much lower value. These were apparently of very little interest to Viking raiders.

Both in England and on the Continent, native rulers regularly paid Viking raiders to leave them in
peace.

Both in England and on the Continent, native rulers regularly paid Viking raiders to leave them in peace. The
idea of 'Danegeld' is particularly associated today with the reign of Ethelred II (978-1016), whose policy of
paying off the Vikings rather than fighting them was famously unsuccessful, and led to the conquest of
England by Svein Forkbeard and Cnut. Such payments were also common in the ninth century, and both
Anglo-Saxon and Frankish chronicles are full of references to rulers 'making peace' with the raiders. 'Making
peace' was a polite expression for 'paying them to go away', and could involve large sums, such as the 7,000
pounds paid by the Frankish ruler Charles the Bald in 845. Even Alfred the Great, more famous for his military
resistance, was forced to 'make peace' on occasion. A particular feature of late ninth-century England is the
existence of small lead weights, with Anglo-Saxon coins set into the top. These were probably used by the
Vikings to weigh out payments in coinage.

Imitation
 Silver penny of Athelstan / Guthrum, imitating Alfred's 'Two-line' type ©The
idea of
coinage was not a difficult one to grasp, and once the Viking raiders began to settle in England in the late ninth
century, they began to issue coins of their own. Today this might seem an obvious thing to do, because we are
used to dealing with coins on a regular basis. However, even a single silver penny (the only common
denomination in the period) was a valuable item, and most poorer people probably never handled coinage at
all. Coins might be very slightly more convenient than some other forms of silver, but payments continued to
be primarily based on the total weight and quality of the silver.
Most of the early Viking coin types were imitations of more established coinage.

The reasons for adopting coinage were probably political and cultural as much as economic. Like many
'barbarian' invaders, the Vikings looked at the more 'civilised' peoples they had invaded, and wanted to be like
them. Issuing coins was one of the established rights associated with Christian kingship in Europe in the early
Middle Ages. The Anglo-Saxons themselves had adopted coinage as soon as they converted to Christianity,
and the Vikings did just the same.

Reverse of silver penny ©Most of the early Viking coin types were imitations of
more established coinage. This is fairly typical of societies that adopt the idea of coinage from their
neighbours. One of the main models for the coinage of the Danelaw was naturally the coinage of Alfred the
Great of Wessex, the most powerful ruler in the British Isles. Many coins from the southern Danelaw carried
Alfred's name, rather than the name of the rulers who issued them. In East Anglia, the Viking Guthrum,
Alfred's godson, issued coins copying the designs of Alfred's coins, but with his own new baptismal name of
Athelstan. Other early designs were copied from Byzantine and Frankish coins, reminding us of the wide range
of the Vikings' contacts.

Coinage in the British Isles

The link between issuing coins and Christian kingship is very clear in the coinage of Viking rulers in the
British Isles. Almost all the coins that carry the name of a ruler were issued in the name of kings, rather than
jarls (or earls). The exception is a rare coinage from around 900 in the name of Sihtric Comes (Jarl Sihtric), of
which only a handful of examples survive. This might not seem surprising, but the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
suggests that the Viking armies were led by jarls as often as kings. Furthermore, when coinage was adopted by
Viking rulers outside England in the 990s and later, the jarls of Orkney did not issue coinage, although they
were probably at least as powerful as the kings of Dublin and the Isle of Man, who did.

Some of the St Peter pennies carry the hammer of the pagan god Thor alongside the name of St Peter.

It is also very noticeable that the coins of the Danelaw carry very Christian symbols. Many have the Christian
cross, and some carry Christian inscriptions such as DOMINUS DEUS REX (Lord God and King) or
MIRABILIA FECIT (He has done marvellous things). Coins were also issued in the name of St Peter at York,
and St Martin at Lincoln. The designs were not all exclusively Christian, however, which suggests some
religious toleration. Some of the St Peter pennies carry the hammer of the pagan god Thor alongside the name
of St Peter. A coin type attributed to Olaf Guthfrithsson of York (939-41) shows a bird that has often been
identified as one of Odin's ravens. It could equally well be interpreted as an eagle, symbol of St John the
Evangelist, and the image may have been chosen deliberately to appeal to Christian and pagan alike.

Whatever the religious symbolism of the Olaf coins may be, they carry a very clear statement of Scandinavian
identity. While most Anglo-Scandinavian coinage had inscriptions in Latin, like Anglo-Saxon and Frankish
coins, Olaf's coins carry the inscription ANLAF CUNUNC (konungr), which is Old Norse for King Olaf.

Coinage in Scandinavia

Silver penny of Olof Tribute-king, king of Sweden, minted in the 990s

©Foreign coins, especially Islamic silver dirhams, were known in Scandinavia
throughout the early Viking Age. They circulated alongside other forms of silver bullion,
but the supply of silver from the east dried up in the late tenth century. This was one
reason for the new wave of Viking raids in the west from the 980s onwards. England
was particularly wealthy, and its ruler Ethelred II found it easier to pay off Viking
raiders than to raise armies to fight them. Apart from leading to the conquest of
England, this policy led to a huge flow of silver coinage to Scandinavia. This continued
as a result of trade during the reign of Cnut and his sons, and even today more late
Anglo-Saxon coins are found in Scandinavia than in Britain.
...even today more late Anglo-Saxon coins are found in Scandinavia than in
Britain.

At the same time, western ideas were also flooding into Scandinavia. These included
the same ideas of Christianity and kingship that the Viking settlers had adopted in
England. This coincided with the gradual unification of the smaller kingdoms into what
we now know as Denmark, Norway and Sweden. These changes are reflected in the
adoption in the late 990s of regal coinage in all three kingdoms. Svein Forkbeard of
Denmark, Olaf Tryggvasson of Norway and Olof Tribute-king of Sweden all issued coins
with their names and titles, imitating the coinage of Ethelred II. Before this there had
been a small anonymous coinage in Denmark, but there were no earlier coins produced
in Norway or Sweden.

Reverse of silver penny of Olof ©The

fate of the coinages was
different in each kingdom. In Norway, the coinage got off to a very weak start and only
really took off under the powerful kingship of Harald Hardrada (1047-66). By contrast,
the Swedish coinage started strongly, but collapsed in the 1030s when the new Swedish
kingdom fragmented and relapsed into paganism. By far the most successful was the
Danish coinage, which started strongly under Svein Forkbeard and became firmly
established once Cnut united the kingdoms of Denmark and England. As in England,
coinage was issued in a number of towns around the kingdom, and these also acted as
power centres both for the king and the Church.
Female Vikings?

Could women be Vikings? Strictly speaking, they could not. The Old Norse
word vikingar is exclusively applied to men, usually those who sailed from Scandinavia
in groups to engage in the activities of raiding and trading in Britain, Europe and the
East. But some Vikings stayed behind in these regions, and Scandinavian colonies were
also established in the North Atlantic (Faroe, Iceland, Greenland).

... a permanent population could only be established if women also made the
journey ...
Women could and did play a part in this process of settlement. Iceland, for instance,
was uninhabited, and a permanent population could only be established if women also
made the journey there. In regions with an established indigenous population, Viking
settlers may have married local women, while some far-roving Vikings picked up female
companions en route, but there is evidence that Scandinavian women reached most
parts of the Viking world, from Russia in the east to Newfoundland in the west.

Most journeys from Scandinavia involved sea-crossings in small, open ships with no
protection from the elements. Families heading for the North Atlantic colonies would
also have to take all the livestock they would need to establish a new farm, and the
journey cannot have been pleasant. The Viking colonists settled down to the farming
life in their new home, or established themselves as traders and became town-dwellers.
Both farming and trading were family businesses, and women were often left in charge
when their husbands were away or dead. There is also evidence that women could
make a living in commerce in the Viking Age. Merchants' scales and weights found in
female graves in Scandinavia suggest an association between women and trade, while
an account of a ninth-century Christian mission to Birka, a Swedish trading centre,
relates the conversion of a rich widow Frideburg and her daughter Catla, who travelled
to the Frisian port of Dorestad.

Viking women in England

The St Paul's stone ©The 'great Danish army' that criss-

crossed and conquered much of England in the 860s and 870s probably had camp-
followers, although these need not have been Scandinavian women. The Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle notes that a Viking army operating in the years 892-5 was accompanied by
women and children, who had to be put in a place of safety while the army fought and
harried. But this army arrived in England after raiding on the continent and at least
some of the women may have come from there. The first Viking settlers who turned
their swords into ploughshares are unlikely to have had Scandinavian wives.
... there was considerable Scandinavian immigration into ... England ...

However, place-names and language suggest that there was considerable Scandinavian
immigration into those areas of England controlled by the Viking invaders, later known
as the 'Danelaw'. Although the nature and extent of the Scandinavian immigration is
contested by scholars, the most convincing explanation of the evidence is that there
was a peaceful migration of Scandinavian families to parts of the north and east of
England throughout the tenth century. Recent finds of large numbers of low-grade,
Scandinavian-style female jewellery, particularly in Lincolnshire, have been taken to
show the presence of Scandinavian women there in the tenth century. These finds
correlate well with the distribution of Scandinavian place-names in the same region:
taken together, the evidence does suggest a significant Scandinavian presence.

There was a further significant influx of Scandinavians into England during the reign of
Cnut in the 11th century. These new, higher-class immigrants left their mark in London
and the south, areas not previously subject to Scandinavian settlement. The rune stone
from St Paul's, London, with its fragmentary inscription which tells us only that it was
commissioned by Ginna (a woman) and T-ki (a man), shows two Scandinavians
asserting their cultural affiliations at the heart of the English kingdom.

Scandinavian immigration

An elderly woman of high-status was buried at Scar with her possessions

©Scandinavian immigration had a greater impact on the more sparsely-populated
areas of the British Isles, especially the Northern Isles and the Hebrides. In these rural
and maritime regions, the settlement pattern is less like England and more like the
Scandinavian colonies of the North Atlantic, with the difference that there were
indigenous populations (such as the Picts) to contend with. Whether these were driven
out or whether they reached some accommodation with the incomers, the place-name
evidence is compatible with an almost total Scandinavian takeover of Orkney and
Shetland.
Pagan graves provide plentiful archaeological evidence ...

Pagan graves provide plentiful archaeological evidence for early Scandinavian

settlement in Scotland, and for female settlers. Two graves from Orkney show us two
very different women: the young, stout and wealthy mother of newborn twins from
Westness, and the high-status, elderly woman from Scar, buried in a boat along with a
younger man and a child, a matriarch, perhaps even a priestess of Freya.

While the Northern Isles are completely Scandinavian in language and culture, the
Viking-settled areas in and around the Irish Sea had a more varied population. The rich
female grave from the Isle of Man, popularly known as the 'Pagan Lady of Peel', shows
a woman with almost wholly Scandinavian affinities, but the 30 or so Christian runic
monuments of that island reveal a much more mixed picture. These are basically Celtic
crosses with some Scandinavian-style decoration, including mythological scenes. The
inscriptions are in runes and Old Norse, but the personal names (both Norse and Celtic)
and the grammatically-confused language suggest a thoroughly mixed community. At
least a quarter of these monuments commemorate women, mostly as wives, though a
stone from Kirk Michael appears to be in memory of a foster-mother, and the
inscription notes that 'it is better to leave a good foster-son than a bad son'.

Daily life

A brooch found at the Scar burial ground ©The

mythological poem
Rígsþula, written down in medieval Iceland, accounts for the divine origin of the three
main social classes. But it also gives us a snapshot of daily life in the Viking Age. The
woman of the slave-class wears 'old-fashioned clothes' and serves bread that is 'heavy,
thick, packed with bran... in the middle of a trencher', with 'broth in a basin'. The
woman of the yeoman class wears a cap and a blouse, has a kerchief around her neck
and 'brooches at her shoulders', and is busy with her spindle, 'ready for weaving'. The
aristocratic woman is just busy preening herself: she wears a blouse of smooth linen, a
spreading skirt with a blue bodice, a tall headdress and appropriate jewellery, and has
very white skin. She serves silver dishes of pork and poultry on a white linen cloth,
washed down with wine.
... women were often buried in their best outfits ...

The archaeological evidence shows that women were often buried in their best outfits,
including a pair of oval brooches of gilt bronze, which held up a woollen overdress worn
with a linen underdress. Many spindle whorls have been found, as most women would
have been engaged in spinning and other textile production much of the time. A Viking
Age spindle whorl from L'Anse aux Meadows (in Newfoundland) is evidence that women
also reached the New World.

The standard Viking Age house was rectangular and had just one room, in which
everything took place around a central hearth. This house type has been found from
Sweden in the east to Newfoundland in the west, in both rural settlements and in towns
such as York and Dublin. As in most traditional societies, women spent much of their
time indoors in such houses, cooking, making clothing and caring for children and the
elderly, but they would also have had responsibility for the dairy.

Women of influence
 The Oseberg ship ©Most women's lives were bounded by hearth and
home, but they had great influence within this sphere. The keys with which many were
buried symbolise their responsibility for, and control over, the distribution of food and
clothing to the household.
Some women made their mark through exceptional status or achievement. One of the
richest burials of Viking Age Scandinavia is that of the Oseberg 'queen', buried in a very
grand style with a richly-decorated ship and large numbers of high-quality grave goods
in 834. Later in that century, Aud the 'deep-minded' lived a veritable Viking Age
odyssey. The daughter of a Norwegian chieftain in the Hebrides, she married a Viking
based in Dublin and, when both her husband and son had died, took charge of the
family fortunes, organising a ship to take her and her granddaughters to Orkney, Faroe
and Iceland. She settled in Iceland, distributing land to her followers, and was
remembered as one of its four most important settlers, and as a notable early
Christian.

Some women made their mark through exceptional status or achievement.

The Christianisation of Scandinavia in the 11th century gave women new roles, which
are reflected in the rune stones from this period. On the Dynna stone from Norway,
Gunnvor commemorates her daughter Astrid with pictures of the Nativity, while the
Stäket stone from Sweden commemorates Ingirun, who went on a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem.

Queen Emma sums up the cultural connections of the Viking Age. Her father was Duke
Richard of Normandy, descended from its Viking founder Rollo, while her mother is said
to have been Danish. Emma was married to two kings of England, the English Æthelred
and the Danish Cnut, and was the mother of two more. With Cnut, she was a great
patron of the Church, and after his death she commissioned the Encomium Emmae, a
Latin account of Danish kings in England in the 11th century, ensuring that her portrait
was included in the manuscript.

The day begins

Imagine a scene in North Yorkshire a thousand years ago. The autumn sun crawls lazily
across the horizon, flooding a small coastal valley with the early morning light.
Svensholm is a small Viking homestead, comprising a large hall and a few outbuildings.
The longhouse has thick walls which keep it cool in summer and stop it freezing in
winter. The family sleep in the main hall around the fire pit along with some of the farm
stock. On the top of an outbuilding a cockerel crows rousing the farm to life. With little
thought to the daily chores ahead the immediate care is to breakfast! No breakfast
cereals, bagels or scrambled eggs for these farmers though.

The stew itself ... looks rather scary ...

Whilst Ingrid, the farmer's wife, coaxes the embers of yesterday's fire back to life, Sven
the farmer helps himself to some of yesterday's left-over stew. It has been left in an
iron cauldron, rather like something you'd imagine Halloween witches to sit around. The
stew itself also looks rather scary; a thin crust of fat has formed over a brown liquid
which is made up of boiled lamb bones, beans, peas, carrots and turnips. Sven breaks
off a hunk of bread to dip into the stew. A rather stale crusty flat loaf, this bread was
baked last week.

The children of the household will spend the day helping their parents. Fortified with a
breakfast of bread and buttermilk (similar to skimmed milk), Tostig will help his father
in the fields. The remainder of the harvest has to be gathered in and a lamb needs to
be slaughtered. Sven uses an iron sickle to cut the corn, whilst Tostig uses a wooden
rake to gather the cut corn into sheaths. Later these will be threshed to release the
grains of wheat, rye and barley.

A typical day

A simple midday meal ©Thora will help her mother grind the
corn into flour. The grains are dropped onto the millstones whilst the women take it in
turns to tirelessly grind the mill first one way then the other. The flour is gathered and
mixed with water to make bread. The dough is kneaded in small wooden trugs then
placed in a large clay oven to bake or placed on a flat iron in the embers to make a flat
cake of bread. A few wild chickens and some geese roam the farmyard, Thora will
collect their eggs for the evening meal.
If they are very lucky there may be some fruit ...
For a midday break Sven and Tostig share some cottage cheese, unwrapped from a
soggy piece of linen. If they are very lucky there may be some fruit, wild plums or a
crab apple. A little butter and stale bread completes the meal. To drink they may find a
fresh water stream, have the buttermilk left over from breakfast, or even some weak
ale.

That afternoon, Ingrid's brother Rigsson and his family call at the farm. He is a
fisherman and has brought fish for his sister's family. Herring and cod fresh from the
nets are handed over along with some shellfish. Ingrid repays Riggson's generosity with
some salted bacon (home cured), and some venison - the remainder of last month's
hunt. Whilst Ingrid cuts and guts the fish, the children go into the woods to collect nuts
and berries, which are just coming into season. They find raspberries, elderberries and
some cherries, and nuts such as walnuts and hazelnuts. These will be left in their shells,
cracked open only at mealtimes for greater freshness.

Feast night

Mead, a drink made from honey ©With no fridges or freezers our

Viking family has to take special measures to stop their food going bad. Meat and fish
can be smoked or rubbed with salt. Fruit can be dried; grains are made into bread or
ale. Dairy produce such as milk is made into cheese. Cooking the meat will make it last
a little longer, making sausages will make it last longer still.
At sunset the family gather together in the long house. The usual evening meal will be
enlarged tonight because it is one of the three Viking feast nights. In their homelands a
horse would have been sacrificed to the old Gods. Horsemeat was spitted and roasted
rather like a kebab. Sven and his family nominally follow the Christian faith, however,
so although they celebrate the traditional feast, tonight they will dine on roast lamb.
There will also be salted fish and pork, goat and plenty of fresh bread. For dessert the
Vikings will eat fresh fruit and a little honey on buttered bread. Beer will be drunk as
well as mead, a beverage made from honey.

Horsemeat was spitted and roasted rather like a kebab.

The Vikings had bowls and plates very similar to our own, but made more often from
wood rather than pottery. They ate with a sharp pointed knife, which served as both a
knife and a fork (the latter would not be invented for another century). Spoons were
made from wood, horn or animal bone. They were often carved with delicate patterns of
interlaced knotwork and the heads of fabulous beasts. Drink was taken in horns,
similarly decorated and sometimes with metal tips and rims.

The end of the day

A Viking feast ©As the day ends on our Viking homestead, the
children have gone to bed, wrapped in furs on cots built into the side of the house.
They have listened to their uncle's stories of heroism and legend. Rigsson has told how
the God Thor once went fishing to catch the mighty Midguard Serpent. He fished from
the back of a giant's boat with a rod and line and used an ox head for bait. Thor caught
the serpent but the giant, fearing for the end of the world, cut the line. Sven remarks
on how fishermen's tales of today have not changed much. Night draws in on a house
full of well fed Vikings, seemingly oblivious to the smoky atmosphere from the fire and
the acrid smell of burning fat from the oil lamps. The everyday smells, a mixture of
unwashed clothes, animal dung and curdled milk pass unnoticed.
Bad weather may have meant they had to rely more on stored food ...

So ends a typical culinary day in the Viking Age. Many variants would have been
encountered of course, depending on the season, the geographical location and of
course how well off the farm was. Bad weather may have meant they had to rely more
on stored food, whilst prime locations would have given access to 'exotic' food such as
elk, bear, puffin, salmon and trout.

Finally, you may be wondering just how we know what the Viking diet contained. There
are no Fanny Craddock's cookbooks surviving from those times. Instead we have to rely
on the archaeologist whose painstaking work has revealed the remains of the Dark Age
menu. Fish bones, seeds from berries, and the husks from grain are all present in
Viking latrines (toilets) and middens (rubbish dumps). Surprisingly these food remains
aren't necessarily the same as modern ones. Domesticated animal bones such as cows
and pigs are two-thirds the size of modern ones. Similarly wheat grains are smaller and
less nutritious.
In conclusion, many changes have occurred in the last millennium that has affected our
diet. Modern food is far more accessible, bought from the supermarket, prepacked so
we don't have to butcher it ourselves, and full of added vitamins. However did our
Viking ancestors have to worry about BSE epidemics, genetically modified foods, and
whether food is organic or not? Perhaps the Vikings got it right after all, especially as all
their food was organic and free range!

War or peace?

What happened when Viking raiders turned into Viking settlers and took land to farm?
There is considerable debate and controversy even today about the nature of the
relationship between the colonists and the local population in Britain and Ireland. The
historical sources are clear that the relationship was hostile and that negotiation was by
the sword. Most modern historians argue that the Norwegians who settled in Scotland
and the Danes who settled in England simply took what they wanted by force, killing or
enslaving anyone who got in their way.

Place names are an invaluable source of information on the extent of

Scandinavian influence...

But there is also the evidence of place names and archaeology, and they can be
interpreted in more than one way. Place names are an invaluable source of information
on the extent of Scandinavian influence, and their distribution mirrors the geographical
spread of colonisation known from historical and archaeological evidence. In England,
for instance, Scandinavian names are concentrated within the Danelaw, the area of
northern and eastern England that was in Danish hands.

In Scotland, the most densely concentrated area of Scandinavian names is Caithness,

Orkney and Shetland, where a Norwegian earldom was established. But we should not
assume that density of place names equals numbers of colonists, or that the creation of
place names can be dated precisely. Blanket replacement of native names, as in Orkney
and Shetland, may have happened gradually rather than suddenly. Above all, we need
to remember that the story is likely to have varied across Britain and Ireland, and that
we should balance historical, linguistic and archaeological evidence within a local
framework.

People and daily life

 Exquisite craftsmanship on a Viking strap-end ©History
tells of
events, places and important people. The spread of Scandinavian place names not only
helps to chart the extent of Scandinavian settlement but records the names of lesser
people and how they reacted to the landscape around them. For example, in Shetland,
Haroldswick in the island of Unst means Harold's bay, while Lerwick or 'mud bay'
perpetuates the Vikings' scorn for what was for them a useless harbour. But for the
details of everyday life, we depend on archaeological evidence from excavations. Pagan
graves are particularly useful because the bodies were fully dressed and accompanied
by personal belongings, some of which indicate important activities of the living.
Women often had the iron sickles with which they harvested the flax for making linen;
the toothed iron heckles or combs with which they straightened the fibres; and the
stone discs or whorls that weighted the wooden spindle for spinning the fibres into
thread. Very occasionally they had beautifully carved boards of whalebone on which
they rubbed a high gloss on to the linen. Men were usually buried with their weapons
(sword, shield, spear, arrows, axe) and sometimes with blacksmith's tools such as iron
tongs and hammers.

An antler bone whorl used for spinning ©Farmhousesin the 9th and 10th
centuries were long rectangular buildings with rounded corners, built of stone and turf
or stone and timber with thatched roofs. Most consisted of a single room, 15-20 metres
long, with a central long hearth and low benches lining the long walls. Cooking, eating,
storytelling and sleeping all took place in this one room, along with weaving and carving
bone pins and whatever else was needed. There were separate outhouses for the cattle.
Houses in towns tended to be smaller and were usually built of wood and wattle.
Wherever people lived, domestic rubbish accumulated and with it invaluable information
about diet, hygiene, equipment and everyday activities.

A Viking brooch
 Two brooches attach the straps of a Viking woman's pinafore ©One
of these
everyday objects and something that is found wherever the Vikings settled is the oval
brooch. This was a favourite item of jewellery in Scandinavia, and it is so standardised
in design that it is instantly recognisable. This makes it very useful to the archaeologist
as an indicator of Viking activities. It turns up in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, England,
Scotland, Ireland and even as far away as Iceland and Russia. About 10-12 centimetres
long, the oval brooch was mass-produced in hundreds in workshops throughout
Scandinavia during the 9th and 10th centuries. It was cast in bronze (copper alloy) in a
two-piece clay mould, and the decoration was often quite elaborate, with interlaced
designs and sometimes settings for projecting bosses of amber or glass.
When pagan female graves are excavated, the textiles have normally rotted
away but the two oval brooches will still be in place above the ribcage.

Female dress was very conservative and the equivalent of a folk-costume was worn for
200 years, not just in the homelands but everywhere that the Vikings settled from
Ireland in the west to Russia in the east. It consisted of a pinafore of wool or linen,
which was worn over a long and sometimes pleated linen shift. The pinafore had
shoulder straps that were fastened by a pair of oval brooches, one below each shoulder.
Wealthy women might have a string of brightly coloured beads linking the two brooches
across the chest. When pagan female graves are excavated, the textiles have normally
rotted away but the two oval brooches will still be in place above the ribcage. We
assume such burials to be those of Scandinavian women who came as colonists, but of
course such brooches could equally well have been worn by local women married to
Viking warriors.

Styles of settlement

A walrus ivory dice excavated in York ©Typical

Scandinavian
artefacts like oval brooches, whalebone plaques and ornate swords can be found
throughout the Viking world - but there were remarkable differences in the way that the
newcomers lived. There is a contrast between the essentially rural pattern of Norwegian
settlement in Scotland, with its individual farms and family estates, and the urban
development of Dublin and later Waterford in Ireland. There the Vikings established
trading centres on the coastal fringe of a rural hinterland that was little affected by
Scandinavian activities. York was the northernmost of the Viking towns of England, and
it seems possible that the Viking takeover of rural estates may have stimulated urban
growth in the sense that some of the dispossessed English farmers sought a new life in
trade or industry in towns.
Timber buildings set in plots of equal size suggest a degree of town planning,
while the debris from workshops tells of urban industries.

Viking York in the 10th century was larger than contemporary Scandinavian towns, a
fact that underlines the importance of the Danish settlement of England to the balance
of wealth and power around the North Sea. It was enclosed by an earthen bank topped
by a stout wooden fence, and in places within the heart of the modern city excavations
have revealed deposits of Viking Age material several metres deep. Timber buildings
set in plots of equal size suggest a degree of town planning, while the debris from
workshops tells of urban industries such as leather-working, bone comb-making,
textiles and metalworking. Crucial to urban development is the discovery of coin-
making dies, for the Viking economy had previously been based not on currency but on
silver bullion and the exchange of goods.

Towns were not a Viking invention, and the growth of towns such as York depended on
their existing foundations. This is perhaps why towns did not develop in Scandinavian
Scotland before the 12th century because there had been no previous urban
development. Kirkwall in Orkney was one of the first, stimulated by the building of St
Magnus Cathedral which began in 1137. Until then, despite being the seat of the
Norwegian earldom of Orkney, Caithness and Shetland, Orkney was essentially rural.
Wonderfully fertile, Orkney was a prime target for settlement in the 9th century. There
may even have been Viking winter-camps in Orkney in the late 8th century from which
raiding parties set out for Lindisfarne, Iona and the monasteries of Ireland.

Viking Orkney

Ruins on the Brough of Birsay, Orkney ©We

have no written
records left by the ordinary people who lived in areas that were taken over by the
Vikings. There is no way that we can tell for certain what happened, but we can use the
evidence of artefacts from excavations as clues. Orkney, perhaps the first place to be
colonised, is an ideal place to search. The original people who were living in Orkney at
the start of the Viking Age were Celtic-speakers. They were known as Picts, and
inhabited part of the Kingdom of the Picts which made up most of mainland Scotland.
The question of what happened to them is still hotly debated, especially between
historians, linguists and archaeologists.
By the end of the 9th century, the colonisation of Orkney had been so
successful that it had become a Norwegian earldom.

According to Scandinavian historical sources, the Orkney islands were either deserted
at the time of the earliest Norse settlement or their inhabitants were slaughtered. Very
few Celtic place names survive, lending weight to this picture of desertion or wholesale
genocide. But by the end of the 9th century, the colonisation of Orkney had been so
successful that it had become a Norwegian earldom. The very strength of this Norse
settlement would ensure that in time the pre-Norse names would disappear, and we
simply do not know how quickly that happened. The archaeological evidence shows that
Pictish artefacts were still in use in the early Norse settlements. The question is how
this evidence should be interpreted. Does it mean that Pictish slaves were servicing new
masters? Or that the Norse colonists needed to acquire tools and equipment from the
Picts? At the very least it ought to imply that there were still Picts around and that they
had not been exterminated by the Vikings.

Christian Vikings

The cross on this coin from Viking York reveals a Christian community
©Critical to this issue are excavations of Pictish sites in use before the Viking Age
began. Some farms were abandoned, others were much reduced in size. The evidence
seems to suggest that Pictish society was in decline in Orkney in the 8th century,
perhaps from epidemics of disease or bouts of civil war, which would have made the
Viking takeover of the islands much easier. It is even possible that the Vikings were
welcomed as protectors against the Picts and Gaels of mainland Scotland. Whatever the
reason, the Picts of Orkney survived alongside their new political masters. They even
influenced the Viking way of life, most notably converting them away from their pagan
Nordic gods to Christianity. Pagan burials with their useful array of grave goods ceased
soon after 950, a couple of generations before the official conversion of Norway in 995.
The influence of the Vikings on our native population continues to raise many questions
about the effects of their colonisation of parts of Britain. Perhaps some of these
questions will never have satisfactory answers, but new discoveries, campaigns of
excavations on targeted sites and new research into scientific sources of information,
such as DNA, will add to our knowledge and help to explain our Viking ancestry.

Alcuin of York (c.735 - 804)

This famous scholar is one of our best sources of information for the later eighth
century. He was educated in the cathedral school at York, and became a monk and
teacher there. He was a deacon of York when, in 781, he was returning from a visit to
Rome and met the king of the Franks at Parma. King Charles the Great, known often as
Charlemagne (768-814), recognised in Alcuin a scholar who could help him to achieve a
renaissance of learning and reform of the Church. At the king's invitation, Alcuin joined
the royal court in 781, and became one of Charlemagne's chief advisers on religious
and educational matters.

Many schools of learning were attached to monasteries and cathedrals.

Alcuin was made head of the palace school at Aachen, which was attended by members
of the royal court and the sons of noble families, and he established a great library
there. He revised the church liturgy and the Bible and, along with another great
scholar, Theodulf of Orleans, he was responsible for an intellectual movement within
the Carolingian empire in which many schools of learning were attached to monasteries
and cathedrals, and Latin was restored to a position as a literary language. In 796,
Alcuin became abbot of St Martin's monastery at Tours, where he established a school
and library.

An ambassador and scholar

Anglo-Saxon cross ©Alcuin was not himself a great or innovative

thinker, but he was a superb teacher and scholar. He had the ability to guide others
through what he saw as 'golden whirlpools of spiritual meaning', and to inspire them to
rise to even greater intellectual heights. He wrote educational manuals, poetry and
copied classical texts, and above all he was a copious writer of letters.
At Charlemagne's court he acted almost as an English ambassador. He provided a link
with the English royal court and exchanged information and ideas on a regular basis,
not just with secular and ecclesiastical leaders but with personal friends. He must have
had a special gift for making and keeping friends and he wrote to them at length.

... a preacher of piety, not an exactor of tithes ...

His correspondence was clearly appreciated, for it was collected and copied for
distribution to centres of learning, such as Salzburg, as early as 798. Many of his letters
read like exhortations, for he was concerned over social and educational issues as well
as Church reform. A missionary friend was recommended to be 'a preacher of piety, not
an exactor of tithes', to guide people into good living rather than taking taxes for the
benefit of the Church. In a letter to the monks of Jarrow and Monkwearmouth in
Northumbria, he encouraged them to ...

'... consider the splendour of your churches, the beauty of your buildings, your way of
life according to the Rule... Let the boys be present with praises of the heavenly king,
and not be digging foxes out of holes or following the fleeting courses of hares ... he
who does not learn when he is young, does not teach when he is old.'

Divine retribution

The death of St Cuthbert - his body was buried at Lindisfarne ©Alcuin

was also
a practical man. He knew that the oil needed for church services was scarce in Britain
and he sent olive oil to be distributed amongst the Northumbrian bishops. His distress
and horror at the fate of Lindisfarne in 793 comes over very strongly in his letters both
to the Bishop of Lindisfarne and the Northumbrian king.
'When I was with you, the closeness of your love would give me great joy. In contrast,
now that I am away from you, the distress of your suffering fills me daily with deep
grief, when heathens desecrated God's sanctuaries, and poured the blood of saints
within the compass of the altar, destroyed the house of our hope, trampled the bodies
of saints in God's temple like animal dung in the street ...' Letter from Alcuin to
Higbald, Bishop of Lindisfarne
Alcuin saw the Viking onslaught as divine retribution for the slack standards of the
Northumbrian people, much as he might have interpreted an epidemic of disease as
punishment for human sin. Worse was to come for his homeland, however, and Alcuin
might have had difficulty in explaining the Viking activities of the ninth and tenth
centuries in terms of God's punishment for bad behaviour.

'What security is there for the churches of Britain if St Cuthbert with so great a throng
of saints will not defend his own? Either this is the beginning of greater grief or the sins
of those who live there have brought it upon themselves.' Letter from Alcuin to Higbald,
Bishop of Lindisfarne'.
One of Alcuin's poems celebrates York and its library, where he spent so many happy
years, and he lists many of the authors whose works were on its shelves: classical Latin
writers such as Virgil, Cicero and Lucan. The cathedral library at York became even
more famous throughout Europe after Alcuin's time - only to be destroyed utterly by
Danish Vikings in an attack in 866. Fortunately Alcuin's writings have not been lost to
us and they remain a key source which give a unique insight into one of the most
traumatic periods of English history.

Sources and contemporary accounts

The Vikings have left many traces of their settlement which are still visible today.
Archaeology provides physical evidence of their conquests, settlement and daily life.
The study of place-names and language shows the lasting effect which the Viking
settlements had in the British Isles, and DNA analysis provides some insights into the
effect the Vikings had on the genetic stock of the countries where they settled. All of
this provides valuable information, but the only reason that we have an idea of the
'Vikings' as a people is their appearance in the written sources.

... the value of the written evidence is limited.

Unfortunately, the value of the written evidence is limited. Not a lot of evidence
survives, and much of what we have is either uninformative or unreliable. Many popular
ideas about Vikings are nineteenth-century inventions. Others are the result of early
historians accepting sources which modern scholars now regard as completely
unreliable. In Scandinavia the Viking Age is regarded as part of prehistory because
there are practically no contemporary written sources. Even in western Europe, the
Viking Age is often seen as part of the 'Dark Ages', from which comparatively few
historical records have survived.
 Detail from the manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ©Surviving
accounts of Viking activity were almost exclusively written by churchmen. These include
monastic chronicles, such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and similar Frankish and Irish
Annals, which outline broadly what happened, at what date. There are also sources of a
more directly religious nature, such as the much-quoted letters of Alcuin, and
Wulfstan's famous 'Sermon of the Wolf', both of which chose to interpret the Viking
raids as God's punishment on the Anglo-Saxons for their sins. Even the chronicles
reflect the fact that the Vikings often attacked monasteries for their wealth, which
created an obvious bias against them, and the hostile tone of these contemporary
accounts has done much to create the popular image of Viking atrocities. However,
modern historians have noted that the same sources show Christian rulers behaving
equally unpleasantly, but without being condemned on religious grounds.
Runes

Runestone from Uppsala in Sweden. The inscription reads 'Thorkunn and

Bruni had this monument made, in memory of their father Igulfast'. ©One
of the reasons that we
have so few records from the Viking Age is that the Vikings did not become familiar
with the Roman alphabet (the alphabet we use today) until they adopted Christianity.
However, they did have another form of lettering, known as runes. Runes were
normally carved, rather than written, and were therefore mostly used for fairly short
inscriptions.
The word 'alphabet' comes from the Greek letters 'alpha' and 'beta'. Similarly, the runic
alphabet is known as the 'futhark', from the first six runes. The original futhark had 24
runes, later reduced to 16. This meant that some runes were used for several different
letters, but there were two runes for the letter 'a', two for 'r', and one for our 'th'. More
runes were gradually added after the Vikings became familiar with the Roman alphabet.
There were several different versions of some of the runes, and individual runes might
be carved back-to-front or upside down. All these factors can make runes difficult to
read.

... it is likely that few people were literate in runes.

It is unknown how many people could read runes in the Viking Age. Runic inscriptions
on pieces of wood from Bergen in Norway show that runes were used for all sorts of
everyday purposes later in the Middle Ages, but no comparable evidence has survived
from the Viking Age, and it is likely that few people were literate in runes. However, the
fact that some Vikings were able to carve their names on their possessions suggests
that the use of runes wasn't uncommon.

Most of the surviving runes are found on large memorial stones. Very often they only
have the name of the person in whose memory the stone was carved, and the names of
those responsible for having it made. Sometimes the name of the rune-carver was also
given. Occasionally the inscriptions describe the achievements of the person
commemorated, and refer to historical events in which they were involved. For this
reason, runic inscriptions are a valuable source for Viking history. However, because
they are so brief, they never give a very full picture, and often raise as many questions
as they answer.

Coins

Coin of 'King Cnut', minted in York, c AD 900. This side has a distorted
version of the name of York. ©Theinscriptions on coins are normally even shorter than those
on runestones, and contain even less factual information. Some coins have no
inscription at all. Even so, coin inscriptions are contemporary texts from the Viking Age,
and both the inscriptions and the images on coins can provide a surprising amount of
information. Sometimes coins can provide information which is not known from any
other source.
One example of this is the so-called Cnut/Ebraice coinage from Viking Northumbria,
dating from the beginning of the tenth century. Ebraice is a version of the Latin name
for York, Eboracum, which became Eoforwic to the Anglo-Saxons, and Jorvik to the
Vikings. The other side has the inscription CNUT REX (King Cnut), although the letters
are spread around the arms of the central cross design. This has nothing to do with the
later and more famous Cnut (1016-35), and if it weren't for these coins we would have
no idea that York was ruled by a king called Cnut around the year 900, although we do
know of someone of that name raiding around that time.

Images on coins can also be significant.

Images on coins can also be significant. The small-scale Danish coinage of the tenth
century has no proper inscriptions, although some of the designs were originally copied
from Carolingian coin inscriptions. However, from the mid-tenth century the Danish
coins begin to show clear Christian symbols. This supports Harald Bluetooth's famous
runic inscription from Jelling at the same period, in which he states that he 'made the
Danes Christian'.

Silver coin of 'King Cnut', c AD 900. This side has the inscription CNVT
REX spread around the arms of a cross. ©By
contrast, coins sometimes give a very different
impression from other sources. For example, Ceolwulf II of Mercia (874 - c.879) is
dismissed in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as 'a foolish king's thegn', and has often been
seen as a puppet of the Vikings. However the coinage shows a clear alliance between
Ceolwulf and Alfredof Wessex, with both kings issuing coins of the same type. Since the
coins are contemporary and the Chronicle was written some years later, the coins may
be a more reliable source.

Sagas
 Saga of Gudmundr the Good, written c 1710. ©The most detailed
accounts which we possess of the Viking Age are the Icelandic sagas. Some of these
deal with the deeds of powerful rulers, such as the kings of Norway or the earls of
Orkney. Others deal with the 'ordinary people' of Iceland, although the central
characters even then tend to come from the ruling class. Often the sagas describe
events in great detail, including what was said by those involved.
This may sound ideal for the historian, but the picture is far more complicated. The
earliest sagas weren't written down until the twelfth century, and many of the most
famous ones are even later. This means that the sagas were often written down two or
three hundred years after the events which they describe, and it is not always clear
where the compilers of the sagas used earlier material and where they simply made
things up. There is a further problem that the sagas are primarily works of literature.
Both events and particularly speech might well be rewritten to give a particular literary
effect.

Detail from Saga of Gudmundr the Good ©Historiansin the nineteenth

century accepted the sagas as more or less accurate accounts, except where they
clearly strayed into mythology and fantasy. The graphic accounts of the sagas played a
large part in the creation of the 'Viking' myth. More recently, historians have looked at
the sagas more critically, and for a period in the late twentieth century, many historians
wouldn't accept that the sagas had any historical value at all.
Today, most historians would accept that the sagas are not reliable, and that some
saga material is clearly not factual, or reflects a much later society rather than the
Viking Age. However, this does not mean that the sagas have no value at all.
Sometimes the broad outline of events in the sagas is supported by other sources. In
other words, we can use sagas to study history, but we have to be very careful when
we do.

Skaldic verse

Egil Skallagrimsson, the hero of Egil's saga, from a late manuscript. Egil's
saga contains many verses attributed to the hero ©One
feature of the sagas may genuinely date
back to the Viking Age. Many of the sagas quote poems written in a traditional form
known as skaldic verse. There were various different metres, but all skaldic verse was
written according to complicated structures, including internal rhyme and alliteration.
The verses are often attributed to known poets, or skalds, many of whom were eye-
witnesses to the events which they describe in their poetry. The verses were probably
only preserved orally until they were written down in the sagas. Even so, it is argued
that the rigid structure of the verses meant that they would be remembered accurately,
since any changes would disrupt the structure.
This should mean that skaldic verse is a more reliable source for historians than the
main saga text. However, skaldic verse presents many problems of its own. Firstly, the
structures of skaldic verse were still remembered in the 13th century, and some verses
are probably late compositions, even though they may be attributed to earlier poets.
Secondly, the poems are not always reliable accounts. For example, a dramatic account
of Eric Bloodaxe being welcomed into Valhalla by the gods is unlikely to have been
written by an eyewitness.

... a dramatic account of Eric Bloodaxe being welcomed into Valhalla by the
gods is unlikely to have been written by an eyewitness.
The rigid structures of the poems meant that the choice of words had to fit the form. As
a result, we have to be aware that the poets were probably more concerned with poetic
form than accurate description. The poems also use a form of words called kennnings.
Kennings involve using a poetic paraphrase instead of a simple word. For example, the
sea could become the 'whale's road', while poetry itself was described as 'Kvasir's
blood' or 'Kvasir's mead' in reference to a myth about the origins of poetry.

This combination of factors means that skaldic verse is a difficult and often unreliable
form of evidence. Nevertheless, it is not completely useless. For example, passing
references in poems support both Frankish laws and archaeological evidence in
suggesting that the vikings got some of their weapons from western Europe.

Anglesey

In 1992 Mark Redknap, from the National Museum of Wales, was sent some small artefacts from Anglesey.
The haul included ninth-century coins and some small lead weights typical of those used by Viking traders.
Evidence for the Vikings in Wales is sparse, but a hoard of five exquisite silver arm rings had also been found
on Anglesey. The island itself has Scandianvian connections, probably deriving its name, Onguls-ey, from a
Viking leader.

Based on this evidence, Mark instigated a geophysical survey of the site where these objects had been found,
and discovered a hidden trench. Excavations then began which revealed a ninth-century defensive wall, partly
constructed with massive stone blocks and about two metres wide at its base. The question was, what were the
inhabitants of this settlement defending themselves against?

Archaeologists uncover some surprising finds ©In

the Welsh Annals Mark found records of
Viking raids in the ninth and tenth centuries. Combined with the archaeological clues to a Scandinavian
presence, Mark began to suspect these local people might have been under threat from Vikings.
A few seasons into the excavation Mark got a surprise. Two skeletons were found. It looked as if they had
been thrown into the ditch - without the care or ceremony one would expect if they had been buried by family
and friends. The following year three more skeletons turned up. The position of one, a young male, led Mark to
believe his hands had been tied behind his back. It's possible these Welsh victims of violence were killed by
the Vikings.
Repton

The wounds on this warrior's skull suggest he died a violent death ©In
the ninth
century, a group of Danish Vikings set sail for England. For several years the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
describes the journey of this 'Great Army', attacking towns and villages on the way. In 873 the Great Army is
said to have travelled to Repton, where it took up quarters for the winter.
Over 20 years ago, Birthe and Martin Biddle uncovered the body of a warrior in the churchyard at Repton. As
well as sword, the body had been buried with a small Thor's hammer - the sign of the Viking god Thor, and a
boar's tusk. Examination of the bones revealed the man to have been killed in the most brutal way. Two
wounds in the skull were probably made by a spear, and marks on the spine suggest he was disembowelled
after death. Finally a violent blow to the top of the thigh could easily have removed his genitals, perhaps
explaining why the boar's tusk was found between the legs of the skeleton. It was an attempt to make his body
complete before his trip to Valhalla, the Viking afterlife.

The warrior was buried with a small Thor's Hammer, a sign of his beliefs ©The Biddles
also excavated
a nearby Anglo-Saxon body, and found the remains of at least 249 people. A report from an earlier excavation
- in 1686 - claimed to have found a 'humane body nine foot long' surrounded by further skeletons. Might this
have been the body of the Viking leader legendary for his size, Ivar the boneless?
Nearby, in Ingleby, further evidence for the Great Army's presence has been found by archaeologist Julian
Richards, of York University. A cluster of burial mounds was excavated in the 1950s - some of which
appeared to have been the site of cremations. Goods found with the bodies also appeared to have been through
the cremation fires. Sword and buckles, nails and wire embroidery all suggested these had been Viking
cremations.

The face of the Repton warrior, reconstructed from his battered skull ©Could
the two groups of
people have been part of the Great Army, and if so why did those at Repton bury their dead, but those in
Ingleby still practice the pagan ritual of cremation? The Great Army was probably made up of various groups
of Vikings - there is no reason why they would all practice the same burial rituals. These two groups of people
may have had two different leaders, and joined together for a brief time at Repton.

Orkney

Was this bone comb used as an item for trading? ©The Anglo-Saxon
Chronicles
give the date of the first Viking raid as 793. But were the Vikings in contact with the native population of the
British Isles before this date?
In Norway, a Viking woman's grave found at Skei contained a small wooden bucket and ladle. The decoration
on the bucket suggests it was made in Northumbria sometime in the eighth century. How did these Anglo-
Saxon goods end up in her grave? They might be the spoils of a raid, but it is also possible the goods were
traded. Or maybe the woman was an Anglo-Saxon who had travelled to Norway, bringing her Anglo-Saxon
goods with her. She may be evidence of more peaceful contact with the Vikings before the traditional
beginning of the Viking Age.

More evidence for early contact between the Vikings and native Britons is found on the Northern Isles of
Scotland. Combs made of antler are commonplace discoveries on the islands of Orkney. Both the native
Pictish and the Vikings made these combs, each group of people apparently using a distinctive style. In their
homelands the Vikings tended to use reindeer antler to make combs, while the Picts used their native red deer.

This Northumbrian bucket was found in a Viking grave in Skei ©Antler

expert Lyuba Smirnova
travelled to Orkney Museum, Kirkwall, Orkney to take a look at some of the combs discovered in Birsay.
Some were Pictish, others Viking. As expected, the Viking combs were made of reindeer antler and most of
the Pictish combs were made of red deer. But then Lyuba made an exciting discovery. An earlier theory had
suggested that some of the Pictish combs were carved from reindeer antler, and Lyuba believes this is the case.
These animals are not found anywhere in the Northern Isles. So where did the Picts get reindeer antler from?
The closest place where reindeer are common is Norway.
Could the Picts who made these combs have bought reindeer antlers from the Vikings? Or did the Vikings
make these combs specifically to trade with the Picts? It may be that the Vikings were making contact, trading
and not raiding, well before historians had previously thought.

Kaupang

A brooch mould and book clasp, probably stolen from an Anglosaxon monastic book ©Not
far from Oslo, in Norway, archaeologist Dagfinn Skre and his team have uncovered what he thinks could be
the first Viking town. The site lies in a small inlet, protected from the sea by two small islands. The sheltered
location would have allowed sailing ships to travel in, and out, whatever the wind direction, perfect for the
seafaring Vikings.
For many years the site has been recognised as a settlement, but Dagfinn has found it far bigger than originally
thought. More importantly, he believes there is evidence for permanent buildings. The postholes, traces of
stone foundations, and well-built hearths all hint at a town that could survive the cold Norwegian winter. The
site might have expanded still further in the summer, incorporating tents erected by traders during the busy
season.

The archeaologists have to carefully wash and seive the soil to be sure of spotting all the artefacts
©Many types of goods passed through the site. The excavations have revealed glass and pottery from the
Rhineland and beads from the Orient. Evidence for brooches and glass beads being made were also found,
suggesting craftsmen were hard at work alongside the traders. But as well as evidence for goods being bought
and sold, some of the artefacts suggested the Vikings had also been raiding.
There are several metal objects, which Dagfinn does not think the Vikings could have bought legitimately. One
appears to have been a book clasp, probably stolen from an Anglo-Saxon monastic book. It may have been
traded, but it's more likely the original owners were forced to give it up.
Along with the evidence for trading, and possibly raiding, the excavation has revealed what Dagfinn believes
is a chieftain's house. It seems to have been burnt down. Perhaps this had something to do with the decline of
the site, because despite a long legacy of apparently successful trading, Kaupang was eventually abandoned.

Scar

A whalebone plaque from the Scar burial site ©In

1985 Orkney farmer John Deerness was
walking along the beach at Scar when he found some bones sticking out of a cliff. He assumed they were those
of a sailor who had died at sea. Nearby he spotted a small round lump of metal, which he took home as a
souvenir. A neighbour dismissed it as part of a car battery so he thought no more about it. John died a few
years later, without realising the significance of this small lead object.
Six years later archaeologist Julie Gibson heard about the discovery of the bones at Scar. Thinking it might be
an Iron Age burial - something she had never seen before - Julie went to have a closer look at the site.
Alongside the bones she found two rusty lumps of iron, which she thought could be boat rivets. Julie paid a
visit to John Deerness's widow, and was shown the strange lead object he had found. It turned out to be a
Viking lead weight.

The goods found buried at Scar ©It

was late in the year, and by the time the team of rescue
archaeologists, led by Magnar Dalland, could reach the site it was already November. The team had to work in
drastic weather conditions, with water lapping at their feet, and the daylight fading rapidly. But their efforts
were rewarded. They uncovered a Viking Age boat burial. Inside the boat were three skeletons, a male, a
female and a child. These people had been buried with grave goods including a brooch, a sword and a
whalebone plaque.
These artefacts suggested Scandinavian links, and there was a further clue. Grains of sand found in the
caulking used to seal the boat are unlike any found on Orkney, Shetland or the Scottish mainland. Could this
boat and the people buried with it have come directly from Norway?
 Top

Roskilde ships

Five Viking boats were found at Roskilde in the 1960s. ©In the 1960s the remains of
five Viking ships were found at Skuldelev in the Roskilde Fjord, Denmark. This find revealed an enormous
amount about the techniques of Viking ship building. The ships dated to the 11th century and appeared to have
been deliberately sunk, to make a blockade in the fjord. They ranged from a small warship to a deep-sea
trading ship.
The Skuldelev ships were clinker built - with planks which overlap one another - a characteristic of Viking
shipbuilding. They all had a single mast, and double-ended hulls with curved stems. Analysis of the planks
showed that the wood used ranged from Norwegian pine to oak from Ireland. The planks of wood from these
ships were preserved and eventually reconstructed in the Roskilde Viking Ship Museum. To learn more about
Viking ship building the museum has since built a replica of the small warship, known as Skuldelev 5, using
Viking techniques. Following on from this success they are now attempting to build a replica of Skuldelev 2, a
30-metre-long warship.

The remains of a Viking ship found at Roskilde ©In

the mid-90s, an extension to the
museum was built specifically to house these reconstructed Viking ships. It was during the building works for
this extension that a whole new excavation began. In the autumn of 1996 the builders encountered ship parts in
the soil. Further excavation revealed nine ships. Some of these ships are from the middle ages, but one is
certainly a Viking warship. Known as Roskilde 6 it measured some 36m in length - the longest Viking ship
ever discovered. The trees used to make the ship were dated using dendrochronology, showing the ship to have
been made sometime around AD 1,025. Today the timbers are also going through a lengthy process of
conservation, to ensure these ships can join the Skuldelev ships as historical records of the Viking period.

Tarbat
 This smashed sculpture was the clue to a Viking raid on the ancient Tarbat monastery ©A
few miles
from Inverness Martin Carver and a team of archaeologists from the University of York have discovered the
site of a possible Viking raid. On the site today is a church which dates from the 12th century, and Martin
expected to find a settlement dating from the sixth to eighth centuries. Located on the coast, it would not have
been surprising if the site had been turned into a beach market by Norse settlers in the ninth or tenth centuries,
like many coastal site in Eastern England.
The excavation began under the 12th-century church. Here the team found a large number of burials - not
unusual in a church from this era. But strangely, more than three quarters of the skeletons belonged to men.
Then, just a short distance from the church, the archaeologists discovered evidence of metalworking, a mill and
farm buildings. A self-sufficient community, nearly all male, it seemed the site might have been a monastery.

Julian Richards and archaeologist Martin Carver at the Tarbat dig site ©A
further
discovery added more weight to this suggestion. A thin layer of black soil was identified, with small nails,
evidence for a fire that had destroyed timber buildings. Hidden within this layer, were large fragments of
broken sculpture. The sculpture was covered in beautiful designs, crosses and inscriptions as clear as if they
had just been carved. A monastic community could have produced both the sculpture and the metalwork.
But why was all this exquisite sculpture in pieces? The clean breaks and sharp edges suggested it had been
deliberately smashed. The burnt layer could have been the result of buildings burnt to the ground. And some of
the skeletons from under the church looked as if they had been struck by swords. Could this have been a
Viking attack on a monastery?

Westray
 The side of the excavation trench was littered with sea shells and fish bones - an ancient rubbish dump
©On the island of Westray in Orkney, an ancient rubbish dump has been excavated by James Barrett of York
University. The harsh weather in Orkney often results in coastal erosion and this dump was spotted when sea
shells and bone were seen eroding out of a cliff face near Nether Trenabie.
The site appeared to have been occupied for hundreds of years, from well before the Vikings arrival. The
original inhabitants seemed to have been farmers, because their rubbish consisted mainly of the bones of
sheep, cattle, pigs or other small mammals. But an abrupt change occurs sometime in the ninth or tenth
century, which could be clearly seen in the side of the archaeological trench. The animal bones are replaced by
huge quantities of sea shells.

The large number of fish skeletons showed they were an important part of the Viking diet
©James thinks this change in diet is a clear signal that the Vikings have arrived, bringing with them their
seafaring skills and favourite food. And it seems the Vikings were not just fishing for themselves. The sheer
number of fish bones, cut up in a very specific way, suggests the Vikings were drying and salting the fish to
preserve it. This would have allowed them to trade it within the Orkney islands, and probably further afield,
perhaps even back to their Norwegian homelands.

Hadstock Church

A sample of skin was taken for DNA testing - could it really be human
skin? ©On St Brice's Day (13 November) 1002 the mass killing of Danes was ordered by
the English King Ethelred. It was his reaction to the news that there was a Danish
conspiracy to assassinate him. But is there any other evidence that Viking settlers in
Britain were subjected to harsh treatment?
The village of Hadstock, Essex, has a local legend which suggests that they might have
been. The wooden door of the local church is thought to date back to Saxon times, and
like many church doors would have been covered in leather. In 1791 a small piece of
what looked like leather was found under the iron fittings of the door. It found its way
to the Saffron Walden Museum, where analysis suggested it had a more gruesome
origin. A label from 1883 tells the story of the piece of skin, suggesting that it once
belonged to a Dane, a sacrilegious Viking, killed for stealing from the church. He was
flayed and his skin mounted on the door as a warning.

But was this local legend really true? Ancient DNA expert Alan Cooper of Oxford
University decided to put it to the test. He was allowed to remove one tiny part of the
ancient skin, no more than one centimetre square. He took it back to the lab, hoping he
would be able to find some surviving DNA in the tiny sample.
Alan did manage to extract identifiable DNA from the sample. But when he compared it
with known DNA, the results suggested that the flayed Dane was no more than a grizzly
legend after all. The skin, ancient though it was, had once belonged to a cow. It was no
more than an ordinary leather covering on Hadstock church door after all.

Discovery

The Cuerdale Hoard is the greatest Viking silver treasure trove ever found, outside
Russia, far exceeding in scale and range any hoard found in the Scandinavian
homelands or in the western areas of Viking settlement. Containing around 8,600 items
of silver coins and bullion when found, and weighing some 40kg, it is an astonishing
assemblage, as impressive even in its slightly depleted form today as it must have been
when it was first put together in the early tenth century.

... this massive treasure may have been a war chest ...

It was found on 15 May 1840, by workmen engaged in repairing the embankment on

the south side of the River Ribble at Cuerdale, near Preston, Lancashire. The hoard had
been buried in a lead chest, fragments of which survive, and the presence of small bone
pins suggests that some of the coins or bullion had been parcelled up into separate
bags or parcels, secured by these pins.

Prompt action by the landowner's bailiff ensured that almost all the hoard was
retrieved; the labourers were allowed to retain one coin each for themselves. It was
declared Treasure Trove at an inquest on 15 August 1840, the property of Queen
Victoria in right of her Duchy of Lancaster; the Duchy then passed it to the British
Museum for examination prior to its distribution to over 170 recipients. The lion's share,
however, was allocated to the British Museum.
 The Cuerdale Hoard, a general view ©The
coins found with the
hoard reveal that it must have been buried in the years between 905 and 910, shortly
after the expulsion of the Vikings from Dublin in 902. The Ribble Valley, a peaceful
backwater today, was then the main route between Viking York and the Irish Sea; this
fact, together with the Irish Norse origins of much of the bullion, and the presence of
newly minted coins made by the York Vikings, have led scholars to suggest that this
massive treasure may have been a war chest, assembled by Irish Norse exiles
intending to mount an expeditionary force to reoccupy Dublin from a base on the Ribble
estuary.

Hoards and hoarding

Silver ingots like these were both a means of storing wealth and the raw
material for creating high-status jewellery ©It
is often assumed that hoards from the Viking
Age were buried in times of danger, and not recovered because the person who had
hidden the hoard was killed, captured or forced to flee. This is probably a good
explanation for many hoards, and the threat of Viking raids was itself sufficient to make
many people hide their treasures. However, there are other possible reasons why
treasure might be hidden and not recovered.
One is that the treasure was buried for religious reasons. It is said that pagans in the
Viking Age believed that a man would have the use in the afterlife of any treasure he
buried while still alive. However, this story was written down long after the
Christianisation of Scandinavia, and it is not known whether it is true.

Another possibility is that hoarding might be linked with the display of wealth and
power. If a leader wished to appear generous and successful, he needed to be able to
hand out silver to his followers. This would mean stockpiling silver ready for handouts,
and even without a specific threat, it would be important to keep the silver safe until it
was given out.
If a leader wished to appear generous and successful, he needed to be able to
hand out silver to his followers.

An even more dramatic display of wealth would be to remove the silver from circulation
permanently, by burying it. In Egil's saga, the hero Egil Skallagrimsson does precisely
that, hiding his hoard to provide a permanent talking point for others. That sort of
ostentatious destruction of wealth finds parallels in many cultures.

Some of these possibilities can probably be excluded in the case of Cuerdale. The hoard
contains both quite freshly minted Christian coins from the Danelaw, and ingots marked
with a cross. This suggests that the hoard is unlikely to have been buried for religious
reasons, while its huge size makes it unlikely that it was symbolically removed from
circulation. However, the fact that the hoard contains identifiable parcels, acquired at
different times and places, would be consistent with a carefully hidden stockpile which
was added to gradually, as well as with a single hoard buried because of a sudden
crisis.

The coins

Byzantine silver hexagram of Heraclius and Heraclius Constantine. Minted

AD 615-30, this is by far the oldest coin in the hoard ©The
Cuerdale hoard contains over 7,000
coins. Between them they demonstrate very clearly the international scale of Viking
activity, as well as providing evidence for the dating of the hoard. Not surprisingly,
most of the coins come from England, both official Anglo-Saxon issues (about 1,000)
and coins of the Danelaw (about 5,000). However, the hoard also contained about
1,000 Frankish coins, a handful of early Scandinavian coins, about 50 Kufic dirhams
from all over the Islamic world, a few imitations of Kufic coins from eastern Europe, and
a single Byzantine coin.
It is likely that the Scandinavian, Byzantine, Kufic and imitation Kufic coins all
came to Britain from Scandinavia...

It is likely that the Scandinavian, Byzantine, Kufic and imitation Kufic coins all came to
Britain from Scandinavia, reflecting the Vikings' links to the east through the Russian
river systems. The Frankish coins reflect multiple raids on the continent.
One group contains coins of the so-called Middle Kingdom, which stretched from the
modern Netherlands down into northern Italy. Such coins were probably acquired from
raids on the Netherlands, where the port of Dorestad was a repeated target. The date
and condition of these coins suggest they were acquired on at least two occasions. The
same is true of the much larger group of coins acquired in raids on what is now western
France.

Silver penny of Ceolwulf II, who became king of Mercia in 874 after the
Vikings forced his predecessor Burgred into exile ©The
English material also suggests a variety
of sources. The condition of the Anglo-Saxon coins suggests that they came in a steady
trickle rather than all being acquired at the same time, and this probably reflects
ongoing trade as much as raiding.
By contrast, the coinage from the southern Danelaw seems to have come north in
distinct groups, one of which had only recently been struck when the hoard was
deposited. Finally, the local coinage of Viking Northumbria, the largest single group in
the hoard, shows some variation of wear, but all the coins were relatively new. This
suggests that these issues were circulating locally, and that the hoard was buried only a
few years after this coinage was first introduced.

Our knowledge of the dating of the Danelaw issues largely derives from the hoard,
rather than the other way round, but the Anglo-Saxon, Frankish and Kufic coins all
point consistently to a date between AD 905 and AD 910.

The bullion

Fragments of Pictish, Irish and Carolingian luxury items ©The bulk of

the hoard, weight-wise, was bullion - weighing over 36kg (80lb). Some of this had been
melted down into ingots of various shapes and weights; much of the rest consists of
silver jewellery, and other items that had been chopped up into small pieces designed
for the melting pot or for sharing out as payments.
...Among all this vast assemblage there are only two items of Anglo-Saxon
origin...

The very varied nature of this so-called hack-silver testifies to the mobility and far-
ranging contacts of the Vikings. Much of it is of Norse Irish origin, including distinctive
stamped arm-ring types, both whole and chopped up, and fragments of spectacular
bossed penannular brooches and thistle brooches; such large and imposing items of
personal jewellery were portable wealth as well as functional and decorative
attachments.

Scandinavian and Irish jewellery from the hoard ©Alongside

these
relatively local products, however, were more exotic items, matching the coins in the
hoard in their range and diversity. Arm-rings and neck-rings of different types from
Scandinavia are present in some quantity, as one might expect; but there are also
fragments of so-called Permian rings, from the eastern Baltic, as well as some Slav
beads.
From western Europe comes a very fine gilded Carolingian buckle, along with brooch
fragments and a decorative mount - testimony no doubt to the well-attested Viking
raids on France. The northerly reach of Viking enterprise is seen in a decorated silver
sheet and a fragment of a silver comb, both apparently of Pictish origin.

Perhaps the greatest surprise, however, is that among all this vast assemblage there
are only two items of Anglo-Saxon origin - a fine strap-end and a tiny mount - to set
against the total of over 1,000 Anglo-Saxon coins in the hoard.

These different elements came together in the hoard from many separate parcels,
accumulated over time and across distances; but they are a graphic witness both to the
boldly ranging scope of Viking activity, and to the enormous wealth it generated.