Vikings: A History of the Northmen

Introduction

Vikings: that one word summons up many images. Maybe it is of dragon ships carving their way across the waters, descending on isolated, unprotected monasteries and unleashing terror in their wake. Or perhaps it is an image of Viking explorers, heading out across unknown oceans and facing unfathomable terrors which grips the imagination. It could even be their craftsmanship which draws the reader in. All these views are equally valid and therein lies the attraction of the Vikings; they were multi-dimensional, unpredictable.

They had a decisive impact on the shaping of medieval Europe, and through that on the modern world. They were integral to the development of nation states, not just in their own Scandinavian homelands but in territories further afield such as Britain, Ireland, Francia (modern France and Germany), and Russia. Intriguing in a different way, they created settlements in Iceland, the Faroes and Greenland, not to mention their incursions into North America in their role as frontiersmen and women. Theirs is a fascinating and multi-faceted story.

I make no claim to be writing a definitive history of the Vikings, indeed, I am not even sure that such a thing is possible given the vast sweep of the subject. What I have tried to do in this book is to tell the story of some of the key events and the major characters who bestrode the world of Western Europe and beyond for 250 years. I have arranged the story chronologically. There is a tendency among some modern historians to look at the Viking story thematically. While this approach undoubtedly has its merits, it runs the risk of not seeing the Viking saga as an interconnected tale. For example, that quasi-legendary character Ivarr the Boneless was active in England, Scotland and Ireland as well as probably on the mainland of Europe in a series of more or less sequential actions. In my view it is important that the reader understands how these activities are inter-connected. We will find a number of relevant examples in the story that follows.

Not only did the Vikings shape medieval Europe, equally, medieval Europe shaped them. Another interesting aspect of the saga is how the Vikings transmuted from pagan raiders to devout Christians. Equally interestingly, this did not necessarily make them any less violent, but it did shape the way they acted. Therein lies a tale in itself; violence was not the exclusive preserve of pagan Vikings at the time. However, in the eyes of contemporary observers somehow violence committed by Christians against non-Christians (viz. the soon-to-follow epic of the Crusades and the Reconquista in Spain) was far more acceptable.

Although there is a tendency to think of the Viking Age as belonging to the latter part of the so-called Dark Ages, there are a number of sources telling us about the course of events that provide some illumination. These range from annals and chronicles, normally written by monastic observers who potentially had an axe to grind, to later saga writers who had their own perspective on ‘the truth’. There are potential difficulties with all of these sources. However, we cannot afford to be overly restrictive in the ones we use, particularly when Viking culture prided itself on its tradition of oral storytelling, which in its own way was a form of record-keeping. Of course in the process many details were subject to interpretation and, over time, to change and elaboration; but I do not think we should ignore them completely even if we are naturally cautious in using them.

This is the story of great warriors and remarkable women, of intrepid adventurers and canny and unscrupulous traders. It is also a tale of many ordinary people, both Scandinavians and those on the wrong end of their unwelcome attentions. Many of the latter are not known to us, nameless shadows from the past. Yet all of them played a part in this remarkable if sometimes harrowing story. The saga deserves to be retold if only for them.

Prologue

The Vikings and their World

Above the prow, the dragon rears its glowing head.

King Harald’s Saga

Who were the Vikings?

At the very outset of our journey back into the world of the Vikings, an important question needs to be addressed; what do we mean by a ‘Viking’? Academics propose a range of origins for the word, including the Scandinavian term vik, which in Norse means ‘bay’, a convenient gathering point for pirates to assemble before setting out on their raids; or from ‘Viken’, a region in the south of modern Norway around Oslofjord, the point of origin for some (though not all) of the raiders. Vikingr in Old Norse means someone away from home, usually raiding, while Viking is the group name for a party of such individuals. There are several contemporary monuments in Scandinavia that record the word ‘Viking’.¹ There may also be a link to the Old English wicing, loosely meaning a pirate, a word used on five occasions in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (ASC), always with reference to a raiding party rather than a larger army. Properly speaking, the term ‘Viking’ only applies when these Scandinavians are travelling overseas, often raiding, rather than being applied to any Scandinavian of the early Middle Ages – and academics might insist that we should strictly adhere to this line of reasoning when we discuss them.² Good luck with winning that particular argument; ‘Viking’ has rightly or wrongly become shorthand for a Scandinavian of the period.

One expert on the Viking Age said that ‘we can refer to Viking-Age society, but not all Scandinavians were Vikings. They themselves used the term to refer to raiders from the region, but it certainly didn’t describe the local farmers who were back on the land.’³ This is pedantically correct; but the situation becomes distinctly blurred when a man might be a Viking one day and then become a farmer on another. Neatly pigeonholing individuals into one category or another is not straightforward and arguably not very useful.

Early medieval chroniclers would rarely call such men, even when raiding, Vikings. In the ASC, they are often referred to as ‘Danes’, even though we know that the raiders who caused such chaos also came from elsewhere. They are sometimes referred to as ‘Northmen’ or normanni from which the later term ‘Norman’ derives. Adam of Bremen noted that ‘the Danes and the other people who live beyond Denmark are all called Northmen by the historians of the Franks’.⁴ On other occasions they would merely be named, in dismissive terms, ‘pagans’, ‘heathens’ or ‘gentiles’, something ‘other’. The terms ‘black’ or ‘white’ foreigners (‘Gaills’) were often used in Ireland, with in some interpretations ‘black foreigners’ originating in Norway and ‘white’ in Denmark.⁵ The Muslims of Cordoba, who were briefly on the Vikings’ itinerary, called them majus, loosely translated as ‘heathen wizards’.⁶ All these terms come back to much the same thing, generically ‘Vikings’. In other words, everything is as clear as mud. Broadly speaking in my simple view of the world a ‘Viking’ is a Scandinavian of the late eighth to eleventh centuries (with a date range covering 789 to 1103) who was operating overseas. The year 789 is the date of the first recorded Scandinavian raid overseas (though there may well be unrecorded ones pre-dating this) while 1103 saw the death of the Norwegian king, Magnus Barelegs, in Ireland. I freely admit that these dates are rather arbitrary and for that reason even I do not stick slavishly to them in the analysis that follows. But activities during this general time period are the primary focus of my own particular voyage of discovery.

The Vikings and Scandinavia

Scandinavia had a particular point of reference 1,000 years ago that is different from what it has today. Some historians limit their discussions to those activities of the Vikings that were taking place outside of Scandinavia.⁷ However, my personal take on the Viking story is that it cannot be fully understood without referring to Scandinavia itself, both to explain the origins of the Vikings and their later development. During this period great changes took place in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, which impacted on Viking activities overseas. Equally some of those distant events affected Scandinavia greatly too. For this reason, I will regularly refer back to events in the Viking ‘homelands’.

Scandinavia and its culture is and always has been defined to a significant extent by its geographical location, and this in turn helped to define the peoples who lived there. In the case of the Viking world, when we mention Scandinavia we include not only Norway and Sweden but also Denmark. There are also close cultural links between the south-west of Finland and this wider Scandinavia, and men from other regions would often join Scandinavians on their expeditions: for example, Finns would journey alongside Swedes into the lands of the Rūs. Warriors from other parts of the Baltic region, from what are now Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland and Belarus, were also engaged as participants in Viking expeditions. Meanwhile, inhabitants from the far north of Scandinavia, such as the Sáami people, are not regarded as Vikings regardless of the modern countries where they are now found. In other words, both the appellation Viking and that of Scandinavia is loosely defined.

The very shape of the landscape helped define the nature and direction of Viking activities. Geographically, Scandinavia is far from one homogeneous whole. Norway has a long, mainly westward-facing coastline that is ripped open by the jagged fingers of fjords clawing into the interior. They gouge out drowned valleys reaching far into the mountain ranges, which form a largely impregnable natural inner barrier preventing most permanent human habitation beyond the coastal zone. These fjords can be extremely long but at the same time they are often narrow, framed by towering rock walls on either side, a source of stunning natural beauty as many an awed modern cruise traveller to the country would confirm.

One could do worse than quote the words of the twelfth/thirteenth century Danish writer Saxo Grammaticus when describing Norway. He talked of it in the following terms:

Craggy and barren, it is beset all around by cliffs, and the huge desolate boulders give it the aspect of a rugged and gloomy land; in its furthest part the day-star is not hidden even by night; so that the sun, scorning the vicissitudes of day and night, ministers in unbroken presence an equal share of his radiance in either season.⁸

As far as the Viking Age is concerned, Norway can be simplistically divided into three separate regions, though there were many sub-divisions. Firstly, there was Ostland, the eastern region. This comprised the settlements lying along either side of the Oslofjord, which provided some of the best agricultural land in Norway. Significant trading settlements such as Kaupang developed there, acting as a regional centre of trade, much as Helgö and later Birka would in Sweden or Hedeby and Ribe did in Denmark. Vestfold, one of Ostland’s sub-divisions which was on the western shores of Oslofjord, became particularly affluent and was well placed to play a key role in the development of a royal dynasty, which later expanded its control over a wider area of Norway.

The Ostland region, centred around modern Oslo, Kristiansand and Gothenburg, was known as the Viken – a name which, as noted above, is a possible point of origin for the term ‘Viking’. The area was split up into smaller tribal territories known as fylki. It has been suggested that each of these fylki would at one stage have had its own king, though he would govern over a very limited area when compared to the national polities that later developed in Scandinavia.⁹ Ostland was perfectly situated to provide a link between Sweden and Norway.

More remote was the south-west corner of Norway, the Jaeder and the southern Trøndelag, which formed Vestland. Here regional sub-divisions such as Rogaland and Hordaland were important. This area was defined by steep mountains and fjords that bisected the land like sharp arrowheads. Nowadays this is a prime spot for cruise ships to penetrate inland through breathtaking scenery to remote towns, in some cases scores of miles from the coast. No such luxury attended life here a thousand years ago. Workable land is in short supply. Only small pockets of agriculturally productive terrain are available as steep, rocky mountains hem in the coastal region. Any surplus population is likely to create difficulties, as there is little spare land to expand into. It is notable that many Viking raiders departed from here, perhaps pushed out by shortages and inspired by the prospect of rich pickings to compensate for harsh lives and limited prospects back home. This might also explain why activities that initially took the shape of raids later became far more ambitious attempts at conquest and settlement overseas. Vestland was always likely to produce a fiercely independent and hard-living population who were adventurous risk-takers given their constrained options; those who lived there only had a limited amount to lose.¹⁰

Further north along the western coast of Norway is the northern Trøndelag where Trondheim later developed. Although closer to the Arctic Circle than Vestland, it provided more agricultural land. Here the mountain range that separates Norway from Sweden, a formation known as the Keel as it mimics the shape of an upturned ship, is situated further inland than it is to the south, giving a greater area available for farming. Trade links from the Trøndelag to the Frisian coast of continental Europe developed from quite early on, and it is notable that one of the earliest phases of Viking settlement in the Viking Age proper was in Frisia. A strong group of independent landowners with supporting laws to protect their interests would develop in the northern Trøndelag, and later aspiring kings of the polity we now call Norway often found themselves faced by fierce resistance here.

Farming opportunities in Norway are therefore limited in scope to relatively narrow strips of land. The coast is protected from the worst of the Atlantic weather by a string of some 1,500 islands, the Lofoten, patrolling the approaches to it like rocky sentries, a great, extended natural windbreak. Inside this outer layer of islands there are some well-protected natural harbours, perfect for Viking ships to moor safely sheltered from the weather. Here, the impact of the Gulf Stream mitigates the worst effects of the regions’ proximity to the Arctic; coastal waters do not become icebound in the winter as they do in other parts of the world at the same latitude.

Sea, mountains and forests are writ large in the history of Scandinavia. The mountains, with the dense forests that blanketed the landscape, made overland connection between the different parts of Scandinavia very difficult and sometimes totally impossible; therefore, the best way to travel was by sea. From early in their history, the peoples of Scandinavia were wedded to it. Its surface was their highway, their way of moving from one place to another in the shortest possible time. There is a certain inevitability around the development of superb seafaring skills among the inhabitants of this rugged, isolated area that is embraced and defined by the ocean.

Both Norway and Sweden reach up towards the Far North. During the summer months, virtually permanent daylight is the norm, the more so the further north one travels, while in the winter the opposite is true. Significant parts of both Norway and Sweden lie above the Arctic Circle and the climate changes significantly and becomes harsher the further north the voyager travels. It takes a hardy breed of people to survive, let alone thrive, in such regions given the harshness and longevity of the winter months. A by-product of this meant that summer was a time for raiding and winter for staying at home.

On the Atlantic-facing coast of Scandinavia, weather and current conditions encourage sea journeys from east to west, for example from Norway or Denmark to Britain or France. Thus when Scandinavian seafarers became more adventurous, they tended to look west. They forayed across the Atlantic, first to Scotland and Ireland, then to the Faroes, the ‘Sheep Islands’ (where the name of the capital Torshavn – ‘Thor’s Harbour’ – eloquently betrays its origins) and Iceland. They went beyond that to Greenland and finally made landfall in Newfoundland, probably visiting the mainland of North America too. This was a ‘stepping stone’ strategy by which the Vikings expanded westwards ‘island hopping’ bit by bit.

These were epic voyages in an age when ships rarely sailed out of sight of land and the wild Atlantic was a vast, almost insurmountable barrier. It is difficult to overstate the risks inherent in these extraordinary undertakings. Nature could help to a limited extent in establishing the exact location of a ship at sea; for example, between the Faroes and Iceland, whales could be followed as they fed on the vast stocks of plankton that lived around the undersea mountain range known as the Iceland Ridge; when the saga writers formulaically describe the sea as the ‘whale’s path’ they are being more literal than we might think.¹¹ But this must have been of limited comfort when sailing uncharted waters.

It is likely that even in remoter places such as the Faroes and Iceland the Viking explorers already found human beings living there. There is evidence of this from the Irish monk Dicuil who wrote a geography of the early medieval world, stating that Irish hermits were living there before the Vikings intruded, such places being much loved by those of a contemplative mind who sought to find God in out-of-the-way locations.¹² Dicuil spent much of his career in Francia, just like the more famous Alcuin of York. His work De Mensura Orbis Terrae (‘On the Measurement of the World’) is a revealing insight into the state of geographical knowledge at the start of the Viking Age (he was active in the early years of the ninth century).

In contrast to Norway and Denmark, Sweden as a general rule tended to look east (though some Swedish Vikings certainly took part in raids on Britain and elsewhere), travelling across the Baltic, a relatively recent relic of melting glaciers after the last Ice Age. When the mood takes it, the Baltic can be perilous and subject to sudden, unexpected squalls; within living memory the sinking of the ferry Estonia in 1994, with shocking loss of life, is a painful reminder of this. The Baltic is frequently cloaked in blankets of heavy fog; the saga writers often mention mists as an ill omen, something with which seafarers in any age can empathise. The seas here are renowned for their propensity to generate short but sharp waves. Currents and wind directions in the Baltic encourage journeys from west to east, explaining why Swedes, in alliance with Finns, regularly made the journey eastwards into what is now Russia. The 50,000 islands in the Baltic Sea made for convenient stopping-off points for sailors making their way across.

Geographically, Sweden is to a large extent sectioned off from Norway by the mountain ranges in the west, while the northern part is generously covered by thick carpets of forest. The southern part of Sweden, Scania (Skåne), is more fertile than the lands to the north; it was described in the eleventh century as being ‘well provided with men, opulent of crops, rich in merchandise’.¹³ It therefore assumed great importance in Viking history. Though it is now in Sweden, for much of its past – and certainly for a good part of the Viking Age – Skåne was part of Denmark. To the north, the infertile plateau of Småland acted as a natural border with the north. Vast forests isolated Skåne and encouraged it to look towards Denmark across the narrow straits that separated the two.

Denmark is in a significantly different geographical spot compared to Norway and Sweden in a metaphorical, if not a literal, sense. Only a few miles separate it from Sweden at its narrowest point and at such places it is easy to see one from the other on all but a misty morning (the two countries are these days connected by a combination of a bridge and a tunnel). But Denmark is joined to the main portion of continental Europe; and the further south in the country that one travels, the more obvious this becomes. On the extreme southern borders of Denmark, historically territory has frequently changed from Danish to German (or in earlier times Frankish) hands and back again, the region of Schleswig being a prime example. Having a strong neighbour just to the south has frequently affected Danish history even, and notably, back in Viking times. On the other hand, Norway and Sweden in a geographical sense are more peripheral and isolated. This makes them better protected and hidden from the eyes – and the unwelcome attentions – of acquisitive neighbours.

Denmark is also geographically distinct in other ways. Its structure is complicated with a mainland portion, Jutland, and a number of islands, some called ‘The Belt’, just off it. Zealand is the biggest, with Funen in between it and Jutland. There are also more than 400 named smaller islands, though only 74 of them are currently inhabited.¹⁴ Nowadays Denmark has a reputation for efficient and effective agriculture, but this was not always the case. In former times, the boggy nature of much of the land limited farming potential, even though there was no mountainous territory acting as a constraint. Adam of Bremen, writing in the eleventh century, suggests that ‘the soil in Denmark is sterile; except for places close to a river, nearly everything looks like a desert’. He also wrote that ‘[Jutland] is avoided because of the scarcity of crops, and the sea because it is infested by pirates’.¹⁵

Complicated geography and wide regional variations in Scandinavia mitigated against centralised authority. Deep into the Viking Age, Norway and Sweden were loosely confederated regions at best; and even Denmark was too for much of the time. But for all that there were unifying features between the Scandinavians, most strongly evidenced by shared language – though in Viking times this would evolve and ‘West Norse’ would become the language of Norway and the Atlantic islands while ‘East Norse’ would be used in Denmark and Sweden. They were the northernmost representatives of Germanic languages that also included English and Dutch. There was also a common Scandinavian heritage in terms of mythology. The Vikings’ religious framework was distinctive and, centuries after most of Western Europe had adopted Christianity, they remained wedded to their pagan belief system, which at one time had also been shared with other Germanic peoples. There were also shared views of the law and a similar social hierarchy across Scandinavia. And there were shared influences on art too, though certainly not in a suffocating monotone way that held back the development of more individualistic regional styles.

Scandinavia was the cradle of the Vikings, and as such it is important to understand something of the region from which they came to make more sense of how they originated and developed; they did not emerge out of thin air but came about as a result of centuries, indeed millennia, of evolution. It was the coincidence of the combination of various factors that led to the timing of their appearance and the impact they had. Some of these factors were technological, in particular developments in shipbuilding. Others were societal, yet more were responses to opportunities that presented themselves as a way of making profit in one form or another. These opportunities derived from the state of the world in which the Vikings operated. In Western Europe in particular, but also in Russia, the current state of affairs played into Viking hands. The Vikings perceived weaknesses in the structure of the wider world and took full advantage of them. It is important to understand both how the Scandinavian region had developed and where it was at on the cusp of the Viking Age. We also need to comprehend the condition of the wider world at the time; and it is to these issues that we now turn.

1

The Dawn of the Viking Age

There’s woe in the world, wantonness rampant

The Poetic Edda

Scandinavia in Prehistory

Being far to the north, Norway and Sweden were among the last European territories to emerge from the latest Ice Age. After this ended, hunter-gatherers began to populate the area. These peoples transitioned, like others in Europe, through a Bronze and eventually into an Iron Age, though later than other parts of the Continent. They constructed boat-shaped graves for their prominent dead; ships were required in ancient Scandinavia for more than just terrestrial journeys, an ancient tradition and way of life that continued for millennia, well into the Viking Age.

By about 4,000BC, agriculture had arrived in Scandinavia, crops were being grown and animals domesticated. Small villages were established. Cattle were especially important and became a prime measure of wealth, as they remained into the Viking Age. By about 2,300BC, the Bronze Age had arrived in Scandinavia, accompanied by a new influx of people with a Germanic language. Their technology allowed improved tools to be made. Pottery also developed, invaluable for the storage of perishable items such as food.

These developments gave impetus to trade. Tin and copper, crucial for the making of bronze, were not available in Scandinavia and needed to be imported from other regions such as Central Europe. In return, furs were exchanged along with walrus ivory and whalebone. Even Britain was involved in this extended trading network; hand-axes from the period 4000–2200 BC, which were found locally and are exhibited in the Museum of London, are said by experts to show Scandinavian influence. Some of the goods that flowed out of Scandinavia originated with the Sáami in the Far North, able to move cross-country with the aid of skis, sleighs and skates and establishing trading links with the more southerly Scandinavians. Amber, prized as a precious stone, was also traded south from the Baltic. Evidence of the wealth that was starting to come into Scandinavia in return can be found in the grave goods buried across the region in the period.

This culture peaked between 1500 and 1100BC, a time known as the Northern Bronze Age and a period of relative plenty for Scandinavia. Although settlements were scattered and no such thing as a town existed, these were good times when trade with parts of Europe further south enabled a degree of prosperity. Rock paintings of the period suggest that later beliefs concerning Viking gods were already developing. Examples have been found in a number of places and are particularly fine at Tanum, Bohuslän, Sweden, where there are petroglyphs of objects including boats, a chariot and a whale. One carving at Bohuslän, the Vitlycke Flat Rock, shows a flotilla of ships with a larger vessel surrounded by smaller ones though there is not a sail to be seen anywhere. Ships are also carved on the walls of the so-called King’s Grave near Kivik in Sweden. Religious beliefs were evolving too: the development of large gravesites in the form of barrows strongly suggests a major concentration on burial rites, especially the veneration of ancestors, something else that lived on into the Viking Age.

Then the general European economy declined. This was probably linked to major political upheavals in regions as far afield as Egypt, the Hittite Empire and Greece, leading to a retreat in cross-Continental trade with Scandinavia. For some time, the Far North receded into the twilight as trading routes seized up. The Iron Age that followed was initially harsh for Scandinavia. Climatic conditions contributed to this situation but while a harsher climate made life even tougher for the Scandinavian peoples, the emergence of the Celts as the dominant force in much of continental Europe also hid the northern region from view for a time. Only later in the Iron Age with the emergence of the Celtic La Tene culture did trade between mainland Europe and Scandinavia return. Iron began to be worked in Scandinavia in about 800BC but not for perhaps 400 years after that did quality iron, and maybe even foreign smiths, begin to arrive from further south.

There were important developments in funerary practices in the region during these years with the emergence of massive boat-shaped graves, their outlines traced out by large megaliths (particularly on the islands of Gotland and Bornholm): the abstract paintings on the rocks which we see in the Bronze Age had morphed into something far more recognisable and substantial. At either end of the graves a larger stone was placed to mark the prow and stern of the vessel. The deceased was clearly journeying across an otherworldly sea to another existence. Other forms of art developed too, and there is evidence of Celtic influence on some of it. One example is the Gundestrup Cauldron, found in Denmark but with metalwork displaying human heads removed from dead bodies, a common Celtic practice.

In the absence of written records, we must make what we can of the Scandinavia of early times from archaeological evidence. However, this changes with several references to the peoples of the Far North in the Classical record. In around 325BC, a Greek geographer, Pytheas, made an astonishing voyage of discovery from Massalia (Marseilles). Journeying around Britain, he sailed up to Scandinavia. He returned with reports of polar ice and the Arctic region. He told how the inhabitants of that far-off region used honey to make mead and how, despite being so far north, they were able to grow barley. He also noted with awe that dazzling lightshow known as the Aurora Borealis. Pytheas also mentioned amber, one of the most valuable trade products originating in Scandinavia. It has been suggested that he may even have reached Iceland. Unfortunately, his account of this epic voyage does not survive, and we only know of his travels second-hand through references made by other writers in Antiquity. Therefore, we have to take at face value the words of Strabo who wrote that ‘Pytheas asserts that he explored in person the whole northern region of Europe as far as the ends of the world’.

With the subjugation of many of the Celtic territories by Rome, more conduits between north and south were opened. The lands of the north piqued Rome’s interest. A naval expedition was despatched by the Emperor Augustus and reached as far as the Kattegat, the narrow strait between Denmark and Sweden. Then in 60AD during Nero’s reign, another maritime Roman foray penetrated further into the Baltic. Tacitus wrote shortly afterwards in his Germania of a people in the region called the Suiones whose unusual ships had a prow at each end. These people have been identified with the Swedes from Uppland in central Sweden.¹

The evolution of the Roman Empire had a dramatic economic impact on Europe, including in those areas beyond its borders such as Scandinavia. Trade between them was two-way. High-status Roman goods such as glass, ceramics and silver objects have been found in significant quantities in both Denmark and Skåne; Roman wine was also a much sought-after commodity for the upper classes. Other more mundane objects appear from time to time; for example, the skeleton of a woman buried in Lolland, Denmark, appears to be clutching a Roman sieve.² There were more exotic Roman-origin grave goods found in Lolland, too, such as a bronze jug superbly decorated with vine motifs.

Goods also flowed the other way; cattle from Denmark were driven south to feed the tens of thousands of Roman soldiers who garrisoned the frontier of the Empire. In addition, there were trade links between Scandinavian merchants and territories further to the east during the Roman period; the Vistula River was a prominent artery for such movements. Roman weaponry made its way north and swords became highly valued in parts of Scandinavia. Such weapons are referred to in Norse mythology where they are objects that were prized by the gods. Yet Rome never sought to add Scandinavia to her Empire; her nose had been bloodied by Germanic tribes and their very effective guerrilla tactics; this deterred her from pushing into the lands beyond.

As trade continued to expand, petty chieftains in parts of Scandinavia grew more powerful, allowing an upper echelon of strong warlords to emerge. As was common among most peoples of Germanic origin, success in battle was crucial to maintaining the position of these warlords; not only did it enhance their status, it gave them access to new stores of loot with which to practice patronage. With limited land resources, loot was the only available source of wealth to buy support. War bands developed, composed of fraternities of men who served their chosen lord and in return shared in the spoils of peace and war. Standards of behaviour were expected of both parties to the bargain. The warlords were expected to be generous, ‘ring-givers’ and ‘bestowers of gold’; in return, their men were required to be loyal.

The concept of loot as a form of patronage was certainly not unique to Scandinavians of the period. It also happened on a much larger scale in cases of what might be called state-sponsored bounty hunting. The rulers of the eighth/ninth-century Carolingian Empire, and tenth-century Anglo-Saxon England, were able to practise patronage by conquest, giving access to vast stores of new land and portable plunder. Once that expansion stopped, then those rulers were in trouble because their ability to operate a system of patronage was limited. For early medieval states it was a case of ‘expand or die’.³

As the Roman Empire grew old, it began to unravel. With her decline, the legions were less able to defend her borders. In Britannia, coastal regions were exposed to pirate raids from Anglo-Saxons, precursors of later Viking assaults. During the last centuries of Rome there came the age of the Great Migrations when the fabric of Europe was torn apart by devastating migratory movements from the north and east into the south of the Continent and even beyond into North Africa. One early group from Scandinavia, mentioned as far back as the third century AD, were the Eruli. They were raiding as far away from home as the Black Sea and they gained a reputation for their acts of ferocious piracy. They were accused of all sorts of barbaric behaviour, including making sure that the trials of old age did not affect their elderly folk too much by thoughtfully stabbing them to death before they endured them. The Eruli eventually made their way back to southern Sweden.⁴ Other migrations saw peoples come to Britain from Schleswig, on the southern extremities of Denmark; these were the Angles and the Jutes. Bede suggested that the Jutes lived to the north of the Angles in Denmark. The Saxons from north Germany, which is to the south of the other groups, were also involved. Therefore, even before the Viking Age, there was a long tradition of migrations from the north.

There were almost certainly pirate raids from Scandinavia on adjacent parts of Europe at the time. One is obliquely referred to in the epic Anglo-Saxon work Beowulf. Although it was not written up until perhaps the ninth or tenth centuries, it probably originates in oral traditions from a time long before then. In it we are told that a warlord called Hygelac, king of the Geats, attacked Frisia. For him, it was a personal disaster as he and all but one of his army were killed in the battle that followed. That this was an actual historical event seems probable because it is also referred to in other sources such as the works of Gregory of Tours, dated to around 521. Hygelac’s skeleton was preserved and shown to a curious public at the mouth of the Rhine for some time afterwards. He was such a large man that no horse could carry him (an attribute also claimed for the tenth-century Viking founder of Normandy, Rollo). The Geats, also known as the Gautar, were the traditional great enemies of the Swedes, but where exactly they came from is unclear; it may have been Denmark but it was certainly somewhere in Scandinavia.⁵

Unfortunately, with the decline of the Roman Empire there is also a sharp drop in our documentary evidence concerning Scandinavia. Scandinavian trade significantly tailed off if the scarcity of archaeological remains of imported items is anything to go by. However, a fifth-century writer, Cassiodorus, revived interest in Scandinavia when he wrote The Origin and Exploits of the Goths, partly because the Goths – who had created so much chaos in continental Europe for the previous two centuries – had originated in Sweden.

The writer Jordanes, whose work the Gettica arrived shortly after that of Cassiodorus and may have been based on it (Cassiodorus’s original works have also not survived), wrote of a region in the far north inhabited by the Adogit where, for forty days in the summer, there was unbroken daylight and, in the winter, an equal and opposite duration of perpetual night. So tough were conditions up there, said Jordanes, that no grain could be grown, and the locals survived on a diet of animal flesh and birds’ eggs. Jordanes also spoke of a race called the Dani from the region. He was impressed by the superb physical specimens of humanity that were found there, as many later historians would be too.

The Byzantine writer Procopius wrote of Denmark in 550 and of the island, as it was perceived to be, of Thule. The exact location of where Thule was has confusingly moved around throughout history but when spoken of during the time of Procopius, it is believed to have been a part of Scandinavia. He also spoke of the Sáami who relied on animals for virtually every aspect of everyday life. He remarked that it was believed that their children never tasted milk but, from birth, were fed on bone marrow from butchered animals. As soon as they were born, babes in arms were wrapped in a fur cloak and suspended from a tree so that the mother could return to hunting duties as quickly as possible; hunting was important not just for survival but also for trading, especially with neighbours to the south.

Some surviving accounts of pre-Viking Age Scandinavia tell of wars between different groups in the region. The Ynglinga Saga suggests that the Swede Ottar (Ohthere) invaded Jutland but was defeated and killed there in a naval battle in the great natural canal across the north of that region called the Limfjord. The Danes, euphoric at their success, exposed his corpse on the top of a mound to be ravaged by the birds and wild beasts. This is further evidence that violence was common in Scandinavia long before the Vikings emerged, as indeed it was across much of Europe during the post-Roman period.

Post-Roman developments

For some time after the collapse of Rome, great migratory tides ebbed and flowed across Europe, swathes of humanity washing across the Continent. A dark veil was once more drawn across the Far North, however, it is clear from archaeology that this was not necessarily a time of extreme hardship in Scandinavia. Items of gold work have been found in Sweden dated to the fifth and sixth centuries including many fine examples of gold neck rings. A gold collar from Färjestaden in Sweden is a magnificent example of simple yet dazzling filigree work. Much of the gold that survives comes from items buried in hoards, leading to speculation that they were deposited in times of trouble and never recovered. Hoards continued to be buried into the Viking Age: so many examples have been found that it has been suggested that the reason for them concerns ritual as well as pragmatic security measures.

Impressive cemeteries in Sweden are a sign of the wealth that was present in the pre-Viking Age. Massive tombs, megalithic edifices in the shape of ships, were constructed; Skåne is particularly well provided with examples. As time moved on, styles changed. Grave mounds erected at Uppsala have been linked with the pre-Viking Yngling dynasty – though archaeological remains to confirm this definitively are in frustratingly short supply. The reference to this dynasty is an important pointer that parts of Sweden had been under the rule of some form of a king for some time before the Viking Age. However, some of the Yngling moved to Norway where they founded a dynasty in the Vik region, close to modern-day Oslo. From them, Harald Fairhair and ultimately the medieval, and modern, Norwegian royal house descended.⁶

When we can start to talk about a Viking Age is a moot point. There is a tendency to want to delimit precise intersections for historical periods, as if one morning with the rising of the sun the Viking Age began when it had not been there the night before. That well-known raconteur of Viking history, the Icelandic-born Magnus Magnusson, wrote that the dates for the Viking Age are clear-cut: 793 to 1066.⁷ It is understandable that one might pick as a start date the sacking of Lindisfarne and suggest that a terminus is arrived at in the year of Stamford Bridge and the death of the quasi-legendary Harald Hardrada; but it is an approach that has its problems. History rarely works in such a neat fashion. The Vikings may have appeared to have struck out of the blue when they attacked Lindisfarne in 793 but it is unlikely that they really did. For one thing, the possibility that the raiders happened upon a rich but undefended monastery on a remote island by chance without prior knowledge of it is stretching coincidence beyond breaking point. They surely knew of it beforehand, perhaps had even visited it as traders, so they probably knew exactly where they were headed. Neither is it likely that a group of previously pacific Scandinavian farmers, fishers and hunters suddenly woke up one morning and decided without any forethought to take up arms against unsuspecting distant lands. Indeed, we know they were in England several years before they pillaged Lindisfarne, attacking Portland in the south; and their ancestors were involved in localised raiding long before that.

The Vikings were as much about trading as raiding, a process that must have opened their eyes to the existence of the wider world and the opportunities it offered. Trading settlements existed in Scandinavia long before the Viking Age began. One of the most significant was at Helgö, Sweden. Its origins may date back as far as 200AD. It was situated on Lake Mälar (nowadays Mälaren, in the region of Stockholm) where the settlement of Birka was later sited. Evidence of trading from Helgö includes a very exotic artefact in the form of a fifth- to sixth-century Buddha. This is a small but evocative statue, probably originating from Kashmir on the modern Pakistan/India border. It has a third eye, a classic Buddhist motif. The figure sits cross-legged in meditative pose, as far removed from the stereotypical image of a Viking warrior as you can get. Other exotic finds from Helgö include an Egyptian Coptic ladle and a bishop’s crozier from Ireland that dates to the late eighth century, possibly the spoils of an early Viking raid; the latter appears to have a fanciful depiction of Jonah’s adventures with a whale carved on it, perhaps a story that the Vikings were attracted to. More mundane archaeological evidence has been found such as furs from beavers, winter squirrels and marten pelts. Ivory from walrus tusks and amber from the Baltic has also been discovered along with the remains of falcons from the Far North. The settlement was icebound in the winter, when rivers and lakes became frozen thoroughfares over which sledges were pulled by men on skis or wearing skates.

The Vikings developed their trading contacts partly because of the range of goods they dealt in. There was very little that they would not trade given the chance; as one historian remarked ‘they were particularly well placed to meet the inexhaustible European and Muslim demand for fur and slaves, but turned their hand to any saleable commodity: grain, fish, timber, hides, salt, wine, glass, glue, horses and cattle, white bears and falcons, walrus ivory and seal oil, honey, wax, malt, silks and woollens, amber and hazel nuts, soapstone dishes and basalt millstones, wrought weapons, ornaments, and silver’.⁸ This ability to turn their hand to the selling of such a wide range of merchandise was very likely inherited by the Vikings from their forefathers.

But alongside this talent for trade, further evidence of internal violence has been discovered. The end of the fifth and the beginning of the sixth century was seemingly one when coastal raids on Scandinavian settlements were a serious problem. Evidence of settlements that were burned on land, an island off the south-east coast of Sweden, and Gotland can cautiously be linked with raiding activities. In addition, a number of fortifications were constructed during the same period, suggesting a need to take significant defensive measures. Those on land are particularly striking. Several massive circular structures, such as examples at Ismantorp and Groborg, suggest a desperate need for the local population to defend itself. While Viking raids in the late eighth century and beyond may have come as a shock to Western Europe when they arrived, the people of Scandinavia and the Baltic had already been suffering from violent confrontations for several centuries.

Further reminders that these were tumultuous times are provided by the many hillforts that appeared in Norway and Sweden between 400 and 600. Local aristocrats became more powerful, effectively becoming regional kings. Below them were a number of lesser chieftains, the hersirs. But even in these chaotic days a form of law existed, regulated by an assembly called the Thing. These assemblies made decisions on the implementation of customary law and protected the rights of free men (which, as there were many slaves around, was far from everybody).

Occasionally in the later Viking sagas, we come across the names of some of these small-scale kings (‘kinglets’ they might be called, though that might be considered a little patronising: the Norse smákonungar or ‘small king’ seems slightly more respectful). For example, in Norway we read of Halfdan Whiteleg who lived to a very old age before he was buried in a barrow in the Vestfold. Then there was Eystein Fart (Halfdansson) who died while leading a raid up the Oslofjord, allegedly when a powerful warlock on the shore caused his ship’s boom to swing and hit him, knocking him into the water and drowning him. Closer to the Viking era proper, in the latter half of the eighth century, there was Halfdan II, nicknamed rather wonderfully ‘Halfdan the Generous in Gold and Stingy of Food’. These attributes were important; in the context of the times ‘a successful king gave: a bad king hoarded’.⁹ Being a ‘bracelet-giver’ was certainly an important characteristic for the man who would be king.

In the pre-Viking age the impressive ships for which Scandinavian shipwrights were later famed had not yet fully developed. Traders were limited to short-distance travel up and down the fjords or short crossings across the Baltic. Not until the keel was developed did longer-distance travel become possible; the new technology married perfectly with the adventurism and spirit of exploration among the Scandinavian seamen at this moment in history in an unplanned coincidence.

Mention of Sweden, Denmark and Norway requires explanation; in the story that follows these are regions rather than countries. It is important to note that ‘the Scandinavian states were small, and the potential resources restricted’; this situation may well have been a significant motivation for Viking expansion.¹⁰ That said, during the Viking Age the initial conceptions of these modern nation states took root but even then these first steps were hesitant and impermanent: what we call the kingdom of Denmark took several attempts before it firmly took hold and even after that there was an ebb and flow to its development. To compound this complication, even when nations began to emerge, their boundaries were fluid. Only as time went on did kings at a national level begin to emerge. Before then, we are looking at smaller territories ruled by warlords or chiefs. Men bound themselves to each other, in Christian as well as in Viking society, through an exchange of patronage and reciprocal obligation;¹¹ in the latter, loyalty was initially to chief (or ‘kinglet’) rather than to a national king. These chiefs did not take kindly to someone else claiming sovereignty over them. Even when national kings did emerge, they had to be careful to stay on good terms with their most powerful subjects, who could be dangerous enemies.

The ship gave birth to the Viking. Even if relatively undeveloped, such vessels had long played a part in Scandinavian life. Early carvings of boats from as far back as 3,000BC are liberally dotted across southern Norway, etched into rock surfaces. It has been suggested that the boats depicted are skin-covered craft. The oldest Scandinavian craft yet found, the Als boat from south-west Denmark, dates to about 350BC and has as its base a hollowed-out lime tree with planks for sides. A vessel discovered near Stockholm, the Björke boat, dates from a few hundred years later but is essentially a development based on earlier craft like the Als boat. As time passed, such vessels evolved. The Nydam boat, from southern Jutland and dating to around 400AD, is a relatively large craft, around 25 metres long, made of pine. With rowlocks for thirty oars, it was able to carry a significant human cargo. Although it did not have a keel, it did have the high prow that was typical of the later Viking longship. In common with the ships of the later Viking era the Nydam boat was clinker-built, with the planks from which it was constructed overlapping each other. It was steered by a large detachable steering oar at the stern on the right-hand side (or ‘starboard’ to give it its correct nautical term: strybord is Old Norse for ‘steering side’). Captain Magnus Andersen, who sailed across the Atlantic in 1893 in a replica of a later Viking ship, said that the side rudder worked very well and was very easy for one man to handle.

Pagan Viking religion

The Vikings became famous, or rather infamous, as terrifying pagan raiders and their religion was a core part of their legend and their very being. They were warriors from their early days, shaped by their harsh environment and their tough way of life, and this undoubtedly impacted on, and was impacted by, their religion. They lived life at the margins of the world and their belief system mirrored the challenges they faced in eking out an existence. Life hung by a slender thread, which could very easily be cut. The tales of their gods reflected this. Death was a constant companion and explanations needed to be given to deal with this reality; death in battle particularly, as this was a core part of their life as raiders.

And so, we come face-to-face with the Valkyries, the ‘choosers of the slain’, whose role was to select from those who were killed in battle and take them to the heavenly hall in Valhalla, the ‘hall of the slain’. Here they act as the handmaidens of these chosen men, serving them with copious amounts of mead from huge horns that served as goblets. Connections between Viking and Anglo-Saxon lore are quickly apparent when we scratch the surface, of which the Valkyries are one example; in Norse they are called valkyrja, in Saxon wælcryge. We know of them first and foremost from later written poems that, centuries afterwards, recorded oral traditions. There have also been archaeological artefacts unearthed depicting what looks suspiciously like Valkyries and these unnerving harpies are referred to occasionally in runic inscriptions. While the Valkyries have become somewhat romanticised, particularly through the works of the nineteenth-century composer Richard Wagner, initially they were portrayed as wild figures who roamed the battlefield looking for corpses as if they were carrion, devouring them wholesale – not such a romantic picture.¹²

The world was, in the end, doomed. Ragnarök, ‘the twilight of the gods’, was the name given to the terrifying end-time of the Viking deities. Its description in the Völuspá, part of a collection of oral tales known as the Poetic Edda written up by that later paragon of saga writers Snorri Sturluson, employs words that, even when translated into English, summon up terrifying images of the end of the world:

Brothers will battle to bloody end

And sister’s kin commit foul acts.

There’s woe in the world, wantonness rampant,

An axe-age, a sword age, shields are sundered;

A storm-age, a wolf-age, before the world crumbles.

No mercy or quarter will man give to man.

The sun grows dark, earth sinks in the sea,

The bright stars fall from the skies;

Flames rage and fires leap high,

Heaven itself is seared by heat.

Snorri’s work, known as the Prose Edda was based on the earlier Poetic Edda, a collection of Old Norse poems. In this world view, there was a consolation in the shape of a better world to come, of ‘… a hall more fair than the sun, thatched with gold, at Gimlé; there shall the gods in innocence dwell, live for ever a life of bliss’; the hall, unlike many real-life wooden Viking halls, could not be burned. Just when we might think a happy ending is coming, a life eternal of everlasting joy, the image is demolished by a shattering end-piece where ‘the dragon of darkness, a glittering serpent from Nidafell’ soars high above. ‘It flies over fields and bears on its wings a naked corpse’; a finale that would do Beowulf or, nearer our own time J. R. R. Tolkien, proud.¹³

Given the fact that there was no hope for men, even if they were gifted the prize of riotous feasting in Valhalla for a time, it probably seemed to those who were Vikings that life should be lived a day at a time – and lived to the full. This in its own way must have been an inspiration and a comfort to men who emerged silently from the seas and fell on unsuspecting coastlines, while facing the prospect of their own death in battle; or those who, fired by some spirit of adventure that it is almost impossible for twenty-first century mortals to comprehend (possibly astronauts or deep-sea explorers would be the closest equivalent), sailed into the great unknown across hundreds and thousands of miles of uncharted, dangerous seas.

The Vikings had many gods. They were similar to those of the Angles and Saxons in their pre-Christian era, showing that they shared a common Germanic origin. There were three who towered above all others in the Norse pantheon, a kind of Viking trinity: Odin, Thor and Freyr. Chief of them was Odin (Germanic Woden or Wotan: hence ‘Woden’s Day’ or Wednesday), famously associated with ravens, one of which was perched on each shoulder – these harbingers of death were called Huginn and Muninn, Mind and Memory, and they were sent out every morning to spy on the world and report back. Often depicted wearing a cape and a broad hat, Odin has a wizard-like appearance (Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings prompts suitable mental images, though in the Prose Edda he is a dwarf rather than a wizard). The Roman writer Tacitus, seeking a suitable counterpart for the Saxon Woden in his own pantheon of gods, equated him with Mercury (hence the French name for Wednesday, Mercredi). Odin, who