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Title: The Vikings
Author: Allen Mawer
Release Date: September 21, 2016 [EBook #53106]
Language: English
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The Cambridge Manuals of Science and
Literature
THE VIKINGS
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
London: FETTER LANE, E.C.
C. F. CLAY, MANAGER
[Illustration: Emblem]
Edinburgh: 100, PRINCES STREET
Berlin: A. ASHER AND CO.
Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS
New York: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
Bombay and Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
_All rights reserved_
[Illustration: The Gokstad ship]
[Illustration: Decorative title page, text follows]
THE VIKINGS
BY
ALLEN MAWER, M.A.
Professor of English Language and
Literature in Armstrong College,
University of Durham: late Fellow
of Gonville and Caius College,
Cambridge
Cambridge:
at the University Press
1913
Cambridge:
PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
_With the exception of the coat of arms at the foot, the design on
the title page is a reproduction of one used by the earliest known
Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521_
CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction 1
CHAP.
I. Causes of the Viking movement 4
II. The Viking movement down to the middle of the
9th century 12
III. The Vikings in England to the death of Harthacnut 22
IV. The Vikings in the Frankish Empire to the
founding of Normandy (911) 43
V. The Vikings in Ireland to the battle of Clontarf
(1014) 54
VI. The Vikings in the Orkneys, Scotland, the Western
Islands and Man 65
VII. The Vikings in Baltic lands and Russia 69
VIII. Viking civilisation 82
IX. Scandinavian influence in the Orkneys, Shetlands,
the Western Islands and Man 112
X. Scandinavian influence in Ireland 116
XI. Scandinavian influence in England 123
XII. Scandinavian influence in the Empire and Iceland 138
Bibliography 146
Index 148
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Gokstad ship _Frontispiece_
PLATE
I. Viking ship from the Bayeux tapestry _facing page_ 100
II. Ornaments of the Viking period " " 104
III. The Jellinge stone " " 111
The frontispiece is reproduced by kind permission of the photographer,
Mr O. Væring, of Christiania; plates II and III are taken from Sophus
Müller's _Nordische Altertümskunde_.
INTRODUCTION
The term 'Viking' is derived from the Old Norse _vík_, a bay, and
means 'one who haunts a bay, creek or fjord[1].' In the 9th and 10th
centuries it came to be used more especially of those warriors who
left their homes in Scandinavia and made raids on the chief European
countries. This is the narrow, and technically the only correct use of
the term 'Viking,' but in such expressions as 'Viking civilisation,'
'the Viking age,' 'the Viking movement,' 'Viking influence,' the word
has come to have a wider significance and is used as a concise and
convenient term for describing the whole of the civilisation, activity
and influence of the Scandinavian peoples, at a particular period in
their history, and to apply the term 'Viking' in its narrower sense to
these movements would be as misleading as to write an account of the
age of Elizabeth and label it 'The Buccaneers.'
It is in the broader sense that the term is employed in the present
manual. Plundering and harrying form but one aspect of Viking activity
and it is mainly a matter of accident that this aspect is the one that
looms largest in our minds. Our knowledge of the Viking movement was,
until the last half-century, drawn almost entirely from the works of
medieval Latin chroniclers, writing in monasteries and other kindred
schools of learning which had only too often felt the devastating hand
of Viking raiders. They naturally regarded them as little better than
pirates and they never tired of expatiating upon their cruelty and
their violence. It is only during the last fifty years or so that we
have been able to revise our ideas of Viking civilisation and to form a
juster conception of the part which it played in the history of Europe.
The change has come about chiefly in two ways. In the first place the
literature of Scandinavia is no longer a sealed book to us. For our
period there are three chief groups of native authorities: (1) the
prose sagas and the _Historia Danica_ of Saxo Grammaticus, (2) the
eddaic poems, (3) the skaldic poems. The prose sagas and Saxo belong to
a date considerably later than the Viking age, but they include much
valuable material referring to that period. The chief poems of the
older Edda date from the Viking period itself and are invaluable for
the information they give us as to the religion and mythology of the
Scandinavian peoples at this time, the heroic stories current amongst
them, and their general outlook on life. The skaldic poems are however
in some ways the most valuable historical authority for the period. The
_skalds_ or court-poets were attached to the courts of kings and jarls,
shared their adventures, praised their victories, and made songs of
lament on their death, and their work is largely contemporary with the
events they describe.
Secondly, and yet more important in its results perhaps, archaeological
science has, within the last half-century, made rapid advance, and the
work of archaeologists on the rich finds brought to light during the
last hundred years has given us a vast body of concrete fact, with the
aid of which we have been able to reconstruct the material civilisation
of the Viking period far more satisfactorily than we could from the
scattered and fragmentary notices found in the sagas and elsewhere.
The resultant picture calls for description later, but it is well to
remember from the outset that it is a very different one from that
commonly associated with the term 'Viking.'
With this word of explanation and note of warning we may proceed to our
main subject.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The word is older than the actual Viking age: it is found in
Anglo-Saxon in the form _wicing_. Some writers have said that it means
'people from the district of the _Vík_' in South Norway, so-called
from the long fjord-like opening which is found there, but the early
Anglo-Saxon use of the term forbids this derivation.
CHAPTER I
CAUSES OF THE VIKING MOVEMENT
The period of Scandinavian history to which the term Viking is applied
extends roughly from the middle of the 8th to the end of the 10th or
the first half of the 11th century. Its commencement was marked by the
raids of Scandinavian freebooters upon the coasts of England, Western
Scotland and Ireland and upon Frankish territory. Its climax was
reached when in the course of the 9th and 10th centuries Scandinavian
rule was established in Ireland, Man and the Western Islands, the
northern and midland districts of England, Normandy, and a great
part of Russia. Its close was marked by the consolidation of the
Scandinavian kingdoms in the late 10th and early 11th centuries under
such mighty sovereigns as Olaf Tryggvason and Olaf the Holy in Norway,
Olaf Skötkonung in Sweden, and greatest of all, king Knut in Denmark,
who for a brief time united the whole of Scandinavia and a great part
of the British Isles in one vast confederacy.
The extent and importance of the movement is indicated from the first
by the almost simultaneous appearance of trouble in England, on the
coast of France, and on the Eider boundary between Denmark and the
Frankish empire.
In the reign of Beorhtric, king of Wessex (786-802), three ships of
the Northmen coming from Hörðaland (around Hardanger Fjord) landed
near Dorchester, in June 793 Lindisfarne was sacked, in March 800
Charlemagne found himself compelled to equip a fleet and establish a
stronger coastguard to defend the Frankish coast against the attacks
of the Northmen, and from 777 onwards, when the Saxon patriot Widukind
took refuge with the Danish king Sigefridus (O.N. Sigröðr), there was
almost constant friction along the land-boundary between Denmark and
the Frankish empire.
This outburst of hostile activity had been preceded by considerable
intercourse of a varied character between Scandinavia and the countries
of Western Europe. Early in the 6th century the Danes or, according to
another authority, the Götar from Götaland in south Sweden, invaded
Frisia under their king Chocilaicus. Reference is made to this raid
in the story of Hygelac, king of the Geatas, in _Beowulf_. Professor
Zimmer suggested that the attacks of unknown pirates on the island
of Eigg in the Hebrides and on Tory Island off Donegal, described
in certain Irish annals of the 7th century, were really the work of
Scandinavian raiders. The evidence of Irish legend and saga goes
to prove that in the same century Irish anchorites settled in the
Shetlands but were later compelled by the arrival of Scandinavian
settlers to move on to the lonely Faroes. Here they were not to be
left in peace, for the Irish geographer Dicuil, writing in 825, tells
us that the Faroes had then been deserted by the monks for some thirty
years owing to the raids of Northmen pirates. Dr Jakobsen has shown
that the forms of place-names in the Shetlands point very definitely
to a settlement from Scandinavia in pre-Viking days--before 700--while
the sculptured stones of Gothland show already at the end of the 7th
century clear evidence of Celtic art influence. Possibly also merchants
of Scandinavian origin were already settled in the Frankish empire and
it is certain that there was considerable trade between Scandinavia and
the West.
Most of the intercourse thus demonstrated was slow in development,
peaceful and civilising in character. How came it that in the later
years of the 8th century this intercourse was suddenly strengthened and
intensified, while at the same time it underwent a great change both in
methods and character?
The traditional explanation is that given by Dudo and by William of
Jumièges in their histories of the settlement of Normandy and by Saxo
in his account of Danish settlements in Baltic lands in the 10th
century, viz. that the population of Scandinavia had outgrown its means
of support and that enforced emigration was the result. There may be a
certain element of truth in the tradition but when it says that this
excess of population was due to polygamy we have every reason to doubt
it. Polygamy does not lead to an over-rapid growth of population as
a whole, and it is fairly certain that it was practised only by the
ruling classes in Scandinavia. It is quite possible, however, that the
large number of sons in the ruling families made it necessary for the
younger ones to go forth and gain for themselves fresh territories in
new lands.
A clearer light is perhaps thrown on the matter if we examine the
political condition of the Scandinavian countries at this time. In
Norway we find that the concentration of kingly authority in the hands
of Harold Fairhair after the middle of the 9th century led many of the
more independent spirits to leave Norway and adopt a Viking life in the
West or to settle in new homes in Iceland. So strong was the spirit of
independence that when Harold Fairhair received the submission of the
Vikings of the West after the battle of Hafrsfjord, many of them rather
than endure even a shadowy overlordship abandoned their Viking life and
settled down to peaceful independence in Iceland. It is quite possible
that earlier attempts at consolidation on the part of previous petty
Norwegian kings may have had similar results.
Of the condition of Sweden we know practically nothing but we have
sufficient information about the course of events in Denmark at this
time to see that it probably tended to hasten the development of the
Viking movement. Throughout the first half of the 9th century there
were repeated dynastic struggles accompanied probably by the exile,
voluntary or forced, of many members of the rival factions.
External causes also were certainly not without influence. From the
6th century down to the middle of the 8th, the Frisians were the great
naval and trading power of North-West Europe. They had probably taken
some part in the conquest of England and, during the 7th and 8th
centuries, the whole of the coast of the Netherlands from the Scheldt
to the Weser was in their hands. Their trade was extensive, their
chief city being Duurstede a few miles south-east of Utrecht. The
northward expansion of the Franks brought them into collision with the
Frisians in the 7th century. The struggle was long and fierce but in
the end the Frisians were defeated by Charles Martel in 734 and finally
subjugated by Charlemagne in 785. The crushing of Frisian naval power
and the crippling of their trade probably played no unimportant part
in facilitating the Scandinavian advance, and it is curious to note
that while there is considerable archaeological evidence for peaceful
intercourse between the west coast of Norway and Frisian lands in the
8th century, that evidence seems to come to an end about the year 800,
just when Frisian power finally declined. There can be no doubt also
that the conquest of the Saxons by Charlemagne at the close of the
8th century, bringing Franks and Danes face to face along the Eider
boundary, made the latter uneasy.
There has been much arguing to and fro of the question as to the
respective shares taken by Danes and Norwegians in the Viking movement.
That of the Swedes can fortunately be determined with a good deal more
certainty. The Swedes were for the most part interested only in Eastern
Europe and there by way of trade rather than of battle: we learn
from runic inscriptions and other sources that some Swedes did visit
England and the West, but these visits were due to individual rather
than national activity. The question as between Dane and Norwegian
has been to some extent made more difficult of settlement through the
national prejudices of Scandinavian scholars; e.g. Danes for the most
part decide in favour of the Danish origin of Rollo of Normandy, while
Norwegians decide in favour of his Norwegian birth. Such differences
of opinion are unfortunately only too often possible owing to the
scantiness of the material upon which we have to base our conclusions.
Medieval chroniclers were for the most part unable or unwilling
to distinguish between Danes and Norwegians; they were all alike
'Nordmanni' to them and the term 'Dani' is practically interchangeable
with it. The vagueness of their ethnographical knowledge is manifest
when we find the Norman Dudo at the beginning of the 11th century
tracing back the Dani (or Daci) to an original home in Dacia. The
Irish annalists did, however, draw a very definite distinction between
Norwegians and Danes--Finn-gaill and Dubh-gaill as they called them,
i.e. White and Black Foreigners respectively[2]. They seem never
to confuse them, but exactly on what grounds they gave them their
distinguishing epithets it is now impossible to determine. They do not
correspond to any known ethnographical differences, and the only other
reasonable suggestion which has been offered is that the terms are used
to describe some difference of armour or equipment as yet unknown to
us. The Irish annals also distinguish between Daunites or Danes and
Lochlanns or men from Lochlann, i.e. Norway; but again the origin of
the term Lochlann as applied to Norway is obscure. The writers of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle seem to use the term _Norðmenn_ very definitely
of Norwegians, just as Alfred does in his translation of Orosius, but
the term _Dene_ came to be used more vaguely and uncertainly. It is
only very rarely that the chroniclers vouchsafe us precise information
as to the home of any particular group of Viking raiders. We have
already mentioned the presence of Norwegians from Hörðaland in England
at the very opening of the movement[3]: once we hear of 'Westfaldingi,'
i.e. men from Vestfold in South Norway, in an account of attacks on
Aquitaine, and in one passage the Vikings are called 'Scaldingi,' but
it is disputed whether this means Vikings who had been quartering
themselves in the valley of the Scheldt, or is a term applied to the
Danes from the name of their royal family, viz. the Skjöldungar[4].
Speaking roughly we may however assert that Ireland, Scotland and the
Western Islands were almost entirely in the hands of Norwegian settlers
(Danish attacks on Ireland failed for the most part). Northumbria was
Norwegian, but East Anglia and the Five Boroughs were Danish. The
attacks on France and the Netherlands were due both to Norwegians and
Danes, probably with a preponderance of the latter, while Danes and
Swedes alone settled in Baltic lands.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] The name _Finn-gaill_ survives in Fingall, the name of a district
to the north of Dublin, while _Dubh-gaill_ is the second element in the
proper names MacDougall and MacDowell.
[3] The name _Hiruath_ given by Celtic writers to Norway probably
points also to a tradition that many of the Viking invaders of Ireland
were Hörðar from Norway.
[4] A third explanation has recently been suggested by Dr Björkman,
viz. that it is a Low German word meaning 'shipmen' which came to be
used specially of the Vikings.
CHAPTER II
THE VIKING MOVEMENT DOWN TO THE MIDDLE OF THE 9TH CENTURY
England was possibly the scene of the earliest Viking raids, but after
the Dorchester raid, the sack of Lindisfarne in 793 (_v. supra_, p.
5), and the devastation of the monastery of St Paul at Jarrow in 794
we hear nothing more of Vikings in England until 835. The fate of
Ireland was different. Attacks began almost at the same time as in
England and continued without intermission. Vikings sailed round the
west coast of Scotland. Skye and then Lambay Island off Dublin were
invaded in 795, Glamorganshire was ravaged in the same year and the
Isle of Man was attacked in 798. Iona was plundered in 802 and again
in 806. In 807 invaders appeared off the coast of Sligo and made their
way inland as far as Roscommon, and in 811 Munster was plundered. In
821 the Howth peninsula near Dublin and two small islands in Wexford
Haven were ravaged. The Vikings had completely encircled Ireland with
their fleets and by the year 834 they had made their way well into the
interior of the island so that none were safe from their attacks. They
no longer contented themselves with isolated raids: large fleets began
to visit Ireland and to anchor in the numerous loughs and harbours
with which the coast abounds. Thence they made lengthy raids on the
surrounding country and often strengthened their base by building forts
on the shores of the loughs or harbours in which they had established
themselves. It was in this way that Dublin, Waterford and Limerick
first rose to importance.
Of the leaders of the Vikings at this time there is only one whose
figure stands out at all clearly, and that is Turges (O.N. Ðorgestr)
who first appeared in 832 at the sack of Armagh. He had come to Ireland
with a great and royal fleet and 'assumed the sovereignty over the
foreigners in Erin.' He had fleets on Lough Neagh, at Louth, and on
Lough Ree, and raided the country as far south as the Meath district.
Turges was not the only invader at this time: indeed so numerous were
the invading hosts that the chronicles tell us 'after this there came
great sea-cast floods of foreigners into Erin, so that there was not
a point thereof without a fleet.' The power of Turges culminated in
841, when he drove the abbot of Armagh into exile, usurped the abbacy,
and exercised the sovereignty of North Ireland. At the same time his
wife Ota (O.N. Auðr) profaned the monastery of Clonmacnoise and gave
audience, probably as a _völva_ or prophetess, upon the high altar.
Three years later Turges was captured by the Irish and drowned in Lough
Owel (co. West Meath).
The early attacks on England and the first invasion of Ireland were
alike due to Norsemen rather than Danes. This is evident from their
general course, from the explicit statement of the Anglo-Saxon
chronicle, and from the fact that the first arrival of Danes in Ireland
is definitely recorded in the year 849. The attack on Dorchester (c.
786-802), lying as it does near the centre of the south coast of
England, is somewhat strange if it is assigned to the traditional date,
viz. 787, but there is no authority for this, and if it is placed at
any date nearer to 802 (before which it must have taken place), it is
probable that the attack may be explained as an extension of Viking
raids down St George's Channel and round the S.W. corner of England.
In 835 the attacks on England were renewed after an interval of 40
years, but as they now stand in close connexion with contemporary
invasions of Frankish territory there is every reason to believe that
they were of Danish rather than of Norse origin. The attacks began in
the south and west but they soon spread to East Anglia and Lindsey.
In 842 the same army ravaged London, Étaples and Rochester. In 851
Aethelstan of Kent defeated the Danes at sea in one of the rare battles
fought with them on their own element, and in the same year they
remained for the winter in Thanet, probably owing to the loss of their
ships. The size and importance of these attacks may be gauged from
the fact that in this year a fleet of some 350 Danish ships sailed up
the Thames. It was probably that same fleet, with slightly diminished
numbers, which in 852 ravaged Frisia and then sailed round the British
Isles, came to Ireland, and captured Dublin. In 855 the Danes wintered
for the first time in Sheppey and we reach the same point in the
development of their attacks on England to which they had already
attained in Ireland. We pass away from the period of raiding. The Danes
now came prepared to stay for several years at a time and to carry on
their attacks with unceasing persistency.
The course of events in the Frankish empire ran on much the same lines
as in England and Ireland during these years except that here trouble
arose on the land boundary between Denmark and the Franks as well as on
the sea-coast.
Alarmed by the conquest of the Saxons the Danish king Guðröðr collected
a fleet at Slesvík and in 808 he crossed the Eider and attacked the
Abodriti (in Mecklenburg-Schwerin), a Slavonic tribe in alliance with
the Franks. He also sent a fleet of some 200 vessels to ravage the
coast of Frisia, laid claim to that district and to Saxony, north of
the Elbe, and threatened to attack Charlemagne in his own capital.
The emperor was preparing to resist him when news arrived (810) of
the death of Guðröðr at the hands of one of his followers and the
consequent dispersal of the Danish fleet.
Soon after disputes over the succession arose between the family of
Guðröðr and that of an earlier king Harold. Ultimately the contest
resolved itself into one between the sons of Guðröðr, especially
one Horic (O.N. Hárekr) and a certain Harold. It lasted for several
years, the sons of Guðröðr for the most part maintaining their hold
on Denmark. At one time during the struggle Harold and his brother
Ragnfröðr went to Vestfold in Norway, 'the extreme district of their
realm, whose chiefs and peoples were refusing to be made subject to
them, and gained their submission,' showing clearly that at this time
Denmark and Southern Norway were under one rule and rendering probable
the identification of Guðröðr with Guðröðr the Yngling who about this
time was slain by a retainer in Stifla Sound on the south coast of
Norway. This king ruled over Vestfold, half Vingulmörk and perhaps
Agðir. Both parties were anxious to secure the support of the emperor
Lewis and in the end Harold gained his help by accepting baptism at
Mainz in 826. He promised to promote the cause of Christianity in
Denmark, while Lewis in return granted him the district of Riustringen
in Frisia as a place of retreat in case of necessity. The Danes thereby
gained their first foothold within the empire.
Sufficient has been said of the relation between Denmark and the empire
on its land boundary: we must now say something of the attacks made by
sea.
The first were made in 799 on the coast of Aquitaine and they were
probably due to raiders from Ireland who followed a well-known trade
route from South Ireland to the ports of Southern France. In 800
Charlemagne inspected the coast from the Somme to the Seine and gave
orders for the equipment of a fleet and the strengthening of the
coastguard against Northmen pirates. When Guðröðr's fleet plundered
the islands off the Frisian coast in 810, Charlemagne gave orders for
his fleet to be strengthened once more, but the results were meagre in
the extreme. The passage of the Channel was no longer safe, and year
after year, from some time before 819, Vikings harried the island of
Noirmoutier at the mouth of the Loire, commanding the port of Nantes
and the extensive salt-trade of the district. The Island of Rhé
opposite La Rochelle, was raided in similar fashion.
The Frankish empire was free from attack between the years 814 and
833. During the same time the English coast was also unvisited, and it
is probable that the struggles for the succession in Denmark had for
the time being reduced that kingdom to inactivity. About the year 830
the Danish king Hárekr seems to have established himself firmly on
the throne, while on the other hand the emperor Lewis was troubled by
the ambition of his sons Lewis, Pippin and Lothair. It is probably no
chance coincidence that these events synchronised with the renewal of
Viking attacks on Frisia. Throughout their history the Vikings showed
themselves well informed of the changing political conditions of the
countries which they visited and ready to make the utmost use of the
opportunities which these might give for successful invasion.
Frisia was the main point of attack during the next few years.
Four times was the rich trading town of Duurstede ravaged; fleets
sailed up the Veldt, the Maas, and the Scheldt; Antwerp was burned
and the Island of Walcheren plundered, so that by the year 840 the
greater part of Frisia south of the Vlie, was in Danish hands and
so it remained till the end of the century. The Danish king Hárekr
repeatedly denied all complicity in these raids and even promised to
punish the raiders, but it is impossible to tell how far his denials
were genuine. Equally difficult is it to say how far Harold in his
Frisian home was responsible for these attacks. The annalists charge
him with complicity, but Lewis seems to have thought it best to bind
him by fresh gifts and (probably about 839) granted the district
around Duurstede itself to him and his brother Roric (O.N. Hroerekr)
on condition that they helped to ward off Viking attacks. All the
efforts of the emperor to equip a fleet or to defend the coast were to
no purpose, and there was even a suspicion that the Frisian populace
were in sympathy with the Vikings. So great was the terror of attack
that when in 839 a Byzantine mission, including some Rhôs or Swedes
from Russia, visited the emperor at Ingelheim, the Swedes were for a
time detained under suspicion, as spies.
On the death of Lewis the Pious in 840 things went from bad to worse.
The division of the empire in 843 gave the coast from the Eider to
the Weser to Lewis, from the Weser to the Scheldt to Lothair, and the
rest to Charles, removing all possibility of a united and organised
defence, and soon these princes entered on the fatal policy of calling
in the Vikings to assist them in their quarrels. Thus Lothair in 841
endeavoured to bind Harold to his cause by a grant of the Island of
Walcheren and Harold is found in the following year with Lothair's army
on the Moselle.
The Viking expeditions to England and France stand now in close
connexion. In 841 the valley of the Seine was ravaged as far as
Rouen, in 842 Étaples in Picardy was destroyed by a fleet from
England, while in 843 Nantes fell a prey to their attacks. From their
permanent quarters at Noirmoutier the Vikings sailed up the Garonne
and penetrated inland as far as Toulouse. In 844 we hear from Arab
historians of their vessels swarming on the coasts of Spain like 'dark
red sea-birds,' but while they effected landings at Lisbon and Cadiz
and at Arzilla in Morocco, and captured Seville, with the exception of
its citadel, the Mussulman resistance was too stout for them to effect
much.
As a result of this expedition the Emir of Cordova, Abd-ar-Rahman
II sent an embassy to the king of the _Madjus_ (i.e. the magi or
the heathen, one of the commonest Arab names for the Vikings). The
ambassador found the king living in an island three days' journey from
the mainland, but we are told that the heathen occupied many other
neighbouring isles and the mainland also. He was courteously received
by the king and became an especial favourite with the queen Noud (? O.N.
Auðr). His companions were alarmed at the intimacy and as a result the
ambassador paid less frequent visits to court. The queen asked him why,
and when he told her the reason she said that, owing to perfect freedom
of divorce, there was no jealousy among the Madjus. The details of the
story are too vague to admit of certainty, but it would seem as if
the embassy had visited the court of the great Turges and his equally
remarkable wife Auðr in Ireland, or perhaps that of Olaf the White and
his wife Auðr (_v. infra_, p. 66).
In 845 Hárekr of Denmark sailed up the Elbe and destroyed Hamburg,
while in the same year the dreaded Ragnarr Loðbrók, most famous of
all Vikings, sailed up the Seine as far as Paris. While on its retreat
from Paris, after the usual devastation, a strange and deadly disease,
possibly some form of dysentery due to scantiness of food resulting
from a hard winter, broke out in the Danish army. Various legends
arose in connexion with this event, and it finds a curious echo in the
story told by Saxo Grammaticus of an expedition made by Ragnarr among
the Biarmians (in Northern Russia) when that people by their prayers
called down a plague of dysentery upon the Danes in which large numbers
perished. In the end the historical plague was stayed when Hárekr
commanded the Vikings on their return to Denmark to refrain from flesh
and meat for fourteen days. Whether as a result of the plague or from
some other cause Hárekr now showed himself ready to come to terms with
Lewis, and for the next eighty years there was complete peace along
the Eider boundary. The whole of the coast was still open to attack
however; Frisia was hardly ever free from invaders; Brittany was
obliged to buy off Danish attacks in 847, while Noirmoutier continued
to form a basis of attack against Southern France in the Gironde
district. The Viking invasions in France had attained much the same
stage as that to which we have already traced them in England and
Ireland.
CHAPTER III
THE VIKINGS IN ENGLAND TO THE DEATH OF HARTHACNUT
The great development of Viking activity which took place after 855
was certainly not unconnected with the course of events in Denmark
itself. Hárekr was attacked by his two nephews in 850 and compelled to
share the kingdom with them. In 854 large bands of Vikings returned to
their fatherland after twenty years' ravaging in Frankish territory.
Trouble now arose between Hárekr and his nephew Godurm (O.N. Guðormr),
one of the returned leaders. Civil war broke out and ultimately, after
a great fight, the kingship fell to a younger Hárekr, a relative of
the late king. A severe dynastic struggle of this kind must have been
accompanied by much unsettlement and perhaps by an actual proscription.
It would certainly seem that there was some definite connexion between
these events and the coincident appearance of the sons of Ragnarr
Loðbrók as leaders of a more extended Viking movement both in England
and in France. Three of his sons--Halfdanr, Ubbi and Ívarr--took part
in the first wintering in Sheppey in 855, while in the same year
another son Björn Ironside appeared on the Seine.
The figure of Ragnarr Loðbrók himself belongs to an earlier generation,
and great as was his after-fame we unfortunately know very little of
his actual career. He would seem to have been of Norwegian birth,
closely connected with the south of Norway and the house of Guðröðr,
but like that prince having extensive interests in Denmark. He probably
visited Ireland in 831, for we read in Saxo of an expedition made by
Ragnarr to Ireland when he slew king Melbricus and ravaged Dublin,
an event which is pretty certainly to be identified with an attack
made on the Conaille district (co. Louth) by foreigners in 831 when
the king Maelbrighde was taken prisoner. He led the disastrous Seine
expedition in 845 (_v. supra_, p. 21). The next glimpse of him which
we have is probably that found in certain Irish annals where he is
represented as exiled from his Norwegian patrimony and living with some
of his sons in the Orkneys while others were absent on expeditions to
the British Isles, Spain and Africa, and a runic inscription has been
found at Maeshowe in the Orkneys confirming the connexion of the sons
of Loðbrók and possibly of Loðbrók himself with those islands. The
expeditions would be those mentioned above and the yet more famous one
made to Spain, Africa and Italy by Björn Ironside in the years 859-62
(_v. infra_, pp. 46-7). Ragnarr Loðbrók's later history is uncertain.
According to the Irish annals quoted above, his sons while on their
expedition dreamed that their father had died in a land not his own
and on their return found it to be true. This agrees with Scandinavian
tradition according to which Ragnarr met his death at the hands of
Aelle, king of Northumbria, by whom he was thrown into a snake-pit,
while the capture of York by Ívarr the Boneless in 866-7 (_v. infra_)
is represented as part of a great expedition of vengeance undertaken
by the sons of Ragnarr. This tradition (apart from certain details) is
probably historical, but we have no definite confirmatory evidence.
With this note on the history of Denmark at this time and on the career
of the most shadowy, if at the same time the most famous of the Viking
leaders, we may turn once more to the history of events in England.
For ten years after the wintering in Sheppey, England was left in
a state of comparative peace. The change came in 866 when a large
Danish force which had been bribed to leave the Seine by Charles the
Bald sailed to England and took up its quarters in East Anglia. In
867 they crossed the Humber and captured York, their task being made
easier by the quarrels of Aelle and Osberht as to the kingship of
Northumbria. Next year the rivals patched up their differences, but
failed to recapture York from the Danes under Ívarr and Ubbi. Setting
up a puppet king Ecgberht in Northumbria north of the Tyne, the Danes
next received the submission of Mercia and returned to York in 869. In
870 they marched through Mercia into East Anglia, as far as Thetford,
engaged the forces of Edmund, king of East Anglia, defeated and slew
him, whether in actual battle or in later martyrdom, as popular
tradition would have it, is uncertain. The death of St Edmund, king and
martyr, soon became an event of European fame and no Viking leader was
more widely execrated than the cruel Ívarr, who was deemed responsible.
The turn of Wessex came next. The fortunes of battle fluctuated but
the accounts usually terminate with the ominous words 'the Danes held
possession of the battle field.' In 871, Alfred commenced his heroic
struggle with the Danes and in the first year of his reign some nine
pitched battles were fought, beside numerous small engagements. So keen
was the West Saxon resistance that a truce was made in 871 and the
Danes turned their attention to Mercia once more. London was forced
to ransom itself at a heavy price and a coin of Halfdanr, probably
minted in London at the time, has been found. After a hurried visit
to Northumbria the _here_ settled down for the winter of 872-3 at
Torksey in the Lindsey district, whence they moved in 873 to Repton
in Derbyshire. They overthrew Burhred of Mercia and set up a foolish
thegn of his as puppet ruler of that realm. In the winter of 874-5 the
_here_ divided forces: one part went under Halfdanr to the Tyne valley,
the other under Guthrum (O.N. Guðormr) to Cambridge.
In 876 Halfdanr divided up the lands of Northumbria among his followers
who soon ploughed and cultivated them. At the same time they did not
forget their old occupations. Raids were made against the Picts and the
Strathclyde Welsh, while Halfdanr soon became involved in the great
struggle going on in Ireland at that time between Norsemen and Danes.
This ultimately led to his death in 877 (_v. infra_, p. 58).
In the meantime the struggle continued in Wessex. In 875 Alfred
captured seven Danish ships. In 876 the southern division of the _here_
slipped past the West Saxon _fyrd_ and reached Wareham in Dorsetshire,
but came to terms with Alfred. Though the peace was sworn with all
solemnity on their sacred altar-ring, the mounted portion of the _here_
slipped off once more and established themselves in Exeter. Their land
forces were supported by a parallel movement of the fleet. At Exeter
Alfred made peace with them and the _here_ returned to Mercia. There
half the land was divided up among the Danes while the southern half
was left in the hands of Ceolwulf.
Alfred reached the nadir of his fortunes when the _here_ returned to
Wessex in the winter of 877-8, drove many of the inhabitants into
exile across the sea, and received the submission of the rest with the
exception of King Alfred and a few followers who took refuge in the
Island of Athelney amid the Somersetshire marshes. Alfred soon gathered
round him a force with which he was able to issue from his stronghold
and ultimately to inflict a great defeat on the Danes at Edington near
Westbury. They now made terms with Alfred by the peace of Wedmore, and
agreed to leave Alfred's kingdom while their king Guthrum received
Christian baptism. They withdrew first to Cirencester and then to East
Anglia. Here they settled, portioning out the land as they had done in
Northumbria and Northern Mercia. A peace was drawn up between Alfred
and Guthrum of East Anglia defining the boundary between their realms.
It was to run along the Thames estuary to the mouth of the Lea (a few
miles east of London), then up the Lea to its source near Leighton
Buzzard, then due north to Bedford, then eastwards up the Ouse to
Watling St. somewhere near Fenny or Stony Stratford. From this point
the boundary is left undefined, probably because the kingdoms of Alfred
and Guthrum ceased to be conterminous here.
England now had peace for some twelve years. Alfred made good use of
the interval in reorganising his army and strengthening the kingdom
generally, so that when attacks were renewed in 892 he was much better
prepared to meet them. In the autumn of that year two fleets coming
from France arrived in England: one landed on the Limen (between Hythe
and Romney Marsh), the other under the leadership of Hæsten (O.N.
Hásteinn) at Milton in North Kent. Alfred's difficulties were increased
by the fact that during the next four years the Danish settlers in
Northumbria and East Anglia played a more or less actively hostile
part, both by land and sea. The Danes showed all their old mobility
and in a series of raids crossed England more than once--first to
Buttington on the Severn (co. Montgomery), then to Chester, and on a
third occasion to Bridgenorth in Shropshire. They met with a uniformly
stout and well organised resistance under the leadership of Alfred, his
son Edward the Elder, and his brother-in-law Aethelred of Mercia, and
in the end they had to retire with no fresh acquisition of territory.
For the most part they distributed themselves among the East Anglian
and Northumbrian Danes, but those who had no cattle wherewith to
stock their land took ship and sailed back to the Seine. There were
no further attacks from abroad during Alfred's reign, but piratical
raids made by the East Anglian and Northumbrian Danes caused him a good
deal of trouble, and in order to meet them he definitely addressed
himself to the long delayed task of equipping a fleet. The vessels were
carefully designed according to Alfred's own ideas: they were larger,
swifter and steadier than the Danish vessels and they soon showed their
worth when more than 20 vessels with their crews were lost by the Danes
in one year. It is interesting to note that these vessels were manned
in part by Frisian sailors, probably because of the low ebb to which
English seamanship had sunk.
When once Edward the Elder's claim to the throne was firmly established
in the battle fought at 'the Holm,' somewhere in South Cambridgeshire,
he commenced, with the active co-operation of his brother-in-law
Aethelred, ealdorman of Mercia, the great work of strengthening the
hold of the English on Southern Mercia preparatory to an attempt to
reconquer the Danelagh. Chester was rebuilt in 907. In 910 a fort was
built at 'Bremesbyrig,' possibly Bromesberrow in Gloucestershire.
Aethelred died in the next year, but his wife Aethelflæd, the 'Lady of
the Mercians,' continued his work, and forts were built at 'Scergeat,'
perhaps Shrewsbury, at Bridgenorth on the Severn, at Tamworth, and at
Stafford in 912. In 914 Warwick was fortified, while in 915 forts were
built at Chirbury in Shropshire and Runcorn in Cheshire.
On the death of Aethelred, Edward took London and Oxford and the parts
of Mercia adhering to them into his own hands. Two forts were built
on the north and south sides of the Lea at Hertford in 911-12, and
another at Witham on the Blackwater in Essex. Edward's work soon bore
fruit, for we read that in the same year a large number of those who
had been under Danish rule now made submission to the king. The Danes
in the Five Boroughs became restless under the continued advance of the
English, and twice in the year 913 they made raids from Leicester and
Northampton as far as Hook Norton in Oxfordshire and Leighton Buzzard,
while in the next year Edward, for the first time in his reign, was
troubled by raiders from abroad. Coming from Brittany they sailed
up the Severn, ravaged South Wales and the Archenfield district of
Herefordshire, but could do nothing against the garrison of Gloucester,
Hereford and other neighbouring towns, which seem already to have been
fortified. They were forced to leave the district and so careful a
watch did Edward keep over the coast of Somerset, Devon and Cornwall
that they could make no effective landing, though they tried twice, at
Porlock and at Watchet. Ultimately they took up their quarters in the
islands of Flatholme and Steepholme in the Bristol Channel, but lack of
food soon drove them away to Ireland in a starving condition. In the
same year Edward built two forts at Buckingham, one on each side of
the Ouse, and his policy again found speedy justification when Earl
Thurcytel (O.N. Ðorkell) and all the chief men who 'obeyed[5]' Bedford,
together with many of those who 'obeyed' Northampton submitted to him.
Everything was now ready for the great advance against the Danes.
Derby fell in 917, while in the next year Leicester yielded without
a struggle. Their fall was accompanied by the submission of the men
of Derbyshire and Leicestershire. At the same time the inhabitants
of York declared themselves ready to enter the service of Mercia.
Edward fortified Bedford in 915, Maldon and Towcester in South
Northamptonshire in 916. Again the Danes from Northampton and Leicester
tried to break through the steadily narrowing ring of forts and
they managed to get as far south as Aylesbury, while others from
Huntingdon and East Anglia built a fort at Tempsford in Bedfordshire
near the junction of the Ivel and the Ouse. They besieged a fort at
'Wigingamere' (unidentified) but were forced to withdraw. Edward
gathered an army from the nearest garrison towns, besieged, captured,
and destroyed Tempsford (915). In the autumn he captured Colchester and
a Danish attempt on Maldon failed. Edward now strengthened Towcester
and received the submission of Earl Thurfrith (O.N. Ðorröðr) and all
the Danes in Northamptonshire as far north as the Welland. Huntingdon
was occupied about the same time and the ring of forts around East
Anglia brought about the submission of the whole of that district,
Cambridgeshire making a separate compact on its own account. In 918
Edward built a fort just south of Stamford and soon received the
submission of the Danes of South Lincolnshire, and in the same year
occupied Nottingham, building a fort and garrisoning it with a mixed
English and Danish force. He was now ruler of the whole of Mercia
owing to the death of his sister Aethelflæd, and in 919 he fortified
Thelwall in Cheshire, on the Mersey, and rebuilt the old Roman fort
at Manchester. In 920 he built a second fort at Nottingham and one at
Bakewell in Derbyshire. The reconquest of the Danelagh was complete and
Edward now received the submission of the Scots, the Strathclyde Welsh,
of Regnold (O.N. Rögnvaldr) of Northumbria, and of English, Danes and
Norsemen alike. The Danish settlers accepted the sovereignty of the
West Saxon king and henceforward formed part of an expanded Wessex
which had consolidated its power over all England south of a line drawn
roughly from the Humber to the Dee.
The submission of Rögnvaldr, king of Northumbria and the mention
of Norsemen need some comment. On the death of Halfdanr in 877 an
interregnum of seven years ensued and then, in accordance with
instructions given by St Cuthbert in a vision to abbot Eadred of
Carlisle, the Northumbrians chose a certain Guthred (O.N. Guðröðr) as
their king. He was possibly a nephew of the late king, ruled till 894,
and was also known as Cnut (O.N. Knútr). We have coins bearing the
inscription 'Elfred rex' on the obverse and 'Cnut rex' on the reverse,
indicating apparently some overlordship of king Alfred. Together with
these we have some coins with 'Cnut rex' on the obverse and 'Siefredus'
or (Sievert) on the reverse, and others, minted at 'Ebroice civitas'
(i.e. York), with the sole inscription 'Siefredus rex.' This latter
king would seem to have been first a subordinate partner and then,
on Guðröðr's death, sole ruler of Northumbria. Other coins belonging
to about the same period and found in the great Cuerdale hoard near
Preston, bear the inscription 'Sitric Comes,' and there is good reason
to believe that Siefredus (O.N. Sigröðr) and Sitric (O.N. Sigtryggr)
are to be identified with Sichfrith and Sitriucc who just at this time
are mentioned in the Irish annals as rival leaders of the Norsemen in
Dublin. The identification is important as it shows us that Northumbria
was now being brought into definite connexion with the Norse kingdom
of Dublin and that the Norse element was asserting itself at the
expense of the Danish in Northern England.
The rule of Sigröðr and Sigtryggr alike had come to an end by 911 and
we know nothing more until the year 918 when a fresh invasion from
Ireland took place under a certain Rögnvaldr. He gained a victory at
Corbridge-on-Tyne and captured York in 919 or 920. He divided the lands
of St Cuthbert among his followers but died in 921, the year of his
submission to the overlordship of Edward. The Irish annals speak of
him as king of White and Black foreigners alike, thus emphasising the
composite settlement of Northumbria.
Another leader from Ireland, one Sigtryggr, succeeded Rögnvaldr as
king of Northumbria. He was on friendly terms with Aethelstan and
married his sister in 925. He died in 926 or 927 and then Aethelstan
took Northumbria under his own control. Sigtryggr's brother Guðröðr
submitted to Aethelstan but after four days at the court of king
Aethelstan 'he returned to piracy as a fish to the sea.' Both Sigtryggr
and Guðröðr left sons bearing the name Anlaf (O.N. Ólafr) and with
them Aethelstan and his successors had much trouble. Anlaf Sihtricsson
lived in exile in Scotland and gradually organised against Aethelstan
a great confederacy of Scots, Strathclyde Welsh and Vikings, both
Danish and Norwegian, Anlaf Godfreyson brought help from Ireland and
the great struggle began. The course of the campaign is uncertain but
if the site of its main battle, 'Brunanburh,' is to be identified with
Birrenswark Hill in S.E. Dumfriesshire, it would seem that Aethelstan
carried the war into the enemy's country. The result of the battle
was a complete victory for the forces of Aethelstan and his brother
Edmund. Constantine's son, five kings and seven jarls were among the
slain. We have in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle a poem[6] celebrating the
victory, and it describes in vivid language the hurried return home of
Constantine, lamenting the death of his son, and the headlong flight of
Anlaf Godfreyson to Dublin. England had been freed from its greatest
danger since the days of king Alfred and his struggle with Guthrum.
Aethelstan had no more trouble with the Norsemen and we have evidence
from other sources that at some time during his reign, probably at an
earlier date, he exchanged embassies with Harold Fairhair, king of
Norway. The latter sent him a present of a ship with golden prow and
purple sails and the usual bulwark of shields along the gunwale, while
Harold's favourite son Hákon was brought up at Aethelstan's court.
There he was baptised and educated and is known in Norse history as
Hákon Aðalsteinsfóstri.
After the death of Aethelstan, Anlaf Sihtricsson, nicknamed Cuaran
(i.e. with the sock or brogue of leather, so called from his Irish
dress) came to England and captured York. From there he made an
attempt to conquer the Danish district of the Five Boroughs. He seems
to have got a good part of Mercia into his hands but in the end
Edmund freed the Danes from Norse oppression and took once more into
his hands all Mercia south of a line from Dore (near Sheffield) to
Whitwell (Derbyshire) and thence to the Humber. Edmund and Anlaf came
to terms, but Anlaf was driven out by the Northumbrians in 943, and
in the next year that province fell into the hands of Edmund. In 947
Eric Blood-axe, son of Harold Fairhair, was accepted as king by the
Northumbrians. In Scandinavian tradition we learn how he was expelled
from Norway in 934 by the supporters of Hákon, went on Viking raids in
the west, was appointed ruler of Northumbria by Aethelstan on condition
of his defending it against attack, but was not on good terms with
Edmund, who favoured one Ólaf. Probably Eric retired after Aethelstan's
death and only returned to England in 947. In 948 Edmund forced the
Northumbrians to abandon his cause and about the same time Anlaf
returned from Ireland and ruled till about 950 when he was replaced
by Eric, whose short rule came to an end in 954. In that year he was
expelled by the Northumbrians and killed at Stainmoor in Westmorland.
The attempt to establish a Norse kingdom of Northumbria had failed and
henceforward that district was directly under the rule of the English
king. English authority was supreme once more even in those districts
which were largely peopled with Scandinavian settlers.
England had no further trouble with Norse or Danish invaders until
the days of Ethelred the Unready, but no sooner did that weak and
ill-advised king come to the throne than, with that ready and intimate
knowledge of local conditions which they always displayed, we find
Danes making an attack on Southampton and Norsemen one on Chester. The
renewed attacks were not however due solely to the weakness of England,
they were also the result of changed conditions in Scandinavia itself.
In Denmark the reign of Harold Bluetooth was drawing to a close, and
the younger generation, conscious of a strong and well-organised nation
behind them, were ambitious of new and larger conquests, while at the
same time many of them were in revolt against the definitely Christian
policy of Harold in his old age. They turned with hope towards his
young son Svein, and found in him a ready and willing leader. In
Norway, Earl Hákon had broken away from the suzerainty of Harold
Bluetooth, but the Norwegians could not forget that he owed his throne
to a foreign power, and his personal harshness and licentiousness as
well as his zealous cult of the old heathen rites were a cause of much
discontent. The hopes of the younger generation were fixed on Olaf
Tryggvason, a man filled with the spirit of the old Vikings. Captured
by pirates from Esthonia when still a child, he was discovered,
ransomed, and taken to Novgorod, where he entered the service of the
Grand Duke Vladimir. Furnished by him with a ship he went 'viking' in
the Baltic and then ten years later we find him prominent among the
Norsemen who attacked England in the days of king Ethelred. In 991
a Norse fleet under Olaf visited Ipswich and Maldon. Here they met
with a stout resistance headed by the brave Byrhtnoth, earl of Essex,
and in the fragmentary lay of the fight at Maldon[7], which has been
preserved to us, we see that there was still much of the spirit of the
heroic age left in the English nation even in the days of Ethelred
II. It was to buy off this attack that a payment of Danegeld to the
extent of some ten thousand pounds was made. From Maldon Olaf went to
Wales and Anglesey and it was somewhere in the west that he received
knowledge of the Christian faith from an anchorite and was baptised.
He did not however renounce his Viking-life, but joined forces with
his great Danish contemporary Svein Forkbeard. Bamborough was sacked
in 993, and both were present at the siege of London in 994, when they
sailed up the Thames with 490 ships. The attack was a failure and Olaf
came to terms with Ethelred agreeing to desist from further attack in
return for a payment of sixteen thousand pounds of Danegeld. Olaf was
the more ready to make this promise as he was now addressing himself
to the task of gaining the sovereignty of Norway itself. Many of the
Norsemen returned with Olaf but the attacks on the coast continued and
the invaders, chiefly Danes now, ravaged the country in all directions.
Treachery was rife in the English forces and again and again the
ealdormen failed in the hour of need. Danegeld after Danegeld was
paid in the vain hope of buying off further attacks, and the almost
incredible sum of 158,000 pounds of silver (i.e. some half million
sterling) was paid as Danegeld during a period of little more than 20
years. Once or twice Ethelred showed signs of energy; once in 1000 when
a fleet was sent to Chester, which ravaged the Isle of Man while an
army devastated Cumberland, and again in 1004 when a great fleet was
made ready but ultimately proved of no use. Ethelred's worst stroke
of policy was the order given in 1002 for the massacre on St Brice's
Day of all Danes settled in England. His orders were carried out only
too faithfully and among the slain was Svein's sister Gunnhild, the
wife of a Danish jarl in the king's service. Svein's vengeance was
relentless, and during the next ten years the land had no peace until
in 1013 Ethelred was driven from the throne, and Svein himself became
king of England. Svein died in 1014 and his son Cnut succeeded to his
claim. Ethelred was invited by the _witan_ to return, and ultimately
Wessex fell to Cnut, while the district of the Seven Boroughs (the old
five together with York and Chester) and Northumbria passed into the
hands of Ethelred, or rather of his energetic son Edmund. This division
of the country placing the district once settled by Danes and Norsemen
under an English king while the heart of England itself was in the
possession of a Scandinavian king shows how completely the settlers
in those districts had come to identify themselves with English
interests as a whole. Mercia was nominally in Ethelred's power, but its
ealdorman, Eadric Streona, was the most treacherous of all the English
earls. On Ethelred's death in 1016 the _witan_ chose Edmund Ironside
as king and a series of battles took place culminating in that at
Ashingdon in Essex where the English were completely defeated through
the treachery of Eadric. A division of the kingdom was now made
whereby Wessex fell to Edmund, Mercia and Northumbria to Cnut--thus
easily was the allegiance of the various districts transferred from
one sovereign to another. Edmund only lived a few months and Cnut then
became king of all England. For twenty years the land enjoyed peace
and prosperity. In 1018 the greater part of the Danish army and fleet
returned to Denmark, some forty ships and their crews sufficing Cnut
for the defence of his kingdom. During the next four years he received
the submission of the king of Scotland and made a memorable pilgrimage
to Rome. The most important event of his later years was however his
struggle with Olaf the Stout, the great St Olaf of Norway.
Norway was now entirely independent of Danish sovereignty and when Cnut
sent an embassy voicing the old claims of the Danish kings he received
a proudly independent answer from St Olaf. For the time being Cnut
had to be satisfied, but in 1025 he sailed with a fleet to Norway,
only to suffer defeat at the Battle of the Helge-aa (i.e. Holy River)
in Skaane, at the hands of the united forces of Norway and Sweden.
Three years later the attack was renewed. Olaf's strenuous and often
cruel advocacy of the cause of Christianity had alienated many of his
subjects and the Swedes had deserted their ally. The result was that
Olaf fled to Russia and Cnut was declared king of Norway. Two years
later the exile returned and fell fighting against his own countrymen.
Cnut was now the mightiest of all Scandinavian kings, but on his death
in 1035 his empire fell apart; Norway went to his son Svein, Denmark
to Harthacnut and England to Harold Harefoot. Harold was succeeded by
Harthacnut in 1040, but neither king was of the same stamp as Cnut and
they were both overshadowed by the great Godwine, earl of Wessex. When
Harthacnut died in 1042 the male line in descent from Cnut was extinct,
and though some of the Danes were in favour of choosing Cnut's sister's
son Svein, Godwine secured the election of Edward the Confessor. With
the accession of Edward Danish rule in England was at an end and,
except for the ambitious expedition of Harold Hardrada, foiled at
Stamford Bridge in 1066, there was no further serious question of a
Scandinavian kingship either in or over England.
The sufferings of England during the second period of invasion
(980-1016) were probably quite as severe as in the worst days of
Alfred--the well-known _Sermo Lupi ad Anglos_, written by Archbishop
Wulfstan of York in 1014, draws a terrible picture of the chaos and
anarchy then prevailing--but we must remember that neither these years
nor the ensuing five and thirty years of Danish kingship left as deep
a mark on England as the earlier wars and the settlements resulting
from them. There was no further permanent occupation or division
of territory and though some of the earldoms and the great estates
passed into the hands of the king's Danish followers, there was no
transformation of the whole social life of the people such as had taken
place in the old Danelagh districts.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] This phrase is used repeatedly in the Chronicle in connexion with
such towns as Bedford, Cambridge, Derby, Leicester and Northampton, and
there can be no question that these groups represent the shires which
now take their names from these towns. For purposes of convenience we
shall henceforward speak of such groups as 'shires.'
[6] See Tennyson's translation.
[7] See Freeman's _Old English History for Children_ for a translation
of this poem.
CHAPTER IV
THE VIKINGS IN THE FRANKISH EMPIRE TO THE FOUNDING OF NORMANDY (911)
The years from 850-865 were perhaps the most unhappy in the whole
history of the sufferings of the Frankish empire under Viking attack.
The Danes now took up more or less permanent quarters, often strongly
fortified, on the Scheldt, the Somme, the Seine, the Loire and the
Garonne, while Utrecht, Ghent, Amiens, Paris, Chartres, Tours, Blois,
Orléans, Poitiers, Limoges, Bordeaux and many other towns and cities
were sacked, often more than once. When Hroerekr obtained from the
young Hárekr of Denmark a concession of certain districts between the
Eider and the sea, he gave trouble in that direction and sailed up
the Elbe and the Weser alike. His nephew Guðröðr was in occupation of
Flanders and the lower valley of the Scheldt.
Besides these Viking leaders, who were active in the Low Countries, we
have the names of several others who were busy in France itself. The
most famous of these were the sons of Ragnarr Loðbrók. Berno, who first
appeared on the Seine in 855, was Björn Ironside, while it is quite
possible that the Sidroc who accompanied him was Sigurd Snake-eye,
another son of that famous leader. With Björn, at least according to
Norman tradition, came Hastingus (O.N. Hásteinn), his foster-father.
Hásteinn was destined to a long and active career. We first hear of him
in the annals in 866 when he appeared on the Loire, and it was he who
was one of the chief leaders in the great Danish invasion of England in
892-4. The sudden appearance of these leaders was undoubtedly due, as
suggested in the previous chapter, to the turn of events in Denmark at
this time. During the year of the revolution--854--no attacks were made
on France at all and then immediately after came a flood of invaders.
The Seine was never free from 855-62 and the Loire district was little
better off. The troubled and desolate condition of the country may be
judged from the numerous royal decrees commending those who had been
driven from their land to the protection of those with whom they had
taken refuge and exempting them from payment of the usual taxes. Many
even deserted their Christian faith and became worshippers of the gods
of the heathen. The difficulties of Charles the Bald were greatly
increased by succession troubles both in Brittany and Aquitaine.
Now one, now another claimant allied himself with the Northmen, and
Charles himself was often an offender in this respect. He initiated the
disastrous policy of buying off attack by the payment of large sums of
what in England would have been called Danegeld. In 859 occurred an
incident which throws a curious light on the condition of the country.
The peasants between the Seine and the Loire rose of their own accord
and attacked the Danes in the Seine valley. It is not quite clear what
followed, but the rising was a failure, and possibly it was crushed by
the Frankish nobles themselves who feared anything in the nature of a
popular rising made without reference to their own authority. In any
case the incident bears witness to a lack of proper leadership by the
nobles.
After the year 865 the tide of invasion set from France towards
England. These were the years of Alfred's great struggle, and Danish
efforts were concentrated on the attempt to reduce that monarch to
submission. The Franks themselves had begun to realise the necessity
of more carefully organised resistance. They began building fortified
bridges across the rivers at certain points in order to stop the
passage of Viking ships, and they also fortified several of their towns
and cities, thus giving perhaps a hint for the policy later adopted
in England by Edward the Elder. Probably the Franks were not above
taking lessons from their enemies in the matter of fortification, for
the latter had already shown themselves approved masters of the art in
such fortified camps as that at Jeufosse on the Seine. In another way
also had the Danes showed themselves ready to adapt themselves to new
fighting conditions. Not only did they build forts, but we hear of them
as mounted, and henceforward horses played an important part in their
equipment both in France and England.
During these years the Vikings made one notable expedition far beyond
the ordinary range of their activity. Starting from the Seine in 859
under the leadership of Björn and Hásteinn, they sailed round the
Iberian Peninsula through the Straits of Gibraltar. They landed in
Morocco and carried off prisoners many of the Moors or 'Blue-men' as
they called them. Some of these found their way to Ireland and are
mentioned in certain Irish annals of the period. After fresh attacks
on Spain they sailed to the Balearic Isles, and Roussillon, which
they penetrated as far as Arles-sur-Tech. They wintered in the island
of Camargue in the Rhone delta and then raided the old Roman cities
of Provence and sailed up the Rhone itself as far as Valence. In the
spring of the next year they sailed to Italy. They captured Pisa and
Luna (at the mouth of the Magra), the latter being taken by a clever
stratagem. Hásteinn feigned himself sick unto death and was baptised
by the bishop of Luna during a truce. Then news came that Hásteinn
was dead and the Vikings asked Christian burial for him. Permission
was given and a mock funeral procession entered the city. It was in
reality a band of armed men in disguise and the city was soon captured.
The real aim of the Vikings in this campaign was the capture of Rome
with its mighty treasures, but, for some reason unknown, they made no
advance further south. Scandinavian tradition said it was because they
mistook Luna for Rome and thought their work already done! Sailing back
through the Straits of Gibraltar they returned to Brittany in 862.
The Vikings had now almost encircled Europe with their attacks, for
it was in the year 865 that the Swedish Rhôs (Russians) laid siege to
Constantinople.
When Alfred secured a definite peace with the Danes in 878, those who
were averse to settling permanently returned to their old roving life.
They made their way up the Somme and the Scheldt and their progress
was not stopped by a brilliant victory gained by the young Lewis III
in June 881 at Saucourt, near the Somme, a victory which is celebrated
in the famous _Ludwigslied_. During the same years, another Viking
host invaded Saxony winning a decisive victory over Duke Bruno on the
Lüneburg Heath. After their defeat at Saucourt the main body of the
Danes made their way to Elsloo on the Meuse whence they ravaged the
Meuse, Rhine and Moselle districts plundering Cologne, Bonn, Coblentz,
Aachen, Trèves and Metz. So alarmed was the emperor Charles the Fat
that he entered into negotiations with the Danish king Guðröðr who
was with the forces at Elsloo. He secured Guðröðr's acceptance of
Christianity and the promise of security from further attack at the
price of a large payment of Danegeld and the concession to Guðröðr of
the province once held by Hroerekr, with large additions. The exact
extent of the grant is uncertain, but it included the district of
Kinnem (round Alkmaar and Haarlem) and probably covered the greater
part of Modern Holland from the Vlie to the Scheldt. Here Guðröðr
lived in semi-independence and might perhaps have established another
Normandy within the empire had he not been ruined by too great
ambition. He entirely failed to defend his province from attacks,
indeed he probably gave them covert support; he intrigued with Hugo,
the bastard son of Lothair II, against the emperor, married his sister
Gisla, and then asked for additional territories on the Rhine and the
Moselle, on the plea that his own province included no vine-growing
districts. Guðröðr had now overstepped all reasonable limits: the
emperor entered into negotiations with him but secured his death by
treachery when a meeting was arranged near Cleves. With the fall of
Guðröðr Danish rule in Frisia came to an end, and though we hear of
isolated attacks even during the early years of the 10th century, there
was no more serious trouble in that district.
In the autumn of 882, encouraged doubtless by the news of the death of
Lewis III, the Danes returned from the Meuse to Flanders and during the
next three years ravaged Flanders, Brabant and Picardy, establishing
themselves strongly at Louvain. In 885 they abandoned these districts
and sailed up the Seine, after a nine years' absence. In November they
reached Paris with a fighting force of some 30,000 men and a fleet of
700 vessels. The passage up the river was stopped by fortified bridges
and the besiegers were fortunate in having as leaders two men of great
ability and courage, first Gauzlin, Abbot of St Germain's, and, later,
Count Odo of Paris. The position of Paris was at times desperate. The
Danes were exasperated by the stout defence and in their eagerness
to plunder further up the river dragged many of their ships some two
miles overland past Paris, and so reached the upper waters of the
Seine. Later, as the result of peaceful negotiations, they obtained
permission to pass the bridges on condition that they only ravaged
Burgundy, leaving the Seine and Marne districts untouched; thus had
the provinces of the Frankish empire lost all sense of corporate union.
The Danes soon made their way as far west as Verdun. Here however they
were disastrously defeated by Odo, now king of the West Franks (June
888), and in the next year they finally abandoned the siege of Paris
making their way to Brittany.
In Brittany they found another army already busy. The Bretons had won
a great victory in the autumn of 888 when only 400 out of some 15,000
Danes made their way back to their fleet. The great _here_ from the
Seine now joined forces with the remnants of this army, but proved
powerless against Duke Alan, and some returned to Flanders in 890,
while Hásteinn with the rest sailed to the Somme. The Danes in Flanders
were defeated by Arnulf (afterwards emperor) on the Dyle, near Louvain,
in 891, but it had no great effect for soon after we find them again as
far east as Bonn. A bad harvest in the summer of 892 brought famine in
its train and this was more effective in ridding the land of invaders.
In the autumn of the year the whole army, horses and all, crossed in
one passage in some 250 ships from Boulogne to the mouth of the Limen
in Kent and, shortly after, Hásteinn with a fleet of 80 ships left the
Somme and sailed to Milton in North Kent. The story of the campaigns
there has already been told. For the first time since 840 the Frankish
empire was free from invaders. Grievous as were the losses of the
Franks, it is well to remember that those of the Danes had been great
also. Their fleet had been reduced from 700 to 250 ships, and as the
whole army could still go to England in one crossing, that must also
have been reduced from thirty to ten or fifteen thousand men.
When the English invasion had failed, those who could not settle in
England returned to their French haunts once more. A small force of
eight ships and some 200 men sailed up the Seine under one 'Huncdeus'
and gradually their numbers were increased by fresh arrivals from
abroad. They made their way north to the Meuse, south to the Loire, and
east to Burgundy, but their head quarters were on the lower waters of
the Seine. In 903 other invaders appeared on the Loire under leaders
named Baret (O.N. Bárðr) and Heric (O.N. Eiríkr). The name of Bárðr is
mentioned more than once in the contemporary history of the Norsemen
in Ireland, and as the Norsemen were driven from Dublin in 902 it is
probable that these invaders came from there. The expedition was not
a success and the Vikings soon sailed away again. Of the history of
the settlers on the Seine after 900 we unfortunately know practically
nothing. The Norman historian Dudo attempted in the 11th century to
give a connected account but his narrative is confused and unreliable.
Odo was dead and Charles the Simple was more interested in conquering
Lorraine than defending Neustria. The clergy were weary of the
ceaseless spoiling of the monasteries and anxious for the conversion
of the heathen, while the nobles were, as usual, selfish and careless
of the interests of the country at large. The Northmen made no great
expeditions between 900 and 910, but maintained a steady hold on the
Lower Seine and the districts of Bessin and Cotentin. They could not
extend their territories and the Franks could not drive them from the
Seine. At length, largely through the intervention of the clergy, a
meeting was arranged between Charles and the Viking leader Rollo at St
Clair-sur-Epte, before the end of 911. Here the province later known
as Normandy (including the counties of Rouen, Lisieux, Evreux and the
district between the rivers Bresle and Epte and the sea) was given
to Rollo and his followers as a _beneficium_, on condition that he
defended the kingdom against attack, and himself accepted Christianity.
The Danes now formed a definite part of the Frankish kingdom and
occupied a position analogous to that of their countrymen in East
Anglia, Northumbria and Mercia in England, except that the latter after
a period of freedom had in course of time to pass definitely under
English rule.
The story of the foundation of Normandy is obscure: still more obscure
is the origin and history of the leader of the Northmen at this time.
Norse tradition, as given by Snorri Sturluson, makes Rollo to be
one Hrólfr, son of Rögnvaldr earl of Möre, who was exiled by Harold
Fairhair and led a Viking life in the west. Norman tradition, as found
in Dudo, made him out the son of a great noble in Denmark, who was
expelled by the king and later went to England, Frisia and Northern
France. Dudo's account of the founding of Normandy is so full of errors
clearly proven that little reliance can be placed on his story of
the origin of Rollo. The _Heimskringla_ tradition was recorded much
later, but is probably more trustworthy, and it would be no strange
thing to find a man of Norse birth leading a Danish host. Ragnarr
Loðbrók and his sons were Norsemen by family but they appear for the
most part as leaders of Danes. How Rollo came to be the leader of the
Danes in France and what his previous career had been must remain an
unsolved mystery. His name is not mentioned apart from the settlement
of Normandy.
The Normans continued to ravage Brittany without any interruption and
they were soon granted the further districts of Bayeux, Seez, Avranches
and Coutances, which made Brittany and Normandy conterminous.
CHAPTER V
THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND TO THE BATTLE OF CLONTARF (1014)
In the history of the Vikings in Ireland we have seen how the attempt
made by Turges to bring all Ireland under one ruler came to nought
by his death in 845. At first this seems to have thrown the Norsemen
into confusion and we hear of a series of defeats. Then, in 849, the
invasions developed a new phase. Hitherto while the Irish had been
weakened by much internecine warfare, their enemies had worked with
one mind and heart. Now we read of 'a naval expedition of seven score
of the Foreigners coming to exercise power over the Foreigners who
were before them, so that they disturbed all Ireland afterwards.' This
means that the Danes were now taking an active part in the invasions
of Ireland, and we soon find them disputing the supremacy with the
earlier Norse settlers. A full and picturesque account of the struggle
is preserved for us in the second of the _Three Fragments of Irish
Annals_ copied by Dugald MacFirbis. Unfortunately the chronology of
these annals is in a highly confused state and it is often difficult to
trace the exact sequence of events.
When the Norsemen first saw the approaching fleet they were much
alarmed. Some said it was reinforcements from Norway, but others, with
keener insight, said they were Danes who were coming to harry and
plunder. A swift vessel was dispatched to find out who they were, and
when the steersman called out to them inquiring from what land they
came and whether as friend or foe, the only answer was a shower of
arrows. A fierce battle ensued, in which the Danes killed thrice their
own number and carried off the women-folk and property of the Norsemen.
In 851 they plundered the Norse settlements at Dublin and Dundalk, but
in the next year the Norsemen attacked them in Carlingford Lough. At
first the Danes were defeated, but then their leader cunningly exhorted
his men to secure by their prayers and alms the patronage of St
Patrick, who was incensed against the Norsemen because of the many evil
deeds they had wrought in Erin. The battle was renewed and the Danes
were victorious. After the battle they made rich gifts to St Patrick
for 'the Danes were a people with a kind of piety: they could for a
time refrain from meat and from women.' After the fight we learn that
the Danes cooked their meat in cauldrons supported on the bodies of
their dead foes. The Danes now helped Cerbhal, king of Ossory, against
the Norsemen who were harrying Munster, and henceforward we hear again
and again how the various Irish factions made use of the dissensions
among the invaders to further their own ends.
Matters were further complicated by the fact that many of the Irish
forsook their Christian baptism and joined the Norsemen in their
plundering. These recreant Irish were known as the Gaill-Gaedhil
(i.e. the foreign Irish), and played an important part in the wars
of the next few years. The Gaill-Gaedhil were undoubtedly a race of
mixed Norse and Gaelic stock and we must not imagine that they sprung
suddenly into existence at this time. Long before this the Norsemen
and the Gaels must have had considerable peaceful intercourse with
one another in their various settlements, and in accordance with
well-established Scandinavian custom it would seem that many of the
Irish were brought up as foster-children in Norse households and must
soon have learned to accept their religion and customs. There was
also extensive intermarriage between Norsemen and Irish. The annals
speak of several such unions, the most famous being the marriage of
Gormflaith, afterwards wife of Brian Borumha, to Anlaf Sihtricsson,
while in the genealogies of the Norse settlers in Iceland at the end of
this century, Gaelic names are of frequent occurrence. One of the most
famous of the leaders of these 'foreign Irish' was Ketill Finn (i.e.
the White), a Norseman with an Irish nickname. These foreign Irish
fought either by the side of the foreigners or on their own account
and we have an interesting story telling how, when Vikings from Ireland
made an invasion of Cheshire (c. 912), Aethelflæd, the lady of the
Mercians, sent ambassadors to those Irish who were fighting on the side
of the invaders, calling upon them to forsake the pagans and remember
the old kindness shown in England to Irish soldiers and clergy.
The troubles between Norsemen and Danes were probably responsible for
the arrival in Ireland in 853 of Amhlaeibh, son of the king of Norway,
to receive the submission of the foreigners. This Amhlaeibh is Olaf
the White of Norse tradition. Olaf is represented as ruling together
with his brother Imhar (O.N. Ívarr). The annals are not very good
authority for the relationship of the Norse leaders to one another,
and it is quite possible that Ívarr is really Ívarr the Boneless, son
to Ragnarr Loðbrók. Under the strong rule of Olaf and Ívarr Dublin
became the chief centre of Scandinavian rule in Ireland, and the
Danes and Norsemen were to some extent reconciled to one another. The
Irish suffered great losses but some brave leaders were found to face
the Norsemen. Cennedigh, king of Leix (Queen's County), came upon a
party of them laden with booty; they abandoned the spoil and rushed
upon Cennedigh with angry barbarous shouts, blowing their trumpets
and many of them crying _nui, nui_ (i.e. probably, in the old Norse
speech, _knúi, knúi_, 'hasten on, hasten on'). Many darts and spears
were thrown and at last they took to their heavy powerful swords.
All was however of no avail and Cennedigh won a great victory. Less
fortunate was Maelciarain, 'champion of the east of Ireland and a
hero-plunderer of the foreigners.' He was expelled from his kingdom by
the Leinstermen, who envied him in consequence of his many victories
over the Norsemen!
The activities of Olaf and Ívarr were not confined to Ireland. In 866
Olaf paid a visit to Scotland, while in 870 both Olaf and Ívarr were
present at the siege of Dumbarton. If Ívarr is Ívarr the Boneless, he
must then have gone to England and taken part in the martyrdom of St
Edmund. In the next year both leaders returned to Dublin with a large
number of prisoners--English, Britons and Picts. In 873 Ívarr, 'king
of the Norsemen of all Ireland and Britain' died, and about the same
time Olaf returned to Norway, possibly to take part in the great fight
against Harold Fairhair at Hafrsfjord. The Danes seem to have taken
advantage of the removal of Olaf to attempt to throw off the Norse
yoke. Fresh fighting took place and the Danes under Albdann, i.e.
Halfdanr, king of Northumbria, were defeated on Strangford Lough in 877
with the loss of their leader.
After 877 the _War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill_ notes a period of
rest for Ireland, lasting some forty years. This is true to the
extent that no large fleets of fresh invaders seem to have come to
Ireland during this time--the Vikings were too busy elsewhere, both
in England and the Frankish empire--but there were occasional raids
from Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford and other towns into various
districts of Ireland, and the Norsemen were often at variance amongst
themselves. Dissensions in Dublin were particularly violent and so
much did they weaken Norse rule there that in 902 Dublin fell into
the hands of the Irish. The Vikings were driven abroad, some going
to Scotland and others to England, where they besieged Chester (_v.
supra_, p. 57). In the year 914 all the old troubles were renewed.
Rögnvaldr, a grandson of Ívarr, fresh from a great victory off the Isle
of Man, captured Waterford, and two years later Sigtryggr, another
grandson of Ívarr regained Dublin. The Irish attempted resistance
under the _ardrí_ Niall Glundubh, but he fell with twelve other kings
in a fight at Kilmashogue near Dublin in 919. During the next fifty
years Ireland was a prey to ceaseless attacks by Norwegians and Danes
alike. Towards the close of the 9th century Limerick had become a
stronghold of the Norsemen in the west, and from there they made their
way up the Shannon into the heart of the country. Cork was settled in
the early years of the 10th century, chiefly by Danes, and from there
all Munster was open to attack. Waterford and Wexford, which stood
as a rule in close connexion with Dublin, served as centres of attack
against Leinster. The Irish made a stout resistance under able leaders
and Dublin was 'destroyed' more than once. First among these leaders
stands Muirchertach 'of the leather cloaks,' son of Niall Glundubh,
a hero who came forward about the year 926. His activities were
unceasing. He repeatedly attacked Dublin, took a fleet to the Hebrides
where he defeated the Vikings, gaining much spoil, and finally in 941
made a circuit of Ireland, from which he brought back as hostages many
provincial kings, including the Norse ruler of Dublin. More famous
still in Irish song and story was Cellachan of Cashel. He made war
against the Vikings in Munster and for a time had the Norse kingdom of
Waterford under his control. Similarly he conquered Limerick, and we
find him fighting side by side with Norsemen from both these towns.
During these fifty years the Norse kingdom in Dublin stood in close
relation with the Scandinavian kingdom of Northumbria. Rögnvaldr,
who died in 912, ruled there and so did his brothers Sigtryggr (d.
927) and Guðröðr (or Godfrey) (d. 934). The brothers left sons known
respectively as Anlaf Sihtricsson and Anlaf Godfreyson. The latter
took part in the great fight at Brunanburh and died in 939. Anlaf
Sihtricsson was destined to a longer career. He would seem to have
spent his early years in Scotland where he married king Constantine's
daughter. It is uncertain whether he fought at Brunanburh, but he
came to Northumbria in 941 and captured York. He was expelled from
Northumbria in 944 or 945 and retired to Dublin, and the rest of his
life was chiefly spent in fighting in Ireland. He was in close alliance
with the Norsemen in Man and the Western Islands, and was, for some
thirty years, the most powerful Norse ruler in Ireland. Then came the
first great blow to Norse rule in Ireland. In 980 Maelsechlainn II, the
_ardrí_, won a great victory at Tara over the foreigners of Dublin and
the Islands in which Anlaf's son was slain. The power of the kingdom of
Dublin was effectually broken. The Norsemen were compelled to liberate
all the hostages in their custody, to pay a fine of 2000 oxen and
to remit the tribute which they had imposed on all Ireland from the
Shannon eastwards to the sea. Anlaf abandoned his authority and retired
on a pilgrimage to Iona, where he died in the same year an inmate of
its monastery.
In the meantime events, fraught with important consequences for
Norse rule in that country, were gradually developing in a distant
quarter of Ireland. In the province of Munster the Dalcassian line
of princes first comes into prominence about the middle of the 10th
century, and the two most famous of these princes were the brothers
Mathgamhain and Brian, commonly known as Brian Borumha. Together
the brothers conquered Munster in spite of the support given to the
Irish by the Viking settlers, and when their success aroused Ívarr,
the ruler of Limerick, they attacked him and won a great victory at
Sulcoit near Tipperary (968). Limerick was captured, Mathgamhain died
in 976 and Brian was soon acknowledged king of all Munster. He next
became master of Leinster, but his rapid advance brought him into
conflict with the _ardrí_ and by a compact made in 998, Maelsechlainn
practically surrendered the southern half of Ireland to Brian. The
ruler of Dublin at this time was Sigtryggr of the Silken Beard, son of
Anlaf and Gormflaith, sister of Maelmordha, king of Leinster. In 1000
Leinster with the support of the Norsemen in Dublin revolted, but Brian
defeated them and captured Dublin, giving his daughter in marriage
to Sigtryggr and himself marrying Gormflaith. In 1002 Maelsechlainn
submitted to Brian and the latter became _ardrí_. There followed twelve
years of peace, but Brian's marriage with Gormflaith was his undoing.
Quarrelling with her husband, she stirred up Maelmordha of Leinster
against him. An alliance was formed between Maelmordha and Sigtryggr,
and Gormflaith dispatched embassies to all the Viking settlements in
the West, summoning them to the aid of Sigtryggr in a great fight
against Brian. Sigtryggr secured the help of Earl Sigurd of the
Orkneys and North Scotland by promise of the kingship of Dublin. Ships
came from all parts of the Viking world, from Northumbria, from Man
and the Western Islands, from Scotland and the Orkneys, and even from
Iceland. Dublin was fixed as the trysting-place and Palm Sunday 1014
was to be the time of meeting. Brian mustered all the forces of Munster
and Connaught and was joined in half-hearted fashion by Maelsechlainn,
who was really waiting to see which way the fortunes of war would turn.
Brian advanced into the plain of Fingall, north of Dublin, and the two
armies faced one another at Clontarf all Passion week. The Norsemen had
learned by magic incantations that if the fight took place before Good
Friday their chiefs would perish and their forces be routed, while if
the fight took place on Good Friday Brian himself would perish but the
Irish would win the day. So they waited until the Friday and then made
their attack. The fight was long and the slaughter was terrible. Brian
and Sigurd were themselves numbered among the slain. In the end the
Norsemen were defeated and Maelsechlainn completed their discomfiture
when he cut down the fugitives as they tried to cross the bridge
leading to Dublin and so reach their ships. No fight was more famous in
Irish history and it seems to have appealed with equally strong force
to Scandinavian imagination. Clontarf and Brunanburh are the two great
Viking battles which find record in Scandinavian saga, and in the story
of Burnt Njal[8] we have a vivid account both of the actual battle and
of the events leading up to it. Yet more interesting perhaps is the old
lay preserved to us, the _Song of the Valkyries_, who that same day
were seen in Caithness riding twelve together to a bower where they set
up a loom of which men's heads were the weights, men's entrails the
warp and woof, while a sword was the shuttle and the reels were arrows.
They wove the web of war and foretold the fate of king Sigtryggr
and Earl Sigurd as well as the sharp sorrow which would befall the
Irish[9]. The Norse world was full of this and like portents and there
can be no question that the Vikings were themselves conscious that the
battle of Clontarf marked a very definite epoch in the history of the
Vikings in the West and in Ireland more particularly. The Norsemen
remained in possession of their cities, Sigtryggr continued as king
of Dublin, but gradually the fortunes of the Norse settlers tended to
become merged in the history of the nation as a whole and there was no
further question of Scandinavian supremacy in Ireland.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] English version by Sir G. W. Dasent.
[9] This song was probably composed soon after the events with which it
is concerned and was first rendered into English by the poet Gray under
the title _The Fatal Sisters_.
CHAPTER VI
THE VIKINGS IN THE ORKNEYS, SCOTLAND, THE WESTERN ISLANDS AND MAN
When the Vikings sailed to England and Ireland in the late 8th and
early 9th centuries their most natural path was by the Orkneys and
Shetlands and round the Western Islands of Scotland. We have seen how
early they formed settlements in the Shetlands, and they soon reached
the Orkneys and the Hebrides. From the Orkneys they crossed to the
mainland, to Sutherland and Caithness--the very names bear witness
to Scandinavian occupation--while Galloway (i.e. the land of the
Gaill-Gaedhil, _v. supra_, p. 56) was settled from the Isle of Man.
Already in the 9th century the Norse element in the Hebrides was so
strong that the Irish called the islands _Innsi-Gall_ (i.e. the islands
of the foreigners), and their inhabitants were known as Gaill-Gaedhil.
The Norsemen called the islands _Suðreyjar_ (i.e. Southern Islands)
in contrast to the Orkneys and Shetlands, which were known as
_Norðreyjar_, and the name survives in the composite bishopric of
'Sodor' and Man, which once formed part of the archdiocese of Trondhjem
in Norway. The Isle of Man was plundered almost as early as any of the
islands of the West (_v. supra_, p. 12), and it was probably from
Man that the Norse settlements in Cumberland and Westmorland were
established. Olaf the White and Ívarr made more than one expedition
from Ireland to the lowlands of Scotland, and the former was married to
Auðr the daughter of Ketill Flatnose who had made himself the greatest
chieftain in the Western Islands. After the battle of Hafrsfjord,
when Harold Fairhair had finally crushed his rivals in Norway itself,
so powerful were the Norse settlements in the West that he felt his
position would be insecure until he had received their submission.
Accordingly he made a great expedition to the Shetlands, Orkneys and
the west coast of Scotland, fulfilled this purpose and entrusted the
Northern Islands to Sigurd, brother of Rögnvaldr, earl of Möre, as his
vassal.
The history of the Norse settlements in the Orkneys is well and fully
told in the _Orkneyingasaga_[10]. The first Orkney-earl was the
above-named Sigurd. He entered into an alliance with Thorstein the
Red, son to Olaf the White, and together they conquered Caithness and
Sutherland, as far south as the river Oikel on the borders of Ross and
Cromarty. Sigurd's son Einar, known as Turf-Einar because he first
taught the islanders to cut peat for fuel, founded a long line of
earls of the Orkneys. He had a quarrel with Harold Fairhair and when
that king imposed a fine on the islanders for the murder of his son
and the farmers could not pay it, Einar paid it himself on condition
that the peasants surrendered their _óðal_ rights, i.e. their rights
of possession in the lands they cultivated. Turf-Einar's son Sigurd
the Stout was the most famous of all the Orkney-earls, renowned both
as warrior and poet. He conquered Sutherland, Caithness, Ross, Moray,
Argyle, the Hebrides and Man, securing the support of the men of Orkney
by giving them back their _óðal_. He married a daughter of Malcolm king
of Scotland, and met his end, as we have already seen, fighting on the
side of the heathen Norsemen in the battle of Clontarf in 1014. After
this the power of the Orkney-earls declined. The Norse line of earls
was replaced by one of Scottish descent in 1231, but the islands did
not pass definitely to the Scottish crown until the 15th century[11].
Of the Norse settlements in the Hebrides we have no such definite or
continuous record. Mention is made in Irish annals of the middle of the
9th century of a king in the Hebrides--one Guðröðr son of Fergus--whose
very name shows him to have been one of the Gaill-Gaedhil. Ketill Finn
(_v. supra_, p. 56) was another such. In the latter half of the 9th
century Ketill Flatnose was the chief Norse leader in the Hebrides
until his power was destroyed by Harold Fairhair. Many of the settlers
then betook themselves to Iceland, the most famous of them being Auðr
the deep-thoughted, widow of Olaf the White and daughter of Ketill.
Norse rule was all powerful during the 10th and 11th centuries. There
was a line of kings but we find ruling side by side with them certain
officers known as 'lawmen' (_v. infra_, p. 103), while in the late 10th
and for the greater part of the 11th century, the Hebrides were under
the sovereignty of the Orkney-earls. Norse rule in the Hebrides did
not finally come to an end until 1266 when Magnus Hákonsson, king of
Norway, renounced all claims to the islands.
The early history of the settlements in Man is equally obscure. At
first the island suffered from repeated raids, then about the middle
of the 9th century it passed under the authority of the kings of
Dublin and remained so until, with the Hebrides and Western Scotland
generally, it was conquered by Sigurd the Orkney-earl. From the
Orkney-earls it passed to the great conqueror Godred Crovan--the King
Gorry or Orry of Manx tradition--who came from the Hebrides, and his
successors down to the cession of the islands in 1266 were known as
kings of Man and the Isles.
Of the details of the settlement of the Scottish mainland, of
Caithness, Sutherland, and Galloway, of the occupation of Cumberland
and Westmorland we know almost nothing, but when we speak later of
Norse influence in these districts we shall realise how strong was
their hold on them. Our knowledge of the Norse occupation of Man and
the Islands is somewhat scanty in detail, but there can be no question
that their settlements in lands often closely resembling in physical
features their own home-country were of the highest importance.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] English translation by Sir G. W. Dasent.
[11] They were pledged by Christian I of Denmark and Norway for the
payment of the dowry of his daughter Margaret to James III in 1460 and
the pledge was never redeemed.
CHAPTER VII
THE VIKINGS IN BALTIC LANDS AND RUSSIA
The activities of the Northmen during the Viking age were not confined
to the lands west and south of their original homes: the Baltic was as
familiar to them as the North Sea, to go 'east-viking' was almost as
common as to go 'west-viking' and Scandinavian settlements were founded
on the shores of the Baltic and far inland along the great waterways
leading into the heart of Russia. As was to be expected from their
geographical position it was Danes and Swedes rather than Norwegians
who were active in Baltic lands, the Danes settling chiefly on the
Pomeranian coast among the Wends, while the Swedes occupied lands
further east and founded the Scandinavian kingdom of Russia.
Already in the early years of the 9th century we find the Danish
king Guðröðr now making war against his Slavonic neighbours in
Mecklenburg-Schwerin, now intriguing with them against the emperor.
Mention is made of more than one town on the southern coast of the
Baltic bearing an essentially Scandinavian name, pointing to the
existence of extensive settlements. Interesting evidence of this
eastward movement is also to be found in the _Life of St Anskar_. There
we learn how, soon after 830, a Danish fleet captured a city in the
land of the Slavs, with great riches, and we hear in 853 how the Swedes
were endeavouring to reconquer Kurland which had been under their rule,
but had now thrown off the yoke and fallen a prey to a fleet of Danish
Vikings--possibly the one just mentioned. St Anskar himself undertook
the education of many Wendish youths who had been entrusted to him.
This and other evidence prepare us for the establishment, in the
tenth century, of the most characteristic of all Viking settlements,
that of Jómsborg on the Island of Wollin at the mouth of the Oder.
According to tradition King Gorm the Old conquered a great kingdom in
Wendland, but it was to his son Harold Bluetooth that the definite
foundation of Jómsborg was ascribed. For many years there had been
an important trading centre at Julin on the Island of Wollin, where
traders from Scandinavia, Saxony, Russia and many other lands met
together to take part in the rich trade between north and south, east
and west, which passed through Julin, standing as it did on one of the
great waterways of central Europe. Large finds of Byzantine and Arabic
coins bear witness to the extensive trade with Greece and the Orient
which passed through Julin, while the Silberberg, on which Jómsborg
once stood, is so called from the number of silver coins from Frisia,
Lorraine, Bavaria and England which have been found there. It was no
doubt in the hope of securing some fuller share in this trade that
Harold established the great fortress of Jómsborg and entrusted its
defence to a warrior-community on whom he imposed the strictest rules
of organisation. The story of the founding of Jómsborg is told in the
late and untrustworthy _Jómsvikingasaga_, but, while we must reject
many of the details there set forth, it is probable that the rules of
the settlement as given there are based on a genuine tradition, and
they give us a vivid picture of life in a Viking warrior-community. No
one under eighteen or over fifty years of age was admitted to their
fellowship, and neither birth nor friendship, only personal bravery,
could qualify a man for admission. No one was allowed to continue a
member who uttered words of fear, or who fled before one who was his
equal in arms and strength. Every member was bound to avenge a fallen
companion as if he were his brother. No women were allowed within the
community, and no one was to be absent for more than three days without
permission. All news was to be told in the first instance to their
leader and all plunder was to be shared at a common stake. The harbour
of Jómsborg could shelter a fleet of 300 vessels and was protected by
a mole with twelve iron gates.
The Jómsvikings played an important if stormy part in the affairs of
the three Scandinavian kingdoms in the later years of the 10th and the
early 11th century. Many of them came to England in the train of king
Svein, while Jarl Thorkell was for a time in the service of Ethelred
the Unready. The decline of Jómsborg as a Viking stronghold dates from
its devastation by Magnus the Good in 1043, but the importance of Julin
as a trading centre continued unimpaired for many years to come.
From Jómsborg Harold Bluetooth's son Hákon made an attack on Samland in
the extreme east of Prussia, but the real exploitation of the Eastern
Baltic fell as was natural to the Swedes rather than to the Danes. We
have already mentioned their presence in Kurland on the Gulf of Riga,
and we learn from Swedish runic inscriptions of expeditions to Samland,
to the Semgalli (in Kurland) and to the river Duna. The important
fortified port of Seeburg was probably near to Riga, while the chief
trade route from the island of Gothland lay round cape Domesnæes (note
the Scandinavian name) to the mouth of the Duna.
The chief work of the Swedes was however to be done in lands yet
further south, in the heart of the modern empire of Russia in Europe.
The story of the founding of the Russian kingdom is preserved to us
in the late 10th century chronicle of the monk Nestor, who tells us
that in the year 859 'Varangians' came over the sea and took tribute
from various Finnish, Tatar and Slavonic peoples inhabiting the forest
regions round Lake Ilmen, between Lake Ladoga and the upper waters of
the Dnieper. Again he tells us that in 862 the Varangians were driven
over seas and tribute was refused, but soon the tribes quarrelled among
themselves and some suggested that they should find a prince who might
rule over them and keep the peace. So they sent across the sea to the
Varangians, to the 'Rus,' for such is the name of these Varangians,
just as others are called Swedes, Northmen, Anglians, Goths, saying
that their land was great and powerful but there was no order within it
and asking them to come and rule over them. Three brothers with their
followers were chosen: the eldest, Rurik (O.N. Hroerekr), settled in
Novgorod, the second in Bieloözero, the third in Truvor in Izborsk.
Three years later two of the brothers died and Rurik took control of
the whole of the settlements, dividing the land among his men. In the
same year two of Rurik's followers, Askold (O.N. Höskuldr) and Dir
(O.N. Dýri), setting out for Constantinople, halted at Kiev and there
founded a kingdom, which in 882 was conquered by Rurik's successor
Oleg (O.N. Helgi) and, as the mother of all Russian cities, became the
capital of the Russian kingdom.
There is a certain _naiveté_ about this story which is characteristic
of the monkish chronicler generally, and it is clear that, after the
usual manner of the annalist who is compiling his record long after the
events described, Nestor has grouped together under one or two dates
events which were spread over several years, but the substantial truth
of the narrative cannot be impugned and receives abundant confirmation
from various sources.
The earliest evidence for the presence of these 'Rus' in Eastern Europe
is found in the story of the Byzantine embassy to the emperor Lewis the
Pious in 839 (_v. supra_, p. 19), when certain people called 'Rhôs,'
who had been on a visit to Constantinople, came in the train of the
embassy and asked leave to return home through the empire. Enquiries
were made and it was found that these 'Rhôs' were Swedes. This would
point to the presence of 'Rus' in Russia at a date earlier than that
given by Nestor, and indeed the rapid extension of their influence
indicates a period of activity considerably longer than that allowed
by him. These 'Rus' or 'Rhôs' soon came into relations, both of trade
and war, with the Byzantine empire. We have preserved to us from the
years 911 and 944 commercial treaties made between the 'Rus' and the
Greeks showing that they brought all kinds of furs and also slaves
to Constantinople, receiving in exchange various articles of luxury
including gold and silver ornaments, silks and other rich stuffs. The
names of the signatories to these treaties are, on the side of the
'Rus,' almost entirely of Scandinavian origin and may to some extent
be shown to be of definitely Swedish provenance. About the year 950,
the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, writing a tractate on the
administration of the empire, describes how traders from various parts
of Russia assemble at Kiev and sail down the Dnieper on their way to
Constantinople. Their course down the Dnieper was impeded by a series
of rapids, and Constantine gives their names both in 'Russian' and in
Slavonic form, and though the names are extremely corrupt in their
Greek transcription there is no mistaking that the 'Russian' names are
really forms belonging to some Scandinavian dialect.
The Rus were also well known as warriors and raiders. In 865 they
sailed down the Dnieper, across the Black Sea and made their way into
the Sea of Marmora. Their fleet was dispersed by a storm, but they
were more successful in 907 when Oleg with some 2000 ships harried the
environs of Constantinople and was bought off by a heavy tribute. These
attacks were continued at intervals during the next century.
We also find a good deal of interesting information about these 'Rûs,'
as they are called, in various Arab historians. We hear how they sailed
their vessels down the chief waterways and had such a firm hold on the
Black Sea that by the year 900 it was already known as the Russian Sea.
Often they dragged their vessels overland from one stream to another,
and thus they made their way from the upper waters of the Don down
the Volga to the Caspian Sea. But not only do we have a description
of their journeyings we also learn a good deal of their customs
and habits, and, though at times the information given is open to
suspicion, archaeological research tends to confirm the statements of
these historians and to show that the civilisation of the 'Rûs' closely
resembled that of the Scandinavian peoples generally in the Viking age.
The identification of the ancient 'Rus' with the Swedes was long
and hotly contested by Slavonic patriots but there is now a general
consensus of opinion that the evidence for it is too strong to be
overthrown. Not only have we the evidence given above but also the
very names 'Rus' and 'Varangian' can be satisfactorily explained only
on this theory. The name 'Rus' is the Slavonic, 'Rhôs' the Greek, and
'Rûs' the Arabic form of the Finnish name for Sweden, viz. Ruotsi. This
name was originally derived from _Roþr_ or _Roþin_, the name of certain
districts of Upland and Östergötland, whose inhabitants were known as
_Rods-karlar_ or _Rods-mæn_. The Finns had early come into relation
with the Swedes and they used the name of those people with whom they
were in earliest and most intimate contact for the whole Swedish
nationality. When these Swedes settled in Russia the Finns applied the
same term to the new colonists and the term came to be adopted later
into the various Slavonic dialects.
We are most familiar with the term 'Varangian' or 'Variag,' to use
the Slavonic form, as applied to the famous guard of the Byzantine
emperors, which seems to have been formed in the latter half of the
10th century and was largely composed of Norwegian, Icelandic and
Swedish recruits. In Russian and Arabic historians on the other hand
the term is used rather in an ethnographic or geographic sense. We
have seen that it was thus used by Nestor, and similarly we find the
Baltic commonly spoken of as the 'Varangian' Sea both in Russian and
in Arabic records. All the evidence tends to show that this was the
earlier sense of the term and we find it gradually displacing the term
'Rhôs' even in Byzantine historians. The word itself is of Scandinavian
origin and means 'those who are bound together by a pledge.' The theory
which best explains its various uses is that put forward by Dr Vilhelm
Thomsen, viz. that it originated among the Northmen who settled in
Russia, i.e. among the ancient Russ, and that under that term they
denoted those peoples west of the Baltic who were related to them by
nationality.
From the Russ the word passed into the Slavonic language as
_variag_[12], into the Greek as _barangoi_--where it was often used in
the restricted sense of members of the imperial guard largely recruited
from this nation,--and into the Arabic as _varank_. Dr Thomsen adduces
two happy parallels for the somewhat remarkable history of the terms
'Russian' and 'Varangian.' The term 'Russian' came to be used as their
own name by the Slavonic peoples, who were once ruled over by the Russ,
in much the same way that the term 'Frankish' or 'French' was adopted
by the Gaulish population of France from its Germanic conquerors. The
term 'Varangian,' ultimately the name for a nation or group of nations,
came to be used of a military force once largely recruited from those
nations, much in the same way as the term 'Swiss' was applied to the
Papal guard long after that guard had ceased to be recruited from the
Swiss nation exclusively.
The belief in the Scandinavian origin of the Russ is amply supported
by archaeological evidence. The large number of Arabic coins found
in Sweden (more especially in Gothland) and in Russia itself points
to an extensive trade with the Orient whose route lay chiefly to the
east of the Caspian Sea and then along the valley of the Volga. The
dates of the coins point to the years between 850 and 1000 as those
of most active intercourse with the East. Equally interesting is the
large number of western coins, more especially Anglo-Saxon pennies
and sceatts, which have been found in Russia. They probably represent
portions of our Danegeld which had come into the hands of the Swedes
either in trade or war. Viking brooches of the characteristic oval
shape with the familiar zoomorphic ornamentation have been found in
Western Russia, and one stone with a runic inscription, belonging to
the 11th century and showing evidence of connexion with Gothland, has
been found in a burial mound in Berezan, an island at the mouth of the
Dnieper. Professor Braun says that no others have been found because
of the rarity of suitable stone.
How long the Russ maintained their distinctively Scandinavian
nationality it is difficult to determine. Oleg's grandson Svjatoslav
bore a distinctively Slavonic name, and henceforward the names of the
members of the royal house are uniformly Slavonic, but the connexion
with Sweden was by no means forgotten. Svjatoslav's son Vladimir the
Great secured himself in the rulership of Novgorod in 980 by the aid of
_variags_ from over the sea and established a band of variag warriors
in his chief city of Kiev. But the Viking age was drawing to a close.
Variag auxiliaries are mentioned for the last time in 1043 and it
is probable that by the middle of the 11th century the Scandinavian
settlers had been almost completely Slavonicised. Of their permanent
influence on the Russian people and on Russian institutions it is,
in the present state of our knowledge, almost impossible to speak.
Attempts have been made to distinguish Scandinavian elements in the
old Russian law and language but with no very definite results, and we
must content ourselves with the knowledge that the Vikings were all
powerful in Western and Southern Russia during the greater part of two
centuries, carrying on an extensive trade with the East, establishing
Novgorod, 'the new town,' on the Volga under the name _Holmgarðr_ and
founding a dynasty which ruled in Kiev and became a considerable power
in eastern Europe negotiating on terms of equality with the Byzantine
emperors.
Mention has already been made more than once of the way in which the
Northmen entered the service of the emperors at Constantinople or
_Miklagarðr_, 'the great city,' as they called it. From here they
visited all parts of the Mediterranean. When Harold Hardrada was in
the service of the emperor he sailed through the Grecian archipelago
to Sicily and Africa. There he stayed several years, conquering some
eighty cities for his master and gaining rich treasures for himself.
One interesting memorial of these journeys still remains to us. At the
entrance to the arsenal in Venice stands a marble lion brought from
Athens in 1687. Formerly it stood at the harbour of the Piraeus, known
thence as the Porto Leone. On the sides of the lion are carved two long
runic inscriptions arranged in snake-like bands. The runes are too
much worn to be deciphered but they are unquestionably of Scandinavian
origin and the snake-bands closely resemble those that may be seen on
certain runic stones in Sweden. The carving was probably done by Swedes
from Uppland about the middle of the 10th century. One can hardly
imagine a more striking illustration of the extent and importance of
the Viking movement in Europe.
FOOTNOTE:
[12] The word variag in Modern Russian means a pedlar and bears witness
to the strong commercial instincts of the Viking.
CHAPTER VIII
VIKING CIVILISATION
The activities of the Vikings were all-embracing, and before any
attempt can be made to estimate their influence in the various
countries which came permanently under their rule, or were brought more
or less closely into touch with them, some account, however slight,
must be given of Scandinavian civilisation at this time, both on its
spiritual and on its material sides. For the former aspect we must
turn chiefly to the poems and sagas of old Norse literature, for the
latter to the results of modern archaeological research. So far as the
poems and sagas are concerned it is well to remember that they were to
a large extent composed in Iceland and reflect the somewhat peculiar
type of civilisation developed there at a period just subsequent to
the Viking age itself. This civilisation differs necessarily from that
developed in Scandinavia or in the other Scandinavian settlements, in
that it was free from Western influence, but this is to some extent
compensated for by the fact that we get in Iceland a better picture of
the inherent possibilities of Viking civilisation when developed on
independent lines.
At the beginning of the Viking age the Scandinavian peoples were in
a transitional stage of development; on the one hand there was still
much, both in their theory and in their practice of life, that savoured
of primitive barbarism, while on the other, in the development of
certain phases of human activity, more especially in those of war,
trade, and social organisation, they were considerably ahead of many
of their European neighbours. More than one writer has commented upon
the strange blending of barbarism and culture which constitutes Viking
civilisation: it is evident when we study their daily life, and it
is emphasised in the story of their slow and halting passage from
heathenism to Christianity.
We need not travel far to find examples of their barbarism. Their
cruelty in warfare is a commonplace among the historians of the period.
When the Irish found the Danes cooking their food on spits stuck in
the bodies of their fallen foes (_v. supra_, p. 55) and asked why they
did anything so hateful, the answer came 'Why not? If the other side
had been victorious they would have done the same with us.' The custom
of cutting the blood-eagle (i.e. cutting the ribs in the shape of an
eagle and pulling the lungs through the opening) was a well-known
form of vengeance taken on the slayer of one's father if captured in
battle, and is illustrated in the story of the sons of Ragnarr Loðbrók
himself. Another survival of primitive life was the famous Berserk
fury, when men in the heat of battle were seized with sudden madness
and, according to the popular belief, received a double portion of
strength, and lost all sense of bodily pain, a custom for which Dr
Bugge finds an apt parallel in the 'running amok' of the races of the
Malay peninsula. Children were tossed on the point of the spear and the
Viking leader who discouraged the custom was nicknamed _barnakarl_,
i.e. children's friend.
In contrast to these methods of warfare stands their skill in
fortification, in which they taught many lessons both to their English
and to their Frankish adversaries, their readiness in adapting
themselves to new conditions of warfare (_v. supra_, p. 46), and their
clever strategy, whereby they again and again outwitted their opponents.
The same contrast meets us when we consider the position of women among
them. The chroniclers make many references to their lust after women.
We hear in an English chronicler how they combed their hair, indulged
in sabbath baths, often changed their clothes and in various ways
cultivated bodily beauty 'in order that they might the more readily
overcome the chastity of the matrons, and make concubines even of the
daughters of the nobility.' Wandering from country to country they
often had wives in each, and polygamy would seem to have been the
rule, at least among the leaders. In Ireland we hear of what seem to
have been veritable harems, while in Russia we are told of the great
grandson of Rurik, the founder of the Russian kingdom, that he had
more than 800 concubines, though we may perhaps suspect the influence
of Oriental custom in this case. Yet, side by side with all this, the
legitimate wife was esteemed and honoured, and attained a position
and took a part in national life which was quite unusual in those
days. In the account of an Arabic embassy to the Vikings of the west
(_v. supra_, p. 20) we have a vivid picture of the freedom of their
married life. Auðr, the widow of Olaf the White, after the fall of her
son Thorstein, took charge of the fortunes of her family and is one
of the figures that stand out most clearly in the early settlement of
Iceland. We have only to turn to the Icelandic sagas to see before us
a whole gallery of portraits, dark and fair alike, of women cast in
heroic mould, while the stone at Dyrna in Hadeland, bearing the runic
inscription, 'Gunvor, daughter of Thirek, built a bridge to commemorate
her daughter Astrid, she was the most gracious maiden in Hadeland,'
gives us one of the most attractive pictures of womanhood left to us
from the Viking age. It must be added however that beside the runic
inscription, the stone bears carvings of the Christ-child, the star in
the east and the three kings, and this may serve to remind us that the
age was one in which the peoples of the North passed from heathenism
to Christianity, though the passage was a slow one and by no means
complete even at the close of the period.
It is probable that the first real knowledge of 'the white Christ'
came, as is so often the case, with the extension of trade--Frisians
trading with Scandinavia, and Danes and Swedes settling in Frisia and
elsewhere for the same purpose. St Willibrord at the beginning of the
8th century and Archbishop Ebbo of Rheims in 823, as papal legate
among the northern peoples, undertook missions to Denmark, but it was
in 826, when king Harold was baptised at Mainz, that the first real
opportunity came for the preaching of Christianity in Denmark. Harold
was accompanied on his return by St Anskar, a monk from Corvey and a
man filled with religious zeal. After two years' mission in Denmark St
Anskar sailed to Sweden, where he was graciously received at Björkö by
king Björn. He made many converts and on his return home in 831 was
made archbishop of Hamburg and given, jointly with Ebbo, jurisdiction
over the whole of the northern realms. Hamburg was devastated in 845
and St Anskar was then appointed to the bishopric of Bremen, afterwards
united to a restored archbishopric of Hamburg. He laboured in Denmark
once more and established churches at Slesvík and Ribe. He conducted
a second mission to Sweden and his missionary zeal remained unabated
until his death in 865; his work was carried on by his successor and
biographer St Rimbert and by many others. Their preaching was however
confined to Jutland and South Sweden and there is no evidence of any
popular movement towards Christianity. Gorm the Old was a steadfast
pagan but Gorm's son Harold Bluetooth was a zealous promoter of
Christianity. His enthusiasm may have been exaggerated by monastic
chroniclers in contrast to the heathenism of his son Svein, but with
the accession of Cnut all fears of a reversion to heathendom were at an
end. Cnut was a devout son of the Church.
The first Danish settlers in England were entirely heathen in
sentiment, but they were soon brought into close contact with
Christianity, and the terms of the peace of Edward and Guthrum in the
early years of the 10th century show that already Christianity was
making its way in the Danelagh. In the course of this century both
archbishoprics were held by men of Danish descent and the excesses of
the early 11th century were due, not to the Danish settlers, but to the
heathen followers of Olaf Tryggvason and Svein Forkbeard. Similarly the
Danish settlers in Normandy were within a few years numbered among
the Church's most enthusiastic supporters, and Rollo's own son and
successor William was anxious to become a monk.
The story of the preaching of Christianity in Norway is a chequered
one. The first attempt to establish the Christian faith was made by
Hákon Aðalsteinsfóstri (_v. supra_, p. 36). Baptised and educated in
England, he began warily, inducing those who were best beloved by him
to become Christians, but he soon came into conflict with the more
ardent followers of paganism. At the great autumn festival at Lade when
the cups of memory were drunk, Earl Sigurd signed a cup to Odin, but
the king made the sign of the cross over his cup. Earl Sigurd pacified
popular clamour by saying that the king had made the sign of the hammer
and consecrated the cup to Thor. The next day the king would not eat
the horse-flesh used in their offerings nor drink the blood from it:
the people were angry and the king compromised by inhaling the steam
from the offering through a linen cloth placed over the sacrificial
kettle, but no one was satisfied and at the next winter-feast the king
had to eat some bits of horse-liver and to drink crossless all the
cups of memory. Hákon died a Christian but Eyvindr Skaldaspillir in
_Hákonarmál_ describes how he was welcomed by Odin to Valhalla.
Earl Hákon Sigurdson, nicknamed _blót-jarl_, i.e. sacrifice-earl,
was a zealous heathen, but Olaf Tryggvason after his succession in
995 promoted the cause of Christianity by every means in his power,
and it was largely to this that he owed his ultimate overthrow. Then,
after a brief interval, the crown passed to St Olaf, greatest of all
Christian champions in Norway, and during his reign that country became
definitely Christian, though his rough and ready methods of conversion
were hardly likely to secure anything but a purely formal and outward
adhesion to the new faith.
Sweden was the most reluctant of the three northern realms to accept
Christianity, and the country remained almost entirely heathen until
the close of the Viking period.
The story of the Norse settlers in Ireland and the Western Islands
in their relation to Christianity was very much that of the Danes
in England. Celtic Christianity had a firm hold in these countries,
and from the earliest period of the settlements many of the Vikings
adopted the Christian faith. Among the settlers in Iceland who came
from the West were many Christians, and Auðr herself gave orders at her
death that she should be buried on the sea-shore below the tide-mark,
rather than lie in unhallowed ground. Most of the settlers undoubtedly
remained heathen--in 996 a ring sacred to Thor was taken from a temple
in Dublin and in 1000 king Brian destroyed a grove sacred to the same
god just north of the city. But side by side with incidents of this
kind must be placed others like that of the sparing of the churches,
hospitals and almshouses when Armagh was sacked in 921, or the
retirement of Anlaf Cuaran to the monastery at Iona in 981. In Ireland
as elsewhere there seems to have been a recrudescence of heathenism in
the early years of the 11th century and the great fight at Clontarf was
regarded as a struggle between pagan and Christian.
Outwardly the Scandinavian world had largely declared its adhesion
to Christianity by the close of the Viking period, but we must
remember that the medieval Church was satisfied if her converts passed
through the ceremony of baptism and observed her rites, though their
sentiments often remained heathen. Except in purely formal fashion it
is impossible to draw a definite line of demarcation between Christian
and heathen, and the acceptance of Christianity is of importance not
so much from any change of outlook which it produced in individuals,
as because it brought the peoples of the North into closer touch
with the general life and culture of medieval Europe. Leaders freely
accepted baptism--often more than once--and even confirmation as part
of a diplomatic bargain, while their profession of Christianity made
no difference to their Viking way of life. Even on formal lines the
Church had to admit of compromise, as for example in the practice
of _prime-signing_, whereby when Vikings visited Christian lands as
traders, or entered the service of Christian kings for payment, they
often allowed themselves to be signed with the cross, which secured
their admission to intercourse with Christian communities, but left
them free to hold the faith which pleased them best.
Strange forms and mixtures of belief arose in the passage from one
faith to the other. Helgi the Lean was a Christian, but called on Thor
in the hour of need. The Christian saints with their wonder-working
powers were readily adopted into the Norse Pantheon, and Vikings by
their prayers and offerings secured the help of St Patrick in Ireland
and of St Germanus in France in times of defeat and pestilence, while
we hear of a family of settlers in Iceland who gave up all faith
except a belief in the power of St Columba. On sculptured stones
in the west may be found pictures of Ragnarök, of Balder and of
Loki together with the sign of the cross. Some of the heathen myths
themselves show Christian influence; the Balder story with its echoes
of the lamentations for the suffering Christ belongs to the last
stage of Norse heathendom, while a heathen skald makes Christ sit by
the Fountain of Fate as the mighty destroyer of the giants. When
the virtue had gone out of their old beliefs many fell a prey to the
grossest superstition, worshipping the rocks and groves and rivers
once thought to be the dwelling place of the gods. Others renounced
faith in Christian and heathen gods alike, and the nickname 'godless'
is by no means rare among the settlers in Iceland. Of such it is often
said that they believed in themselves, or had no faith in aught except
their own strength and power, while in the saga of Friþjof we hear how
the hero paid little heed to the sanctity of the temple of Balder and
that the love of Ingibjorg meant more to him than the wrath of the
gods. For a parallel to such audacious scepticism as that of Friþjof
we must turn to southern lands and later times with Aucassin's 'In
Paradise what have I to win? Therein I seek not to enter, but only to
have my Nicolete, my sweet lady that I love so well.' For some the way
of escape came not by superstition or by scepticism, but in mystic
speculation, in pure worship of the powers of nature. Thus we hear of
the Icelander Thorkell Mani, whom all praised for the excellence of
his way of life, that in his last illness he was carried out into the
sunshine, so that he might commend himself into the hands of the god
who made the sun, or of the _goði_ Askell who, even in the hour of
famine, deemed it was more fitting to honour the creator by caring for
the aged and the children, than to relieve distress by putting these
helpless ones to death.
One other illustration of the declining force of heathenism must be
mentioned. It is to the Viking age that we owe the poems of the older
Edda, that storehouse of Norse mythology and cosmogony. They are almost
purely heathen in sentiment, and yet one feels that it could only be in
an age when belief in the old gods was passing away that the authors
of these poems could have struck those notes of detachment, irony, and
even of burlesque, which characterise so many of them.
The condition of faith and belief in the Viking age was, then, chaotic,
but, fortunately for purposes of clear statement, there was, to the
Norse mind at least, no necessary connexion between beliefs and
morality, between faith and conduct, and the ideas on which they based
their philosophy and practice of life are fairly distinct.
The central ideas which dominate the Norse view of life are an
ever-present sense of the passingness of all things and a deep
consciousness of the over-ruling power of Fate. All earthly things
are transitory and the one thing which lasts is good fame. 'Wealth
dies, kinsmen die, man himself must die, but the fame which a man wins
rightly for himself never dies; one thing I know that never dies,
the judgment passed on every man that dies,' says the poet of the
_Hávamál_, the great storehouse of the gnomic wisdom of the Norsemen.
'All things are unstable and transitory, let no man therefore be
arrogant or over-confident. The wise man will never praise the day
before it is evening.' Prudence and foresight are ever necessary. All
things are determined by a fate which is irrevocable and cannot be
avoided. Every man must die the death that is appointed for him, and
the man whose final day has not yet come may face unmoved the greatest
danger. This sense of an inevitable fate must lead to no weakening
of character or weariness of life. Death must be faced with cheerful
stoicism and our judgment of the worth of any man must depend on
the way in which he awaits the decree of fate. Place no great trust
in others whether friend or foe, least of all place trust in women.
'Wommennes conseils been ful ofte colde,' says Chaucer in the _Nun's
Priest's Tale_, using an old Scandinavian proverb. 'Be friendly to
your friends and a foeman to your foes. Practice hospitality and hate
lying and untruthfulness.' With their enemies the Vikings had an evil
reputation for cunning and deceit, but when we study the incidents on
which this charge was based--as for example the story of the capture
of Luna (_v. supra_, p. 47) or the oft-repeated trick of feigning
flight, only to lure the enemy away from safe ground--one must confess
that they show an enemy outwitted rather than deceived. This aspect
of Viking character perhaps finds its best illustration in the figure
of Odin. His common epithets are 'the wise,' 'the prudent,' 'the
sagacious'; he is a god of witchcraft and knows all the secret powers
of nature and stands in contrast to the simple-minded Thor, endowed
with mighty strength, but less polished and refined. The development
of the worship of Odin in Norway belongs specially to the later Iron
Age, and it is worthy of note that his worship seems to have prevailed
chiefly in military circles, among princes and their retainers.
The Vikings were guilty of two besetting sins--immoderate love of
wine and of women. Of their relations to women enough has been said
already. Their drunken revelry is best illustrated by the story of
the orgie which led up to the death of St Alphege in London in 1012,
when, after drinking their fill of the wine they had brought from
abroad, they pelted the bishop with bones from the feast, and finally
pierced his skull with the spike on the back of an axe. Of sin in the
Christian sense the Vikings had no conception. An Irish chronicler
tells us indeed that the Danes have a certain piety in that they can
refrain from flesh and from women for a time, but a truer description
is probably that given by Adam of Bremen when he says that the Danes
can weep neither for their sins nor for their dead.
The chief occupations of the Vikings were trade and war, but we must
beware of drawing a too rigid distinction between adventurers and
peaceful stay-at-homes. The Vikings when they settled in England and
elsewhere showed that their previous roving life did not hinder them
in the least from settling down as peaceful traders, farmers, or
peasant-labourers, while the figure of Ohthere or Óttarr, to give him
his Norse name, who entered the service of king Alfred, may serve to
remind us that many a landed gentleman was not above carrying on a good
trade with the Finns or undertaking voyages of exploration in the White
Sea.
Trading in those days was a matter of great difficulty and many risks.
The line of division between merchant and Viking was a very thin one,
and more than once we read how, when merchants went on a trading
expedition, they arranged a truce until their business was concluded
and then treated each other as enemies. Trade in Scandinavia was
carried on either in fixed centres or in periodical markets held in
convenient places. The chief trading centres were the twin towns of
Slesvík-Hedeby in Denmark, Skiringssalr in S.W. Norway, and Björkö,
Sigtuna and the island of Gothland in Sweden, while an important market
was held periodically at Bohuslän on the Götaelv, at a place were
the boundaries of the three northern kingdoms met. A characteristic
incident which happened at this market illustrates the international
character of the trade done there. On a certain occasion a wealthy
merchant named Gille (the name is Celtic), surnamed the Russian because
of his many journeys to that country, set up his booth in the market
and received a visit from the Icelander Höskuldr who was anxious to buy
a female slave. Gille drew back a curtain dividing off the inner part
of the tent and showed Höskuldr twelve female slaves. Höskuldr bought
one and she proved to be an Irish king's daughter who had been made
captive by Viking raiders.
The chief exports were furs, horses, wool, and fish while the imports
consisted chiefly in articles of luxury, whether for clothing or
ornament. There was an extensive trade with the Orient in all such
luxuries and the Vikings seem eagerly to have accumulated wealth of
this kind. When Limerick was re-captured by the Irish in 968, they
carried off from the Vikings 'their jewels and their best property, and
their saddles beautiful and foreign (probably of Spanish workmanship),
their gold and their silver: their beautifully woven cloth of all
colours and all kinds: their satins and silken cloths, pleasing and
variegated, both scarlet and green, and all sorts of cloth in like
manner.' They captured too 'their soft, youthful, bright, matchless
girls: their blooming silk-clad young women: and their active, large,
and well formed boys.' Such captives whether made by Irish from
Norsemen or Norsemen from Irish would certainly be sold as slaves, for
one of the chief branches of trade in those days was the sale as slaves
of those made prisoner in war.
The expansion of Scandinavian trade took place side by side with,
rather than as a result of, Viking activity in war. There is evidence
of the presence of traders in the Low Country early in the 9th century,
and already in the days of St Anskar we hear of a Swedish widow
of Björkö who left money for her daughter to distribute among the
poor of Duurstede. Jómsborg was established to protect and increase
Scandinavian trade at Julin, and there were other similar trading
centres on the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic.
The Viking might busy himself either with war or trade, but whatever
his occupation, living as he did in insular or peninsular lands, good
ships and good seamanship were essential to his livelihood. Seamen
now often abandoned that timid hugging of the coast, sailing only by
day time and in fair weather, which characterised the old Phoenician
traders, and boldly sailed across the uncharted main with no help save
that of the sun and stars by which to steer their course. It was this
boldness of spirit alone which enabled them to reach the lonely Faroes,
the distant Shetlands and Orkneys, and the yet more remote Iceland.
Irish monks and anchorites had shown similar fearlessness, but their
bravery was often that of the fanatic and the mystic rather than the
enterprise of the seaman. Boldness of seamanship led to boldness in
exploration. From Iceland the Vikings sailed to Greenland, and by the
year 1000 had discovered Vinland, the N.E. part of North America.
Ottarr rounded the North Cape and sailed the White Sea in the 9th
century, while Harold Hardrada in the 11th century made a voyage of
Polar exploration.
Of their ships we know a good deal both from the sagas and from the
remains of actual ships preserved to us. The custom of ship-burial,
i.e. burial in a ship over which a grave chamber, covered with a how
or mound, was erected, was common in the Viking age, and several
such ships have been discovered. The two most famous are those of
Gokstad and Oseberg, both found on the shores of Christiania Fjord.
The Gokstad vessel is of oak, clinker-built, with seats for sixteen
pairs of rowers, and is 28 ft. long and 16 ft. broad amidships. It
dates from about 900, and in form and workmanship is not surpassed by
modern vessels of a similar kind. There is a mast for a single sail,
and the rudder, as always in those days, is on the starboard side. The
gunwale was decorated with a series of shields painted alternately
black and gold. The appearance of the vessel when fully equipped can
perhaps best be judged from the pictures of Viking ships to be seen in
the Bayeux tapestry. There we may note the parti-coloured sail with
its variegated stripes, and the rich carving of stem and stern. These
magnificent sails were a source of much pride to their possessors, and
the story is told of Sigurd Jerusalem-farer that on his way home from
Jerusalem to Constantinople he lay for half-a-month off Cape Malea,
waiting for a side wind, so that his sails might be set lengthwise
along the ship and so be better seen by those standing on shore as he
sailed up to Constantinople. The stem often ended in a dragon's head
done over with gold, whilst the stern was frequently shaped like a
dragon's tail, so that the vessel itself was often called a dragon.
The Oseberg ship is of a different type. The gunwale is lower and the
whole vessel is flatter and broader. It is used as the grave-chamber of
a woman, and the whole appearance of the vessel, including its richly
carved stem, indicates that it was used in calm waters for peaceful
purposes.
The story of the escape of Hárek of Thjotta through Copenhagen Sound
after the battle of Helgeäa in 1018 illustrates the difference between
a trading-ship and a ship of war. Hárek struck sail and mast, took down
the vane, stretched a grey tent-cloth over the ship's sides, and left
only a few rowers fore and aft. The rest of the crew were bidden lie
flat so that they might not be seen, with the result that the Danes
mistook Hárek's war-galley for a trading-vessel laden with herrings or
salt and let it pass unchallenged.
[Illustration: _PLATE I_
Viking ship from the Bayeux Tapestry]
In the last years of the Viking period ships increased greatly both in
size and number. Olaf Tryggvason's vessel, the _Long Serpent_, in which
he fought his last fight at Svoldr, had thirty benches of oars, while
Cnut the Great had one with sixty pairs of oars. This same king went
with a fleet of some fourteen hundred vessels to the conquest of Norway.
In battle the weapons of defence were helmet, corselet and shield.
The shields were of wood with a heavy iron boss in the centre. The
corselets were made of iron rings, leather, or thick cloth. The weapons
of offence were mainly sword, spear and battle-axe. The sword was of
the two-edged type and usually had a shallow depression along the
middle of the blade, known as the blood-channel. Above, the blade
terminated in a narrow tang, bounded at either end by the hilts.
Round the tang and between the hilts was the handle of wood, horn, or
some similar material, often covered with leather, or occasionally
with metal. Above the upper hilt was a knob, which gave the sword
the necessary balance for a good steady blow. Generally the knob
and the hilts were inlaid with silver, bronze, or copper-work. The
battle-axe, the most characteristic of Viking weapons, was of the
heavy broad-bladed type.
Next to warfare and trade, the chief occupation of the Viking was
farming, while his chief amusement was the chase. At home the Viking
leader lived the life of an active country gentleman. His favourite
sport was hawking, and one of the legendary lives of St Edmund tells
how Ragnarr Loðbrók himself was driven by stress of storm to land on
the East Anglian coast, receiving a hospitable welcome from the king,
but ultimately meeting death at the hands of the king's huntsman who
was jealous of his prowess as a fowler.
Of the social organisation of the Vikings it is impossible to form a
very definite or precise picture. We have in the laws of the Jómsborg
settlement (_v. supra_, p. 71) the rule of life of a warrior-community,
but it would be a mistake to imagine that these laws prevailed in
all settlements alike. The general structure of their society was
aristocratic rather than democratic, but within the aristocracy, which
was primarily a military one, the principle of equality prevailed.
When asked who was their lord, Rollo's men answered 'We have no lord,
we are all equal.' But while they admitted no lord, the Vikings were
essentially practical; they realised the importance of organised
leadership, and we have a succession of able leaders mentioned in the
annals of the time, to some of whom the title king was given. These
kings however are too numerous, and too many of them are mentioned
together, for it to be possible to give the term king in this connexion
anything like its usual connotation. It would seem rather to have
been used for any prince of the royal house, and it was only when
the Vikings had formed fixed settlements and come definitely under
Western influence that we hear of kings in the ordinary territorial
sense--kings of Northumbria, Dublin, Man and the Isles, or East Anglia.
We hear also of _jarls_ or earls, either as Viking leaders or as
definite territorial rulers, as for example the Orkney-earls and more
than one earl who is mentioned as ruling in Dublin, but these earls
usually held their lands under the authority of a king. By the side of
kings and earls mention is made both in the Danelagh and also in the
Western Islands of _lawmen_. It is difficult exactly to define their
position and function. Originally these men were simply experts in
the law who expounded it in the popular _thing_ or assembly, and were
the spokesmen of the people as against the king and the court, but
sometimes they assumed judicial functions, acting for example in Sweden
as assessors to the king, who was supreme judge.
In their home life we find the same strange mixture of civilisation
and barbarism which marks them elsewhere. Their houses were built
of timber, covered with clay. There was no proper hearth and the
smoke from the fire made its way out as best it could through the
turf-covered roof. The chief furniture of the room consisted in beds,
benches, long tables and chests, and in the houses of the rich these
would at the close of our period often be carved with stories from the
old heroic or mythologic legends, while the walls might be covered with
tapestry. Prominent in the chieftain's hall stood the carved pillars
which supported his high-seat and were considered sacred. When some
of the settlers first sailed to Iceland they threw overboard their
high-seat pillars which they had brought with them, and chose as the
site of their new abode the place where these pillars were cast ashore.
In clothing and adornment there can be no question that our Viking
forefathers had attained a high standard of luxury. Any visitor to the
great national museums at Copenhagen, Stockholm or Christiania must be
impressed by the wealth of personal ornaments displayed before him:
magnificent brooches of silver and bronze, arm-rings and neck-rings of
gold and silver, large beads of silver, glass, rock-crystal, amber and
cornelian. At one time it was commonly assumed that these ornaments,
often displaying the highest artistic skill, were simply plunder taken
by the Vikings from nations more cultured and artistic than themselves,
but patient investigation has shown that the majority of them were
wrought in Scandinavia itself.
[Illustration: _PLATE II_
Ornaments of the Viking period]
The most characteristic of Viking ornaments is undoubtedly the brooch.
It was usually oval in shape and the concave surface was covered with
a framework of knobs and connecting bands, which divided it into a
series of 'fields' (to use a heraldic term), which could themselves
be decorated with the characteristic ornamentation of the period. The
commonest form of oval brooch was that with nine knobs on a single
plate, but in the later examples the plate is often doubled. The
brooches themselves were of bronze, the knobs usually of silver with
silver wire along the edge of the brooch. These knobs have now often
disappeared and the bronze has become dull with verdigris, so that it
is difficult to form an idea of their original magnificence. The oval
brooches were used to fasten the outer mantle and were usually worn in
pairs, either on the breast or on the shoulders, and examples of them
have been found from Russia in the East to Ireland on the West. Other
types of brooch are also found--straight-armed, trilobed and round.
Such brooches were often worn in the middle of the bosom a little below
the oval ones. Other ornaments beside brooches are common--arm-rings,
neck-rings, pendants. One of the most interesting of the pendants is a
ring with a series of small silver Thor's hammers which was probably
used as a charm against ill-luck. All these ornaments alike are in
silver rather than gold, and it has been said that if the post-Roman
period of Scandinavian archaeology be called the age of Gold, the
Viking period should be named the age of Silver.
The style of ornamentation used in these articles of personal adornment
as well as in objects of more general use, such as horse-trappings, is
that commonly known to German archaeologists as _tier-ornamentik_, i.e.
animal or zoomorphic ornamentation. This last translation may sound
pedantic but it is the most accurate description of the style, for we
have no attempt to represent the full form of any animal that ever had
actual existence; rather we find the various limbs of animals--heads,
legs, tails--woven into one another in fantastic design in order to
cover a certain surface-area which requires decoration. 'The animals
are ornaments and treated as such. They are stretched and curved,
lengthened and shortened, refashioned, and remodelled just as the
space which they must fill requires.' This style was once called the
'dragon-style,' but the term is misleading as there is no example
belonging to the Viking period proper of any attempt to represent a
dragon, i.e. some fantastic animal with wings. Such creatures belong to
a later period.
The zoomorphic style did not have its origin during the Viking
period. It is based on that of a preceding period in the culture of
the North German peoples, but it received certain characteristic
developments at this time, more especially under the influence of
Irish and Frankish art. Irish art had begun to influence that of
Scandinavia even before the Viking period began, and the development
of intercourse between North and West greatly strengthened that
influence. To Frankish influence were due not only certain developments
of _tier-ornamentik_ but also the use of figures from the plant-world
for decorative purposes. One of the finest brooches preserved to us
from this period is of Frankish workmanship--a magnificent trilobed
brooch of gold with acanthus-leaf ornamentation. This leaf-work
was often imitated by Scandinavian craftsmen but the imitation
is usually rude and unconvincing. Traces are also to be found of
Oriental and more especially of Arabic influence in certain forms
of silver-ornamentation, but finds of articles of actual Eastern
manufacture are more common than finds of articles of Scandinavian
origin showing Eastern influences in their workmanship.
Buried treasure from the Viking period is very common. It was a
popular belief, sanctioned by the express statement of Odin, that a
man would enjoy in Valhalla whatsoever he had himself buried in the
earth. Another common motive in the burial of treasure was doubtless
the desire to find a place of security against robbery and plunder.
Treasure thus secreted would often be lost sight of at the owner's
death. To the burial-customs of the Viking period also we owe much of
our knowledge of their weapons, clothing, ornaments and even of their
domestic utensils.
The dead were as a rule cremated, at least during the earlier part of
the Viking period. The body burned or unburned was either buried in a
mound of earth, forming a 'how,' or was laid under the surface of the
ground, and the grave marked by stones arranged in a circle, square,
triangle or oval, sometimes even imitating the outlines of a ship.
The 'hows' were often of huge size. The largest of the three 'King's
hows' at Old Upsala is 30 ft. high and 200 ft. broad. A large how was
very necessary in the well-known ship-burial when the dead man (or
woman) was placed in a grave-chamber on board his ship and the ship
was drawn on land and buried within a how. Men and women alike were
buried in full dress, and the men usually have all their weapons with
them. In the latter case weapons tend to take the place of articles of
domestic use such as are found in the graves of an earlier period, and
the change points to a new conception of the future life. It is now a
life in which warriors feast with Odin in Valhalla on benches that are
covered with corselets. A careful examination of Norwegian graves has
proved fairly definitely the existence of the custom of 'suttee' during
the Viking period, and the evidence of the Arab historian Ibn Fadhlan
seems to show that the same custom prevailed among the Rûs. Horses,
dogs, hawks and other animals were often buried with their masters, and
the remains of such, burned or unburned, have frequently been found.
The varying customs attending burial are happily illustrated in the
two accounts preserved to us of the burial of king Harold Hyldetan,
who died c. 750. The accounts were written down long after the actual
event, but they probably give us a good picture of familiar incidents
in burial ceremonies of the Viking period.
One account (in a late saga) tells how, on the morrow of the great
fight at Bravalla, king Ring caused search to be made for the body of
his kinsman Harold. When the body was found, it was washed and placed
in the chariot which Harold used in the fight. A large mound was raised
and the chariot was drawn into the mound by Harold's own horse. The
horse was now killed and Ring gave his own saddle to Harold, telling
him that he might ride or drive to Valhalla just as it pleased him
best. A great memorial feast was held, and Ring bade his warriors and
nobles throw into the mound large rings of gold and silver and good
weapons before it was finally closed.
The other account (in Saxo) tells how Ring harnessed his own horse to
Harold's chariot and bade him drive quickly to Valhalla as the best in
battle, and when he came to Odin to prepare goodly quarters for friend
and foe alike. The pyre was then kindled and by Ring's command the
Danes placed Harold's ship upon it. When the fire destroyed the body,
the king commanded his followers to walk round the pyre and chant a
lament, making rich offerings of weapons, gold and treasure, so that
the fire might mount the higher in honour of the great king. So the
body was burned, the ashes were collected, laid in an urn and sent
to Leire, there to be buried with the horse and the weapons in royal
fashion.
There are many curious coincidences of detail between these accounts
and that given by Ibn Fadhlan of the burial of a Rûs warrior, and
every detail of them has at one time or another been confirmed by
archaeological evidence.
[Illustration: _PLATE III_
The Jellinge stone]
The dead were commemorated by the how itself, but _bautasteinar_,
i.e. memorial stones, were also erected, either on the how or, more
commonly, elsewhere. In course of time these monuments came to be
inscribed with runes. Usually the inscription is of the most formal
type, giving the name of the dead person, the name of the man who
raised the memorial, and sometimes also that of the man who carved the
runes. Occasionally there is some more human touch as in the wording
of the Dyrna runes (_v. supra_, p. 85), and in the latter part of the
Viking period we often find pictures and even scenes inscribed on
the stones. This is true of the Dyrna stone (_v. supra_, p. 86): the
Jellinge stone has a figure of Christ on it, while there is a famous
rock-inscription in Sweden representing scenes from the Sigurd-story
(Regin's smithy, hammer, tongs and bellows, Sigurd piercing Fafnir with
his sword, the birds whose speech Sigurd understood) encircled by a
serpent (Fafnir) bearing a long runic inscription. The runic alphabet
itself was the invention of an earlier age. It is based chiefly on the
old Roman alphabet with such modifications of form and symbol as were
necessitated by the different sounds in the Teutonic tongues and by the
use of such unyielding materials as wood and stone. Straight lines were
preferred to curved ones and sloping to horizontal. During the Viking
period it was simplified, and runic inscriptions are found from the
valley of the Dnieper on the east to Man in the west, and from Iceland
on the north to the Piraeus in the south.
CHAPTER IX
SCANDINAVIAN INFLUENCE IN THE ORKNEYS, SHETLANDS, THE WESTERN ISLANDS
AND MAN
Of all the countries visited by the Vikings it is undoubtedly the
British Isles which bear most definitely the marks of their presence.
The history and civilisation of Ireland, the Orkneys and Shetlands, the
Western Islands and Man, Scotland and England, were profoundly affected
by the Viking movement, and its influence is none the less interesting
because it varies greatly from place to place, in both character and
intensity. These variations are doubtless due in part to differences
of political and social organisation as between Norsemen and Danes,
or between men coming from scattered districts of the as yet loosely
co-ordinated kingdoms of Denmark and Norway, but their chief cause lies
in the wide divergences in the social and political conditions of the
lands in which they settled.
The Orkneys and the Shetlands were settled by the Norsemen earlier than
any other part of the British Isles and they formed part of the Norse
kingdom till 1468. It is not surprising therefore that the great Norse
historian Munch describes them as _ligesaa norskt som Norge selv_,
'as Norse as Norway itself.' The old Norse speech was still spoken
there by a few people until the end of the 18th century, and we have a
version of the ballad of _King Orfeo_ taken down from recital at the
close of that century with the Norse refrain still preserved '_Scowan
ürla grün--Whar giorten han grün oarlac_,' i.e. probably _Skoven årle
grön--Hvor hjorten han går årlig_ = 'Early green's the wood--where the
hart goes yearly.' Place-nomenclature is almost entirely Norse and the
modern dialects are full of Norse words. Several runic inscriptions
have been found, the most famous being that at Maeshowe in Hrossey,
made by Norse crusaders when they wintered there in 1152-3 and amused
themselves by breaking open the how, probably to look for treasure, and
scoring their runes on the walls of the grave-chamber. In the system of
landholding the 'udallers' are an interesting survival of the old Norse
freeholders. 'The Udaller held his land without condition or limitation
in any feudal sense,' says Mr Gilbert Goudie, i.e. he held his _udal_
on precisely the same free terms that the native Norseman did his
_óðal_. From the Shetlands and the Orkneys the Norsemen crossed to the
Scottish mainland. Sutherland (i.e. the land south of the Orkneys),
Caithness, Ross and Cromarty are full of Norse place-names, and Norse
influence may be traced even further south.
The Hebrides were also largely influenced by the Norsemen. Together
with Man they formed a Norse kingdom down to the middle of the 13th
century. Many of the islands themselves and their chief physical
features bear Norse names, many personal names (e.g. MacAulay, son of
Aulay or Olaf) are of Norse origin, and there are many Norse words in
the Gaelic both of the islands, and the mainland. These words have
undergone extensive changes and much corruption in a language very
different in form and sounds from that of their original source, and
their recognition is a difficult problem. There is at present a danger
of exaggerating this Norse element, the existence of which was long
overlooked. Similarly, affinities have been traced between Scandinavian
and Gaelic popular tales and folk-lore, but the evidence is too vague
and uncertain to be of much value.
It is however in Man that we get the most interesting traces of the
presence of the Norsemen. Here as elsewhere we have place-names and
personal names bearing witness to their presence, but we have much else
besides. Some 26 rune-inscribed crosses have been preserved to us. The
crosses are Celtic in form and to a large extent in ornament also, but
we find distinct traces of the Scandinavian animal-ornamentation. The
inscriptions are short and for the most part give only the name of the
memorial-raiser and the memorised. One bears the rune-writer's own
proud boast 'Gaut made this and all in Man.' More interesting than
the runes are the sculptured figures. On four of the crosses we have
representations of incidents from the Sigurd story--Sigurd slaying
Fafnir, Sigurd roasting Fafnir's heart and cooling his fingers in his
mouth after trying too soon if the heart was done, Loki slaying the
Otter. We also have pictures of Thor's adventure with the serpent of
Miðgarðr and of Odin's last fight with Fenrir's Wolf. These sculptured
stones are probably among the latest of those found in Man and have
their chief parallel in stones found in Sweden (_v. supra_, p. 111).
Possibly it was to settlers from Man also that we owe the famous
Gosforth cross in Cumberland with its picture of Thor's fishing for the
serpent.
In addition to all this we have the Manx legal system as a standing
witness to Norse influence. The chief executive and legislative
authority in the island (after the Governor) is the Tynwald Court.
That court takes its name from the Old Norse _Þing-völlr_[13], the
plain where the _Þing_[14] or popular assembly meets, and the House of
Keys, which is the oldest division of the court, consisted originally
of 24 members, a number perhaps due to Scandinavian influence, being
a combination of two groups of 12 lawmen (_v. supra_, p. 103). These
men who have the 'keys of the law' in their bosom closely resemble
the 'lawmen' or speakers of the Icelandic assembly. All laws to be
valid must be promulgated from the Tynwald Hill which corresponds to
the _lögberg_ or law-hill of the Icelandic _althing_. When the court
is held the coroner 'fences' it against all disturbance or disorder,
just as in the old Norwegian Gulathing we hear of _vé-bönd_ or
sanctuary-ropes drawn around the assembly.
It was possibly from Man that a good number of the Norse settlers in
Cumberland, Westmorland and North Lancashire came (_v. infra_, pp.
126-7), and others may have settled in Galloway.
FOOTNOTES:
[13] This word survives in another form in more than one Thingwall
among place-names.
[14] The word is familiar to us in the form -_ting_ in _hus-ting_,
house assembly (originally _hús-Þing_), a council held by a king or
earl and attended by his immediate followers, in contrast to the
ordinary _Þing_ or general assembly of the people.
CHAPTER X
SCANDINAVIAN INFLUENCE IN IRELAND
At the time of the Viking invasion of Ireland the various provincial
kingdoms were held in loose confederation under the authority of the
_ardrí_ or high king, but these kingdoms stood in constantly shifting
relations of friendship and hostility towards one another, and were
themselves often split into factions under rival chieftains. There
was no national army like the English _fyrd_. Rather it consisted of
a number of tribes, each commanded by its own chief, and though the
chief owed allegiance to the king, the bond was a frail one. The tribe
was further divided into _septs_ and the army was utterly lacking in
any cohesive principle. It is no wonder that for many years the Irish
showed themselves quite unable to cope with the attacks of forces so
well organised as those of the Norse and Danish Vikings.
In vivid contrast to the chaos in political and military organisation
stand the missionary enthusiasm of the Irish church and the high
level of education and culture which prevailed among her clergy and
_literati_. In the Orkneys and the Shetlands such names as Papa Westray
or Papa Stronsay bear witness to the presence of Irish priests or
_papae_ as the Norsemen called them. Irish anchorites had at one time
settled in the Faroes (_v. supra_, p. 6), and when the Norsemen first
settled in Iceland (c. 870) they found Irish monks already there. The
monastic schools of Ireland were centres of learning and religious
instruction for the whole of Western Europe, while Irish missionaries
had founded monasteries in Italy, Switzerland, Germany and France.
Unfortunately religion and culture seem to have been almost entirely
without influence on the body politic, and as the Vikings had at least
in the early days no respect for the religion or the learning of the
Irish nation there was nothing to prevent them from devastating Irish
monasteries and carrying off the stores of treasured wealth which
they contained. No plunder was more easily won, and it was only when
they themselves had fallen under Christian influences and had come
to appreciate Irish literary and artistic skill that they showed
themselves more kindly disposed towards these homes of learning.
One feature must at once strike the observer who compares the Viking
settlements in Ireland with those in England, viz. that Viking
influence in Ireland is definitely concentrated in the great coast
towns--Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork and Limerick--and the districts
immediately around them. Irish place-nomenclature bears very definite
witness to this fact. _Ford_ in Strangford and Carlingford Loughs,
Waterford and Wexford is O.N. _fjorðr_, a fjord, -_low_ in Arklow and
Wicklow is O.N. _ló_, 'low-lying, flat-grassland, lying by the water's
edge.' The O.N. _ey_, an island, is found in Lambey, Dalkey, Dursey
Head, Ireland's Eye (for Ireland's Ey), Howth is O.N. _höfuð_, 'a
head,' Carnsore and Greenore Point contain O.N. _eyrr_, 'a sandy point
pushing out into the sea.' Smerwick contains the familiar O.N. _vík_
a bay or creek, while the Copeland Islands off Belfast lough are the
O.N. _kaupmannaeyjar_, 'the merchants' islands.' All these are found on
or off the coast, while the number of Scandinavian names found inland
is extremely limited. The most interesting perhaps is Leixlip on the
Liffey, a name derived from O.N. _laxahlaup_, 'salmon-leap.' Donegal,
Fingall and Gaultiere are Celtic names, but they mark the presence
of the northern _Gall_ or foreigners, while the -_ster_ in Ulster,
Leinster and Munster is O.N. -_staðir_ (pl. of -_staðr_, place, abode)
suffixed to the old Gaelic names of these provinces.
There was free intermarriage between Norse and Irish (_v. supra_, p.
56), but the strength of the clan-system kept the races distinct and
there was no such infiltration of the whole population as took place
in the English Danelagh. This system prevented any such settlement
of Norsemen upon their own farms as took place in England, and the
invaders lived almost entirely in the coast towns and the districts
in their immediate neighbourhood, busying themselves with trade and
shipping.
Though the settlements were limited in their extent, we must not
underrate their influence on Irish history generally. They gave the
impetus there, as elsewhere, to the growth of town life, and from the
period of Viking rule dates the origin of the chief Irish towns. To
them also was due the great expansion, if not the birth, of Irish
trade. Mention has been made of the wealth of Limerick (_v. supra_,
p. 97), drawn chiefly from trade with France and Spain, and the other
towns were not behind Limerick. The naval power of Dublin stretched
from Waterford to Dundalk, the Irish channel swarmed with Viking
fleets, and many of the shipping terms in use in Gaelic are loan-words
from the Norse.
It is probably to the trading activities of Vikings from the chiefs
ports of Ireland that we owe the sprinkling of names of Norse origin
which we find along the Welsh coast from the Dee to the Severn--Great
Orm's Head, Anglesey, Ramsey I, Skokholm Island, Flat Holme and Steep
Holme, and to them may be due the establishment of Swansea, earlier
_Sweinesea_, Haverfordwest and possibly Bideford, as Norse colonies in
the Bristol channel. We know in later times of several Norsemen who
were living in Cardiff, Bristol, Swansea and Haverfordwest.
Norse influence in Ireland probably reached its climax in the 10th
century. The battle of Clontarf offered a serious check and though
there was still a succession of Norse kings and earls in Dublin they
had to acknowledge the authority of the _ardrí_. The line of Sigtryggr
of the Silken Beard came to an end by the middle of the 11th century,
and the rulership of Dublin fell into the hands of various Norse
families from other Irish settlements and from Man and the Isles. From
1078-94 it was under the rule of the great conqueror Godred Crovan
from Man, and its connexion with that kingdom was only severed finally
when Magnus Barefoot came on his great Western expedition in 1103,
and brought Man into direct allegiance to the kings of Norway. Celtic
influence must have been strong in the Norse families themselves.
Several of the kings bear Gaelic names, and it is probably from this
period that such familiar names as MacLamont or MacCalmont, MacIver,
and MacQuistan date, where the Gaelic patronymic prefix has been added
to the Norse names Lagmaðr, Ívarr and Eysteinn. While Norse power in
Dublin was on the decline as a political force it is curious to note
that the vigorous town-life and the active commerce instituted by
the Norse settlers made that city of ever-increasing importance as a
centre of Irish life and Irish interests generally, and there can be no
question that it was the Norsemen who really made Dublin the capital
city of Ireland.
The Norse element remained absolutely distinct, not only in Dublin but
also in the other cities in which they had settled, right down to the
time of the English invasion in the 12th century. Frequent mention is
made of them in the records of the great towns, and they often both
claimed and received privileges quite different from those accorded to
the native Irish or to the English settlers. They were known to the
latter as 'Ostmen' or 'Easterlings,' a term which in this connexion
seems to have ousted the earlier _Norvagienses_ or _les Norreys_, _les
Norwicheis_. The term 'Ostman' doubtless represents O.N. _Austmaðr_,
a man dwelling to the east. Exactly how or where it first came to be
applied to Norsemen it is difficult to say. The word has left its mark
in Oxmanstown, earlier Ostmanstown, the district of the city of Dublin
assigned to the Ostmen by the English invaders.
Learning and religion in Ireland suffered grievously from Norse attack
but not so sorely as in England. There was never a time when so dark a
picture could have been drawn of Irish learning as Alfred gives of the
state of English learning when he translated the _Pastoral Care_, and
when once the Vikings began to form settlements they were themselves
strongly affected by the wealth of literary and artistic skill with
which they found themselves brought into contact. The question of Irish
influence on Norse mythology and literature is a much vexed one. At
present we are suffering from a reaction against exaggerated claims
made on its behalf some thirty years ago, but while refusing to accept
the view that Norse legends, divine and heroic alike, are based on a
wholesale refashioning and recreating of stories from Celtic saga-lore,
it would be idle to deny that the contact between the two nations must
have been fertile of result and that Norse literature in form, style
and subject-matter alike, bears many marks of Gaelic influence.
CHAPTER XI
SCANDINAVIAN INFLUENCE IN ENGLAND
Of the districts occupied by Scandinavian settlers in England the ones
which show their presence most strongly are Cumberland, Westmorland,
North Lancashire and Yorkshire in the old kingdom of Northumbria and
the district of the Five Boroughs in the midlands. East Anglia was not
so deeply affected by the Danish occupation.
Before dealing with one of the chief sources of our knowledge of the
presence of Norse and Danish settlers in various parts of England,
viz. the evidence derived from place-nomenclature, a few words must be
said as to the chief Scandinavian elements which can be recognised in
English place-names.
Of elements other than personal names the commonest are as follows,
several of them being used as independent words to this day in English
dialects which have been affected by Scandinavian influence:--
-BECK. O.N. _bekkr_, brook, small stream of water.
-BIGGIN(G). O.N. _bygging_, building.
-BY. O.N. _bør_, Dan. Swed. _by_, town or village. This word
indicates a Danish rather than a Norse settlement.
-CAR(R), -ker. O.N. _kjarr_, _kjörr_, brushwood, especially on
swampy ground.
-DALE. O.N. _dalr_, valley. Etymologically this word might be
of native English origin but its distribution points to Norse influence.
-FELL. O.N. _fjall_, mountain.
-FORCE. O.N. _fors_, waterfall.
-FORTH. O.N. _fjorðr_, fjord. English -ford and Scandinavian
-forth often interchange in the old documents.
-GARTH. O.N. _garðr_, enclosure, the Scandinavian equivalent
of English 'yard.'
-GILL. O.N. _gil_, deep narrow glen with a stream at the
bottom.
-HOLM. O.N. _holmr_, small island especially in a bay, creek,
or river. In England its meaning was further developed and it often
means 'low-lying level ground on the borders of a river or stream.' Now
often concealed in the suffix -ham.
-KELD. O.N. _kelda_, well, spring.
-LUND, -lound. O.N. _lundr_, grove. Now often corrupted to
-land in English place-names.
-MIRE. O.N. _myrr_, moor, bog, swamp.
-RAISE. O.N. _hreysi_, cairn.
-SCALE. O.N. _skali_, house. This word is Norse rather than
Danish.
-SCAR, -skear, -skerry. O.N. _sker_, isolated rock in the sea.
-SCOUT. O.N. _skúti_, cave formed by jutting rocks.
-SCOUGH, -scow. O.N. _skógr_, wood.
-SLACK. O.N. _slakki_, slope on a mountain edge. Often used in
English place-names of a hollow or boggy place[15].
-TARN. O.N. _tjörn_, small lake.
-THORP(E). O.N. _þorp_, hamlet, village. This word is also
found in O.E. and in some place-names is undoubtedly of native origin,
but its general distribution points fairly conclusively to Norse
influence.
-THWAITE. O.N. _þveit_, parcel of land, paddock.
-TOFT. O.N. _topt_, piece of ground, messuage, homestead.
-WITH. O.N. _viðr_, a wood.
-WATH. O.N. _vað_, a ford.
Place-names with the prefix _Norman_- mark the settlement not of
Normans but of Norsemen (or Northmen as the English called them), as
in Normanton and Normanby, while the settlement of Danes is marked by
the prefix _Dena_- or _Den_- as in Denaby and Denby. This latter prefix
however has other sources as well.
Scandinavian personal names are very common in place-names but their
presence can as a rule only be detected with any degree of certainty
by reference to the forms found in early documents. Among the more
easily recognised are _Grímr_, as in Grimsargh (Lancs.) and Grimsby
(Lincs.), _Gunnarr_, as in Gunnerside (Yorks.), _Ketill_, as in
Kettlewell (Yorks.), _Klakkr_, as in Claxton (Norf.), _Ormr_, as in
Ormskirk (Lancs.). Others, to be found by reference to earlier forms,
are _Fráni_, as in Franesfeld (=Farnsfield, Notts.), _Gamall_, as
in Gamelestune (=Gamston, Notts.), _Gunnúlfr_, as in Gunnulveston
(=Gonalston, Notts.), _Knútr_, as in Cnutestone (=Knuston, Northants.),
_Leifr_, as in Levesbi (=Laceby, Lincs.), _Sumarliði_, as in
Sumarlidebi (=Somerby, Lincs.), _Skúli_, as in Sculetuna (=Scoulton,
Norf.), _Tóli_, as in Toleslund (=Toseland, Hunts.), _Víkingr_, as
in Wichingestone (=Wigston, Leic.), _Úlfr_, as in Ulvesbi (=Ulceby,
Lincs.).
Examining the distribution of Scandinavian place-names determined by
the above tests and others which can be applied with great accuracy, if
we study not the modern but the old forms of the place-names, we find
that the place-nomenclature of Cumberland and Westmorland is almost
entirely either Scandinavian or Celtic. Indeed it would seem that the
Anglian settlement had hardly affected these districts at all, and it
was reserved for the Scandinavian settlers to Teutonise them. The
same is true of Furness and Lancashire, north of the Ribble, whose
old names Stercaland and Agmundernesse are of Norse origin, but south
of that river there is a great diminution of Norse place-names except
along the coast and a little way inland, where we have several -_bys_
and -_dales_. In Cheshire the evidence of Scandinavian settlement is
confined almost entirely to the Wirral, but there the large number of
-_bys_ and place-names like Thingwall (_v. supra_, p. 115, note 1)
point to a strong Viking colony, and the distribution of place-names
in South Lancashire and Cheshire bears witness to active intercourse
between the settlers in Ireland and England.
On the other side of the Pennine chain, though Northumberland was
several times ravaged by the Norsemen and was probably well populated
at least in the fertile river-valleys, there is practically no evidence
of their presence to be found in place-names. There are several
Biggins, Carrs, and Holms, a few Tofts and Dales, but these are common
dialect words and usually found in uncompounded forms. They are
practically never found in names of towns or villages, and may well
have been introduced from districts further south. In the extreme west
and south-west of the county there are 'fells' and 'dales' but these
are on the borders of Cumberland, Westmorland and Durham. The small
streams are 'burns' and not 'becks,' the Wansbeck being a corruption
of an earlier _Wanespike_.
When we cross into co. Durham the tributaries of the Wear vary between
'burn' and 'beck,' but by the time we reach the Tees these have all
become becks. Beechburn Beck, a tributary of the Wear, shows how a
Scandinavian term could be attached to an English name, when its own
meaning was neglected or forgotten. Other Scandinavian names are
common, but as in Northumberland they belong to the dialect generally
and are seldom found in names of towns or villages. Viking settlers
must have been few in numbers and widely scattered throughout these
two counties. One great exception must be named among the towns, viz.
Durham itself. The city was named _Dún-holmr_, 'the hill-island,' by
the Vikings, and its present name is only the Norman corruption of that
form.
South of the Tees we find ourselves in a district whose place-names are
to a very large extent Scandinavian, and Norse settlements are thickly
and evenly distributed from the North Sea to the Pennine chain.
Passing from Northumbria to the Danelagh, Lincolnshire is perhaps
more purely Scandinavian in its place-names than any other English
county. In Derbyshire Viking influence is not so strong but the
county was probably very thinly inhabited at least in the north and
west and did not offer attractive settling ground. Derby itself was
rechristened by the Northmen, its earlier name being 'Norðweorðig.'
The rich fields and pastures of Leicestershire attracted a great many
settlers and Nottinghamshire is also strongly Scandinavian. Rutland
and Northamptonshire are strongly Danish except that there is some
shading off towards the S.W. corner of the latter county. In the
country bordering the Danelagh on the south and west, Staffordshire has
a few Scandinavian place-names on its Derbyshire and Leicestershire
borders, while Warwickshire has several on its Leicestershire and
Northamptonshire borders.
In East Anglia Danish settlements must have been numerous in the north
and east especially towards the coast, but their presence is less
strongly marked in the S.W. portion of the county. In Suffolk they are
confined still more definitely to the coast-districts and the Danes
do not seem to have settled in the south of the county at all. Three
Kirbys near the Essex coast mark settlements in that county. Of the
other border-counties Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire
show only the slightest traces of Scandinavian influence in their
place-nomenclature, though we know from other evidence that there must
have been many Danish settlers in these counties.
Closely allied to the evidence of place-names is that of dialect. A
very large number of words definitely of Scandinavian origin are found
in the dialects of N.E. and N.W. England, in the N. Midlands and East
Anglia, but they do not furnish so sensitive a test as do place-names
for the extent of the Scandinavian settlements and they need not be
discussed here.
More interesting as evidence of the deep influence of the Viking
settlers on our language is the large number of Scandinavian loan-words
which have become part of our standard speech, many of them being words
essential to our every-day talk. To Scandinavian influence we owe the
pronouns _they_, _them_ and _their_, the adjectives _same_ and _both_,
the _fro_ in _to_ and _fro_ and possibly the auxiliary _are_ and the
preposition _till_. These last are found in the Northumbrian dialect of
Old English but their widespread use is probably due to Scandinavian
influence. In addition to these we may note the following:
Verbs: _bait_, _bask_, _batten_, _call_, _cast_, _dawn_, _droop_,
_drown_, _gain_, _gabble_, _ransack_, _scare_, _scour_, _scrape_,
_skim_, _skip_, _squeal_, _stint_, _take_,
Nouns: _anger_, _billow_, _boon_, _dusk_, _fellow_, _gait_, _grime_,
_haven_, _husband_, _husk_, _husting_, _scull_, _scurf_, _skill_,
_skin_, _skirt_, _sky_, _window_,
Adjectives: _awkward_, _ill_, _odd_, _rotten_, _scant_, _sly_, _ugly_,
_weak_, and a good many words in which Scandinavian forms have
replaced the cognate English ones, e.g. _aloft_, _athwart_, _awe_,
_birth_, _egg_, _get_, _gift_, _give_, _guest_, _raid_, _sister_,
_swain_, _Thursday_.
These words are for the most part of the very stuff and substance of
our language, giving vivid expression to clear-cut ideas, and though
numerically they are outnumbered by the loan-words from French, they
are in themselves more essential to our speech than the rich vocabulary
derived from that language.
For the extent and character of the Viking settlements in England we
have however a far more delicate and accurate index than that to be
found in the evidence of place-names and dialects. When we study the
pages of Domesday, the great record of English social organisation in
the 11th century, we find that in the counties which came under Viking
influence there are many details of land-division, tenure, assessment
and social organisation generally wherein those counties differ from
the rest of England, and some of these differences can still be traced.
The 'ridings' of Yorkshire and the Lindsey division of Lincolnshire
were originally 'thrithings' (O.N. _þriþjungr_, a third part), the
initial _th_ being later absorbed by the final consonant of the
preceding 'East,' 'West,' 'North' and 'South' (in Lincs.).
The chief tests of Scandinavian influence, drawn from Domesday and
allied sources, are however as follows:
(1) The use of the Danish 'wapentake' as the chief division of
the county in contrast to the English 'hundred.' This is found
in Lincolnshire, Derbyshire (with one exception on its southern
border), Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Rutland, and one district
of Northamptonshire, now included in Rutland. We have wapentakes in
Yorkshire, except in certain districts along the sea-coast, while in
Lancashire the term was applied to the court of the hundred or shire
long after the Conquest. There is some evidence also for the belief
that the use of the hundred (or wapentake) as an administrative unit
is in itself due to Scandinavian influence. The proportion of names of
hundreds (or wapentakes) which are definitely of Danish origin is very
high and, unless we assume wholesale renaming, this points to their
having been first named at a period subsequent to the Danish conquest.
(2) The assessment by carucates in multiples and submultiples of 12 is
characteristic of the Danelagh, as opposed to that by hides, arranged
on a decimal system in the strictly English districts. This is found in
Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire and Rutland,
with the exception of the above mentioned district. There are traces of
a duodecimal assessment in the two N.E. hundreds of Northamptonshire,
while in Lancashire a hidal assessment has been superimposed upon an
original carucal one. Carucal assessment is found also in Yorkshire,
Norfolk and Suffolk.
(3) In Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire we have
traces of the use of the Danish 'long' hundred (= 120), e.g. the fine
for breaking the king's peace is £8, i.e. 120 ores[16] of 16 pence.
Using the various tests we find that the Scandinavian kingdom of
Northumbria was considerably smaller than the earlier realm of that
name, Northumberland and Durham being but sparsely settled, while
South Lancashire and Cheshire were occupied chiefly along the coast.
The kingdom would seem to fall into two isolated halves, Cumberland
and Westmorland and North Lancashire in the north-west and Yorkshire
in the south-east. The district of the Five Boroughs covered
Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire (Lincoln and Stamford),
Leicestershire, and probably the whole of Rutland (Stamford). The case
of Northamptonshire is difficult. The carucal assessment fails except
in the extreme N.E. of the county, but Danish place-nomenclature is
strongly evident, though it shades off somewhat towards the S.W. It
resembles Danish East Anglia rather than the district of the Five
Boroughs and it is possible that the boundary of Guthrum's East Anglian
kingdom, which is only carried as far as Stony Stratford in the peace
of Alfred and Guthrum, really ran along Watling Street for a few miles,
giving two-thirds of that county to the East Anglian realm.
Northumbria was governed by a succession of kings. The Five Boroughs
formed a loose confederation, and there can be no question that the
districts which 'obeyed' (_v. supra_, p. 31) the boroughs of Derby,
Leicester, Nottingham, Lincoln (and Stamford) and Northampton form the
modern counties named from these towns. It is also to Danish influence
direct or indirect that we owe the similar organisation of the counties
of Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire in
the old East Anglian kingdom. Each of these counties had a _jarl_ or
earl, whose headquarters were at the 'borough.' He summoned the _here_,
whether for political or military purposes, and when these counties
passed once more under English rule he fulfilled the functions of the
older _ealdorman_.
In East Anglia, apart from place-names (_v. supra_, p. 129) and carucal
assessment in Norfolk and Suffolk, we are left with the boundaries
of Guthrum's kingdom and with various miscellaneous evidence for
estimating the extent of Scandinavian influence. There is a curious
'hundredus Dacorum' (cf. _supra_, p. 10) in Hertfordshire, while the
_Historia Eliensis_ and other documents tend to show the presence of a
strong Danish element in the population and social organisation of the
districts around Cambridge. The kingship of East Anglia came to an end
early in the 10th century, and it is probable that its organisation was
then changed to one resembling that of the Five Boroughs, viz. a number
of districts grouped around central 'boroughs,' which afterwards became
counties, except in the older divisions of Norfolk and Suffolk.
A careful study of Domesday and other authorities reveals many other
features of interest in our social system which were due to Viking
influence. Certain types of manorial structure are specially common
in the Danelagh. Manor and vill are by no means identical, indeed
several manors are included under one vill. Very frequent is the type
which consists in a central manor with sokeland appurtenant. In the
Danelagh there was a large number of small freeholders and the free
peasant class was much more numerous than in Anglo-Saxon England. These
districts stand in clear contrast to the strongly manorialised southern
counties and they were not feudalised to any appreciable extent before
the Norman conquest. When that system was imposed we often find single
knight's fees having to be taken over by entire communities of sokemen.
The 'holds' of Northumbria, who rank next after the earls, and the
'drengs' of Cumberland, Westmorland, Lancashire, Northumberland and
Durham, are also of Scandinavian origin. The 'dreng' was 'a free
servant of the king endowed with lands' and the name still survives in
the Yorkshire place-name Dringhouses.
The legal instinct was strong in the Scandinavian mind and English
law bears deep marks of its influence. The very word 'law' itself is
of Scandinavian origin and has replaced the English 'doom.' The chief
judicial authority in Lincoln, Stamford, Cambridge, Chester and York
was in the hands of twelve _lagmen_ or _judices_. These 'lawmen' (_v.
supra_, p. 103) though they had judicial authority were not chosen
by the king or by popular election. Their position was hereditary.
Of special interest are the '12 senior thanes' of Aethelred's laws
for the Five Boroughs enacted at Wantage in 997. They have to come
forward in the court of every wapentake and to swear that they will
not accuse wrongly any innocent man or conceal any guilty one. The
exact force of this enactment has been a matter of dispute--whether the
thanes simply bore witness to the personal status of the accused, thus
enabling the court to determine the ordeal through which he should be
put, or whether we have an anticipation of the system of presentment
by jury. Whatever may be the exact truth there can be little doubt,
says Dr Vinogradoff, that such a custom prepared the way for the
indictment jury of the 12th century. The same author attributes to
Danish influence a new conception of crime. It is no longer merely a
breach of the peace or the result of a feud, to be settled by monetary
compensation, it is a breach of that conception of honour which binds
together military societies. The criminal is now branded as _nithing_,
a man unworthy of comradeship with his fellow-warriors.
Unfortunately it is only within the last few years that the question
of Danish influence on our social, political and legal systems has
been treated at all seriously and much work still remains to be done,
but we can already see that the Danes affected English life far more
deeply than a superficial glance might suggest. Doubtless the Danish
invasions struck a heavy blow at learning and literature, a blow from
the effects of which not even the heroic activities of an Alfred could
save them, but there can be no question that in the development of town
life, in the promotion of trade, in the improvement of organisation and
administration, in the modification of legal procedure the invaders
conferred great benefits on the country as a whole.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] In Scotland it is used of a hollow pass in a ridge.
[16] The _ore_ as a unit of weight for silver is of Scandinavian
origin. In some districts it was of the value of 16 pence, in others of
20 pence, and eight _ores_ went to the _mark_.
CHAPTER XII
SCANDINAVIAN INFLUENCE IN THE EMPIRE AND ICELAND
Considering the long and devastating campaign of the Vikings within
the Frankish empire and more especially within its western portion, it
is surprising that they only formed permanent settlements in one small
area, leaving practically no marks of their presence elsewhere. Great
portions of the Low Countries were in almost continuous occupation by
them during the 9th century, but the opportunity was lost, and beyond
an important share in the development of the trade of Duurstede, the
Vikings hardly left a sign of their influence behind them.
The case of Normandy is different. Here we have a definite district
assigned to the invaders, just as the Danelagh was given to them in
England, and the whole of that territory is deeply impregnated with
their influence. Many of the Norman towns in -_ville_ contain as the
first element in their name a Norse personal name, e.g. Catteville,
Cauverville, Colleville, Fouqueville, Hacqueville containing the names
_Káte_, _Kálfr_, _Kolr_, _Fólki_, _Hákon_, while the suffixes -_bec_,
-_beuf_, -_dale_, -_ey_, -_gard_, -_londe_, -_torp_, -_tot_, -_tuit_,
-_vic_ as in Bolbec, Elbeuf, Saussedalle, Jersey, Eppegard, Mandelonde,
Torgistorp, Abbetot, Bracquetuit, Barvic go back to O.N. _bekkr_, _búð_
(booth), _dalr_, _ey_ (island), _garðr_, _lundr_, _þorp_, _topt_,
_þveit_, _vík_ (_v. supra_, pp. 124-5). The dialect of Normandy to this
day contains a good number of Scandinavian words, and others have been
introduced into the standard language. Some of these have also found
their way into English through our Norman conquerors, e.g. _abet_,
_baggage_, _elope_, _equip_, _jolly_, _rubbish_, _scoop_, _strife_
just as the _Bulbeck_ in Swaffham Bulbeck (Cambs.) and Bulbeck Common
above Blanchland in Northumberland is from the great Norman barony of
Bulbeck, so named after Bolbec in Normandy, of which they once formed
part. Norman law and customs also show many traces of Scandinavian
influence and so does Norman folk-lore.
The Normans still looked to Denmark as their home-land down to the end
of the 10th century, and at least twice during the reign of Harold
Bluetooth their Dukes received help from that country. The nobles soon
ceased to speak their old northern language, but it is probable that it
remained current on the lips of the people for some considerable time
longer.
The Vikings always showed themselves keenly sensitive to the influence
of a civilisation higher or more developed than their own, and this is
nowhere more apparent than in Normandy. Heathenism found a champion
as late as 943 when, on the death of William Longsword, a rising of
heathen Normans was crushed with the aid of the Frankish king, but
for the most part the Normans soon showed themselves devout sons of
the Church and were destined in the 11th century to be numbered among
the most ardent supporters of the Crusades. With the adoption of
Christianity they learned to respect and honour those homes of learning
which they had once devastated for their wealth of hoarded treasure,
and the famous school at Bec, whence came Lanfranc and Anselm, was only
one among many which they richly endowed and supported.
Their religious and artistic feeling found expression in that
development of Romanesque architecture which we know as Norman and
which has given so many famous buildings not only to Normandy but to
England, to Sicily and to Southern Italy generally. In literature the
Norman-French _trouvères_ did much towards popularising the romances
of war and adventure which play so important a part in medieval
literature, and when they settled in England it was largely due to
Anglo-Norman poets that 'the matter of Britain' became one of the great
subjects of romance for all time.
In its social organisation Normandy seems speedily to have been
feudalised. Rollo divided the land among a comparatively small number
of large landholders and the system of land tenure was quite different
from that in the English Danelagh with its large number of small
freeholders. On the other hand it was probably due to Norse traditions
of personal freedom that serfdom disappeared earlier in Normandy than
in any other of the French provinces.
Trade and commerce were fostered here as everywhere by the Vikings.
It was the Normans who first taught the French to become a power at
sea, many French naval terms are of Norman origin and from the Norman
province have come some of France's greatest sea-captains.
The Vikings like the Franks before them threw off their old speech
and submitted to the all-embracing power of Latin civilisation, and
the result was a race endowed with vigorous personality, untiring
activity, and the instinct for ruling men. The Normans may have become
largely French but they lost none of their old enterprise and spirit of
adventure. In the 11th century they conquered England and founded great
kingdoms for themselves in Sicily and South Italy. No Viking stock was
more vigorous than that which resulted from the grafting of Gallo-Latin
culture on the ruder civilisation of the Teutonic north.
Their influence on France as a whole is not nearly as great as the
influence of their kinsmen in England, probably because English
government was centralised (under Norman rule) much sooner than French
government, and their influence was thus able to make itself felt
outside the actual districts in which they settled. The settlement of
Normandy helped however towards the consolidation of power in the hands
of Charles the Bald and his successors, much as the settlement of the
Danelagh helped in establishing the final supremacy of Wessex.
It remains to speak of one great home of Viking civilisation to
which more than one reference has been made in previous chapters,
viz. Iceland. The story of its settlement is a very simple one. It
commenced about 870, when many great Norwegian noblemen sought there
for themselves and their followers a freer life than they could obtain
under the growing power of Harold Fairhair. It was greatly strengthened
by settlers both from Norway and from Ireland and the Western Islands
when that power was firmly established by the battle of Hafrsfjord,
and by the year 930 the settlement was practically complete. Iceland
was more purely Scandinavian than any other settlement made during the
Viking age. Here we have not the case of one civilisation grafted on
another and earlier one as in England, Ireland or the Frankish empire,
but the transference of the best and finest elements in a nation to
new and virgin soil where, for good or ill, they were free to develop
their civilisation on almost entirely independent lines. Settlers from
the Western Islands and from Ireland may have brought Celtic elements,
and Christianity was not without influence, when it was introduced
from Norway at the close of the 10th century, but on the whole we see
in Iceland just what Viking civilisation was capable of when left to
itself.
At first the settlers lived in almost complete isolation, political
and religious, from one another, but they soon found that some
form of organisation was necessary and groups of settlers began by
choosing from among their number a _goði_, or chieftain, half-priest,
half-leader, who was the speaker at their moot and their representative
in negotiation with neighbouring groups. Then, continued disputes and
the lack of a common law led to the establishment of a central moot
or _alþing_, with a speaker to speak one single law for all. But the
Norsemen were much better at making constitutions and enacting laws
than they were at observing them when instituted, and the condition of
Iceland has been vividly if roughly summarised as one of 'all law and
no government.' The local _þings_ or the national _alþing_ might enact
perfect laws, but there was no compelling force, except public opinion,
to make them be obeyed. Even the introduction of Christianity made no
difference: the Icelanders quarrelled as bitterly over questions of
ecclesiastical as of civil law and the authorities of the medieval
Church were scandalised by their anarchic love of freedom. In the words
of Professor Ker 'the settlers made a commonwealth of their own, which
was in contradiction to all the prejudices of the middle ages and of
all ancient and modern political philosophy; a commonwealth which was
not a state, which had no government, no sovereignty.' 'It was anarchy
without a police-constable.' The result was that the rich men grew
richer, the poor became poorer, the smaller gentry died out and the
large estates fell into fewer and fewer hands. The great men quarrelled
among themselves, intrigued against one another and played into the
hands of the Norwegian kings who were only waiting their opportunity.
It came in the days of Hákon the Old. 'Land and thanes' were sworn into
subjection to that king at the Althing in 1262, and in 1271 the old
Icelandic common law was superseded by a new Norse code.
The failure of the Icelandic commonwealth is amply compensated for
by the rich intellectual development of Icelandic literature, which
owed many of its most characteristic features to the fact that it was
written in a land almost completely isolated and detached from the
main currents of Western medieval thought and the general trend of
European history, but in itself that failure is full of deepest import
for a right understanding of the part played by Viking civilisation in
Europe. Powerful and highly developed as that civilisation was in many
ways, it only reached its highest and best expression when brought into
fruitful contact with other and older civilisations. There it found
the corrective for certain inherent weaknesses, more especially for
certain tendencies of too strongly individualistic character leading
to political and intellectual anarchy, while at the same time by its
own energy and vigour it quickened the life of the older civilisations
where they were tending to become effete or outworn. The Germanic
peoples had done much for the development of European civilisation in
the time of the wanderings of the nations, but by the end of the 8th
century they had lost much of their pristine vigour through contact
with the richer and more luxurious civilisation of the Roman world. It
was reserved for the North Germanic peoples, or the Northmen as we can
more fitly describe them, in the 9th and 10th centuries to give a yet
more powerful stimulus to European life, if not to European thought,
a stimulus which perhaps found its highest expression in the great
creations of the Norman race in the world of politics, the world of
commerce, the world of architecture and the world of letters.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
[The appended bibliography does not attempt to deal with primary
authorities, with the large mass of valuable periodical literature
which has been published within the last thirty years, or with books
only incidentally concerned with the movement. It is much to be
regretted that so few of the important Scandinavian books on the
subject have been translated into English.]
BJÖRKMAN, E. Scandinavian Loan-words in Middle English.
Halle. 1906.
BUGGE, A. Vikingerne. 2 series. Christiania. 1904-6.
(German trans. of 1st series. Leipzig. 1896.)
---- Vesterlandenes Inflydelse paa Nordboernes i Vikingetiden.
Christiania. 1905.
---- Norges Historie. Vol. I, Pt. II.
Christiania. 1910.
COLLINGWOOD, W. G. Scandinavian Britain. London. 1908.
CRAIGIE, W. A. The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia.
London. 1906.
DIETRICHSON, L. and MEYER, S. Monumenta Orcadica.
Christiania. 1906. (Abridged English edition.)
DU CHAILLU, P. B. The Viking Age. 2 vols. London. 1889.
GUSTAFSON, G. Norges Oldtid. Christiania. 1906.
HENDERSON, G. The Norse Influence on Celtic Scotland.
Glasgow. 1910.
KEARY, C. F. The Vikings in Western Christendom. London.
1891.
KERMODE, P. M. C. Manx Crosses. London. 1907.
MAURER, K. Die Bekehrung des Norwegischen Stammes. 2 vols.
Munich. 1855-9.
MONTELIUS, O. Sveriges Historia. Vol. I.
Stockholm. 1903. (German tr. Kulturgeschichte Schwedens. Leipzig.
1906.)
MÜLLER, S. Vor Oldtid. Copenhagen. 1897. (German tr.
Nordische Altertümskunde. 2 vols. Strasburg. 1897-8.)
OLRIK, A. Nordisk Aaandsliv i Vikingetid. Copenhagen.
1907. (German tr. Nordisches Geistesleben. Heidelberg. 1908.)
STEENSTRUP, J. C. H. R. Normannerne. 4 vols. Copenhagen.
1876-82.
---- Danmarks Riges Historie. Vol. I. Copenhagen. 1876-82.
THOMSEN, V. The Relations between Ancient Russia and
Scandinavia. Oxford. 1877.
VOGEL, W. Die Normannen und das Fränkische Reich.
Heidelberg. 1906.
VOGT, L. J. Dublin som Norsk By. Christiania. 1906.
The Publications of the Viking Club (Saga-Book and Year Book) include
papers on various aspects of the movement and notices of the literature
of the subject as well as descriptions of various archaeological
discoveries.
INDEX
Aethelflæd of Mercia, 29, 32, 57
Aethelstan, 35-6
Alfred the Great, 25-8
Altar-ring, 26, 89
_Althing_, 116
Anlaf Godfreyson, 35;
Sihtricsson (Cuaran), 34, 36, 56, 60-1, 90
Arabic historians, references in, 20, 76, 109
Auðr the deep-thoughted, 20, 66, 68, 85, 89
_bautasteinar_, 110
Björkö, 86, 96, 98
Björn Ironside, 22, 44, 46
Black Foreigners, 10
Brian Borumha, 56, 62-4
Brunanburh, 35, 61, 64
Burial ceremonies, 99-100, 108-10
_carucates_, 132-3
Christianity, 16, 37, 41, 83, 86-93
Clontarf, 63-4, 67, 98, 120
Cnut, 41-2, 87, 101
_Daci_, 10, 134
Danegeld, 38-9, 48
Danelagh boundaries, 27, 128-9;
reconquest, 29-32
Danes, _passim_
Denmark, 5, 16, 22-3, 44, 86-7
_drengs_ 135-6
_Dubh-gaill_, 10
Dublin, 15, 23, 33-4, 55, 59-60, 64, 89, 103, 120-2
East Anglia, 11, 14, 27-8, 32, 134-5
Eddaic poems, 2, 93-4
Edmund Ironside, 40-1
Edward the Elder, 29, 31
England, invasion of, 12, 22-43;
influence in, 123-37
Eric Blood-axe, 36-7
Ethelred the Unready, 37-40
Faroes, 6, 98
_Fin-gaill_, 10
Five Boroughs, 11, 30, 36, 134-6
Frisia, 15-8, 49
France, invasions of, 17-21, 43-53;
influence in, 138-42
Frisians, 8
_Gaill-Gaedhil_, 56, 65, 67
Galloway, 65, 116
Gokstad ship, 99
Greenland, 99
Guthrum of East Anglia, 26-7
Hásteinn (Hastingus), 28, 44, 46, 50
Hafrsfjord, 7, 56
Hákon Aðalsteinsfóstri, 35-6, 88
Halfdanr, 22, 25, 33, 58
Harold Bluetooth, 37, 70-2, 87
Harold Fairhair, 7, 35, 58, 67, 142
Harold Hardrada, 42, 81, 99
Harold of Mainz, 16, 18-9, 86
Heathenism, 83, 86-93
Hebrides, 5, 60, 65, 67-8, 114
_Hiruath_, 11
_holds_, 135
Hörðaland, Hörðai, 5, 11
_hows_, 108
Iceland, 83, 85, 117, 142-4
Ireland, attacks on, 12-13, 15, 54-64;
Danes and Norsemen in, 54-8;
influence in, 116-23
Ívarr the boneless, 22, 24-5, 57-8
_jarls_, 103, 134
Jellinge stone, 111
Jómsborg, Jómsvikings, 70-2, 98, 102
jury, presentation by, 136
Ketill Finn, 67
Ketill Flatnose, 56, 67
_lawmen_, 103, 116, 136
Limerick, 59, 62, 98, 120
_Lochlann_, 10
_Ludwigslied_, 47
_Madjus_, 20
Maeshowe, 23, 113
Maldon, battle of, 38
Man, Isle of, 12, 39, 63, 65-8, 114-5
_nithing_, 137
Noirmoutier, 17, 19, 21
Norsemen, Norwegians, _passim_
Northumbria, 11, 24-5, 28, 83-4, 37, 41, 60, 63, 126-8
Normandy, 52-3, 138-42
Norway, 7, 16;
Christianity in, 88-9
Odin, 88, 95, 115
Ohthere, Óttarr, 96, 99
Olaf Tryggvason, 4, 38, 87, 89, 101
Olaf the White, 20, 57-8, 66, 68
_ore_, 133
Orkneys, 23, 63, 65, 112-3, 117
Ornamentation, style of, 79, 106-7
Ornaments, 104-6
Oseberg ship, 99-100
_Ostmen_, 122
_Oðal_, 67, 113
Paris, 21, 49-50
Place-names, influence on Scottish, 114;
Irish, 118-9;
English, 123-9
_prime-signing_, 91
Ragnarr Loðbrók, 21-4, 44, 57, 102
Rhôs, 19, 47, 73-4
_ridings_, 131
Rollo, 9, 53, 103
Runic inscriptions, 23, 81, 85-6, 110-1, 113-5
Rus, 73-9
Russia, founding of, 73-80
St Anskar, 70, 86
St Edmund, 25
St Olaf, 41, 89
_Scaldingi_, 11
Scandinavian loan-words in English, 130-1
Sculptured stones, 91, 111, 114-5
Seven Boroughs, 40
Shetlands, 5, 6, 65, 112-3, 117
Ship-burials, 99-100
Ships, 29, 98-100
Shires, origin of, 31 _n_., 134
Sigurd of the Orkneys, 63, 66-7
Slesvík, 15, 87, 96
Sodor and Man, 65
Stamford Bridge, 42
_Suðreyjar_, 65
Svein Forkbeard, 37, 39, 40, 87
Sweden, 7, 96
Swedes, 9, 19, 72-9
_thing_, 103, 115-6
Thor, 89, 95, 115
Trade, character of, 96-8;
Oriental, 71, 79-80;
Russian, 75-80;
Irish, 120
Turf-Einar, 67
Turges, 13, 20
Tynwald Court, 115
_udal_ and _udaller_, 113
Varangians, Variags, 73, 77-9
Vestfold, 11, 16
Viking, the term, 1
Viking movement, causes of, 4-11
Vinland, 99
_Wapentake_, 132
Weapons, 101-2
Wedmore, peace of, 27
_Westfaldingi_, 11
White Foreigners, 10
Women, position of, 54-6, 94
York, 24, 31, 33
CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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The Old Grammar Schools. By Prof. Foster Watson.
_PHYSICS_
Beyond the Atom. By Prof. J. Cox.
The Sun. By Prof. R. A. Sampson.
Wireless Telegraphy. By C. L. Fortescue, M.A.
Röntgen Rays. By Prof. W. H. Bragg, F.R.S.
_BIOLOGY_
Bees and Wasps. By O. H. Latter, M.A.
The Life-story of Insects. By Prof. G. H. Carpenter.
The Wanderings of Animals. By H. F. Gadow, M.A., F.R.S.
_GEOLOGY_
Submerged Forests. By Clement Reid, F.R.S.
Coast Erosion. By Prof. T. J. Jehu.
_INDUSTRIAL AND MECHANICAL SCIENCE_
Coal Mining. By T. C. Cantrill.
Leather. By Prof. H. R. Procter.
Cambridge University Press
C. F. Clay, Manager
London: Fetter Lane, E.C.
Edinburgh: 100, Princes Street
Transcriber's Notes
Obvious errors of punctuation and diacritics repaired.
Inconsistent hyphenation fixed.
P. 67: Murray -> Moray.
P. 147: Nordisk Aaandsliv -> Nordisk Aandsliv.
P. 148: Cnut, 42-2 -> Cnut, 41-2.
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