C.J. Adrien's Blog, page 11
March 31, 2020
Viking Vlog 3: Dispelling 3 Myths About the Vikings
In this episode, I dispel 3 modern myths about the Vikings while getting in a much-needed shoulder workout with my Viking shield. As many of you are likely experiencing, Covid-19 has made managing my life a bit trickier, but where the is a will, there is a way. Join me for a quick Viking history lesson and workout session.
As discussed in the video, if you have burning questions about Viking history, ask away in the comments below, and I may use your question for a future Viking Vlog.
If you’re interested in checking out my novels, click here: https://geni.us/LordsofWind
Love my work? Consider supporting me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cjadrien
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March 30, 2020
Viking Vlog 2: Finland in the Viking Age
In this episode, I answer a question about the role of Finland in the Viking Age. In regards to the recommended reading from the video, here is a link to Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough’s book, Beyond the Northlands: https://amzn.to/2Us9He5
As discussed in the video, if you have burning questions about Viking history, ask away in the comments below, and I may use your question for a future Viking Vlog. If you’re interested in checking out my novels, click here: https://geni.us/LordsofWind
Love my work? Consider supporting me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cjadrien
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March 28, 2020
Viking Vlog, Episode 1: Introduction
Welcome to the first installment of my Viking Vlog! Here I set the table for what to expect in future Viking Vlogs and I introduce my area of expertise. As discussed in the video, if you have burning questions about Viking history, ask away in the comments below, and I may use your question for a future Vlog.
If you’re interested in checking out my novels, click here: https://geni.us/LordsofWind
Love my work? Consider supporting me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cjadrien
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November 14, 2019
A Boat Within a Boat? A New Viking Age Burial Has Archeologists Scratching Their Heads
Archeologists from the Norwegian Institute of Arts and Sciences have discovered a curious Viking Age burial containing two ships interred more than one hundred years apart. According to the team working at the site of the discovery, it appears a woman of high social status died on a farm between the years 850 and 900. Today, the farm is known as ‘Skeiet’ in Vinjeøra, located southwest of the Trøndelag region in Norway. The woman’s clothes matched what one would expect from a high-ranking woman, with gold-plated bronze brooches and a decorated harness buckle likely made in Ireland.
At first glance, the burial appeared perfectly ordinary when compared with other Viking Age burials. The woman received offerings to accompany her on her journey to the afterlife, including a pearl necklace, scissors, a spinning wheel, and even a cow’s head. But what was discovered next turned the entire project on its head. Archeologists found the woman’s burial nestled within an older, pre-existing grave. Think Russian dolls, but with Viking ships. The older grave had contained a man, ostensibly a warrior, interred with his weapons.
“I had heard of burials with several pits, but never a boat buried within another boat,” said archeologist Raymond Sauvage. “Since then, I learned that in the 1950s, several sites with double-hulled boats in Kaupang and Tjølling contained similar finds in the Vestfold, but we can still say that it is an uncommon phenomenon.”
Who were the man and the woman, and why were they buried together? What does a double-hulled burial signify, or what did it mean to the people who built it? The team working on the project are hoping DNA analyses on the two skeletons will reveal some clues. Their efforts are not without challenges: the bones of both individuals may have decayed beyond the point where they could provide usable DNA. Says Archeologist Raymond Sauvage, “Let’s hope that it will be possible to extract the DNA from the skull, which will give us more information.”
The cross-shaped jewelry found in the woman’s grave gives us a good idea of who she was and the community to which she belonged. “We see from both the ornamentation and the design that the brooch likely came from Ireland and that it was once part of a harness,” says Aina Heen Pettersen, a researcher at the Department of Historical Studies of the NTNU. “It was common for the Vikings to detach such decorative accessories from harnesses and reuse them as costume jewelry.”
Archaeologists generally find such items in burial sites belonging to those who participated in or helped organize expeditions abroad. The woman buried at this site either traveled with or had a strong connection to those who left home to trade and to rove. Since these long journeys formed a central component of Nordic society at that time, any participation in this significant activity not only enabled them to acquire material goods but also contributed to raising their social status and that of their family.
Further research into the mystery of why one ship was buried within another is planned for the coming years. For now, the enigma endures.
Originally reported by gemini.no.
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July 9, 2019
Did the Greenland Norse Intermix with Native American Women?
It’s a well-known fact of history that the Vikings got around, both figuratively and literally. They reached distant lands as far as Bagdad in the Middle East and Newfoundland in North America, and they tended to leave behind more than their trade goods. Vikings were prolific progenitors all across the world. They took slaves in distant lands who frequently became consorts, and they sometimes brought foreign women back to Scandinavia. Often, they left behind their genes where they roved. Considering all of this, one question remains an elusive mystery to us all: did the Vikings intermix with Native American women?
To answer this question, it is essential to explore the evidence we have for Viking settlements in North America, as well as the sagas, which tell the story of the activities of the Greenland Norse. From the evidence, we may then deduce the plausibility of whether or not they intermixed.
A quick note about nomenclature: throughout this article, I will be using the term “American Vikings” to describe the Greenland Norse who established colonies in the Americas. I have used the term interchangeably with “Greenlanders” and “Greenland Norse” in parts, particularly those where the Greenlanders were forced to abandon their colonization attempts. All of these terms refer to the same group of people who attempted to establish themselves on the American continent.
The Greenland Norse and their Discovery of America
The story of the American Vikings begins in Norway. In the second half of the tenth century, a man named Thorvald found himself on the wrong side of the law. Little is known about what exactly he did, but we do know it involved several non-accidental deaths. Thorvald fled into exile and moved to Iceland where he believed he would have a fresh start.
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Eric the Red (Eiríkur rauði). Woodcut frontispiece from the 1688 Icelandic publication of Arngrímur Jónsson’s Gronlandia (Greenland). Fiske Icelandic Collection.
Thorvald found redemption in Iceland where he became a farmer and raised a family. After his death, his son Erik took charge of the farm. It did not take long for his likeness to his father to shine through. The Sagas of the Icelanders tell us this of Erik’s first run-in with the law:
Then did Eirik’s thralls cause a landslip on the estate of Valthjof, at Valthjofsstadr. Eyjolf the Foul, his kinsman, slew the thralls (slaves) beside Skeidsbrekkur (slopes of the race-course), above Va
June 28, 2019
How Tall Were the Vikings?
There exists a peculiar perception among the general public that the Vikings stood taller than other Europeans of the Viking Age. Books, TV shows, and even some notable museum displays paint a portrait of tall and powerful men with above average strength and skill at killing others. Are such portrayals accurate? Luckily for historians, the Vikings buried many of their dead in a way that preserved their bones and, through various osteoarcheological studies, we can say with some degree of confidence how tall Viking Age Scandinavians may have been.
How to Answer the Question, How Tall Were the Vikings?
As with everything to do with the Viking Age, nothing is guaranteed, nor is it likely written in stone (both figuratively and literally). The evidence for how tall or short the Vikings may have been can only be deduced from those pieces of evidence we can find. Written sources on the subject are unreliable for two reasons: first, they were penned by the victims of Viking raids (clerics) who often embellished specific details; second, the most detailed of the written sources were composed long after the fact, and thus have little chance of being accurate. Therefore, archaeology stands as the only sound method for determining the average height of Viking Age Scandinavians.
The question of height has been explored by historians and archaeologists alike since the beginning of Viking studies. Part of the interest in the subject stemmed from testimony in the historical sources. One account from the annals of Fulda describes a failed raid near Aachen after which the Carolingian fighters admired how large the bodies of the slain Northmen were. Anskar’s mission to Birka also fleetingly alluded to the Vikings’ size, as does the testimony of Ibn Fadlan who observed the Rus. As with every issue I attempt to tackle in my blog, the answer is not straightforward. We must first take into account that the Viking Age is a broadly defined period that spans more than 300 years. Also important to note in such an investigation is the fact that geographic distinctions, variations in weather and harvest, as well as plagues, warfare, and any number of other factors can affect a population’s height in a particular location at a specific time.
With all these in mind, the following is some of the research that has been done on the subject.
The Vikings in Iceland Offer Us Some Clues.
In 1958, Jon Steffanson composed an essay titled “Stature as a Criterion of the Nutritional Level of Viking Age Icelanders” in which he compiled known data about the heights of men and women found in Icelandic cemeteries that date to the Viking Age. Iceland is a fantastic place to do such research since the people who settled the island broadly qualify as Vikings.
To summarise his findings, Steffanson looked at the bones of 86 individuals who lived and died in Iceland in the 10th century (except for a select few skeletons that predate the others). He found that the average man of the time stood between 171 and 175 cm tall, and the average woman stood between 157 and 161 cm tall. Interestingly, when Steffanson compared these figures to 20th century Icelanders, he found that the average height of both men and women had remained relatively consistent. Icelanders only began to grow taller, on average, starting in the 1950s, which is precisely what we tend to find in other European nations.
Burials in Denmark and Sweden Offer us a few more Clues.
Viking Age Scandinavians in Sweden and Denmark do not appear to have been any taller or shorter on average than their Icelandic counterparts. In his new book, The Age of the Vikings, Anders Winroth explores the subject of heights not to answer the question of how tall the Vikings were, but how their heights fluctuated as a criterion for how healthy and well fed these populations were (similar to what Jon Steffensen had done for Icelanders in 1958). To investigate the issue, he looked at the Fjälkinge grave site in Sweden, and he writes of the Viking Age skeletons:
“In the Fjälkinge grave field, adult males were 160-185 centimeters tall while women measured 151-171 centimeters.” (pg. 163)
Concerning the averages, these heights are on par with those of the Icelanders of the same period. What’s more interesting is that the Fjälkinge contains graves of generations who were buried before and after the Viking Age. These graves show a slight dip in the average heights of men and women in the Viking Age. From this grave site (and this site alone), it appears that Scandinavians were shorter during the Viking Age than before and afterward. What these findings indicate is that Viking Age Scandinavians may have experienced a period of hunger that stunted the growth of several generations. If the theory that climate change during that time caused food shortages that pushed the Vikings to raid in the first place, the results make perfect sense.
In Denmark, similar research has been done to find the average heights of men and women during the Viking Age. This research, as summarised by Mr. Winroth, found the following: “The average height of Viking Age skeletons in Denmark is 171 for men and 158 centimeters for women.” (pg. 163)
How Did the Vikings Compare to Other Europeans of the Day?
Looking at data from archaeological findings, Richard Steckel of Ohio State University, in his essay Health and Nutrition in the Preindustrial Era: Insights from a Millennium of Average Heights in Northern Europe, found that Vikings Age Scandinavians were no taller on average than people in other places at that time, including the British Isles and Mainland Europe. The data reveal a slight height advantage for Viking Age Scandinavians compared with the Anglo-Saxons, but the disparity between their average heights can be explained by the sample sizes used, where the Anglo-Saxon sample was much larger than the Scandinavian one.
Things to Keep in Mind About the Vikings.
It is important to note that Viking Age Scandinavia was a stratified society. Historian Neil Price recently proposed in an article for National Geographic that Viking Age Scandinavian society was set up more like the plantation system in the Southern U.S. states before the American Civil War than anything else.
“This was a slave economy,” Price explains. “Slavery has received hardly any attention in the past 30 years, but now we have opportunities using archaeological tools to change this.”
Due to the inequalities of Viking Age Scandinavian societies, the more prosperous and healthier members of the community would have grown taller than their servants and slaves. Also to note is the fact that the Vikings had to import slaves to meet the demands of their farming system, so there was a lot of intermixing of populations going on that could have affected heights.
Another point to note is defining what the word Viking means, what the word describes, and how that might affect how we interpret the findings. If we use the word Viking to describe all Scandinavians of the Viking Age, then the sources and evidence discussed above make sense and satisfactorily answer our question. However, if we restrict our meaning of the word Viking to only those who left and roved foreign lands, we will find the above discussion lacking in every respect.
The Takeaway.
We only have the evidence we have. Many factors can influence a population’s height, and considering the geographical dispersal of Viking Age Scandinavia’s people and the period separating the first Vikings to the last, it’s hard to say definitively what their average height was. What we can say through archaeological evidence is that Vikings were probably not taller or shorter than their southern neighbors. We can also say that, similar to other European countries, the men and women of Viking Age Scandinavia were shorter on average than the people who live there today.
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June 26, 2019
How Fast Were Viking Longships?
In The Two Lives of Charlemagne, by the biographer Notker the Stammerer, we encounter a deeply troubled Charlemagne who witnessed an unusual event in southern France. A fleet of Northmen sailed up the coast to raid but, seeing a garrison of Franks stationed where they had hoped to strike, they fled. The Franks sent a fleet to pursue them, but they could not match the Northmen’s speed. Notker tells us Charlemagne recognized the imminent threat of the Vikings on his empire when he said, “I do not fear that these bandits will do me any harm; I am sick at heart to think that, even in my lifetime, they dared to attack this coast, and I am horror-stricken when I think of the harm they will do to my descendants and their subjects.”
Already in his lifetime, we learn that the Vikings’ longships had a reputation for sailing much faster than those of the Franks. The longship was an innovation that struck terrible fear in the hearts of their victims, and it has become one of the leading symbols for the Viking Age. Yet, for all the contemporary testimonies about their speed, historians and archeologists struggled for a long time to determine how fast a longship might have sailed. Not until modern reconstructions put their theories to the test did they manage to estimate longship speeds, and even then there are factors that may have affected speed for which they cannot account.
The Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Denmark, has built five reproduction longships based on those they have found in recent years, and they have put them all to the test. Theirs is one of the most educational efforts to assess the speed with which the Vikings might have sailed. Below are the four best longships among the five they’ve reconstructed, and the information the museum lists about them on their website:
Skuldelev 1 – The Ocean-Going Trader
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Ottar: Skuldelev 1. Photo Credit: The Viking Ship Museum.
Skuldelev 1 is a sizeable ocean-going cargo ship from Sogne
June 25, 2019
The Viking Raid at Lindisfarne: Who Attacked the Monastery?
It was an event that shook the Christian world to its core. So traumatic was its destruction that historians have agreed it should mark the official beginning of the Viking Age, even though it was not the first violence the British Isles experienced at the hands of the Vikings. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records ‘terrible portents’ to the raid at Lindisfarne in 793 A.D. Located on Holy Island in the far north of England, it is written that the monastery saw powerful storms on the eve of the Vikings’ arrival.
Who Attacked Lindisfarne?
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle notes:
“793. Here terrible portents came about over the land of Northumbria, and miserably frightened the people: these were period flashes of lightning, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air. A great famine immediately followed these signs, and a little after that in the same year on 8 January the raiding of heathen men miserably devastated God’s church in Lindisfarne island by looting and slaughter.”
The speed at which the Vikings are said to have arrived caught the monks completely by surprise. Reconstructions in past years have estimated that on a clear day a ship might only be seen as far as 18 nautical miles, a little over an hour’s journey for a longship with the wind at its back. If the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is to be believed, the Vikings neither arrived on a clear day nor did the monks appear to have had an hour to flee.
The monk Alcuin, a leading theologian of his day who was from York but resided at the court of Charlemagne, wrote a reply to his colleague Bishop Higbald of Lindisfarne to lament the event. The letter from Higbald to Alcuin, which we believe described the raid in detail, has not survived to today, so Alcuin’s reply is all we have to know what exactly happened. In his letter he wrote:
“We and our fathers have now lived in this fair land for nearly three hundred and fifty years, and never before has such an atrocity been seen in Britain as we have now suffered at the hands of a pagan people. Such a voyage was not thought possible. The church of St. Cuthbert is spa
June 22, 2019
How Historical is Historical Fiction? An Interview with Bernard Cornwell.
In July 2017, I attended and spoke at the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds. It was a tremendous honor for me to join fellow authors Justin Hill, James Aitcheson, and Kelly Evans on stage for a round table discussion on the topic of historical fiction and the role it plays in presenting the medieval world outside of academia. Yet as I sat among my peers at the session, I could not help but think that for such a prestigious event, with a room full of academics as our audience, one person remained conspicuously absent. That person was Bernard Cornwell.
Bernard Cornwell is arguably the most well known and widely read author of medieval historical fiction. With series spanning most of the medieval period and beyond, including his series Saxon Tales and Grail Quest, I felt that his insights on the topic we discussed would have been invaluable to us and to our audience. Although he had been invited to Leeds, he was unable to make it due to a previous engagement. I personally reached out to him to see if he might be interested in participating in our discussion post-conference to the benefit of my readers and, hopefully, some of the folks we had in the audience during the session. Bernard Cornwell graciously accepted my invitation to be interviewed on the topic.
The topic of the round table was defined as follows: “Fiction offers a degree of creative freedom unavailable to the scholar, yet as both readers and critics, we desire authenticity in these texts – particularly because, for many, such texts are the first point of contact with the medieval world. Thus, historical fiction as a genre raises important questions. How ‘historical’ is it? How does the fiction writer balance creativity against the restraints of historical ‘accuracy’? What is the relationship between research and storytelling? This round table discussion will explore these issues, as well as practical aspects of writing and publication, with published fiction writers whose works can be broadly classed as ‘medieval historical fiction.’”
A sincere and heartfelt thank you to Bernard Cornwell for taking the time to answer these questions.
How Historical is Historical Fiction? What Does the Term Mean to You?
It’s really a circular answer! If the novel isn’t historical, then it isn’t historical fiction! What it means to me is that any historical novel tries to offer the reader a picture of another era, and tries to make that picture as accurate as possible. Writers create worlds, and the world of a historical novelist is the past! I’m sure we don’t get it right much of the time, but still the background to the story should evoke a long- gone era to the reader…what it looked like, smelt like, was like! So the background world has to be as accurate as possible, regardless of what is happening in the story.
What is the relationship between research and storytelling?
I can’t say there’s a huge relationship, though very often the research will suggest a story idea? You certainly can’t write a historical novel without doing vast amounts of research, but the first rule of writing the book is to leave out all the irrelevant research (about 90%).
What is historical “Accuracy?” Can Authenticity Exist in Fiction Writing?
You tell me! No one will probably ever know what it was truly like to live in a long-gone past, so we all make educated guesses and we hope we get it right! Plainly the more research a novelist does then the greater the chance that his guesses are accurate, and the more detail he amasses of the period then the greater the authenticity! And yes, authenticity certainly exists in fiction, it’s the authentic detail that creates the fictional world. Is it fully authentic? I doubt it, but we try!
How Do You Balance Accuracy, Authenticity, and Creativity?
By remembering that I’m not a historian. I’m not here to teach Anglo-Saxon history or any other history. I’m a story-teller, so my first responsibility is to tell a story! That story is fiction, even if it’s based on a well-known episode of history. So accuracy and authenticity must take second place to the story. There’s obviously a limit to that; a fiction writer can’t get away with le
June 21, 2019
What Was the Difference Between Danish, Norwegian, Swedish Vikings?
Today we refer to Viking Age Scandinavians broadly as the Vikings as if they were one people. Linguistic nuances over the modern use of the word Viking aside, the fact is that the historical group known as the Vikings were not an entirely homogenous group. We know from various sources that beginning as early as the late 8th Century, large geographically-related forms of identity, such as Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian took shape (these are not to be confused with the modern notion of national identity — there were no unified forms of government that we would consider a nation-state quite yet). The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle makes mention of Danes and Northmen, the Annals of Ulster in Ireland makes a clear distinction between the Danes and Norwegians, and in the East, the Swedes are referred to wholly separately as the Rus. If the Vikings can be broadly split into three distinct groups, the question becomes: what was the difference between Danish, Norwegian, Swedish Vikings?
A quick precision: the evidence suggests Viking Age Scandinavians self-identified more granularly by their specific region of origin. For example, according to the Annals of Angoulême and the Annals of St. Bertin, the Norwegian group who sacked the city of Nantes in 843 referred to themselves as Vestfaldingi, or Men of Vestfold, and not Norwegians. Regional differences mattered as we see most clearly in the history of the Yngling Dynasty in Norway, in which disparate groups in the same region make clear the differences between one another. The differences between these groups would have been small, if not imperceptible to our modern lens, but to the Vikings, they would have been paramount. In parallel, there was the notion that despite such differences, the people of Norway saw themselves as a different group from the people of Denmark and Sweden, and all three saw themselves as a larger group that stood in contrast to the Anglo-Saxons, the Carolingians, etc.
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Guests from Overseas, Nicholas Roerich (1899)
Why do we think of the Vikings as one people?
The primary sources on the Vikings and their culture are an accumulation of chronicles and histories written first and foremost by religious scholars. Back when these texts were written, the monotheistic religions of Christianity and Islam sought to unite the peoples of the world under one god. Their convictions about their faith created a perceptual lens about the world we would call “us against them.” The differences between outside groups were of little or no consequence because, ultimately, it was believed that they would eventually be converted and brought into the fold. Therefore, an extremely two-dimensional view of Viking Age Scandinavians was created, one which broadly described them all as “pagans.” An excellent example of this is how Muslim chroniclers framed their examinations of the Vikings within the cultural lens of Islam. The historian al-Yaqubi, in his geographical study of the Mediterranean, linked the Scandinavians from Sweden known as the Rus to those from Denmark who sacked Seville, in Spain; he wrote that the attack on Seville, in 844 A.D. was carried out by, “the Magus, who are called the Rus.”
Fast forward to the 19th century when a renewed interest in the Viking Age began, and we see that the first scholars to approach the subject had little more than the religiously biased texts to go on. And let us not forget that the 19th century was still an age of belief, where Christian dogma was (for the most part) universally accepted in Western Europe. What this allowed was for the same slanted view of Viking Age Scandinavians to persist for a time, which eventually led to the cultural perception that the Vikings were, in no uncertain terms, one people.
Further reinforcing the view that the Vikings were one people is the fact that from an archaeological perspective, there is a distinct culture that emerged at the beginning of the Viking Age that stood apart from its neighbors. Finds from Norway to Denmark to the Grobin Colony (in what is today Latvia) show that there was a common culture shared across Scandinavia. Therefore, when we speak of the differences between the Norwegians, Swedes, and Danes of the Viking Age, we must be careful to make clear that we are dealing with three regional identities united by a more significant geographical and cultural relationship. We must also be cognizant of the fact that these differences continued to evolve throughout the Viking Age, which lasted three centuries. In 1066, the consensus date for the close of the Viking Age, the differences between the Danes and Norwegians and Swedes far exceeded the differences between them in 793, the consensus date for the opening of the Viking Age.
What Was the Difference Between Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish Vikings?
Most of what we know about the Vikings both politically and culturally is derived from analyses of the Danes. Chroniclers such as Dudo, Alcuin, Saxo Grammaticus, Rimbert, Notker, among others, all focus nearly exclusively on the Danish people to form their conclusions. Therefore, we know much, much more about Viking Age Danes and their exploits than any other group. This is not surprising since the Danes were far more involved with the politics of the continent than the Norwegians and the Swedes.
In contrast to their cousins in Norway and Sweden, the Danes consistently appear to have been a regional, cultural, and military power from the mid-8th century onward. Even the Franks admitted in the Annals of Fulda that the Danes were the most powerful among the Northmen. As a political power, the Danes also had the closest thing to a monarchy of any of the three regions. Although they experienced political turmoil at the beginning of the 9th century, their rulers reigned consistently throughout the Viking Age, giving the Danes a political and societal strength the others did not have.
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Viking longships besieging Paris in 845 led by a Dane named “Reginherus,” 19th-century portrayal.
The Danes were also heavily involved in regional politics. The Royal Frankish Annals recorded that the Danes sent an emissary in 782 to Charlemagne’s court, along with other Saxon leaders, to hold formal political discussions in response to the massacre of Verden, in which the Franks captured, forcibly baptized, and murdered three thousand Saxon warriors mere miles from the Danish border. Although there is no mention of what came of that meeting, it demonstrates that the Danes were interwoven in the events of the time and did not appear from nowhere.
While the Danes were not alone in developing ambitious plans for territorial conquest, theirs involved enemies who better chronicled their exploits. Their invasion of Britain, the establishment of the Danelaw, and the settlement of Normandy put them front-and-center in the Christian world and in closer proximity to the most celebrated intellectual centers of the day. The Swedes expanded as well, but their exploits East are recorded in fewer texts, such as the Russian Primary Chronicle. Luckily we have Anskar’s mission to Birka to tell us about the Rus’ cultural and religious practices, but it’s hard to say which of those differed from the Danes and Norwegians because we do not have comparable testimonies about them. The Norwegians were exceptionally active in Ireland and Brittany, but again the sources on their activities are scarce in the form of the Annals of Ulster and other disparate documents of the day. Sagas are often evoked to argue that we know equally as much about the Norwegians as the Danes, but sagas are semi-legendary and unreliable.
It is against our body of knowledge about the Danes that we tend to compare the other Vikings. Unfortunately, we do not know all that much about the early political formations of Norway and Sweden. The Ynglingasaga, the saga of the Yngling Dynasty in Norway, purports to tell of the events that led to the establishment of Norway’s monarchy, but it offers very little in the way of substance about the structure of their society, the influence they exerted over neighboring peoples and the cultural backbone that drove their ambitions. We do know that the Norwegians were poised to conduct raids before their Danish cousins — they were the first to attack Ireland and Western France, and are thought to have carried out the raid on Lindisfarne — but ultimately did not exert the same influence as the Danes across Europe. An example of this is the invasion of Brittany in the late 9th Century where Norwegian Vikings took control of the regional center of Nantes. They held it for years until the Bretons expelled them, only to find a derelict city and no concerted effort to colonize the land as had been done in Britain and Normandy by the Danes.
Similarly, the Swedes, then known as Varangians, or Rus, were poised to discover and pillage new lands in the east along the Volga and Dnieper rivers. Their expeditions, however, were of a different sort than the Danes and Norwegians in the west. The goal of the Rus was primarily to trade (or so we think). They established long trade routes to the middle east and around the Black Sea and avoided much more than that until the late 9th century when, according to the Russian Primary Chronicle, the brothers Rurik, Sineus, and Truvor were “invited” by the Slavs to be their rulers. To this day, why this event occurred is unclear, but most historians believe this was a capitulation by the Slavs to years of raids. What is clear is that the entire passage that speaks of the Rus is concise, and from this moment on, the Rus who did move east to join the ruling class quickly assimilated into the Slavic culture and ceased to be what we would call “Vikings.”
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The Invitation of the Varangians by Viktor Vasnetsov.
We are lucky insofar as we know the Swedes were likely the most different among the three groups. The account of Ibn Fadlan during his embassy to the land of the Khazars demonstrates a few stark differences between the Rus and the Danes. For one, the Rus were allegedly covered in blue tattoos, which is not something that was commonly reported by Western chroniclers. The method of burial for their king, their grooming habits, among other details, stand in contrast to the Danes. Likewise, the Frankish chronicler Rimbert recounts the mission of Anskar to Sweden to convert them to Christianity where he describes the unusual and shocking religious rituals of the Swedes at Upsalla. This is evidence that from a cultural and spiritual standpoint, the Swedes may have been, for a time, somewhat different from their Danish and Norwegian cousins. Again, it is hard to say anything for certain as we do not have comparable testimonies about the others.
The Danes: The Original Vikings?
Due to our general ignorance of the political and cultural structure of early Swedish and Norwegian society, it may be said that the real difference between the three groups is how much we know about them, especially early on. Archeologically speaking the three groups were very similar if not the same, and there existed a distinct shared culture, as evidenced by ship burials and colonies in all three regions, which stood apart from their neighbors (i.e., Saxons, Slavs, etc.). By that account, the Danes, as evidenced by the texts we have about them, are far and above the most familiar to us, and tend to drive our conception of what it was to be a Viking. The sagas are more equal: The Danes and Norwegians share a comparable number of heroes and semi-legendary figures. From there, we can say that the Norwegians participated in Ireland and France, and made the great leap across the pond to Iceland, Greenland, and the Americas, but culturally and politically much of what we think we know about them is derived from our familiarity with the Danes. Likewise, much of what we think we know about the Swedes is a derivation of what we know about the Danes. Further reinforcing this notion is the idea that a more substantial number of historically verified Vikings of the day were Danish (there were, of course, great Vikings from Norway and Sweden as well). Simply put, the greatest difference between Viking Age Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes is what we know about them.
As always, for further reading, check out my selected bibliography.
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