C.J. Adrien's Blog, page 12

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

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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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

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

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

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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Do You Use the Word Viking Correctly?

Language matters, and how a person uses language significantly affects their worldview and how they perceive people, objects, and concepts. It is no surprise, therefore, that there are a growing number of people who are dismayed by today’s liberal use of the word Viking to describe a great number of things that the word initially did not. Historians have fought pitched battles over the origins of the word, and many an unsuspecting Viking history fan has been on the receiving end of the ire of the word’s purists. Do you use the word Viking correctly? Yes, and no. Here I will attempt to clarify the origins of the word, its various uses across the ages, and the evolution of its modern incarnation, specifically in non-Scandinavian languages.

The Origins of the Word Viking

This much we know for sure: the word Viking is derived from Old Norse. While its origins are not well understood, and historians are divided over where precisely the word originated, we do know the word began not as a noun but as a verb. The Saga of Egill Skallagrimsson, one of the most famous of the Icelandic Sagas, offers us one of the most compelling examples of the word’s original use (keeping in mind that the Icelandic Sagas were written centuries after the Viking Age). In his opening passage, he describes a man named Ulfr as a man who, “lá hann í víkingu og herjaði,” which translates (roughly) to, “he was roving and fought.” In the context of the passage, the word víkingu, or viking, describes an activity – roving – rather than the man.

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Egill Skallagrímsson in a 17th-century manuscript of Egil’s Saga

Later in the saga, the word is used in a completely different way:

“With bloody brand on-striding

Me bird of bane hath followed:

My hurtling spear hath sounded

In the swift Vikings’ charge.

Raged wrathfully our battle,

Ran fire o’er foemen’s rooftrees;

Sound sleepeth many a warrior

Slain in the city gate.”

Here the saga’s author uses the word as a noun to describe a group of people carrying out a specific action, which tells us the word may have also been used to describe the men whose profession it was to rove and fight. Jugglers juggle. Traders trade. Vikings viking.

Egill’s Saga may well be the last time the word was used in the medieval period. As the Viking Age came to a close, the profession of roving and fighting declined, and with it the use of the word Viking. Although modern Icelandic is the closest relative to Old Norse, Old Norse is considered a dead language. It evolved over the medieval period into the separate languages of Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and Icelandic, and the word Viking did not make it into any of their lexicons.  It disappeared almost entirely for many centuries until it experienced a revival led by 19th Century historians from Western Europe.

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Detail of a miniature from a 13th-century Icelandic manuscript.

The Revival of the Word Viking

The Romantic movement of the early 19th Century (1800–1850) developed an intrinsic fascination with the medieval period. Part of that movement saw a rapidly growing interest in a little-known, poorly understood element of early medieval history: the Viking Age. Historians flocked to the field with keen interest, seeking to shed light on this “dark” age. It is 19th Century historians who first demarcated the Viking Age between 793 A.D., the attack on Lindisfarne, and 1066 A.D, the Norman invasion of England. They were the first to study the sagas, search for writings about the Viking invasions of Europe, and begin to form a coherent narrative of the Viking Age. Through their efforts, Western Civilization rediscovered the long lost history of an enigmatic people who had plagued the early kingdoms of Britain and France, and whose origins they traced to Scandinavia.

During the romantic period, there had not yet been any ship burial discoveries and no archeological digs of any significance, so the primary sources they used had to be tracked down across Europe, many of them hidden away in age-old university archives, cathedral libraries, and private collections owned by Europe’s ruling class. Misconceptions about the Vikings abound in this early period of research, many of which persist to today. At the same time, a new political force took hold in Western Europe, one that would be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of people in the following century: the concept of nationalism.

Beginning in the mid 19th century, the governments of Europe, both nascent democracies and established autocracies, sought to bend the narrative of history to suit their political aims and confirm their legitimacy. In France, for example, the official national story was that modern France was the product of the Carolingian empire, a holy Christian institution that helped to stabilize Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. In England, the official historical narrative began with the Anglo-Saxon kings, such as Alfred the Great, to emphasize that the English monarchy had a long and rich history, one who had fought back innumerable invasions with the help of God. It is within the context of nascent national fervor that the study of the Vikings took shape. Not surprisingly, historians painted the Vikings as an enemy who threatened civilization and had to be defeated. The triumph of Christendom over “the ravages of heathen men”, as written in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, was regarded as a pivotal, divinely ordained achievement, exploited by the governments of Europe as a means to further prove the providence of their nations and to encourage national pride.

The fearsome enemy of Christendom, however, did not yet have a name. What then to call these invaders who attempted to thwart the Christian kingdoms of Europe? No one really knows where 19th-century historians, and later, society, picked up the word for use in non-Scandinavian languages. It may have been borrowed directly from the Scandinavians of the day, or perhaps taken directly from the Sagas of the Icelanders. Historian Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough explains in her book, Beyond the Northlands, that the first modern use in English of the word Viking was recorded in 1807. The word wasn’t reserved for the “men who roved”, but instead referred to the entire Norse world. It is, woefully, a product of the “us against them” mentality, and an unfortunate oversimplification and mischaracterization of a time and people we now know to have been far more complicated than previously acknowledged. From 1807 forward, the generalized use of the word dominated the histories and the arts of the 19th and 20th centuries and is by-and-large how most people use the word today.

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A 19th Century depiction of a Viking raid.

So, Do You Use the Word Viking Correctly?

It all boils down to effective communication. Who is the audience? What is their level of knowledge in regards to the Viking Age? Making clear your intent for the word is critical, and nowhere is this done better than in a recent book titled The Age of the Vikings, by historian Anders Winroth, in which he takes the time to make clear how he intends to use the word to his audience:

“The word ‘Viking’ is rare in the Viking Age sources, but in modern times it has become a ubiquitous but ill-defined label. The original sense of the term is unclear, and there are many suggestions for etymological derivations. In this book, I reserve the term ‘Vikings’ for those northerners who in the early middle ages raided, plundered, and battled in Europe, in accordance with how the word is used in Medieval texts. Otherwise, I refer to the inhabitants of Scandinavia as Scandinavians. The language they spoke is called Old Norse, so I have sometimes used the term ‘Norsemen.’”

Anyone who uses the word should be careful to define how they intend to use it, and to make clear the differences between its various usages. I, for example, use the word Viking more interchangeably because my intended audience is those people who are beginning to explore their interest in the Viking Age and who may not yet understand how its modern use differs from the past. However, in writing more in-depth histories, I focus my use of the word on the “men who roved.”

As always, for further reading, check out my selected bibliography.

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What Caused the Viking Age?

On June 8, 793 A.D., the world of Christendom changed forever. A fleet of mysterious ships appeared off the coast of Northumbria and took aim at the island monastery of Lindisfarne. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records:  “In this year terrible portents appeared over Northumbria, and miserably frightened the inhabitants: these were exceptional flashes of lightning, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air. A great famine soon followed these signs; a little after that in the same year on 8 [June] the harrying of the heathen miserably destroyed God’s church in Lindisfarne by rapine and slaughter.”

In The Two Lives of Charlemagne, by Notker the Stammerer, the emperor of the Carolingian Empire allegedly bore witness to an early raid attempt off the coast of France. So the chronicler tells us when the Northman ships learned Charlemagne and his army had made camp near their target, they turned back and fled. They may not have inflicted any harm to the coast of France on that day, but their sudden appearance and disappearance deeply unnerved the most powerful man in Western Europe of the day. Notker further wrote:

“Charlemagne, who was a God-fearing, just and devout ruler, rose from the table and stood at the window facing East. For a long time, the precious tears poured down his face. No one dared to ask him why. In the end, he explained his lachrymose behavior to his war-like leaders. ’My faithful servants,’ said he, ‘Do you know why I wept so bitterly? I am not afraid that these ruffians will be able to do me harm, but I am sick at heart to think that even in my lifetime they have dared to attack this coast, and I am horror-stricken when I foresee what evil they will do to my descendants and their subjects.’”

Most historians question whether Charlemagne did in fact witness such an event, but the message conveyed to us by Notker is clear: the Vikings posed a real danger to the coastlines of Western Europe even before the accession of Louis the Pious. The terror they struck in the hearts of their victims paints a picture of a threat that no one in Christendom had predicted.

The first recorded attacks at Lindisfarne in 793 A.D., in Ireland in 795 A.D., and in France in 799 A.D. are widely considered the beginning events of what historians call the Viking Age. Though the Viking Age lasted for nearly three centuries, the initial raids between the years A.D. 793 and 835 occurred peripherally, meaning they remained contained to coastlines (in contrast, the second half of the 9th century was marked by invasion attempts and conquests). This is the period that is most romanticized in popular culture: longships filled with rugged bands of marauders suddenly appearing on the horizon to sack and loot monasteries for their silver. That they appeared suddenly in the historical record has launched historians, archeologists, and various fields of science on a quest to answer the question: What caused the Viking Age?

Most historians draw upon a combination of several hypotheses to explain the cause of the Viking Age. These hypotheses range in scope from territorial disputes to diplomatic tensions with neighbors, and nearly all of these factors seem to have played a part. Not unlike Europe on the eve of World War I, Scandinavia in the late 8th century appears to have been ready to boil over, and all the situation needed was a catalyst. Unfortunately, attempts to define a single catalyst or trigger event have all proved unfruitful. A 2010 paper by the archeologist James Barrett called such attempts “unrealistic” and proposed the start of the Viking Age could only be defined by combining numerous factors into a broader, more general theory. 

What caused the Viking Age? The best we can say is that it was a combination of numerous factors, including climate change, trade, political strife, social stratification, among other causes. Here I will explore a few that served as likely significant contributors to what started the Viking Age.

Climate Causes

For as long as the study of the Vikings has existed, historians have proposed a short period of climatic warming as a primary longue-durée cause of the Viking Age. Indeed, most books about Viking history will include some variation of the hypothesis. While not a catalyst for the events of the late eighth century, the warming period may have contributed to societal developments in Scandinavia that caused societal duress during the ensuing cooling period. 

The long-term effects of climate, however, have come under scrutiny from several camps. A 2013 study by the historians Morgan Kelly and Cormac Ó Gráda argues too little evidence exists to correlate climate with social and political changes in the early medieval period. They acknowledge the impact climate change would have had on medieval society if it were a provable phenomenon, but stress that more research must be conducted to keep the climate hypothesis alive.

Social and Cultural Causes

Several leading theories on what caused the Viking Age focus on the social causes born from early Scandinavia’s stratified society and warrior culture. In a 2015 paper, historian Steven Ashby proposed social capital acquired through fame and glory drove sea captains to raid abroad. In the article, he writes, “In the flexible hierarchies of the Viking Age, those who took advantage of opportunities to enhance their social capital stood to gain significantly. The lure of the raid was thus more than booty; it was about winning and preserving power through the enchantment of travel and the doing of deeds. This provides an important correction to models that focus on the need for portable wealth; the act of acquiring silver was as important as the silver itself.”

Other social traditions may have also played a significant role in encouraging young men to raid abroad. The bride price — the price paid by a man to a woman’s family for her hand in marriage — may have precipitated the desire by young men to join sea captains on raids. The treasures they brought home would have paid the bride price for the woman they wanted to marry. In a 2017 paper, historians Ben Raffield, Neil Price, and Mark Collard proposed operational sex ratios driven by polygyny and concubinage led to the need for young men to seek treasures abroad to afford the bride price and increase their chances at marrying. 

In a 2016 essay, Søren M. Sindbæk suggested silver was used to establish and maintain social networks over time in Viking Age Scandinavia, bride prices being an example of such networks. If true, then the influx of Islamic silver from the East and controlled by the elites likely contributed to the need for young men to seek their own treasures in the West to compete.

Political Causes

In 782 A.D. Emperor Charlemagne was just wrapping up his conquest of modern-day Poland when the Saxons, under the leadership of a man named Widukind, rebelled against him. According to the Royal Frankish Annals, Charlemagne’s response was swift and bloody. During their battle near the Elbe River, the Franks took 4,500 prisoners. To teach the rebels a lesson, Charlemagne ordered the prisoners be baptized in the Elbe. The priests recited their benedictions, and the Frankish soldiers held their victims underwater until they drowned.

The event, after that dubbed “The Massacre of Verden” was no more gruesome than many of the other acts committed by the Carolingians. Forced baptisms and conversions were commonplace under Charlemagne’s rule. But Verden was different. The leader of the Saxons, Widukind, was brother-in-law to the king of the Danes, Sigfred. News of the massacre undoubtedly reached the Danish court, and as such would have (and this is conjecture) deeply angered them. It was yet another brutal, violent display of power by Charlemagne, the latest in a long series spanning decades.

Danish raids along the coast of Frisia (modern-day Netherlands) appear to have intensified almost immediately, leading to an infamous assault on the important trade port of Dorestad. The very next decade, an attack on Lindisfarne occurred, and what happened there has led some to believe that there may have been a connection between the two. A source on the attack by the twelfth century English chronicler, Simeon of Durham, who drew from a lost Northumbrian chronicle, described the events at Lindisfarne this way:

“And they came to the church at Lindisfarne, laid everything to waste with grievous plundering, trampled the holy places with polluted steps, dug up the altars and seized all the treasure of the holy church. They killed some of the brothers, took some away with them in fetters, many they drove out, naked and loaded with insults, some they drowned in the sea… “

Some have proposed the drownings symbolized the forced baptisms at Verden. The evidence, however, is inconclusive. What is undeniable is that interactions between the Danes and the Franks, and the kingdoms of the British Isles, predated the official start of the Viking Age. Political strife may have served as an important trigger.

Trade

More recent scholarship on the subject of trade has revealed less apparent causes for the start of the Viking Age. A 2018 study by Irene Baug, Dagfinn Skre, Tom Heldal, and Øystein J. Jansen examined the location and provenance of whetstones to establish probable trade ties between geographic regions across the Baltic region. Most of the whetstones analyzed originated from the settlements of Lade and Borg in what is today Northern Norway. Dating of the quarry sites and the stones reveals the whetstone trade had likely established ties between these remote regions of Scandinavia and the more urbanized southern Baltic regions, such as Ribe, as early as the beginning of the 8th century. The study authors offer further evidence of these ties by citing the discovery of a reindeer antler comb from Norway found in Ribe, Denmark that predates the presupposed timeline for the establishment of trade.

If trade between Lade and the English Channel, even if not direct, had been established in the 8th century, the resulting contact from that trade could have inspired sea captains to shift their focus from trading to raiding, as was often done when the latter proved more worthwhile. As the study authors note: “This evidence, set in the context of the contemporary surge in production and trade around the southern North Sea and English Channel, the early urbanisation in southern Scandinavia and the Baltic, and the political integration in southern and western Scandinavia, allows us to suggest immediate reasons for why Viking ship commanders turned their activities overseas in the late 700s. The evidence also sheds light on why, after the initial ‘scouting phase,’ raiding in three decades since c. 806 took place predominantly in Ireland and Scotland, and why Vikings in the mid-830s began overwintering overseas and took up raiding in England and the Frankish Empire.”

Bringing it all together: What caused the Viking Age?

No single event or trend caused the Viking Age. Why sea captains and their crews launched from Scandinavia to raid abroad has its roots in a wide breadth of social, political, environmental, and cultural trends. Much more research is needed to peel back the shroud of mystery surrounding why longships appeared so suddenly off the coasts of England, Ireland, and France in the late 8th century.

For further reading, be sure to check out my selected bibliography on Viking History.
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New Theory Suggests Harald Bluetooth’s Forts Were A Propaganda Tool.

Harald I, also known as Harald Bluetooth, of Denmark spent a great deal of time flexing his autocratic muscles. Nowhere is his desire to demonstrate his power more evident than in the archaeological remains of massive circular forts, according to a new study. The study author, Jens Ulriksen, has proposed the fortifications were less functional than symbolic, to warn would-be usurpers that the king could crush them at will.

During his 30 year reign, Harald Bluetooth commissioned construction projects across his kingdom, including a giant palisade in Jelling, a 760 meter-long bridge (the longest in Scandinavia at the time), and a considerable extension to the Danevirke, a defensive wall on the southern border of the Jutland Peninsula.

His most remarkable building achievement may have been the iconic circular forts scattered across Denmark. At least five have been uncovered in modern times, and they are comparable in size to modern sports stadiums. The five forts currently under archeological study are: 

Borgring, near Køge 
Trelleborg, near Slagelse
Aggersborg, the largest, near Aggersund
Fyrkat, near Hobro
Nonnebakken, in Odense

A Propaganda Machine?

Jens Ulriksen, a researcher at the Museum of South-East Denmark (Museum Sydøstdanmark), has been leading excavations of the fort at Borgring for the past four years. The fort was discovered near Køge in 2014 and is today the most famous of the five. It is thought to have been built in the middle of his reign. In a recent lecture, Ulriksen proposed Harald had constructed the fort with a specific goal in mind: to promote himself and the legitimacy of his reign to the surrounding area. More simply, Ulriksen’s theory suggests Harald spent lavishly on his forts for propaganda, not actual defense.

“What is striking is that they are all connected to important road corridors, that is, roads that have been in common use for centuries, and I think there was a clear plan behind that,” Jens Ulriksen explained in a recent interview for Videnskab DK, about his work.

Ulriksen’s theory rests on an important historical theme: Harald was the first Christian king of Denmark, and his subjects were not all on his side. To prove himself, and to dissuade unrest, he had to make ostentatious displays of power, particularly for local lords to see. The placement of the fortresses is not random, either. Each appears to have been built at strategic choke points for trade routes between the country’s largest settlements of the time. If they weren’t there to control trade, they indeed were a strong message to the rest of the aristocracy.

“As a reminder of the king to all those who traveled, to say that it was a new era with a new faith and a new king,” Ulriksen explains. He firmly believes that the forts were built to be as visible as possible to remind passersby who was king, even if the king himself was not there. His theory stands in contrast to other archaeologists who have suggested the fortresses were instead built to fend off attacks and to provide the king with greater mobility to squash rebellions.

Asserting Christianity as the Ruling Authority in Denmark

“Of course, it was impossible at the time to see the fortresses from above. But do you know who could?” Ulriksen muses. “God could.”

The problem Harald had initially was that there were many important men across the country interested in the role of decision-maker and ready to challenge anyone with the audacity to proclaim himself king. Most kings before Harald fought incessantly with the ruling class, which impacted their reigns. In addition, Harald Bluetooth was the first ruler to launch a conversion of his people to Christianity. Denmark was not yet entirely Christian when he ascended to the throne. 

The size of the circular forts varies, but their design is nearly identical. Their strict geometric layout — 4 openings distributed to four opposing points, or exactly 90 degrees from each other— form a cross inside a wheel when viewed from above. “Of course, it was impossible at the time to see the fortresses from above. But do you know who could?” Ulriksen muses. “God could.”

The Changing Face of the Forts

Jens Ulriksen has turned quite a few heads for his new theory. At a recent conference, his talk, based on work that had not at the time been published, received positive acclaim. Included among those who find the theory plausible, the archaeologist Mads Runge, chief inspector of the Odense City Museum, said: “Jens’ ideas are fascinating because he deploys a bundle of perspectives and places the fortresses in a broader context. This is a new way to look at these sites.” Runge’s own research investigates the concentration of power that took place in Denmark from the Iron Age to the beginning of the Middle Ages. He acknowledges that Jens’ research could prove useful for his.

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The Longest Longship’s Long Journey Will End in 2020, but Not Without Challenges

As Norway struggles to find funding to preserve their longships, Denmark is celebrating a milestone with one of theirs. The longest Viking ship ever found, the Roskilde 6, has been on the road since 2013, and has traveled on tour across Europe and North America. The entire journey is a feat of modern preservation techniques. Roskilde 6’s trip has exposed it to a wide variety of climates, but efforts by the exhibition’s staff, including the use of hermetically sealed coffers, has defied the odds and offered to museums across Europe and North America a glimpse at one of Denmark’s most prized historical treasures.

The Roskilde 6 longship was found entirely by chance in 1996 when the Roskilde Viking Ship Museum began work to expand its campus. Workers found the ship’s remains almost as soon as they started to dig, and archeologists intervened. No sooner than the excavation had begun, those involved realized they had not found just any longship. Measuring in at 37 meters (121 feet) long, the Roskilde 6 is the longest of its kind ever discovered. Its unusual length made it impossible to exhume from the ground in a single segment, so archeologists had to dig it out piece by piece.

Conditions above ground were cause for concern. The humid, oxygen-rich air risked destroying the ship’s wood. Cleaning, analysis, and documentation of each piece had to be done quickly. Preserving it, however, is no small task. For 15 years after pulling it from the ground, conservators have worked continuously to keep the ship’s wood intact. While ships pulled from ground appear well-preserved, the reality archeologists find is that the pieces are profoundly degraded. Kristiane Strætkvern, the head conservator for Roskilde 6 at the National Museum of Denmark, has led the efforts to preserve the ship since it was found.

Beginning in 2008, the National Museum of Denmark started a collaboration with the British Museum London and the Museum für Vörnd Frühgeschichte (Museum of pre-history) in Berlin to create a Viking-themed exhibit. Curators wanted to showcase an artifact that would draw large audiences. What would attract more viewers than the longest longship in history? As ambitious as it was to add the Roskilde 6 ship to the traveling exhibit, curators and conservators worked together to make it happen. 

To prepare the Roskilde 6 for its long journey on the road with the Viking exhibit, conservators prepared the wood through a process called lyophilization, or freeze-drying. Once prepped, the pieces were placed in hermetically sealed cases. Alongside the original wood, the exhibit also features a metal skeleton of the ship (see video below) that assembles and disassembles somewhat like legos (because Denmark!) to represent the shape the ship had before it was buried.

Vikings: Interview with Roskilde 6 Conservator from The Franklin Institute on Vimeo.

Despite their diligent attempts to preserve the ship, the six years it has spent on the road have taken their toll. Now on display at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, the humid conditions in the museum are worrying curators of the exhibit and the original conservators. More concerning for them is that the display has one more stop on its way home, and it isn’t scheduled to return to Roskilde until 2020. Kristiane Strætkvern, who continues to work with the exhibit, would prefer to take the ship back to Denmark early. The Franklin Institute has taken steps to improve conditions (which Kristiane Strætkvern said were adequate in a recent interview) while they still have the ship on display, which has helped slow the wood’s decay. What the ship needs, ultimately, is to be placed in a stable environment for the long-term.

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