C.J. Adrien's Blog, page 15

What are the Icelandic Sagas?

What are the Icelandic Sagas?

The Icelandic Sagas are a large body of literature written during the medieval period about the history of Iceland and the families who lived there in the 9th, 10th, and 11th century. This period is known in Iceland as the “Saga Age” as opposed to the more common “Viking Age”. What makes the Icelandic Sagas special is that they are considered to be the most genuine glimpse into Viking Age society available. They stand in contrast to other sources, such as the various Christian chronicles, which were predominantly written by outside observers with a specific point to make.

Historicity of the Icelandic Sagas

Unfortunately, it is well known that the sagas were written centuries after the events they portend to describe. This poses a veritable problem for historians seeking to assess their historicity. How the stories contained therein survived into the medieval period was no doubt a result of an enduring oral tradition in Iceland. These stories, therefore, would have been commonly known and told at the time they were translated into the written word. Yet, as we know from studying other ancient cultures and societies, oral tradition tends to change certain aspects of stories and include a variety of fabrications. The question therefore becomes: how much of the Icelandic Sagas is history, and how much is fabrication? Ultimately, there is no definitive answer.

Using the sagas to Approach Viking Society

Outside of the body of archeological evidence, we realistically know very little about the cultural customs of the Vikings. Since they left no written record, piecing together their society has been extremely difficult. When dealing with this time period, it is not uncommon for historians to not entirely discount certain sources just because they were written post-fact. For example, the Russian Primary Chronicle is often cited as a source for piecing together the early history of the Muscovy state, even though the author takes tremendous allegorical and metaphorical artistic license in his description of certain events.

In this same way, the Icelandic Sagas are a commonly cited source for reconstructing Viking Age Scandinavian and Icelandic society. What makes historians comfortable in pointing to the Icelandic Sagas is their structure. Most of the sagas, written in prose, recount events in a linear, matter-of-fact manner that is not particularly embellished or fantastical (though there are exceptions). We must be cautious, however, in using the sagas to describe Viking Age society as a whole. Scandinavians at the time, although culturally distinct from other peoples of Europe, were a fragmented population who, in all likelihood, had significant cultural variations from one region to another, especially toward the end of the Viking Age in the 11th century. Therefore, the Icelandic Sagas should be cited with caution when speaking about Vikings from other regions.

What do the Icelandic Sagas tell us?

First and foremost, the sagas focus heavily on genealogy and family history. In so doing, the authors offer us a glimpse into the more mundane aspects of the lives of Icelanders at the time. For example, we learn through the sagas that family units consisted of 10 to 20 people who lived together in one longhouse, often with multiple child-bearing couples living in the same space, and often with multiple generations (this has also been supported through archeology). We learn that children were expected to work and contribute to the farm, and that society, at least as far as the family unit was concerned, was fairly egalitarian.

What we also learn from the sagas are a variety of cultural norms, as well as problems, of the day. The sagas tell of the courtship process, marriage, and even stories of marital problems. One such passage is the story of Helga, in the Saga of Gunnlaug Ormstungu, who, upon learning that her husband had deceived her into marriage, forever denied him intimacy. The sagas further expound on issues as diverse as fostering children, adoption, blood-oaths, among many others.

Of course the Icelandic Sagas also focus on conflict, warfare, and some government, but many of these things are fairly well documented by other sources, such as the Landnámabók (the Book of Settlements), so the Icelandic Sagas are but one more addition to these sources.

Where can I read the Icelandic Sagas?

There is a website dedicated to the online publication of the Icelandic Sagas, and they have multiple translations of each text. It is a treasure-trove for those interested in the history of Iceland and the history of Vikings in general. Visit The Icelandic Saga Database today to start reading and exploring.

Swedish Vikings: Who Were the Rus?

As I explained in my previous blog about the difference between the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish Vikings, we know the most about the Danes because of the breadth of primary sources written about them by Frankish and English Chroniclers. Archeologically speaking, the Scandinavian culture of the time was distinct and fairly homogenous, although it diverged into distinct groups by the end of the Viking Age. Yet for all we know about the Danes, there is far less information on their Swedish cousins called the Rus who, despite how little we know about them at the outset of the Viking Age, left an incredible legacy for themselves in Eastern Europe. Here I will briefly overview what we know about the Swedish Vikings who were called the Rus, and the narrative, as best we know it, about their early activities across the vast lands that are today Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, and even Turkey.

Primary sources for the early societal structure, culture, and activities of the Rus are practically non-existant. They did not leave any writings behind for us to find, and until the embassy of the missionary Anskar to Birka in the mid-9th century, primary sources are devoid of any substantive information about them. The Rus were, as far as we can tell, as active in raiding and foreign trading as the Danes, if not more. The people they attacked—chiefly those in Finland, then Slavs further east—were not literate like those the Danes terrorized, which further explains why sources are so sparse about their early activities. The earliest mention of the people called the Rus traveling outside of Sweden may be found in the Annals of Saint Bertin in which it is written that a group of traveling Rus visited the court of Louis the Pious, emperor of the Carolingian Empire, as part of a larger group of envoys from the Byzantine Empire.

The Rus’ arrival was marred by the fact that Anskar had already visited and returned from Birka (though this was not yet explicitly chronicled), and his testimony about the Swedes led the emperor to distrust his unexpected guests. In the annals it is said that Louis learned the Rus were, in fact, “people of the Swedes.” He detained the group to verify their claim that they only wished to travel peacefully, and from there the annals cease to mention what happened next. We do not know if they were allowed to return home, or worse, executed. While we are left in permanent suspense about the fate of these Rus, what this account tells us is that the Swedish Vikings had, by the mid-9th century, traveled far enough to the east to have established relations with the Byzantines. How, or why, or how long it took to arrive at this point is still not well understood.

How the Rus got their name is also somewhat of an enigma. Like the name “Viking” itself, the name Rus has several possible sources. In the Annals of Saint Bertin, and indeed in several other sources, they are referred to as the “Rhos” which has led historians to hypothesize a connection with their tribal home of Roslagen. Others think the name was given to them by the Finns, who today still call the Swedes Ruotsi, a word meaning, “those who row.” Again, there is no certainty as to the true origins of the name, but it is the name they would lend to one of the most powerful nations in modern history, Russia. If the second origin theory of the name Rus is correct—the theory tying it to the Finnish word Ruotsi—the name Russia may actually mean “the land of those who row.”

There are also arabic sources which chronicled embassies by eastern scholars to visit the Rus, and who refer to them as such. They also referred to the Vikings as Majus, but this was a name they tended to use in the West, in Al-Andalus (Spain). The sources are used sparingly and carefully where the Rus are concerned because academics are not entirely certain that they were referring to Vikings. What makes their writings somewhat unreliable are observations that were made that are not consistent with what we know about Viking Age Scandinavians from both written and archeological sources. But, even if there is a kernel of truth in the arabic writings, it underscores an easy and prevalent awareness of the Rus in the east, as well as proof of enduring contact.

Snorri Sturluson in his work titled Ynglingasaga, which recounts at a broad level the history of the kings of Sweden (it also recounts the history of the kings of Norway), gives us some insight into the early activities of the Rus on the Baltic. It is widely accepted that Snorri’s works are semi-legendary because he wrote his account several centuries after the fact, drawing his sources mostly from oral tradition, and as such he is not particularly reliable as a source.

There are, however, certain aspects to Snorri’s accounts that have proven useful insofar as they have spurred archeologists to search for evidence to support broad story themes in his work. In 1929, for example, the archeologist Birger Nerman discovered the remnants of a colony in Latvia of Swedish origin. His conclusions were that the colony had existed since the mid 7th century and likely had formed as a result of the expulsion of one third of the inhabitants of Gotland due to famine, a story that was told in Snorri’s Gutasaga. The discovery was the Viking equivalent of the discovery of the city of Troy, whose existence belonged to mythology until its discovery by Heinrich Schliemann in 1870.

Birger’s discovery has indeed proved paramount to help piece together the narrative of the early activities of the Rus in the east. The colony he discovered, known as the Grobin Colony, uncovered significant evidence in the form of burial mounds directly linking the inhabitants there to the Swedes of Gotland. Among the artifacts were picture stones in the shape and style of the Gotland stones, and further artifacts found within the burials were also of the style and construction known to have been common in Gotland. What is most interesting about the site is the progression of types of burials found. The oldest burials contained women, indicating that the colony had begun precisely as that, a colony. The younger of the burials, dating to the late 8th century, contained men with the typical weaponry of the day, indicating a change in the colony’s demographics where the ambitions of the Rus shifted toward traveling east for raids and trade rather than settlement on the Eastern Baltic. Grobin is not an isolated archeological find. Distinctly Scandinavian artifacts have also been found in Ladoga, which date back to the mid-8th century.

There is no doubt that the achievements of the Rus in the east were among the most impressive of their day. From the establishment of their first colonies on the shores of the baltic and Lake Ladoga, they established trade routes that made use of the complex interweave of river networks present in the eastern steppes. From there, they established trade with the Byzantines. Among the goods they brought were honey, wax, amber, blubber, furs, walrus tusks, and most importantly, slaves. They traded these goods for silver, and from an arabic coin minted in 786 (it says so on the coin) at Ladoga, we understand that trade between the Rus and the East was already well established by the end of the 8th century. This stands in contrast to the Danes and Norwegians whose exploits had barely begun by this period.

Massive hordes of arabic silver coins found in Sweden and Gotland over the years are evidence of how extensive their trade was. These hordes contained silver coins numbering in the tens of thousands in some cases, a massive fortune even by today’s standards. The sheer volume attests to a long term relationship between Sweden and the Byzantines, and one which endured several centuries.

From here, the story of the Rus shifts focus. The Russian Primary Chronicle, which tells of the early foundations of the modern country of Russia, tells of an event whereby the Slavs invited the Rus to rule over them. According to the account, the Slavs admitted to being unable to rule themselves, and so resorted to asking the Rus, considered strong leaders, to establish law and order. Similar to Snorri’s account, the Russian Primary Chronicle is considered semi-legendary. Therefore, the event commonly dubbed “The Invitation of the Rus” may not have ever actually happened. Instead, it may be an allegorical account to describe a process of usurpation that took much longer.

Whatever the true story, the Rus went on from this event to establish the principalities of Kiev and Novgorod, at which point they ceased to act in a manner we would today associate with Vikings. They took on the role of autocrats rather than raiders, and established dominion over the Slavs, and assimilated into slavic culture. The Rus’ conflicts with the Byzantines, as related through the Russian Primary Chronicle, and their conversion to the Christian Orthodox Church, all became part of the narrative of the founding of the Muscovy state, which would become Russia. And so as far as the “Viking” history of the Swedes and their eastern exploits are concerned, the story more or less ends there. Anything that came after is the subject of the early history of Russia.

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What Was the Difference Between Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish Vikings?

Today we refer to Viking Age Scandinavians generally as Vikings as though they were one group. Linguistic nuances over the modern use of the word Viking aside, the fact is that the historical group known as “Vikings” were not a homogenous people. We know from various sources that from as early as the late 8th Century, broad geographically related forms of identity, such as Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian existed. These are not to be confused with the notion of national identity of the modern era—there were no unified forms of government that we would consider a nation-state quite yet, although they would develop closely thereafter through the late middle ages. Further confounding the subject of identity among Viking Age Scandinavians are regional differences. The Norwegian group who sacked the city of Nantes in 843, for example, referred to themselves as Vestfaldingi, or Men of Vestfold. This tells us that there were also regional differences among various groups within the context of their broader geographic affiliations.

Why do we think of the Vikings as one people?

Our sources for the Vikings and their culture are an accumulation of chronicles and histories written first and foremost by religious scholars. Even the 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.”

Back then, the monotheistic religions of Christianity and Islam sought to unite the peoples of the world under one god. Their convictions about their own faith created a perceptual lens about the world that today 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.”

Fast forward to the 19th century when a renewed interest in the Viking Age began, the first scholars to approach the subject had little more than these 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 still (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. We have since realized the inadequacy of this view. Unfortunately, the cultural perception of the Vikings continues to propagate the one-people myth.

So, 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 the three regions. Although they experienced political turmoil at the beginning of the 9th century, their rulers reigned fairly consistently throughout the Viking Age, giving the Danes a political and societal strength the others did not have.

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 just miles from the Danish border. Although there is no mention of what came of that meeting, it demonstrates that the Danes were heavily involved in the events of the time and did not simply appear from nowhere.

Finally, the Danes developed far more ambitious plans for territorial conquest than any of the others. Their invasion of Britain, the establishment of the Danelaw, and the settlement of Normandy are a testament to their ambitions. Militarily, they are thought to have been more organized and disciplined, and probably better equipped, than their Swedish and Norwegian cousins.

It is against this body of knowledge about the Danes that we tend 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 formation 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 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 Dniepper 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, Askold, and Dir 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 extremely short, and from this moment on, the Rus who did move east to join the ruling class quickly assimilated into Slavic culture and ceased to be what we would call “Vikings”.

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 Frankish scholars. The method of burial for their king, their grooming habits, among other things stand in contrast to their western cousins. 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 religious standpoint, the Swedes were, for a time, very different from their Danish and Norwegian cousins.

The Danes: The True 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. By that account, the Danes are far and above the most familiar to us, and drive our conception of what it was to be a Viking. From there, we can say that the Norwegians participated in Ireland and France, but culturally much of what we think we know about them is conjecture 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 reenforcing this notion is the idea that the greatest Vikings of the day were Danish. Therefore, dare I say, the Danes were the true embodiment of what we refer to today as “Vikings”.

The Vikings in Spain: A Brief History.

Islam spread quickly across the southern Mediterranean Basin during the life of its prophet Muhammad, and even faster after his death. Under the Umayyad Caliphs, their territorial expansion eventually created an empire that bordered China in the east, and the Atlantic Ocean in the West. The Abbasid Caliphs, who rose to power to replace the Umayyads, took a particular interest in the arts and sciences, with an intense fascination for Hellenistic (i.e. Ancient Greek) and Persian history and culture. Their infatuation led to a sort of cultural revolution, which heavily influenced the writings of the leading Islamic scholars of the day. The rapid expansion of Islam also led to a keen curiosity about all the peoples who were either conquered or encountered in this new global empire. Major advancements in the sciences, particularly in cosmology and mathematics, occurred throughout the 7th and 8th Centuries.

A key feature of this new empire was their advanced postal system, used to relay information across the vast expanses of their territory. It connected the furthest reaches of the empire with its administrative center, Baghdad. Through this postal system, the Islamic world was able to keep track of one particular people they encountered on the fringes of their lands. These were the Vikings, although the Muslims did not refer to them as such. In Arabic writings of the time, the Vikings were referred to by two names: ar-Rus and al-Madjus.

The name ar-Rus was used to describe the Swedish Vikings who sailed the Dnieper and Volga rivers, and who the Islamic world encountered on the shores of the Black Sea. The name al-Madjus described the Vikings in the West, those who terrorized the coasts of Ireland and France. It was not the Vikings who gave them this name. Arab scholars used the name al-Madjus as a means to describe the culture of the Vikings as they perceived it; a culture of fire-worshipers. They likened the al-Madjus to the Persian Zoroastrians, who they believed cremated their dead. The thirteenth century chronicler Ibn Said explained, “nothing seems more important to them than fire, for the cold in their lands is severe.” Ibn Said’s logic is a testament to the general ignorance of the Vikings’ culture in the Islamic world, but it does help to give us a glimpse into how this foreign culture was perceived.

From the earliest sources, we know that the Muslims of the 9th and 10th Centuries understood that they were dealing with a single people, whether they encountered them on the shores of Spain, in the Mediterranean, or in the Eastern Steppes. The historian al-Yaqubi wrote in his geographical study of the Mediterranean that the attack on Seville, in 844 A.D., was carried out by, “the Magus, who are called the Rus.”

Although there is evidence to suggest earlier incursions into Iberia by the al-Madjus, the currently accepted historical start of Viking raids in Spain date to the attack on Seville in 844 A.D. Using a mixture of Christian and Muslim Chronicles to track the Vikings’ movements, historians have over the years pieced together a fairly coherent narrative of the events that marked the opening of raids in Iberia. It must be noted that the Muslim Chronicles, while interesting and helpful, are a mosaic of reconstructed works that had been previously lost to history. The first chroniclers, such as the historian Ahmad al-Razi, his son Isa-ibn-Ahmad, and the scholar Ibn al-Qutyyia, have no surviving works to draw upon for study. We know their names only because later historians reference their works in their own reconstructions of the events of 844. The two most authoritative works about the attack on Seville that have survived to today are the anonymous meeting about the doctrines of the 10th-century scholar, Ibn Al Qutiyya, and Ibn Hayyan’s Al Muqtabis II-I, and II-II. To complement the Arabic sources, historians also have Christians sources, chiefly the Annales Bertinian from the Carolingian Empire and the Asturian Chronicles from Galicia. Additional sources from Christians include Dudo of Saint Quentin, William of Jumièges, the Annals of St-Bertin, the Chronicle of Regino de Prüm, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

The First Wave of Vikings in Spain

From what the sources tell us, a fleet of ships who had raided in the Carolingian Empire sailed along the coasts of the Bay of Biscay into Northern Spain. There they raided a few settlements before encountering a large force of Asturians under the command of King Ramiro I. The Vikings suffered a crushing defeat and retreated back to the Bay of Biscay where it is surmised they had a base. There is much debate over the location of the base, but it may have been as close as Bayonne.

It did not take long for them to gather their forces. A few short months after the first excursion, a larger fleet of eighty ships appeared off the coast of Lisbon where they fought three sea battles with Muslim ships over the course of nearly two weeks. They then headed south to the mouth of the Guadalquivir. From there, they made their way inland via river and sacked the city of Seville, which they also occupied. The attack was so unexpected that Cordova, the administrative center of Islamic Spain, known as al-Andalus, responded slowly to the news. It took them quite some time to muster forces and equipment to drive out the Vikings from the city. On the heels of their victory, Muslim forces pursued and engaged their enemy, resulting in a decisive victory for the Emir Abd al-Rhaman II. Following the Vikings’ bold incursion into his lands, al-Rhaman ordered the construction of a new fleet of ships specifically to counter al-Madjus raids.

In response to this first raid, the Emir sent a Moorish ambassador named al-Ghazal to find and study the al-Madjus. His account tells of his voyage across the ocean to a splendid island described as having lush, flowering plants and abundant streams leading to the ocean. For years historians struggled to gather consensus on where he had actually travelled. Some believe he visited Ireland, while others believe he visited Denmark. The source for al-Ghazal’s embassy to Ireland is a document produced by Abu-l-Kattab-Umar-ibn-al-Hasan-ibn-Dihya, who was born in Valencia in Andalucia, about 1159 A.D. The facts and anecdotes in the story were derived from Tammam-ibn-Alqama, vizier under three consecutive amirs in Andalucia during the ninth century who died in 896. Tammam-ibn-Alqama had allegedly learned the details directly from al-Ghazal and his companions. The only manuscript of ibn-Dihya’s work was acquired by the British Museum in 1866. It is titled Al-mutrib min ashar ahli’l Maghrib, which translates to An amusing book from poetical works of the Maghreb.

al-Ghazal was not the only ambassador to travel north to meet the the Vikings, although he is thought to have been the only Muslim ambassador to have launched from Spain. Others, such as Ibn-Fadlan, visited the Rus in the East and studied them in detail. Ibn-Fadlan’s account is one of the most universally known and well studied documents about the Vikings produced by a Muslim.

The Second Wave

There is no record of any other attacks by the al-Madjus from 844 until 859 when an ambitious man by the name of Hastein made one of the most infamous Viking incursions into the Mediterranean. In 859 with the help of a man named Bjorn Ironside, a supposed son of Ragnar Lothbrok, Hastein sailed to Iberia where he hoped to gain fame and fortune by pillaging al-Andalus. At first, the expedition did not fare well. The Asturians of Northern Spain successfully fought them off, forcing the expedition to continue southward without any loot. They successfully pillaged coastal settlements until they arrived at the straight of Gibraltar where they encountered a sudden storm, which blew them off course. They landed in North Africa where they raided for slaves before resuming their original intended course into the Mediterranean. From there, they continued on toward Italy.

According to the chronicler Dudo of St. Quentin, Hastein was ambitious and sought to sack Rome itself. Unfortunately, the walls of the city were too tall and well fortified. Thus he hatched one of the more notorious plans to take the city by creating a ruse to trick the “naïve” Christians. They arrived at the city and sent a messenger to inform the bishop that their leader had been mortally wounded and, in his dying moments, wished to be baptized so that he may reach salvation. The bishop took pity on him and organized the ceremony. A day later, the Norsemen returned to the city to inform the bishop that their chieftain had died, and that he had requested to be buried in the city. Again, the bishop took pity on them and organized the funeral. Hastein’s body was placed on a bier and carried by his men into the city. A gathering of noblemen and clergymen joined them to begin the ceremony when Hastein rose from the dead, snatched the sword beside him, and cut down the bishop. His men of course followed suit and slaughtered the rest of Christians present.

The ruse had proved successful and the Vikings under Hastein loaded their ships with loot, proud that they had sacked the famed city of Rome. Yet as they sailed from the city, they realized they had made a navigational error. The city they had sacked was not Rome, but rather the smaller city of Luna some two hundred miles north of their intended target. Nevertheless, their ships were filled to the brim with plunder, so Hastein ordered a return to his base on the Loire. As they attempted to sail past Gibraltar, however, the Muslim fleet intercepted them, destroying a significant portion of the Viking fleet. Their chieftain survived and returned to his base on the island of Herius (today called Noirmoutier) with twenty ships, a mere third of the ships he had departed with three years earlier.

The Third Wave

Arabic sources tell of a third wave of attacks beginning in 966 A.D., over 100 years after the end of Hastein’s expedition. Where this fleet came from is not entirely clear, but there is strong evidence to suggest they launched from Normandy after having helped Duke Richard I suppress a rebellion in his duchy. They arrived in Galicia and did what they are known best for: they pillaged. In response to their attack, the bishop of Santiago de Compostela, already a major pilgrimage site, gathered an army to fend off the attackers. They experienced an initial success against the Vikings, but by sheer bad luck, the bishop took an arrow to the neck and died during their second battle. Devastated, his troops retreated and the Vikings continued their terrorizing of the surrounding countryside. For three years they attacked and plundered Galicia. Historians disagree over why their long term presence did not turn into settlement, as it had in Ireland, Britain, and Normandy. But in 972 they appear to have made one last major push for plunder, then returned home.

The Fourth Wave

Beginning in the year 1008, a new threat emerged from the north with its sights on Galicia. Again, regular seasonal raids struck terror in the hearts of the Spaniards. In 1038, a renewed raid struck the town of Tui, led this time by Olav Haraldsson, heir to the throne of Norway. They captured at the bishop and held him for ransom, though the sources do not give us much detail on this interaction. Olav’s chroniclers, Sigvat and Ottar, heavily reference their patron’s successes in Galicia, earning him the name “the Galician Wolf”.

Ultimately, Spain experienced less of the brunt of the Viking Age than other areas such as Ireland, Britain, and France. But they did experience a fair share, and both the Christian kingdoms and Muslim territories in Iberia suffered terrible wounds from the raids. Arguably, it was the Viking attacks on al-Andalus that encouraged the Muslims of Spain and North Africa to fortify their seaborne fleets, which helped the Islamic world maintain naval supremacy in the Mediterranean over Christendom until the high middle ages. This may have directly affected the course of the crusades, and indeed the course of history in Europe. Spain is not often the focus of Viking Age events, but their experience is crucial to understanding the Viking Age as a whole.

Human Sacrifice in Viking Society: Was it a Thing?

Did the Vikings conduct human sacrifice? It is a sensational claim. Not only does it make for an intriguing field of study, but it also makes fantastic television. The idea of human sacrifice is not new to the study of Vikings. There have been several bits and pieces of evidence recovered over the years to support claims made by some scholars and sensationalized by modern media. Where does the idea for human sacrifice in Viking society come from? I explore the evidence:

Textual Evidence for human sacrifice among the Vikings

One of the most well known attestations of human sacrifice in the historical record is that of Ibn Fadlan, an Arab chronicler who encountered the Rus, a tribe of Swedish Vikings, along the Volga river. In his writings, Ibn Fadlan describes the sacrifice of a slave girl, or thrall, who volunteered to join her lord in the afterlife. The ritual is described in gruesome detail, much of which may have been sensationalized by the author himself. Ibn Fadlan’s account is arguably the most widely known and recognized account of human sacrifice in the Viking world. His is also the earliest attestation by an outsider to the ritual of human sacrifice.

The works of Adam of Bremen, who worked as a missionary in Scandinavia in the 11th century and best known for his title work Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, observed and chronicled the rituals of paganism as they were in the 11th century in Uppsala, Sweden. In his description of the rituals, he describes the sacrifice as follows: “Of every kind of male creature, nine victims are offered. By the blood of these creatures it is the custom to appease the gods. Their bodies, moreover, are hanged in a grove which is adjacent to the temple. This grove is so sacred to the people that the separate trees in it are believed to be holy because of the death or putrefaction of the sacrificial victims. There even dogs and horses hang beside human beings.”

There are several other passages from other works that are thought to be of human sacrifice rituals, but are generally discounted as historical sources for being either too vague or written in a time and place apart from when such practices existed. Snorri Sturluson, as an example, briefly touches on the subject of ritual death, but does so in the context of the greater mythological significance, and is not indicative of any one singular event.

Accounts of human sacrifice in the written record have often been discounted as false propaganda against the pagan faiths during the Christianization of Scandinavia. However, the account of Ibn Fadlan has long stood against this idea as it was written by someone who neither had a stake in the conversions nor shared the faith of those historians accused of slander. Nevertheless, the textual evidence is too questionable to confirm that human sacrifice was a thing, and so we must turn to archeology for more concrete answers.

Archeological Evidence for human sacrifice among the Vikings

At Trelleborg, in Denmark, five wells dating back to before the building of a Viking fortress in the late 10th Century were discovered. Within them, archeologists found the mangled remains of various sacrifices, ranging from horses and dogs, to humans. What makes this site of special intrigue is the fact that among the human sacrifices were young children aged between 4 and 7. Their presence raises more questions than it answers. Whatever the significance of the children’s remains, the site remains among the most valid pieces of evidence for the practice of human sacrifice in the Viking Age.

Several burial mounds have been discovered to contain unusual finds that are thought to have been human sacrifices. At a royal center in Lejre, Denmark, for example, archeologists found two male skeletons with vastly different characteristics. The first skeleton was adorned with armor, weapons, and jewelry, and was laid to rest on his back. The second skeleton had been decapitated and was bound by the hands and feet. It is thought that this second skeleton was a thrall sacrificed alongside his master.

Another find in Denmark, at a site called Dråby, also contained two selections in differing positions. The first, a woman, was buried whole with jewelry and other grave goods. The second skeleton was that of a man whose head had been cut off. The presumption is that the male skeleton was that of a thrall sacrificed to follow his mistress into the afterlife. This grave find has lead historians to conclude that both men and women could receive human sacrifices for their burial, and that both men and women could be sacrificed.

There are a spattering of other such examples across Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, and as far away as Iceland, the Orkneys, and Hebrides. Many of the suspected sacrifices are by no means conclusive, and therefore not concrete evidence. But there is ample evidence in the archeological record to prove that, to some extent, human sacrifice was indeed a “thing”.

Concluding Remarks

Human sacrifice is a sensational subject that certainly catches the attention of the general population. Unfortunately, the evidence for its prevalence during the Viking Age is light, and we must therefore be cautious with our conclusions. What can be said is that the textual and archeological evidence does prove that human sacrifice was a practice within the culture of the Vikings. However, there is not enough evidence to suggest that it was a common practice. In fact, the sheer number of burial mounds containing no human sacrifices compared to those that do is indicative that it was rare. Until more evidence is uncovered, it is difficult to know for sure. Did the Vikings conduct human sacrifice? The answer is yes, some Vikings did sacrifice humans.

The Raven Flag: Was it Really a Thing?

The raven was a powerful symbol in Norse society during the Viking Age. Its significance was tied to the leader of the gods, Odin, and ravens were commonly used on ships to help Vikings sailing abroad determine if they were closer to land. As a symbol, it is thought that the raven was used pictorially to represent a given chieftain’s rapprochement with Odin, a form of legitimacy for their rule and leadership. Indeed, a common item paraded by reenactors all over the world is the Raven Flag (or Raven Banner), which is thought to have been a common part of Viking armies. Yet, the archeological and historical records are suspiciously light on evidence to tell us how prevalent the Raven Flag was used. Here is the evidence:

Archeological Evidence for the Raven Flag

The Raven Flag is most famously depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry and was flown by the Normans during their conquest of England. Its repeated presence on the Bayeux Tapestry is the best evidence we have for the existence and use of the Raven Flag.

What is believed to be a Raven Flag is also depicted on coins minted in England in the 9th and 10th Centuries. However, many historians dispute that the coins are depictions of a flag or banner—rather they are simply depictions of a raven. Upon inspection, it is fairly obvious that it’s a flag of some sort (on the right).

Textual Evidence for the Raven Flag

The Raven Flag is mentioned once in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as the banner of the Northmen who arrived to conquer the island. The text depicts the flags as “war-flags” used to evoke the imagery of the raven.

Another text, the Annals of St. Neots, evokes the imagery of the Raven Flag as having belonged to the mythical ruler Ragnar Lothbrok, of History Channel fame. The account is two hundred years past due, and therefore not a particularly reliable piece of evidence to support the use of Raven Flags in the Viking Age.

The Orkneyinga Saga, the Saga of the Vikings in the Orkneys, makes more heavy-handed use of the Raven Banner in its telling of Sigurd the Stout who used the banner as his standard. But his story takes an unexpected turn, and the Raven Banner itself becomes a cursed symbol that ushers in Sigurd’s defeat at the battle of Clontarf, in Ireland.

Interpretation of the Evidence

As mentioned above, there is solid evidence to suggest that Raven Flags were a thing and were actually used by some armies of the Norsemen. However, the evidence is inconclusive in regards to the broader, general questions regarding the banners, such as: how widespread was the banner’s use? Who among the Scandinavians used the flag? Did it represent more than one ruler?

As far as we may tell from the evidence, the banners were only used in England in the later stages of the Viking Age. No flag has survived the test of time, which is curious insofar as we do have some clothing remains that were recovered from burial ships, and it would stand to reason that a king or earl would have wanted to be buried with a flag if the flag’s use was of importance. Therefore, we cannot really know how common the use of the Raven Flag was, nor can we say for certain how culturally relevant it was in Viking Age Norse society.

Not unlike the curious case of the Viking helmet, the Raven Flag is something of an enigma. We know it was used, but we don’t know how much or how long. It cannot be said that it was a major feature of Norse armies of the time other than those who sought to conquer England, and even then we cannot be entirely sure if the flags mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle belonged to the whole army, or one subset under the command of an independent earl.

Invariably, until more evidence is found, the Raven Flag will remain an uncertain topic in the study of the Viking Age.

Trump Didn’t Win Because Americans Are Dumb. He Won Because of This:

I am an American. I am also French. My entire life, I have lived between two countries, two cultures, and two languages. Those of you who are bi-lingual and bi-cultural will understand when I say that my background has allowed me to form a fairly unique perspective on things in each of my countries of origin. As a multi-national citizen, I have always had the ability to remove myself from the bounds of one cultural perspective to reexamine issues from the lens of the other. It is a blessing, and one which I now feel I must use to communicate what I see as the root cause for the rise of the far right in the U.S.

Professionally, I am a writer and a historian. I have spent my entire adult life studying history. The past holds innumerable lessons about our species and our society, and it is in this wealth of knowledge where I tend to find the answers to many difficult questions about the current state of affairs in the world. Today I will draw upon my studies to help me dispel the notion that the rise of Trump is due to Americans’ low IQ. I argue that the root cause for his quick rise in politics is really due to one of America’s most visible attributes: religion.

I remember a class I took in college about the middle ages. The professor opened his first lecture with a disclaimer:

“The medieval period was an age of belief,” he said. “This isn’t a religions class, but we’re going to have to understand Christianity to understand the Middle Ages.”

Indeed, everything we read and everything we discussed included heavy religious references, and we sometimes had to take on that cultural lens to understand what motivated the major actors of the period. We did so from a secular vantage point, ignoring whether or not such beliefs held any validity.

I remember thinking about how much we had progressed since those times.

You see, the medieval period was intellectually dark. Most people of the time knew very little history—other than familial history—and there were very few sciences to help explain the natural world. All they had was religion to help them make sense of it all. Their beliefs superseded all other aspects of their lives, and back then belief counted for something.

Sitting at my desk, gazing into the past through my books, it was easy to make the mistake of thinking that somehow all of that had changed. It was easy to convince myself that we as a species had progressed.

This week, however, I have come to realize that despite all of the progress society has made in the sciences and the humanities, and despite how much the steady rise of intellectualism has reshaped our understanding of our place in the universe, the majority of people within our society continue to employ archaic ways of thinking in their approach to our rapidly changing world.

Trump’s vitriolic campaign has unwittingly exposed that which threatens our modern democracy the most. He exposed the fact that America still lives in an age of belief.

It is a cultural phenomenon that has been passed down from the first colonial formations, when Europeans fleeing religious persecution took root in the Americas where they could worship whomever they wanted however they wanted. Those days were, like the Middle Ages, an age of belief. Religion is all people had to make sense of their world.

As the United States took shape, society had just begun to change due to the advancement of the sciences. A nascent scientific community discovered that the world is much stranger, more interesting, and more complex than anything found in the Bible.

Yet despite the rapid progress we’ve made since then, religion has kept a strong grip on a significant portion of the population and shaped the greater culture at large. Religion is a pillar of American identity. It is also a cultural bane.

Donald Trump famously said, “I could shoot someone in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue and I wouldn’t lose a single vote.” What he was explaining to us all in very clear language is that his followers would never be dissuaded from voting for him, no matter how much damning evidence there was to prove that he is a horrible human being.

His statement (and there are many other examples) exposed the rot that exists in American political culture today: A majority of Americans use the same logic toward politics as they do religion. And as long as they continue to do so, they will continue to elect self-serving megalomaniacs with bad hair. As long as they continue to do so, our political system will continue to be hijacked by radical ideologies.

I’m NOT saying that Trump won because the religious right turned out in droves to vote for him. I AM saying that the kind of thinking used in religion – to believe something without good evidence to support that belief – is what allowed Trump to win.

In religion, dogma is accepted without question. There is no evidence to support the claims of any major religion, and yet a vast majority of people globally and within the U.S. continue to believe in them. If evidence against religion’s claims arises, it is duly ignored. Most children are raised within this archaic system, which primes them to accept certain assertions without evidence. But hey, believing in Santa Claus never killed anyone, right?

This same way of thinking is and has been applied to politics by a majority of Americans, right and left wing. It makes sense, since religion is still a central part of life for a large majority, especially in rural communities, and has shaped our society over centuries. Americans tend to accept certain things without any evidence, and if evidence to the contrary surfaces, they ignore it. It’s not a product of intelligence, it’s a product of culture.

Nearly everyone in America is guilty. It’s a trick of our culture. Walk any street in the U.S. and ask passersby their opinion on any political issue. The first words you will inevitably hear are, “I believe.” They’ll respond to your question by evoking belief rather than evidence-based opinion.

This is what has led us to Trump. It’s also what has led to climate-change denial, the Birther Movement, and the idea that Obama is a Muslim, and on the left anti-vaccination and anti-GMO. All of these movements are popular because they don’t need facts and figures, just raw emotion and leaps of faith.

You don’t have to be religious to be guilty of this phenomenon, either. Many secularists make the same mistake of believing in a certain concept or ideal without real evidence to support whether or not it is beneficial. Politicians are notorious for this sort of thing.

How can this change? It starts with education, although that’s not the only answer. What it will ultimately take is a cultural shift in which people are held accountable to the ideas they share. Science is our brightest beacon of hope for this change. “This is what I know, and this is the evidence for it,” is how most scientists and academics will respond to a question, rather than “I believe.” It is ultimately the example we should all strive for when participating in public debates and deciding on our future.

I disagree with those who say Trump is the result of anti-intellectualism because it implies that America was broadly intellectual in the past. The reality is that intellectualism is and has been a trait of the few, while the larger majority continue to live in an age of belief where leaps of faith are as valid as evidence-based conclusions. The age of belief never went away.

Ritual Drinking in the Viking Age: Was it Really a Thing?

Revisionist history has a way simultaneously shattering old paradigms and creating new ones. For example, the traditional image of a Viking—a noble savage with a propensity for consumption and murder—has recently begun to melt away as historians have come to realize that the 19th century vision of ancient Scandinavians was false.

In that same ilk, there appears to be a movement to outright reject all scholarship on the subject prior to the revisionist era, regardless of evidence. One such victim of revisionist history is the idea that ritual drinking wasn’t actually a thing. Did the Vikings partake in ritual drinking? Many now say no because it was a concept deeply intertwined with the other false beliefs about the Vikings.

Ritual drinking in Viking Age Scandinavia, however, has ample evidence to support its existence. While we cannot say for sure if such rituals were ubiquitous among all norse settlements of the time, we do know that ritual drinking figures in their mythology and is supported, in part, by archeological evidence.

Evidence in text

Ibn Fadlan

The arabic chronicler Ibn Fadlan, who travelled north of the Black Sea where he encountered the Rus on the shores of (what was probably) the Dnieper River, described ritual drinking as part of the funeral rites of a Norse king. According to this source, the drinking was very heavy and lasted several days.

Al-Gazhal

The arabic chronicler Al-Gazhal supposedly traveled to Ireland to visit some of the first Norse settlements there. During his time in the king’s court, he befriended the king’s wife who helped to explain their rituals. Among them was a form of ritual drinking (the name of which is lost due to damage to the original document).

Snorri Sturluson

While evidence from foreign visitors is fairly good evidence, nothing beats evidence directly from the source. Snorri Sturluson described in his Heimskringla ritual drinking in the court of Hakon the Good. He describes a bragarfull, or promise cup, which was a drinking cup used for ceremonial occasions, such as oath-swearings, funerals, and weddings.

Bragarfulls were used ceremonially to solidify pacts and to make certain vows. In the Ynglinga Saga, Snorri tells of another king, Ingjald, who uses a bragarfull as a means to make a vow to increase his lands. In the same document, there is a passage in which the bragarfull is used to celebrate the beginning of Yule.

The Ynglinga Saga also describes a ritual called the Sjaund. The Sjaund is the name of an ale used in funeral ceremonies, and the passing of the Sjaund was a way to ritually recognize a new ruler during a funeral.

Archeological Evidence

The Sjaund ceremony is attested to on the Tune Stone in which a ceremonial ale was used to signify the passing of power to the king’s surviving heirs, the king’s daughters. There are other stones as well, which attest to inheritance, although they are far less explicit on the use of ale to ceremonially recognize it.

The Gotland Stones show several drinking scenes (see below) which are thought to be ceremonial in nature. Although we cannot be entirely certain (although some people are more certain than others) the scenes depict plentiful drinking from horns and barrels.

Conclusion

As with all things that have to do with the Vikings, we cannot be entirely sure of how significant nor how prolific ritual drinking was during the Viking Age in Scandinavia. What we can say with relative certainty is that ritual drinking was practiced, and practiced widely among the various groups, as we have seen with the arabic chroniclers who documented ritual drinking in two places separated by geography and time. We may also conclude that ritual drinking may have been fairly common, as attested to on various Gotland Stones. After all, the Gotland stones depict two major things: the ships, and drinking (among other things, of course). In my opinion, that means drinking was fairly central to their society.

The City the Vikings Sacked Before Paris, and Why It Matters.

**Painting by Édouard Jolin, can be seen in the cathedral of Nantes. Depicts the murdering of bishop St Gohard by the Vikings in 843.

The Vikings loved France. They loved it not because they wanted live there, but because it was full of undefended monasteries and churches filled with valuable treasure. Charlemagne’s Empire was the favored realm of Christendom, and under it the church prospered—and they made themselves rich. Unfortunately for the Vikings, Charlemagne was a keen tactician and an astute politician. His grip on his empire was firm as steel, making the river systems therein nearly impenetrable. Not until his death did the empire he so carefully sewed begin to unravel. His only son, Louis, while not an entirely incompetent ruler, oversaw the partition of the empire that allowed the Vikings to attack.

Charlemagne was lucky. The Franks had not yet adopted the tradition of primogeniture, the passing of a ruler’s lands to the eldest son, which should have forced him to split his empire up among his sons. Louis was Charlemagne’s only legitimate heir (there were, of course, many illegitimate children), making the preparations for his succession quite simple. Louis, however, had already fathered several sons by the time his father died, and he quickly set about making preparations to secure his succession upon his own eventual death.

All was well until Louis fathered a fourth son with his second wife. Per the custom, he began preparations to add his latest heir to his inheritance, an act that incited his other three sons to rebel against him. Thus began the first civil war in the Frankish Empire. Troops were called away from their posts across the land to help fight on one side or the other. The empire’s economy collapsed. For a time, the entire continent seemed to be at war.

In 841 A.D., years of fighting between the factions culminated at the battle of Fontenoy-en-puisane from which emerged the Treaty of Verdun. The treaty effectively split the empire among Louis’ three living sons (alas, poor Pepin died during the fighting). In the West, Charles the Bald inherited a territory roughly corresponding to modern France. His brother Lothaire inherited lands in Italy, and a thin strip all the way to the Baltic via modern day Switzerland and Germany. In the East, Louis the German inherited lands from modern day Germany to modern day Poland. This partition would affect the geo-political makeup of Europe until today.

Following the partition of the empire, the smaller kingdoms therein remained in constant conflict. Until this time, no major outside threat seemed to loom over the Franks, so they continued to ignore the signs that, in retrospect, were a little too obvious. The Vikings had been raiding coastal communities intermittently for decades, but the leadership of the Franks appear to have not acknowledged their increasing boldness. After all, Charlemagne’s defenses had proven an effective deterrent to upriver excursions in the past. What the Franks did not know is that the Vikings had aggressively pushed into the British Isles, including the heavy colonization of Ireland, keeping most of them busy elsewhere. It took only one attack to set into motion a century of invasions in France, invasions which triggered the demise of the Carolingian dynasty.

In 843 A.D. hostilities between the Frankish factions finally ceased. The Empire, now a conglomeration of smaller kingdoms, experienced a brief period of peace. On June 24th, however, it all proverbially went to hell in a hand-basket. In the city of Nantes, nestled along the Loire River in the southern part of the region of Brittany, the festival of Saint John (La Saint Jean, in French) kicked off with the usual festivities: a local fair where merchants and pilgrims gathered to exchange goods and services prior to attending mass in the city’s romanesque cathedral. Seeing as it was a religious holiday, no one ever imagined anything terrible would happen, and so they neglected to post guards at the entrances to the city, and they had left those entrances open. Among the visitors to the city were a great number of hooded men—tradesmen, so the denizens of the city thought. But these men had not arrived at the city to trade. They were scouts. Their mission was to infiltrate the city, perhaps simply to see how easy it might be. Seeing that the city was completely undefended, they revealed themselves as weapon-clad warriors with more malicious intents than to celebrate a Christian saint.

The entire account of this history was recorded in a document called the Annales D’Angoulême, which did not survive to today. It is, however, incorporated into an account written at the end of the 11th century called the Chronique de Nantes (the Nantes Chronicle). Nantes at the time was a well known religious and economic center, a truly rich target for any foreign invader. Its bishop, Gohard, was well known and respected among his peers. The attack itself is a brief passage in the chronicle, and all we may really gleam from it is that the bishop was égorgé, meaning he had his throat slit in front of his audience. News of the sack of Nantes quickly spread across Christendom and is a referenced event in several other chronicles of the time, such as the Annales Bertonni, the works of Adam of Bremen, and several other more obscure writings. At the time, the event was a veritable shock to the Carolingians.

The most important aspect of the attack is that it was the first of its kind. Never before had the Vikings sacked a major settlement in the Carolingian Empire. The attackers, referred to in the Annales D’Angouleme as Vestfaldingi, men from Vestfold, were also not who one might have expected to make such a daring incursion. The fact that the chronicle names the specific kind of Vikings who sacked the city tells us two things: that they were Norwegians, not Danes, and that they had taken the time to introduce themselves to their victims.

We know from numerous other sources that the Danes and the Norwegians had a certain rivalry between them during the Viking Age. While the Danes were far more involved in England than the Norwegians, the Norwegians competed rather effectively with their Danish rivals for lands in Ireland. It is therefore not surprising, although still mostly an educated guess, that the Vikings who sacked Nantes had travelled there from Ireland. Furthermore, it is fairly certain that they boasted of their victory and, according to oral tradition, news of their success would have travelled quite fast indeed across the Viking world.

It was only two years later that the Danes entered the Seine river and sacked Paris. To have done so a few decades earlier would have been suicide. The leaders of the Danes took a major risk by leading as large a fleet as they did up to the walls of Paris. But they already knew the Franks were weaker than before. They knew because of Nantes.