C.J. Adrien's Blog, page 23

Trade or Die: The Viking Business Model.

What were the Vikings?  Were they pirates who set out for plunder and looting?  Or was there more to their activities in Europe?  As it turns out, the Scandinavians who travelled the world originally did so to trade.  Interestingly, it would appear their more violent ventures were in part due to restrictions on their trade.  The story of how the Viking business plan developed is one which begins long before the Viking Age.

During the collapse of the Roman Empire, the region known today as Bretagne — in Western France — took in a massive swath of refugees who desperately desired to escape the clutches of invaders who had seized the island of Britannia.  The influx of people brought two positive changes to a previously peripheral roman territory: more man power, and more gold from the retreating Roman prefects.  The Saxons contented themselves with Britain as their prize, but another germanic tribe yearned to seize the opportunity to profit from the demise of the Romans.  A fleet of Frankish ships sailed and pillaged the coast of Bretagne, beginning a tradition spanning much of the 5th and 6th centuries.  During this time, the region of Bretagne developed an identity of its own; they became fiercely independent and anti-Frank.  It is therefore no surprise that when the Franks descended into former Gaul as land conquerors, not seamen, the Bretons resisted them wherever they could.  

The same seafaring tradition which had allowed the Franks to pillage the coasts of Bretagne and the Saxons to travel to Britannia helped to influence the seafaring tradition we today identify as typically Viking.  To their detriment, the germanic tribes abandoned their seafaring traditions in favor of their land-based ambitions.  This allowed the Scandinavians to develop their technology relatively unchallenged in the Baltic Sea.  Trade routes were established in numerous places by the late 8th Century, including in the region known as Bretagne.  The writings of an obscure cleric named Bertrand in the 8th Century tells of a people from far to the north who traded luxurious furs for wines and salt as early as twenty years before Lindisfarne.  They traded peaceably, he wrote.

As this cross-cultural exchange began to take shape, the bellicose Charlemagne banned trade between his Christian empire and the “savage, unbelieving brutes” from Scandinavia.  Ports closed off access to the Scandinavians who, following decades of trade with the west and increasingly difficult conditions at home, had become dependent on trade for their livelihoods.  This event marks one of the leading causes for the Vikings Age’s start.  Immediately, the Frisian coast fell victim to raids by angered Danes.  Thus began the period most associated with sudden catastrophic attacks for the sake of plunder.  

Despite this change in the relationship between the Scandinavians and Franks, trade continued to be a defining characteristic of the Vikings across the known world.  In the East, the Rus established numerous trading posts to maintain consistent and reliable trade with the Slavs.  In Spain, the Vikings attempted to trade with the Moors.  Evidently, the Moors were rude and unwilling.  Shortly after their first contact, the Vikings sacked Seville.  All the evidence suggests that the Vikings were mostly interested in trade, but attacked when unfairly refused.  Trading was paramount to their endeavors.

Were the Vikings conquerors, or tradesmen?  It appears they were both.  During several of the more tumultuous periods of the Viking Age, some chroniclers wrote about Vikings who mercilessly pillaged some villages, only to turn to others to trade with them the acquired goods from the raids.  Initially, the Vikings appear to have desired peaceful trade.  Only after the hostilities between the Danes and the Franks did they begin their infamous entrance onto the world stage as pirates.  Eventually, the Vikings did conquer certain areas such as Normandy and Ireland.  Permanent settlement became their long term goal rather than riches.  One fact remains certain: if a Viking asks you to trade, it would behoove you to play along. 

 

Further Reading:

     Cassard, Jean-Christophe.  Le Siecle des Vikings En Bretagne.  Editions Jean-Paul Gisserot.  1996.

What’s That Smell? Three Facts You Did Not Know About Viking Poop.

This is shit.

An often overlooked aspect of history is how societies have dealt with the issue of excrement and waste during the development of fixed settlements and urbanization.  All too commonly, the issue of poop inevitably escapes our minds as we are generally averted to the subject.  Yet, the issue of waste management can either make or break a civilization.  

Take for example the Greenland Norse whose rise and fall serves as an excellent example of how improper waste management can lead to disaster.  The Greenland Norse settled a harsh region in which crops yielded little food, and the indigenous Inuit Nations sought to eradicate the newcomers.  Although several issues have been identified as part causes in the demise of the Vikings in Greenland — including the import of invasive species, lack of adaptability to the harsher cold of Greenland, and the refusal to cooperate with the Inuit — one among them deals specifically with poop.  It appears through archeological digs of former settlements that the Greenland Norse, in an effort to stay clean and healthy, attempted to use the same methods of waste management as their counterparts in Scandinavia: cesspits.  While this method worked further south, it created a problem the Norse had not foreseen.  The pits managed to contaminate the little fresh groundwater they had because the porous ground during summer thaws circulated the waste, thereby poisoning the settlement.  

What the Greenland Norse do show us, however, is that the waste management systems in Scandinavia followed a predictable and commonly prescribed system which, for the most part, worked well for them by the medieval period.  This system developed as a result of the push towards agrarianism rather than the traditional hunter gatherer lifestyle.  Evidence of the crisis which took place to invent a viable waste management system in pre-Viking Age Scandinavia can be seen in the well preserved bogs in Denmark where a variety of wastes have been found.  They show that successively, as the cesspit became more viable, Scandinavians used the bogs to rid themselves of waste less, until they eventually no longer had to travel so far to pop a squat. 

Poop can tell scientists and historians a great deal about what Vikings ate as well.  In fact, one of the prized possessions of the Jorvic Viking Museum is a fossilized coprolite (pictured above), otherwise known as poop.  It reveals something interesting: the producer of the log ate mostly breads and meats, and had a particularly vicious case of a parasitic infection.  What do the parasites tell us?  The host was not particularly clean, and must have, at some point, ingested fecal matter to acquire the parasite.  This is not surprising since animals were expensive to raise and feed, so human poop was used as the primary fertilizer for fields throughout the Middle Ages.  

It turns out poop is as interesting as it is disgusting.

Further Reading:

     Albee, Sarah. (2010) Poop Happened! A History of the World From the Bottom Up.  Walker Publishing.

     Diamond, Jeremy. (2013) Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive.  Penguin UK.

     Miller, Frederick P. (2010) Lloyd Banks Coprolite.  VDM Publishing.

The Stinky Truth: How Clean Were the Vikings?

A skaldic verse from Egill Skallagrimson paints the picture of what once was considered the perfect Viking; created impatient from birth, presumptuous, and with a burning desire for a far-off adventure:
“My mother promised me, and soon she will buy me, a vessel and oars, to leave to distant lands with the Vikings…and to strike and fight.”

These early explorers are today remembered as brave, rustic men with long beards and flowing hair.  As historians of the 19th century would have it, the Vikings were uncivilized in their pre-Christian culture, thus making them unclean.  The notion of the Romantic Savage prevailed until well into the latter half of the 20th century, and arguably remains part of popular culture’s view of the Vikings.  What most people do not know, however, is that grooming was a central feature in Viking Age Scandinavian culture.

The Arab chronicler Ibn Fadlan, who encountered the Rus along the Volga River, described them exactly as we might expect: dirty.  His testimony has proven quite detrimental to the image of Vikings among scholars.  Yet, we must not forget to consider the cultural lens from which the Arab chronicler wrote.  In Bagdad, his home, Ibn Fadlan was a writter.  His position earned him a high place in society, and he considered himself an above average figure.  Arab society at the time — especially among the elites — prided itself on cleanliness.  In fact, their fixation with cleanliness and elaborate costuming was heavily chastised by their Christian Byzantine neighbors for being vain.  It is then not surprising that Ibn Fadlan would consider the Rus as dirty, but he did help us in understanding their customs by describing a few of their grooming habits.

First, the grooming began with combing of the hair and beards.  Second, they rinsed their mouths and faces with fresh water from the river.  Some even bathed fully in the river in the morning.  If read in the proper context, Ibn Fadlan’s account provides us with a fantastic insight into how the Vikings viewed and practiced grooming.  They were, in fact, quite clean for the times.  Although the Rus are one among many different tribes of Scandinavian, it can be deduced that many of the Vikings had similar grooming practices.  For example, in what is modern day Finland, archeologists have found and dated Viking Age saunas used to bathe.  It is surmised that many villages across Scandinavia would have known how to build and use saunas for cleansing.  There is even evidence that saunas were built in the new world settlements as well, which hints heavily as to the importance of cleanliness in Viking culture.  

How then did Vikings earn a reputation for uncleanliness?  Several theories exist to answer this question, but the most convincing is the theory of negative propaganda.  Most of what we know about the Vikings is still taken from what was written about them.  The only people capable of writing anything of substance at the time were priests who were the Vikings’ preferred victims.  It must be recognized that the Christians of the time avoided bathing specifically because they considered too much cleanliness to be a sign of vanity, which was sin.  Thus the infamous smelliness of the medieval period began.  Not until the christianization of Scandinavia did the people from that region stop grooming as extensively as they had previously done.  

Were the Vikings dirty?  I suppose by today’s standards they would not appear as clean as, say, a person who showers and shampoos every day; but for the times, they appear to have been the cleanest of the European cultures.  

In my novel The Line of His People, the Vikings bathe regularly in saunas built in the distant lands they colonise.  

Further reading:

On Ibn Fadlan:

Frye, Richard N. (2005) Ibn Fadlan’s Journey to Russia: A Tenth-Century Traveler from Baghdad to the Volga River. Princeton: Marcus Weiner Publishers.

Flowers, Stephen E. (1998) Ibn Fadlan’s Travel-Report: As It Concerns the Scandinavian Rüs. Smithville, Texas: Rûna-Raven.

On saunas in the Viking Age: 

Nordskog, M., Hautala, A. (2010)The Opposite of Cold-The Northwoods Finnish Sauna Tradition. University of Minnesota Press.

For more information on cleanliness in the Middle Ages in Europe, read this fun article about how Buddhists and Muslims thought of the Christians as dirty:

http://www.salon.com/2007/11/30/dirt_on_clean/

A Most Interesting Question

C.J. Adrien holding the Viking shield he made before painting it, and holding an old hatchet he found in his garage.

It has been nearly one year since the release of my debut novel, The Line of His People, and much has transpired since its release.  I recently visited my grandmother who inquired about the performance in sales of the book.  Rather than crunch the numbers (because my reports are monthly and there is no way to get an ‘all time’ report) I simply shrugged my shoulders to say that I wasn’t getting rich by any means.  Then the question began to beckon.  How many books had I sold?  Surely not that many, my pockets are in no way lined with gold.  Yet I felt the impulse to add everything up to see how my book was actually doing.  

I compiled all my reports since September and began counting one by one each transaction in each sales territory (US, UK, Canada, and surprisingly…Germany).  Everything looked exactly as I had remembered until I opened the reports beginning in March and…HOLY SHIT…where did these come from?  Beginning about the time Vikings on History Channel aired their second season, the download rate for the book soared.  An impressive 2600 copies were downloaded in March alone!

How, then, had I missed this?  Why had I not noticed this unusual and admittedly miraculous jump?  Simply put: life.  I had a bad year.  Yes folks, the ever cheerful Viking expert from France with an unwavering passion for history spent the last 11 months exactly where he shouldn’t have.  I got married to a small town girl, she found me a teaching job in her home town, and all seemed perfect until…we got there.  Although I have plenty of fodder to rant about, I shall spare everyone since life experience tells me everyone has problems, therefore complaining of any sort is futile.  I would just like to take this brief moment to share with the mighty interweb that a grave injustice hath been done, and humanity is the lesser for it.  Hopefully the extra terrestrials surveying the planet are not paying attention to that small town because they most certainly will never say hello to we humans based on their behavior.

Bref, je continue: The Line of His People is finally beginning to rise in the manner I had hoped.  My social media is rife with people — kids, adults, and even other authors — complementing my work and wanting to chat.  I am all for that, I love chatting.  

I am especially proud today to say that after compiling all the numbers, the mighty Abriel Haraldsson of Herius’ story has been downloaded (this does not include physical books) over 5,000 times!  My publisher Voyageur Books is ecstatic because they say this is just the beginning.  

To my fans: THANK YOU.  To my future fans: WELCOME.  

“Our training must be difficult so that we may have an easy war,” says Oddr.  And yes, this is a quote from the sequel.

I bid you all a good night as I am off to write some more of the sequel In The Raven’s Wake.

Cheers,

C.J.

P.S. The Line of His People is only $0.99 on Kindle and Nook.  Now that you know it’s going somewhere, give it a try so you can say, “I read it before it was cool”.

You can also get the paperback at Barnes & Noble here, or on Amazon here.

The Viking Connection

By 847 C.E. it became clear that the Viking invaders of Ireland had developed political ambitions beyond the sporadic raiding of the previous three decades. Within one year the Irish won an unprecedented four victories over the Vikings which effectively expelled a tremendous portion of the invaders from Ireland (Graham-Campbell, 1989). That same year in Brittany Viking raiders began an invasion of the mainland peninsula and won three decisive victories over the Bretons (Cassard, 1996). Current scholarship makes no connection between the events in Brittany and Ireland in 847 C.E., but evidence exists to link these events more closely than previously acknowledged. It begins in 799 C.E. with a raid on the island of Noirmoutier found south of the mouth of the Loire River. The monks from the monastery of Saint Philbert fled the island, but returned the following year. In 834 C.E., the monks abandoned the island definitively due to the persistence of the summer raids by Vikings (Delhommeau, 1999). This allowed the Vikings to use the island as a base beginning in 837 C.E. from which they could raid the Loire River Valley. If we consider the larger scope of events in 9th century Europe, Noirmoutier appears to be a rather small and insignificant chapter in the Viking Age. However, the resources of the island (salt), and by extension of the region of Brittany, attracted repeated raids and invasion attempts. Salt was after all a necessary resource for any army of the time, and the Vikings were no exception.

When the Bretons under the command of Barbe-Torte retook the city of Nantes in the 10th century, they found a derelict city which should have been a flourishing trade center. This is indicative that the Vikings had no long term settlement ambitions in Brittany, and that their assets in the region were for purely military reasons (Price, 1989). Specifically, the Vikings held parts of Brittany and Noirmoutier for the acquisition of two important resources: salt and wine. Both are needed in war; and the ambitious warlord Turgeis necessitated all the help he could muster to see through his plans to conquer Ireland. The need for resources, and the lack of permanent interest in Brittany point to an important connection between the Vikings in France and Ireland who may have supported one another during military campaigns to ensure their mutual interests.

C.J. Adrien’s second novel — titled In The Raven’s Wake and due to be released in 2015 — will make use of exclusive research done on the connection between the Vikings of Ireland and Brittany.  The protagonist of Adrien’s debut novel The Line of His People will be swept out to sea to Ireland where he will again fight to survive in one of the most violent periods of European history.  Haven’t read the first novel?  Get it HERE for $0.99.

Bibliography:

          Cassard, Jean-Christophe.   Le Siècle Des Vikings En Bretagne. Paris: Editions Jean-Paul Gisserot, 1996.

D’Haenens, Albert.   Les Invasions Normandes, une Catastrophe?. Paris, 1970.

Delhommeau, Louis.   Ermentaire: Vie et Miracles de Saint Philbert. District de L’isle de Noirmoutier, 1999.

Graham-Campbell, J.   The Viking World, (rev. ed.). London, 1989.

Hall, R. A.  Viking Age Archeology in Britain and Ireland. Princes Risborough, 1990.

Price, Neil S.   The Vikings in Brittany. London: Viking Society For Northern Research, University College London, 1989.

Smyth, A.P.   Scandinavian York and Dublin, (2 Vols.). Dublin, 1975-79.

VIKINGS novel “The Line of His People” for $0.99 on Kindle

Join the adventure that has reached #1 in Norse Historical Fiction in the UK Kindle store!

Buy now on Kindle USA.

Buy now on Kindle UK.

Progress on “In The Raven’s Wake”

As promised, I must inform you, my much loved readers, about my progress on the sequel to The Line of His People which has tentatively been named In the Raven’s Wake.  As the outline and character chart stand, the novel will likely become a 110,000 word behemoth with enough action and battles to make Tolkien George R.R. Martin squirm.  Again the Vikings will be pitted against Christendom and the protagonist, Abriel, will find himself caught between the two worlds.  The villains of the sequel will make the ignominious Adalard of Corbie look like a saint (although Adalard will make a small appearance).  Writing this sequel is even more fun than the first.  In my mind the story has taken a life of its own, yet is steeped in vigorously researched history.  

All of your favorite characters — Abriel, Kenna, Oddr, and Gael the priest — have returned and will be joined by a few more central characters among their inner Circle.  Ulfr, a warrior Abriel rescued in Iberia, has become a close friend and confidant to the king of Herius.  Cnut, a malformed man who survived the trials of childhood to become a warrior in his own right, has joined the ranks of the Vikings.  On the horizon, however, the peaceful settlement on Herius will be challenged for their right to exist.  Other Northmen will descend upon the island in search for land and loot.  

The most exciting setting for the novel will be the northern coast of Ireland.  I do not want to spoil the story more than I have to, therefore I will not elaborate on why or how or who will be in Ireland, but Northern Ireland will be a prominent setting.  

Stay tuned for more author updates as the writing comes along.  I hope to have the novel finished and ready for retail (and a free giveaway) by Christmas.  

From Bend, Oregon, I bid you all a wonderful continuation! 

Invitation of the Rus: A Long Forgotten Common Heritage.

Above is a painting of one of the defining events in European history. During the exploration of the eastern steppes in the 9th Century, Swedish Norsemen discovered a variety of slavic settlements rife with conflict and discord. This constant strife between tribes allowed the Swedes, then known as the Rus (or Varangians), to play local politics. According to the Primary, the Slavs quickly recognized the leadership qualities of the Rus and their potential to help unite the warring Slavic tribes. Thus, as pictured above, the Slavs extended a formal invitation to the Rus to become their governing leaders. In Russian history, this moment is considered the genesis of their autocratic past under the Tsars, and the invitation is considered to have been an act of appreciation on behalf of the Slavs. In more revisionist circles, the invitation of the Rus was more likely the product of a lengthy battering of the Slavic tribes by Swedish raiders who relentlessly pillaged and enslaved the people of ancient Russia. It is therefore recognized that the invitation of the Rus was an act of preservation, with the prevalent idea that if the Slavs had Swedish leadership, they might be spared the devastation of the Swedish raids. That supposition has proved true, as the invitation of the Rus sparked a societal reorganization that saw the creation of powerful city states such as Kiev and Novgorod, the predecessors of the Muscovy (today’s Russians).  What I draw from this short piece of history is the common heritage shared by the people of modern Russia, Ukraine, Belrus, among others.  The intermingling of the people of the region spans back a millennia, but in the end they all originate from the same magnanimous event which propelled their society towards progress: the invitation of the Rus.  It is a shame this commonality is not recognized today when the escalating conflict in Ukraine is approaching the status of the next powered keg of the world, a threat which concerns us all.  

Le Passage du Gois

C.J. Adrien appearing to part the ocean. In reality, he is standing at the parting of the sea over Le Passage du Gois as the tide begins to recede to uncover the road.

Le Passage du Gois is a regularly flooded road which connects the island of Noirmoutier to mainland France.  The name ‘Gois’ dates back to the 16th century and is derived from the Old French verb ‘Goiser’, which literally meant ‘to walk while wetting one’s clogs’.  It is surmised that the passage earned the name from travelers who attempted to cross a sand bar revealed at low tide between the island and the mainland.  Over the centuries, several construction projects have taken place to stabilize the passage and prevent both the further accumulation and the erosion of the sand bar to allow those who could not afford a ferry to the island to cross.  A cobblestone road was eventually completed in 1840 to allow horses and carriages to cross at lesser risk.  

As the tide rises to cover the road, the water can move as fast as a galloping horse.  Anyone or anything caught in the waters is swept away to sea.  It is considered a perilous crossing, and tourists must pay close attention to the tides to avoid personal injury, or death.  Despite this, Le Passage du Gois is a world famous tourist destination, and the rising tide is a popular attraction for the island of Noirmoutier.  

In 1999, the Tour de France crossed Le Gois in the second stage.  The peloton suffered a major accident, and several cyclists favored to win the Tour were left seven minutes behind the breakaways.  Alex Zulle, for example, finished the tour in second place behind Lance Armstrong with an overall time just under seven minutes.  It is often thought that had the accident not occurred on Le Gois, Lance Armstrong would not have finished first.  In 2005, the Tour de France again crossed Le Gois, but this time during the first stage time trial.  Cyclists crossed Le Gois one at a time, thereby avoiding the calamity of 1999.  Author C.J. Adrien (pictured above) had the privilege of being invited to the starting village where he met and interacted with several cyclists, and rode in a support car behind one of the cyclists for the length of time trial course.  Unfortunately, Lance Armstrong was not available for C.J. Adrien to meet (even though all the other cyclists were, including Jan Ulrich), much to the author’s chagrin.

Le Passage du Gois remains one of C.J. Adrien’s favorite places in the world.

Huge New Discovery!

If you love Vikings, you MUST read THIS!  A new discovery in Ireland is about to have tremendous implications for Viking history.  This is a MUST FOLLOW story!!! Click the photo to read the article.