Vikings

Jonathan Swanson Ilana Mindiola Mindy Calderon Miguel Gonzalez Samantha Spampinato Matthew Rada Vikings: Ruthless pillagers and masters of the sea or a society of people which had artists, politicians and artisans? A prayer that was common to those who faced the Vikings was, "From the fury of the Northmen, deliver us, O Lord". Is it possible for people who can strike such fear in others to have a democratic society? The question we hope to answer is whether the Vikings were the feared, ruthless, and uneducated people other Europeans wrote about and described or if they were a cultured society who through various advancements expanded their own wealth and land. The time period between A.D. 800 and the 11th century is referred to as the Viking Age. The term “viking” originates from the early Scandinavian word “vikingr” meaning pirate. People from Scandinavia left home either due to overpopulation or to grow their wealth. They began with attacking Christian monasteries, which caused most of the Christians in Europe to fear and hate them. The fear stemmed from the fact that other enemies, who were predominantly Christian, would not attack monasteries. Monasteries were seen as holy places of their own religion, so regardless if they were on enemy grounds, they would not attack. The vikings did not have such a moral dilemma due to the fact that they were not of the Christian faith. They targeted the churches with good reason because churches, at the time, held the majority of the wealth. While most of these attacks happened in what is now Great Britain and Ireland, there is evidence and writings of viking attacks and colonies in other places, such as modern-day France, Spain, Greenland, Canada, and Italy. They also invested in trade with various places, such as the Middle East and China. Evidence of this is found in “Well-preserved graves in Birka, Sweden, for example, containing fragments of Chinese silk, and in Norway, the

ships in which wealthy Vikings were customarily buried were painted with pigments that may have come from India and the Middle East.”

Figure 1: An example of a Viking longship. The Sea Stallion was a ship recreated to gain a crucial understanding of Viking seafaring techniques.

Figure 2: Silver bowls found at the Sutton Hoo site believed to have been brought from the Byzantine Empire.

Ruthless Pirates A BBC article written about the Vikings attacks. “Raids by seaborne Scandinavian pirates on sites in Britain, especially largely undefended monastic sites, began at the end of the eighth century AD. By the end of the ninth century there were large-scale settlements of Scandinavians in various parts of Britain, and they had achieved political domination over a significant territory. Early in the 11th century the king of Denmark became king of England as well. And in 1066 there were separate invasions by the king of Norway, Harald Hardrada, and duke of Normandy, William, the latter the descendant of Scandinavian settlers in northern France. Many monasteries in the north were destroyed, and with them any records of the raids. Yet the most significant development of the period was an indirect result of Scandinavian involvement in the affairs of Britain - the emergence of two kingdoms of newly unified territories, England and Scotland. In 793 AD, an anguished Alcuin of York wrote to the Higbald, the bishop of Lindisfarne and to Ethelred, King of Northumbria, bemoaning the unexpected attack on the monastery of Lindisfarne by Viking raiders, probably Norwegians sailing directly across the North Sea to Northumbria. It is clear from the letter that Lindisfarne was not destroyed. Alcuin suggested that further attack might be averted by moral reform in the monastery. Over the next few decades, many monasteries in the north were destroyed, and with them any records they might have kept of the raids. We know no historical details of the raids in Scotland, although they must have been extensive. Iona was burnt in 802 AD, and 68 monks were killed in another raid in 806 AD. The remaining monks fled to Kells (County Meath, Ireland) with a gospel-book probably produced in Iona, but now known as the 'Book of Kells'. Other monasteries in Scotland and northern England simply disappear from the record. Lindisfarne was abandoned, and the monks trailed around northern England with their greatest possession, the relics of St Cuthbert, until they found a home in Durham in 995 AD.” This is a group of people who are completely ruthless and with a complete disregard to human life. They attacked these place such as Iona and burned them to the ground completely destroying

everything in their path. Another article wrote that “They had tall curved prows, usually carved in the shapes of dragons. These dragon ships, as they were often called, usually appeared in a bay at about dawn. As soon as the ships reached the beach, tall blond men jumped out, shouting battle cries. Armed with swords and battle-axes, they attacked the sleeping villagers. They killed many of them, captured some of the youths and maidens, and gathered all the loot that their ships could carry. Then they sailed away. The Vikings came to be the most feared raiders of their time and were the only Norsemen with whom most Europeans came in contact. Their name was given to the era that dated from about AD 740 to about 1050--the Viking Age. The raids of the Vikings in the 9th and 10th centuries are among the bestknown episodes of early medieval history. These fierce attacks from Scandinavia fell on the British Isles, the Atlantic and North Sea shoreline of the Carolingian Empire, which included most of what are now France, Germany, and the Low Countries, and to the east on what became Russia. They took a heavy toll on the fragile political development and stability of Europe. The historians were usually priests who looked upon the pagan Vikings with particular horror. In addition, the Church, as a wealthy and relatively defenseless target, may have suffered more heavily than many other sectors of European society. Despite the notoriety the Vikings attracted because of their ferocity, within a century or two they converted to Christianity and settled in the lands they had raided.” Various hoards of treasure were buried in England at this time, some of which may have been deposited by Anglo-Saxons attempting to hide their wealth from Viking raiders, and some of which may have instead been buried by the Viking raiders themselves as a way of protecting their looted treasure.

One such of these hoards was discovered in Croydon, Surrey in 1862. Containing 250 coins, three silver ingots and part of a fourth as well as four pieces of hack silver in a linen bag, it was believed by archaeologists that this was the loot collected by a member of the Viking army. By dating the artefacts, archaeologists came to believe that it was likely that this hoard had been buried in 872, when the army wintered in London. The coins themselves came from a wide range of different kingdoms, with Wessex, Mercian and East Anglian examples being found alongside foreign imports from Carolingian dynasty Francia and the Arab world. Not all such Viking hoards in England contained coins however, for example at Bowes Moor, Durham, 19 silver ingots were discovered, whilst at Orton Scar, Cumbria, a silver neck ring and penannular brooch were uncovered.

Cultured Society Archaeology today highlights the many connections that existed between ancient societies and is steadily revealing the degree to which peoples in the past were regularly in touch with other groups, often in distant lands. The Vikings exemplify this more than most. In just three centuries, these restless traders and raiders spread from their homeland in Scandinavia across much of northern Europe and far beyond, melding scattered settlements of farmers and fisherfolk into powerful kingdoms. The Vikings have long had a fearsome reputation as seaborne warriors bent solely on plunder and destruction. But an exhibition at the British Museum in London in Spring 2014 revealed the latest in the Viking story. The long coastlines and numerous islands of Scandinavia favored travel by sea. The Vikings, as heirs to this maritime tradition, developed superb ocean-going vessels powered by oars and sails. The famous “longships” were just that—long, narrow vessels with flexible hulls that could ride out the swells of the North Atlantic. Capable of traveling great distances at high speed, these technologically advanced ships also featured a shallow draft, enabling them to penetrate far inland, along rivers, and even to be

transported overland. Population growth and a warmer phase of climate spurred the Viking expansion. They colonized parts of the British Isles and the northern coast of France, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland, and famously, if briefly, established a settlement in North America on the northern tip of Newfoundland. They circumnavigated the continent of Europe, voyaging westward and southward on their way to the Mediterranean. Eastward, they traveled along the great rivers that flowed into the Black and Caspian Seas. These raiding and trading ventures brought the Vikings into contact with the Frankish Empire of Central Europe and the Byzantine Empire with its capital at Constantinople. They were also in touch with the Abbasid Caliphate of the Middle East, and the khanates of Central Asia. Many of the richer artifacts found in Viking settlements and graves originated from these distant lands through commerce. Yet the Vikings were not just recipients of goods made by others. They were skilled craftspeople, fashioning jewelry, weapons, tools, fine tableware, and much else, often decorated in distinctive art styles. They developed impressive settlements at home in Scandinavia as centers of royal authority, and founded several of the first towns of medieval Europe, of which York and Dublin are the best known. The Vikings erupted suddenly on a medieval world in formation, opening routes and connecting peoples over vast distances—to great effect. They made important contributions to the development of the societies of Europe and the North Atlantic that we know today. The first recorded Viking raid was a seaborne assault (793) by Norwegian marauders on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, just off the northeast shoulder of England. Growing evidence indicates, however, that considerable overseas Viking migration, west across the North Sea and east across the Baltic, occurred long before that. Swedish entrepreneurs penetrated the hinterland of Russia, pioneering new trade routes down the Volga and the Dnepr, founding city-states such as Kiev and Novgorod, and opening the way to

Constantinople and the exotic markets of Arabia and the Far East. In Constantinople, Vikings formed the elite bodyguard of the Byzantine emperors, the feared and famous Varangian Guard. Danish warriors hammered at the cities of the crumbling Carolingian Empire—Hamburg, Dorestad, Rouen, Paris, Nantes, Bordeaux—until one of the armies in 911 accepted by treaty huge tracts of land in northern France (now known as Normandy, “land of the Northmen”) and settled there.

Briefly, under King Canute (Knut) II in the 11th century, a Scandinavian empire of the North Sea was established, comprising England, Denmark, and Norway. Norwegian adventurers joined Danish Vikings in subjugating the whole of northern England (the Danelaw) before settling there as farmers and traders and developing great mercantile cities such as York. The invaders also took over the Northern Isles of Scotland (Shetland and the Orkneys), the Hebrides, and much of mainland Scotland as well. In Ireland they played a lusty part in the internecine squabbles of rival Irish clans, and they founded Ireland’s first trading towns: Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, Wicklow, and Limerick. They discovered and settled uninhabited lands in the Atlantic—first the Faeroes, then Iceland, then Greenland. From Greenland they launched ambitious expeditions to settle on the eastern seaboard of North America (Vinland), but these attempts to colonize the New World 500 years before Columbus were soon abandoned in the face of hostility from the native Indians. Stories of the abortive American venture are recorded in the medieval Icelandic sagas; but little authentic evidence of the Viking presence has been found, apart from substantial traces of a Viking Age settlement at L’Anse-aux-Meadows, in northern Newfoundland. All other Viking “finds,” such as the Kensington Stone, have been exposed as forgeries or hoaxes, or merely wishful thinking.

Figure 3: A typical Viking village

The Vikings society had a hierarchy of three classes: The Jarls, Karls and Thralls. The Jarls were the wealthiest class and therefore controlled large areas of the countryside. Since they were the highest class, they were also protected by the great god Odin. The second class were the Karls and this was where the majority of the Viking population was. Karls were often the farmers, merchants, warriors, traders, craftsmen and shipbuilders of the society. The lowest class in Vikings society were the Thralls and they were the slaves. Thralls were responsible for the heavy labor of the society because Karls and Jarls used them as servants on farms and workshops. One

could see how raiding was part of the Viking culture because Thralls were able to climb the ladder by obtaining currency and treasures on raids. Though their reputation might imply otherwise, the Vikings had a democratic society and were not lawless. Local Nobles controlled small regions throughout their land but local assemblies, called Things, controlled the Nobles. Karls all had the chance to express their opinion and vote at assemblies. With this, laws were created and disputes were settled and every year a Law Speakers would read the laws of that region to make sure everyone knew the law. If a Karl was to commit a crime, he would be brought to the local assemblies to be found guilty or not guilty. If the karl was found guilty, they would be punished with a fine or death. However, if a Viking killed another Viking and got caught, the murderer would have to pay the family of the lost one whatever amount the victim’s wergild was. A wergild was a person’s monetary value and it reflected the person’s wealth and status. After the money was paid, a Viking’s life was finished with a funeral. Vikings believed that the dead “lived” where they were buried and so their burials would be close to their settlements. Some were buried in simple holes while others who were more wealthy and of higher class were buried in coffins. The wealthy Vikings were also buried with “grave goods” which included jewels, weapons and tools which were made specifically for the burial.

Sources http://www.orkneyjar.com/archaeology/2005/08/11/as-excavation-finishes-work-begins-to-openviking-age-house-remains-to-the-public/

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/raiders-or-traders-52803648/#Ze3AScQmoOOf2rbd.99 "Vikings." Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia (2014): 1p. 1. Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia. Web. 4 May 2015. Moore, Andrew. "The Vikings, An Update." Archaeology 67.5 (2014): 6. Academic Search Premier. Web. 4 May 2015. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/vikings/overview_vikings_01.shtml http://history-world.org/vikings.htm