The Boundless Sea

by David Abulafia

  26. S. McGrail, ‘Prehistoric Seafaring in the Channel’, in Scarre and Healy, eds., Trade and Exchange in Prehistoric Europe, pp. 199–210; Muckleroy, ‘Middle Bronze Age Trade’, p. 275; Briard, Bronze Age in Barbarian Europe, pp. 67–8.

  27. Bercy boats: Ruiz-Gálvez, Europa atlántica, p. 91.

  28. C. Renfrew, ‘Trade beyond the Material’, in Scarre and Healy, eds., Trade and Exchange in Prehistoric Europe, pp. 10–11.

  29. Ruiz-Gálvez, ‘West of Iberia’, pp. 95, 99; S. Celestino and C. López-Ruiz, Tartessos and the Phoenicians in Iberia (Oxford, 2016), pp. 170–72; J. M. Gutiérrez López et al., ‘La Cueva de Gorham (Gibraltar): un santuario fenicio en el confín occidental del Mediterráneo’, in F. Prados, I. García and G. Bernard, eds., Confines: el Extremo del Mundo durante la Antigüedad (Alicante, 2012), pp. 303–81.

  30. M. E. Aubet, Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade (2nd edn, Cambridge, 2001), pp. 301–2.

  31. A. Jodin, Mogador: Comptoir phénicien du Maroc atlantique (Tangier, 1966).

  32. Burgess and O’Connor, ‘Iberia, the Atlantic Bronze Age and the Mediterranean’, p. 51.

  33. Cf. G. Daniel, The Megalith Builders of Western Europe (2nd edn, Harmondsworth, 1963), pp. 89–91.

  17. Tin Traders

  1. J. Henderson, The Atlantic Iron Age: Settlement and Identity in the First Millennium BC (London, 2007), pp. 121–2.

  2. Ibid., pp. 122, 136, 212.

  3. A. Ritchie, Prehistoric Orkney (London, 1995), pp. 96–116.

  4. Henderson, Atlantic Iron Age, p. 168.

  5. Ibid., p. 276.

  6. Julius Caesar, Gallic Wars, 3.12.

  7. Henderson, Atlantic Iron Age, p. 129, fig. 4.13.

  8. M. Costa et al., Casa dos Nichos, núcleo de arqueologia (Gabineto de Arqueologia, Viana do Castelo, s.d.).

  9. J. Koch, Tartessian: Celtic in the South-West at the Dawn of History (2nd edn, Aberystwyth, 2013), p. 270.

  10. Ibid., pp. 81 (J.14.1) and 223–4; cf. S. Celestino and C. López-Ruiz, Tartessos and the Phoenicians in Iberia (Oxford, 2016), pp. 289–300.

  11. Caesar, Gallic Wars, 3.13.

  12. B. Cunliffe, The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek (2nd edn, London, 2002), pp. 104–5.

  13. I. Finkel, The Ark before Noah (London, 2014).

  14. Herodotos, 1.163–7; David Abulafia, The Great Sea: a Human History of the Mediterranean (London, 2011), pp. 123–5; Cunliffe, Pytheas the Greek, pp. 6–8.

  15. Facsimile of editio princeps in Avienus, Ora Maritima, ed. J. P. Murphy (Chicago, 1977), pp. 101–39; see L. Antonelli, Il Periplo nascosto: Lettura stratigrafica e Commento storico-archeologico dell’Ora Maritima di Avieno (Padua, 1998) (with edition); F. J. González Ponce, Avieno y el Periplo (Ecija, 1995).

  16. A. Jodin, Mogador: Comptoir phénicien du Maroc atlantique (Tangier, 1966), pp. 191–3.

  17. Cunliffe, Pytheas the Greek, pp. 45–7.

  18. Avienus, ll. 85, 267–74; Celestino and López-Ruiz, Tartessos, pp. 88–91.

  19. Avienus, ll. 80–332, especially ll. 85, 113–16, 254, 308, 290–98.

  20. Cunliffe, Pytheas the Greek, p. 46; Avienus, ll. 95–9, 154–7.

  21. Avienus, ll. 98–109, modified from Murphy’s translation.

  22. Ibid., ll. 110–16.

  23. Ibid., ll. 164–71.

  24. Ibid., ll. 202–4.

  25. Ibid., ll. 390–93.

  26. Pytheas of Massalia, On the Ocean, ed. C. H. Roseman (Chicago, 1994).

  27. M. Cary and E. H. Warmington, The Ancient Explorers (2nd edn, Harmondsworth, 1963), p. 47.

  28. See the front cover of the Penguin edition of Cunliffe, Pytheas the Greek.

  29. Strabo, Geography, 1:4.3, in Pytheas, On the Ocean, p. 25, and 3:2.11, p. 60, as also 1:4.5 and 2:3.5, pp. 38, 46.

  30. Ibid., 2:4.2, pp. 48–9; the second quotation was cited by Strabo from the works of the cosmographer Eratosthenes.

  31. Cf. Cary and Warmington, Ancient Explorers, p. 48.

  32. Roseman in Pytheas, On the Ocean, pp. 152–3.

  33. Ibid., pp. 148–50.

  34. Cf. Cary and Warmington, Ancient Explorers, p. 47.

  35. Cunliffe, Pytheas the Greek, pp. 56–8, 61; Roseman in Pytheas, On the Ocean, pp. 152–4.

  36. Cunliffe, Pytheas the Greek, pp. 65–6.

  37. Diodoros the Sicilian, 5.21; compare the imagery c.1500 in D. Abulafia, The Discovery of Mankind: Atlantic Encounters in the Age of Columbus (New Haven, 2008).

  38. Roseman in Pytheas, On the Ocean, pp. 18–19; cf. Cunliffe, Pytheas the Greek, pp. 75–7; Cary and Warmington, Ancient Explorers, p. 49.

  39. Diodoros the Sicilian, 5.1–4; Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 4.104; Cary and Warmington, Ancient Explorers, p. 47.

  40. Strabo, Geography, 2:1.17.

  41. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 4.103, in Pytheas, On the Ocean, pp. 89–90; cf. Cunliffe, Pytheas the Greek, p. 100, assuming Pliny was definitely citing Pytheas.

  42. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 2.186–7 and 4.104, in Pytheas, On the Ocean, pp. 75, 91–2; Cunliffe, Pytheas the Greek, p. 127.

  43. Cunliffe, Pytheas the Greek, p. 125.

  44. J. Byock, Viking Age Iceland (London, 2001), p. 11.

  45. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 37.35–6; Cunliffe, Pytheas the Greek, p. 144.

  46. Cunliffe, Pytheas the Greek, p. 140.

  47. Ibid., p. 142.

  18. North Sea Raiders

  1. J. Jensen, The Prehistory of Denmark from the Stone Age to the Vikings (Copenhagen, 2013), pp. 74, 94, 99, 145, 159.

  2. G. Graichen and A. Hesse, Die Bernsteinstraße: Verborgene Handelswege zwischen Ostsee und Nil (Hamburg, 2013); Jensen, Prehistory of Denmark, pp. 410–12, 503–6.

  3. M. North, The Baltic: a History (Cambridge, Mass., 2015), pp. 25–6.

  4. Jensen, Prehistory of Denmark, pp. 706, 753, 768.

  5. Þ. Gylfason, ed., Njál’s Saga (London, 1998), p. 10.

  6. Jensen, Prehistory of Denmark, pp. 582–3.

  7. Tacitus, Germania, ch. 44.

  8. Jensen, Prehistory of Denmark, pp. 326–7, 812–15; J. Haywood, Dark Age Naval Power: a Reassessment of Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Seafaring Activity (London, 1991), pp. 63–5, with a diagram on p. 64; O. Crumlin-Pedersen, Archaeology and the Sea in Scandinavia and Britain: a Personal Account (Roskilde, 2010), pp. 65–7.

  9. Haywood, Dark Age Naval Power, p. 66.

  10. Ibid., pp. 17–18; R. Unger, The Ship in the Medieval Economy 600–1600 (London, 1980), p. 60.

  11. Tacitus, Agricola, ch. 28; Haywood, Dark Age Naval Power, pp. 5–6.

  12. Haywood, Dark Age Naval Power, p. 9.

  13. Tacitus, Annals, 11.19; E. Knoll and N. IJssennagger, ‘Palaeogeography and People: Historical Frisians in an Archeological Light’, in J. Hines and N. IJssennagger, Frisians and Their North Sea Neighbours from the Fifth Century to the Viking Age (Woodbridge, 2017), pp. 10–11.

  14. Tacitus, Histories, 5.23.

  15. C. Krebs, A Most Dangerous Book: Tacitus’s Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich (New York, 2011).

  16. Haywood, Dark Age Naval Power, p. 12.

  17. Ibid., pp. 24–34; L. P. Louwe Kooijmans, ‘Archaeology and Coastal Change in the Netherlands’, in F. H. Thompson, ed., Archaeology and Coastal Change (London, 1980), pp. 106–33.

  18. Haywood, Dark Age Naval Power, pp. 37–41.

  19. Ammianus Marcellinus, 26.4.5; 27.8.1.

  20. J. N. L. Myres, The Oxford History of England, vol. 1b: The English Settlements: English Political and Social Life from the Collapse of Roman Rule to the Emergence of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (2nd edn, Oxford, 1989), pp. 74–103.

  21. Ibid., pp. 55, 107–8.

  22. Haywood, Dark Age Naval Power, pp. 78–85, 179 (with extracts from the sources); Gregory of Tours, The History of the Franks, transl. L. Thorpe (Harmondsworth, 1974), pp. 163–4.

  23. Beowulf, l. 407 (in Seamus Heaney’s translation, London, 2000); also ll. 812, 1202–14, 1820, 1830
, 2354–68, 2497–2506.

  24. R. Hodges and D. Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the Origins of Europe (London, 1983), p. 79.

  25. B. Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford, 2005).

  26. Haywood, Dark Age Naval Power, pp. 66–73; Unger, Ship in the Medieval Economy, pp. 63–4; Crumlin-Pedersen, Archaeology and the Sea, pp. 96–7; G. Asaert, Westeuropese Scheepvaart in de Middeleeuwen (Bussum, 1974), pp. 14–15.

  27. M. Alexander, transl., The Earliest English Poems (Harmondsworth, 1966), p. 70.

  28. Ibid., p. 75.

  29. Beowulf, ll. 32–40, 47–50, 240 (in Heaney’s translation).

  30. Ibid., ll. 216, 218–19.

  31. Ibid., ll. 1905–13.

  32. C. Loveluck, Northwest Europe in the Early Middle Ages, c. AD 600–1150 (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 191–2; Knoll and IJssennagger, ‘Paleogeography and People’, pp. 6, 9–10.

  33. M. Pye, The Edge of the World: How the North Sea Made Us Who We Are (London, 2014), p. 35; R. Latouche, The Birth of Western Economy: Economic Aspects of the Dark Ages (London, 1961), pp. 122, 134–6.

  34. Haywood, Dark Age Naval Power, pp. 88–9; S. Lebecq, Marchands et navigateurs frisons du haut moyen âge (2 vols., Lille, 1983), vol. 1, pp. 114, 123–7, and vol. 2, pp. 258–9, doc. 52.5.

  35. Lebecq, Marchands et navigateurs, vol. 2, pp. 59, doc. 10.2, and p. 63, doc. 11.1; W. Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford, 1946), pp. 49–54; H. Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1972), pp. 129–47; J. Hines, ‘The Anglo-Frisian Question’, and T. Pestell, ‘The Kingdom of East Anglia, Frisia and Continental Connections, c. AD 600–900’, both in Hines and IJssennagger, Frisians, pp. 25–42, 193–222.

  36. Lebecq, Marchands et navigateurs, vol. 2, p. 232, doc. 46.5.

  37. Loveluck, Northwest Europe, pp. 186, 194–7.

  38. A. Verhulst, The Rise of Cities in North-West Europe (Cambridge, 1999), p. 20; D. Meier, Seafarers, Merchants and Pirates in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 56–62.

  39. Hodges and Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne, pp. 93–101; Lebecq, Marchands et navigateurs, vol. 1, pp. 78–83, 149–63; quotation from C. Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–800 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 682–5, who gives a smaller area (sixty hectares).

  40. Lebecq, Marchands et navigateurs, vol. 1, pp. 60–66; Verhulst, Rise of Cities, pp. 27–8; good illustrations in J. Rozemeyer, De Ontdekking van Dorestad (Breda, 2012), pp. 20–30 (ignoring the attempt to identify Dorestad as Utrecht), and also in Unger, Ship in the Medieval Economy, p. 79, fig. 5; Asaert, Westeuropese Scheepvaart, pp. 18–19.

  41. Verhulst, Rise of Cities, pp. 45–6.

  42. Lebecq, Marchands et navigateurs, vol. 1, pp. 169–76.

  43. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 190–95, 213–15, 258–61.

  44. Pye, Edge of the World, p. 44.

  45. Lebecq, Marchands et navigateurs, vol. 1, p. 260, and vol. 2, pp. 281–2; Alpertus van Metz, Gebeurtenissen van deze tijd en Een fragment over bisschop Diederik I van Metz, ed. H. van Rij and A. Sapir Abulafia (Amsterdam, 1980), pp. 18–19.

  19. ‘This iron-studded dragon’

  1. From a poem by Þjóðólfr Arnórsson, cited by G. Williams, The Viking Ship (London, 2014), p. 8.

  2. Out of a vast general literature see in particular J. Brøndsted, The Vikings (2nd edn, Harmondsworth, 1965); E. Oxenstierna, The Norsemen (London, 1966); G. Jones, A History of the Vikings (2nd edn, Oxford, 1984); E. Roesdahl, The Vikings (2nd edn, London, 1998); F. D. Logan, The Vikings in History (3rd edn, London, 2005); P. Parker, The Norsemen’s Fury: a History of the Viking World (London, 2014).

  3. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Cambridge MS (Parker Library, Corpus Christi College), s.a. 878.

  4. Ibid., various versions, s.a. 789.

  5. Ibid., Peterborough MS, s.a. 793, 794.

  6. Ibid., Cambridge MS, s.a. 835, 837, 838, 855.

  7. P. Sawyer, The Age of the Vikings (2nd edn, London, 1971), p. 202.

  8. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Cambridge MS, s.a. 865.

  9. Brøndsted, Vikings, p. 34.

  10. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Cambridge MS, s.a. 882.

  11. Ibid., s.a. 896.

  12. J. Haywood, Dark Age Naval Power: a Reassessment of Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Seafaring Activity (London, 1991), pp. 75–6.

  13. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Cambridge MS, s.a. 917.

  14. M. Lawson, Cnut: the Danes in England in the Early Eleventh Century (Harlow, 1993), pp. 16–48.

  15. M. Magnusson and H. Pálsson, eds. and transl., King Harald’s Saga: Harald Hardradi of Norway, from Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla (Harmondsworth, 1966), pp. 133–54.

  16. Brøndsted, Vikings, pp. 36–9; J. Byock, Viking Age Iceland (London, 2001), pp. 12–13.

  17. H. Ellis Davidson, The Viking Road to Byzantium (London, 1976); E. Christiansen, The Northern Crusades (2nd edn, London, 1997).

  18. Brøndsted, Vikings, pp. 31–6.

  19. Byock, Viking Age Iceland, pp. 82–4.

  20. From the Old Norse poem Hávamál, transl. H. A. Bellows, The Poetic Edda (New York, 1923), p. 44, stanza 77; J. de Vries, Heroic Song and Heroic Legend (London and Oxford, 1963), pp. 184, 187.

  21. H. Pálsson and P. Edwards, transl., Orkneyinga Saga: the History of the Earls of Orkney (Harmondsworth, 1981), pp. 214–16.

  22. Sawyer, Age of the Vikings, p. 206.

  23. Ibn Fadlān, ‘The Book of Ahmad ibn Fadlān’, in C. Stone and P. Lunde, ed. and transl., Ibn Fadlān and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North (London, 2012), pp. 45–55, and other extracts in the same volume.

  24. S. Kleingärtner and G. Williams, ‘Contact and Exchange’, in G. Williams, P. Pentz and M. Wemhoff, eds., Vikings: Life and Legend (London, 2014), p. 54.

  25. B. Magnus and I. Gustin, Birka and Hovgården – a Story That Enriches Time (Stockholm, 2012); D. Skre and F.-A. Stylegar, Kaupang the Viking Town: the Kaupang Exhibition at UKM, Oslo, 2004–2005 (Oslo, 2004).

  26. R. Hodges and D. Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the Origins of Europe (London, 1983), p. 111; K. Struve, ‘Haithabu and the Early Harbours of the Baltic Sea’, in The World of the Vikings: an Exhibition Mounted by the Statens Historiska Museum Stockholm in Co-operation with the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London (London, 1973), pp. 27–8; D. Meier, Seafarers, Merchants and Pirates in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 76–9.

  27. M. North, The Baltic: a History (Cambridge, Mass., 2015), pp. 14–15, for the Obodrites.

  28. Ibid., pp. 19–20.

  29. Meier, Seafarers, Merchants and Pirates, pp. 72–3, 80.

  30. J. Ahola, Frog and J. Lucenius, eds., The Viking Age in Åland: Insights into Identity and Remnants of Culture (Helsinki, 2014).

  31. Hodges and Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne, p. 116, fig. 46; generally, L. Thålin, ‘Baltic Trade and the Varangians’, in World of the Vikings, pp. 22–3.

  32. Hodges and Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne, p. 119, fig. 49.

  33. Ibid., p. 118.

  34. Ibid., pp. 114–15, 117, and fig. 47, p. 116.

  35. North, Baltic, p. 9, citing Adam of Bremen.

  36. R. Öhrman, Gotlands Fornsal: Bildstenar (2nd edn, Visby, 2000); E. Nylén and J. P. Lamm, Stones, Ships and Symbols: the Picture Stones of Gotland from the Viking Age and Before (Stockholm, 1988), pp. 62–3, 68–71, 109–35, 162–9; D. Rossi, ed., Guta Saga: la Saga dei Gotlandesi (Milan, 2010), pp. 26–7.

  37. Nylén and Lamm, Stones, Ships and Symbols, pp. 42, 166–7; R. Simek, Die Schiffe der Wikinger (Stuttgart, 2014), pp. 54–5.

  38. Williams, Viking Ship, pp. 34–9; Simek, Schiffe der Wikinger, pp. 79–82; D. Ellmers, ‘The Ships of the Vikings’, in World of the Vikings, pp. 13–14.

  39. J. Bill, ‘The Oseberg Ship and Ritual Burial’, in Williams et al., eds., Vikings, pp. 200–201.

  40. Williams, Viking Ship, pp. 26–7, 48–52; G. Asaert, Westeuropese Scheepvaart in de Middeleeuwen (
Bussum, 1974), pp. 20–22; my special thanks go to Professor Jón Viðar Sigurðsson for guiding me around the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo.

  41. Williams, Viking Ship, pp. 52–5; R. Unger, The Ship in the Medieval Economy 600–1600 (London, 1980), pp. 82–9.

  42. ‘Zuhrī on Viking Ships c.1160’, in Stone and Lunde, ed. and transl., Ibn Fadlān and the Land of Darkness, p. 110.

  43. A. Christys, Vikings in the South: Voyages to Iberia and the Mediterranean (London, 2015), pp. 19–25.

  44. ‘Ibn Hayyān on the Viking Attack on Seville 844’, in Stone and Lunde, ed. and transl., Ibn Fadlān and the Land of Darkness, pp. 105–9; E. Morales Romero, Historia de los Vikingos en España: Ataques e Incursiones contra los Reinos Cristianos y Musulmanes de la Península Ibérica en los siglos IX–XI (2nd edn, Madrid, 2006), pp. 127–47; Christys, Vikings in the South, pp. 29–45.

  45. Simek, Schiffe der Wikinger, pp. 64–5; F. Brandt, ‘On the Navigation of the Vikings’, in World of the Vikings, pp. 14–18.

  46. Williams, Viking Ship, p. 30; O. Crumlin-Pedersen, Archaeology and the Sea in Scandinavia and Britain: a Personal Account (Roskilde, 2010), pp. 82–8.

  47. The ship Roskilde 6, centrepiece of the British Museum Viking exhibition in 2014: J. Bill, ‘Roskilde 6’, in Williams et al., eds., Vikings, pp. 228–33; Williams, Viking Ship, pp. 67–73.

  48. Williams, Viking Ship, pp. 74–81; Unger, Ship in the Medieval Economy, p. 91; Crumlin-Pedersen, Archaeology and the Sea, pp. 109–13.

  49. M. Egeler, Islands in the West: Classical Myth and the Medieval Norse and Irish Geographical Imagination (Turnhout, 2017).

  20. New Island Worlds

  1. F. D. Logan, The Vikings in History (3rd edn, London, 2005), pp. 21–2, 26–8; A. Forte, R. Oram and F. Pedersen, Viking Empires (Cambridge, 2005), p. 265.

  2. H. Pálsson and P. Edwards, transl., Orkneyinga Saga: the History of the Earls of Orkney (Harmondsworth, 1981), p. 215.

  3. J. Jesch, The Viking Diaspora (London, 2015), pp. 32–3.

  4. Forte et al., Viking Empires, p. 268.

  5. Pálsson and Edwards, transl., Orkneyinga Saga, pp. 26–7.

  6. B. Crawford, The Northern Earldoms: Orkney and Caithness from AD 870 to 1470 (Edinburgh, 2013), pp. 36, 85–7.