The Sea Wolves: A History of the Vikings

by Lars Brownworth

  The only thing preventing a major attack was the confusion of Louis’ Viking enemies. The Danish peninsula had been in turmoil since the death of Godfred. A warrior named Harald Klak had seized power, but after a short reign had been expelled by the slain Godfred’s son Horik. Harald Klak appealed to Louis for help, slyly offering to convert to Christianity in exchange for aid. The emperor accepted, and in a sumptuous ceremony at the royal palace of Ingelheim, near Mainz, Harald and four hundred of his followers were dipped in the baptismal font. Louis the Pious stood in as Harald’s godfather.

  It was a triumphal moment for several reasons. Louis was clearly not the soldier his father was, but here was an opportunity to neutralize the Danes for the foreseeable future. If Harald could be installed on the Danish throne, and then Christianize his subjects, it would pacify the northern border.

  The first part of the plan worked seamlessly. Harald was given land in Frisia and tasked with defending it against marauding Vikings, while an expedition to restore his throne was gathered. With a Frankish army at his back, he was able to force his rival, Horik, to recognize him as ruler. He then invited Louis to send a missionary to aid in the conversion of the Danes. The emperor chose a Saxon preacher named Ansgar, who immediately built a church in Hedeby.37 At this point, however, Louis’ grand policy began to collapse.

  The Danes weren’t particularly interested in Christianity, at least not as an exclusive religion. Nor it seems, were they interested in Harald Klak. After a year, he was again driven into exile by his adversary Horik, a stout pagan. To add insult to injury, Harald returned to his Frisian lands and took up piracy, spending his remaining years plundering his godfather’s property.38

  With the expulsion of Harald Klak, a dam seemed to break in the north, and raiders began to spill out over the Carolingian coast. Dorestad, the largest trading center in northern Europe and a main center of silver-minting, was sacked every year from 834 to 837. Horik sent an embassy to Louis claiming that he had nothing to do with the attacks on Dorestad, but did mention that he had apprehended and punished those responsible. The latter claim, at least, was probably true. Successful raiders were potential rivals, and Horik had no desire to repeat Harald Klak’s fate.39

  Individual Vikings out for plunder needed no invitations from the king to attack. The Frankish empire was clearly tottering. Louis’ tin-eared rule – exacerbated by an ill-thought out plan to include a son from his second marriage into the succession – resulted in a series of civil wars and his deposition at the hands of his remaining sons. Although he was restored to the throne the following year, his prestige never recovered.

  The damage it did to his empire was immense. Not only were there lingering revolts – he spent the final years of his reign putting down insurrections – but the distractions allowed the Vikings to arrive in greater numbers. Multiple groups began to hit the coasts at the same time, burning villages, seizing booty, and carrying away the inhabitants, leaving only the old and sick behind.

  In 836 Horik himself led a major raid on Antwerp, and when several of his warriors died in the assault, he had the nerve to demand weregild – compensation for his loss of soldiers.40 Louis responded by gathering a large army, and the Vikings melted away, but only as far as Frisia where they continued to raid. In 840, the emperor finally ordered the construction of his father’s North Sea fleet to challenge them, but died a few months later without accomplishing anything.

  Instead of unifying against the common threat, Louis’ sons spent the next three years fighting for supremacy as the empire disintegrated around them. On occasion they even tried to use the Vikings to attack each other. The eldest sibling, Lothar, welcomed old Harald Klak into his court and rewarded him with land for raiding his brother’s territory. This turned out to be an exceptionally bad idea, as it gave the Vikings familiarity with and access to Frankish territory. Harald, and streams of like-minded Vikings, happily plundered their way across the northern coasts of the empire.

  These attacks depended on speed, not overwhelming force. By the mid ninth century the typical Viking “army” consisted of a few ships with perhaps a hundred men. Some men would be left to guard the ships while the rest fanned out to plunder. In these early days they weren’t interested in prisoners, and would kill or burn anything that couldn’t be taken.

  The small numbers were a vulnerability, but this was made up for by the speed of the attacks. Most Vikings were reluctant to travel far from the coasts of the sea or river systems, and generally avoided pitched battles. Their equipment was more often than not inferior to their Frankish opponents; Vikings caught in open country were usually overwhelmed. This was partially because they lacked the armor common in Europe at the time. Frankish chronicles referred to them as ‘naked’, and they had to scavenge helmets and weapons from the dead since several Frankish rulers sensibly forbade the sale of weapons to the Vikings on pain of death.

  The one exception to this general inferiority were Viking swords. The original design was probably copied from an eighth century Frankish source, a blacksmith named Ulfberht whose name soon became a brand. The Vikings quickly learned to manufacture the blades themselves, and weapons bearing the inscription Ulfberht have been found all over Scandinavia. They were typically double edged, with a rounded point, made of multiple bars of iron twisted together. This pattern welding created a relatively strong and lightweight blade that could be reforged if broken. They were clearly among a warrior’s most prized possessions and were passed down as heirlooms and given names like “Odin’s Flame” and “Leg-Biter“.

  Aside from their swords, the Viking’s main advantages lay in their sophisticated intelligence gathering and their terrifying adaptability. They had advance warning of most Frankish military maneuvers, and could respond quickly to take advantage of political changes. Most formidable of all, was their malleability. ‘Brotherhoods’ of dozens or even hundreds could combine into a larger army, and then re-dissolve into groups at will. This made it almost impossible to inflict a serious defeat on them, or even predict where to concentrate your defenses.

  The Vikings were usually also more pragmatic than their opponents. They had no qualms about traveling through woods, used impromptu buildings like stone churches as forts, and dug concealed pits to disable pursuing cavalry. They attacked at night, and were willing – unlike the Frankish nobility – to get their hands dirty by digging quick trenches and earthworks. Most of all they could pick their prey and had exquisite timing. Earlier barbarians had avoided churches; the Vikings targeted them, usually during feast days when towns were full of wealthy potential hostages.

  The Christian communities didn’t stand a chance. The monastery of Noirmoutier, on an island at the mouth of the Loire, was sacked every year from 819 to 836. It became an annual tradition for the monks to evacuate the island for the spring and summer, returning only after the raiding season had ended. Finally, in 836 they had enough and carrying the relics of their patron saint – and what was left of the treasury – they fled east in search of a safe haven. For the next three decades they were driven from one refuge to the next until they finally settled in Burgundy near the Swiss border, about as far from the Vikings and the sea as one could get.

  A monk of Noirmoutier summed up the desperation in a plea for his fellow Christians to stop their infighting and defend themselves:

  “The number of ships grows larger and larger, the great host of Northmen continually increases… they capture every city they pass through, and none can withstand them… There is hardly a single place, hardly a monastery which is respected, all the inhabitants take to flight and few and far between are those who dare to say: ‘Stay where you are, stay where you are, fight back, do battle for your country, for your children, for your family!’ In their paralysis, in the midst of their mutual rivalries, they buy back at the cost of tribute that which they should have defended, weapons in hand, and allow the Christian kingdom to founder.”

  The monk’s advice went unheeded. By the
time the Frankish civil war ended, Charlemagne’s empire had dissolved into three kingdoms, each with their vulnerabilities brutally exposed. The western Frankish kingdom became the basis of the kingdom of France, the eastern, Germany, and the third – a thin strip of land between them called Lotharingia – was absorbed by its neighbors.41 Viking raiding groups became larger and bolder. Instead of two or three ships traveling together, they were now arriving in fleets of ten or twelve. More ominously still, they began to change their tactics. In 845 they returned to the island of Noirmoutier, but this time, instead of the usual raid, they fortified the island and made it a winter quarters. The usual practice was to raid in the warmer months, and return home before the first snows fell. Now, however, they intended to stop wasting time in transit, and to be more systematic in the collection of loot.

  Launching raids from their base, they could now penetrate further up rivers, putting more towns and even cities in range. Rouen, Nantes, and Hamburg were sacked, and Viking fleets plundered Burgundy. The next year they hit Utrecht and Antwerp, and went up the Rhine as far as Nijmegen. These raids all paled, however, before one that took place in 845 at the direction of the Danish king. He had not forgotten the Frankish support for his rival Harald Klak. Now Horik finally had his revenge.

  Chapter 3

  Ragnar Lothbrok

  “A cleaved head no longer plots”

  - Edda of Sæmund the Wise

  Ragnar Lothbrok was undoubtedly the most colorful member of Horik’s court. His surname Lothbrok means ‘hairy breeches’, a reference to a curious pair of hide leggings that he wore into battle and which, he claimed, offered him some sort of magical protection. According to one legend, he made them to win his first wife, who was being held prisoner by a dragon-like serpent. To save himself from its venomous bite he boiled a pair of leather pants in pitch, and rolled them in sand. This unorthodox garment protected him long enough to dispatch the beast and claim his bride.

  Ragnar’s actual origins are unknown.42 He became the hero of so many later Viking sagas that his historical accomplishments have become obscured. Stories were told to fill in the gaps, most of them charming, and almost all certainly false. His second wife Aslaug – a woman so beautiful that bakers would let their bread burn while staring at her – was, according to these stories, his equal in cunning. Ragnar, still grieving the death of his first wife, agreed to marry her if she could visit him ‘neither dressed nor undressed, neither fasting nor satisfied, and neither in company nor alone’. She won his heart by appearing naked, but covered by her long hair, having eaten an onion the previous night, and with a sheepdog for company.

  These stories would undoubtedly have pleased Ragnar. He claimed to be a direct descendant of the god Odin, which – since Horik claimed the same – was an oblique way of asserting his fitness for the throne. Rule in the Viking world, however, was a question of prowess more than ancestry, so in 845 Ragnar led a force of Vikings in an attack on Paris.

  Ragnar was not a simple pirate. He was one of the first ‘sea-kings’; a Viking who gained enough wealth and power through raiding to be recognized as a virtual king. A measure of the respect in which he was held was the size of his force. In a time when ‘armies’ were numbered in hundreds of men, Ragnar commanded over five thousand warriors in a fleet of a hundred and twenty longships.

  Sailing south from Denmark, it took the sea wolves just over a week to reach the Seine river estuary. From there, they rowed upstream and pillaged Rouen and Carolivenna (modern Chaussy), roughly nine miles from the wealthy Abbey of St. Denis. His men helped themselves to whatever riches they could find and systematically plundered the fertile districts within easy reach of the river. Rumors of each fresh attack panicked the locals, and they and the monks of St. Denis fled, carrying their relics and valuables with them. However, they were met by the Frankish king Charles the Bald, who tried to stem the flood of refugees by ordering them back to their homes and churches. He had raised an army to confront the raiders, and advanced cautiously.43

  Ragnar presented the king with a difficult choice. The Viking was well known for his blitzkrieg-like tactics to keep his enemies off balance, and only fought when the odds favored him. If Charles approached on one bank of the river, Ragnar and his men could just slip to the other side and avoid a battle. Since he wanted to force a showdown, the king split his forces and advanced along both banks.

  Unfortunately for the Franks, Charles’ army was not the premiere fighting force it had been in Charlemagne’s day. Standards had fallen to such a degree that it now regularly fell into confusion, and was well known for its carelessness and inefficiency. Ragnar attacked the smaller section of the Frankish forces with his entire army, easily slaughtering it as the horrified Charles watched impotently from the other side of the river. Worse was to come. The captured Frankish soldiers – a hundred and eleven of them – were transported to an island in the Seine and hung in full view of Charles’ army as a sacrifice to Odin.

  This was equal part religious observation and equal part calculated strategy of psychological terror. To modern eyes, the Vikings appear appallingly brutal, but there were limits to their violence. They seldom willingly destroyed harvests and despite routine plundering never disturbed the vineyards of Aquitaine. There was much more money to be had in extortion. As far as the execution of prisoners, Charlemagne had done far worse with his Saxon captives at Verdun, where he had beheaded forty-five hundred of them as punishment for a revolt.

  Ragnar’s display had the desired effect. The Franks were unnerved, and easily routed when Ragnar charged at them. Charles was forced to withdraw with what was left of his army to the abbey of St. Dennis, which he vowed to defend at all costs. The presence of an army at his rear would normally have been worrying, but Ragnar had measured its quality and tellingly saw no reason to delay his approach to the now relatively undefended Paris.

  In many ways, medieval Paris was the ideal Viking target. Not only was it rich, but it was largely confined to the Ile de la Cité, an island in the middle of the Seine. The first sight of the city, however, must have been momentarily disappointing. Despite Ragnar’s strategy of attacking on a holy day when churches would be full of potential victims, news of their approach had preceded his army, and most of the population had already fled. The Vikings flooded in, spreading out through the streets in search of plunder. They had been raiding Europe for the better part of five decades, but never had they looted such a prize.

  Thanks to advance warning, which enabled the monks to remove most of the valuables, the Abbey of St. Germain managed to escape most of the destruction. When they returned six weeks later, they found several of the outbuildings burned and superficial damage to the abbey church. The only real casualty was the wine-cellar, which the Vikings had managed to break into and empty.

  The city itself proved to be as frustrating for the Vikings as the Abbey of St. Germain. Much of the expected treasure had been carried away into the surrounding countryside by the frightened inhabitants. They could send out raiding parties in search of it, but that opened them to the possibility of ambush or an assault by Charles’ army.

  In fact, every moment Ragnar spent in Paris, his situation worsened. The Frankish king had been collecting reinforcements, and was now at the head of a considerable army in a position to block the Viking escape. Even more worryingly was the fact that the Vikings were beginning to show signs of dysentery, which further reduced their fighting ability. From the deserted monastery of St. Germain-des-Prés, Ragnar reached out to Charles, hinting that he was willing to leave if offered a suitable tribute.

  The Frankish king was in the mood to negotiate. Despite the size of his army, he had no confidence in its quality or in the loyalty of its commanders. He also had the headache of rebellious vassals, ambitious family members and chronic revolts. Ambassadors for both sides met in the monastery of St. Denis, and the Franks offered extraordinary terms. Not only could the Vikings keep their plunder and depart unmolested, but they woul
d be paid nearly six thousand pounds of gold and silver for their trouble.

  This is the first recorded example of what the English called Danegeld – literally ‘Danish Money’ – a series of increasingly ineffective bribes by desperate monarchs to get the Vikings to go away. Most of the money to pay for it would be commandeered from the church and then later from the people by means of a special tax. The very people who were bearing the brunt of the Viking attacks were now called upon to pay their tormentor’s bribes. To add insult to injury, the Danegeld tended to increase rather than prevent Viking raids, since the offer of protection money simply attracted other Vikings. No matter how expedient his reasons, Charles was unwisely trusting gold to do the work of steel.

  The only silver lining for the Parisians – although it must not have seemed so at the time – was that it took Charles nearly two months to raise the necessary money. During that time, dysentery took a serious toll on Ragnar’s army. So many Vikings died, that the Parisians viewed it as a miracle, claiming that saint Germain was (belatedly) punishing the Norsemen for defiling his abbey.

  As soon as Ragnar was paid, the spoils were loaded onto the ships, along with a heavy iron bar from the city gate to prove that he had taken the city. He proceeded in easy stages down the Seine, taking the time to plunder the trading and fishing ports along the coastline. He and his men arrived in Denmark fantastically wealthy, and with reputations to match. Ragnar himself presented the loot to king Horik, boasting about how easy it was to obtain. The only resistance he met, he reportedly said, was from the long-dead saint Germain. The implication was clear. The days of Charlemagne were gone. There was nothing now to fear from the Franks.

  Ragnar may have been right about Charles the Bald, but not every Frankish ruler was weak. Charles’ powerful half-brother, Louis the German, the immediate southern neighbor of Horik, was not amused by Viking raids, and had immediately sent a delegation to the Danish king to demand the return of all Frankish goods. This was no idle request. A word from Louis would send an imperial army flooding into Denmark, in numbers and quality that Horik couldn’t hope to resist. Embarrassingly for the Viking king, these east Frankish delegates had been present for Ragnar’s little speech, and they made it clear that if Horik wanted to prevent a war he would have to accept Louis the German as his overlord.