The Sea Wolves: A History of the Vikings

by Lars Brownworth

By the end of the decade, Ireland was in serious danger of being completely overrun. Its petty kings were too involved with their own feuds to unite, so clerics began to take the field. The abbot of Terryglass was killed leading the local militia, and the abbot of Armagh was captured together with the relics of St. Patrick. It seemed only a matter of time before the Vikings would have the entire island in their grip.

  It came as a profound relief, both spiritually and physically therefore, that in 845 Thorgils was captured by the high king of Tara, Mael Seachlinn. How the king managed to do this remains somewhat of a mystery. It’s only recorded that Thorgils was seized through trickery and not battle. The hated Viking was tied up, weighed down with stones, and thrown into a river to drown.50

  The death of Thorgils ended the Viking dream of ruling a united, pagan Ireland, and it also shattered the Vikings themselves. The first raiders had been Norwegian, but now Danes were beginning to show up in increasing numbers, and tensions between the two groups had reached boiling point. The death of Thorgils removed the lone figure respected by both sides, and in 850 a Viking civil war broke out over the control of Dublin.

  The Irish were the main beneficiaries of the struggle between the Dubgaill (‘black foreigners’ ie Danes) and the Findgaill (‘white foreigners’ ie Norwegians). In the first year of the war a Danish force managed to batter its way over the walls and sack Dublin, but the Norwegians counterattacked, slaughtering the Danes in a bloody three-day battle. Adding to the chaos was a third group, the offspring of mixed marriages between Irish and Vikings who were called Gallgoidel or ‘foreign Irish’.51 The Gallgoidel fought for whichever side offered them a better deal, and most often as mercenaries for themselves.

  Gradually, the native Irish began to drive the distracted Vikings back to the coasts. The High King, Mael, crushed a Viking army attempting to enter his territory, leaving seven hundred dead on the field. The same year, one of the king’s allies caught a raiding party of two hundred and wiped them out. King Mael even reached out to Charles the Bald, seeking a military alliance against the Vikings.

  While the Vikings were entrenched enough to defend themselves against native assaults – Dublin was attacked six times, each with disastrous results for the Irish – the real threat to their security came from within. The leader of the Norwegians was Olaf the White, the son of a Norwegian warlord who had arrived in Dublin the year of Thorgils’ death. The Danes, on the other hand, were led by his distant kinsman Ivar the Boneless, eldest son of Ragnar Lothbrok.

  It’s unclear when exactly Ivar reached Ireland, but the Danes rallied behind him. Of all of Ragnar’s children, Ivar the Boneless was the most enigmatic. The Vikings themselves had contradictory legends about the meaning of his nickname. Some claimed that he was born completely without bones, but had supernatural strength and height, others that his legs had only gristle, forcing him to be carried into battle on a shield.52 Since it’s highly unlikely that the Vikings would have respected a handicapped person, or that he would have had such a long and successful career of raiding with such a disability, a more likely explanation is that he was double-jointed. Such flexibility would be useful on the battlefield, and given his family’s connection with snakes – his brother was named Sigurd-snake-in-the-eye – it would have been an apt description.

  What all the Sagas do agree on, however, is that Ivar was remarkably cunning. “It is doubtful”, Ragnar’s Saga claimed, “if anyone has ever been wiser than he.” His actions in Dublin seem to support this. Arriving in Dublin in force, he offered to split command of the city with his rival rather than weaken both of them in a protracted struggle. Olaf agreed, and the two of them took the joint title of king.

  Neither Viking ruler was interested in pursuing Thorgils’ old dream of conquering Ireland. It had become clear that much of Ireland was practically beyond the Viking reach. The bogs and forests of the interior were too treacherous for bands of Vikings to penetrate, and the past several decades had warned the Vikings from wandering too far from the coasts. There were, however, more tempting opportunities elsewhere.

  Since its founding around the year 841, Dublin had quickly prospered, becoming one of the busiest trading ports of the Viking world. Other Viking longphorts in Limerick, Waterford, Wexford, and Cork were also flourishing, but none as quickly as Dublin. It was already connected to the main commercial centers in Norway, England, and the Frankish kingdoms, and was a regular port of call for Vikings raiding throughout the North Atlantic.

  Perhaps it was from these sources that knowledge of the rich kingdoms to the east first filtered through to Ivar. Or perhaps, he really was out to satisfy a blood debt for the death of his father. Either way, in 865 Ivar the Boneless decided to invade England.

  Chapter 5

  The Great Heathen Army

  “Pagans from the northern regions came… like stinging hornets and spread on all sides like fearful wolves.”

  - Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

  Unlike its unfortunate neighbors to the south and west, England had hitherto largely escaped the attentions of Viking raiders in the ninth century. There had been sporadic raids since the attack on Lindisfarne, but these had been relatively small and limited operations. Most monasteries were on the alert, and when one was raided, the other communities would usually scatter, ruining the chances of the Vikings obtaining further loot. In 825, for example, word reached the monks of Iona that there were raiders in the area. Most of the community fled, carrying the relics of St. Columba and the other portable treasures with them. Only the abbot and a handful of monks stayed behind to tend to the priory church. A few days later the Vikings struck, bursting into the church in the middle of a Mass. The monks were butchered immediately, but the abbot was kept alive and questioned as to where he had hidden the valuables. When he refused to divulge the secret, the Vikings hacked off his limbs on the steps of the high altar and left him to die.

  As brutal as these attacks were, however, they had been mercifully rare. This was at least in part due to the fact that the English were more politically organized than their Irish neighbors. Political organization, however, had not kept Charlemagne’s empire safe, and it could only deter major Viking attacks in Britain for so long. In the 830’s the raids began to intensify. The first years of the decade saw Vikings off the Kentish coast where they overran the island of Sheppey. For the next fifteen years, the Vikings used this as a base to raid and interfere in English politics. When Cornwall revolted against the West Saxons, the Vikings assisted them, eroding the power of Wessex. The West Saxon king, Egbert, raised an army to confront them but was soundly defeated. After brushing aside another army of Wessex men, the Vikings ravaged East Anglia and Kent, and sacked the city of Rochester. In 844, they extended their reach into Northumbria, restoring an ousted king by killing his rival.

  In 850, their tactics – as they had elsewhere – abruptly changed from seasonal raiding to outright conquest. That autumn they seized the island of Thanet off the Kentish coast, and wintered there. The presence of 350 ships at the mouth of the Thames so alarmed the West Saxon king Aethelwulf that he sent his son Alfred to Rome to petition God’s support.53

  Fortunately for Wessex – in the short term at least – the Vikings decided to target the other major state, Mercia which had absorbed most of its smaller neighbor Essex. Several hundred of them stormed Canterbury and burned London, forcing the Mercian king Berhtwulf to muster his army. Normally, the Vikings avoided pitched battles, but this time they had the numbers to feel confident. After a brief struggle, the Mercian shield wall broke, and Berhtwulf and his army fled.

  Instead of continuing deeper into Mercia, however, the Vikings crossed into Surrey to break the power of Wessex. Yet, this time, instead of an overwhelming victory, they suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of king Aethelwulf and his sons. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle gushed that it was “the greatest slaughter ever heard of.”54 It must not have been too crushing, though, for the next year the Vikings tried again. This time they attac
ked the West Saxon capital of Winchester, but were again driven off.

  The campaign taught the Vikings several valuable lessons. The first was that there was much plunder to be had. London and Canterbury in particular had been rich targets, and there were sure to be more such cities further inland. Second, it also revealed the relative strengths of the four English kingdoms. A Viking force could stand against a royal army in the field and come out the victor. They had failed only because they had lacked a unified strategy, and had been severely outnumbered. Ivar’s attempt would correct these mistakes.

  In 865, Ragnar’s son launched the largest invasion of the British Isles in recorded history. He sailed from Dublin with two of his brothers, Halfdan ‘of the wide embrace’ and Ubba, as well as his colleague Olaf the White. Navigating their way along the southern coast, they landed in East Anglia without opposition. The locals immediately raised a sum of money to bribe them to go away; the first example of Danegeld in England. Ivar took their money, but had no intention of leaving. He had command of a force so massive that the English referred to it simply as “the great heathen army”.55

  Unlike previous Viking forces, this was not just a collection of war bands, but was under the unified command of a single leader and his ruthless lieutenants. It was highly mobile and could break into component parts and reform according to terrain or need.

  Tremendous planning had gone into the creation of the army. Men had been recruited from the Norwegian fjords, the Frisian islands, the western Baltic, and Denmark. They were drawn both by the lure of wealth and, now for the first time, the possibility of acquiring land. Ivar seems to have intended to settle on English soil and to rule as a major king to rival the warlords in Scandinavia. His colleague, Olaf the White, would most likely return in Dublin once the fighting was done. In fact, Olaf quickly broke off from the main army and confined himself to the western Scottish and Welsh coasts, territory which could be safely controlled from Ireland.

  Ivar’s plan was to pick off the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms one by one. His first order of business was to gather supplies for the coming campaigning season. In its entry for the year 865, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle compactly describes his success in intimidating the locals into giving him what he needed: “A great heathen army came into England and took up winter quarters in East Anglia; and there were supplied with horses and the East Angles made peace with them.”

  The Vikings stayed in East Anglia well into the next year, systematically stripping the surrounding countryside of its food. When the autumn harvest approached, Ivar commandeered it, then finally (after accepting yet another round of bribes) ordered his men to ride north along an old Roman road.

  Intriguingly, considering the legends about how Ivar’s father had met his end, the Viking’s target was the kingdom of Northumbria. The Northumbrians had recently driven out their king and replaced him with a tyrant named Aella – the man who had allegedly killed Ragnar Lothbrok. Now Ragnar’s sons had come for a reckoning.

  Ivar, however, wouldn’t have needed to march north out of filial loyalty. The Vikings were well acquainted with the northernmost kingdom. Its main city of York, positioned on a tributary of the Humber, led directly to the North Sea, and had been a site of trade between England and the rest of Europe since ancient times. Over the years, an international merchant community plying wine and other perishable commodities, had grown up in the city, and by the mid-ninth century it probably had its share of Scandinavians who had arrived as merchants since the city was too well fortified to be taken by the usual small Viking party. Capturing the city had clear benefits; surrounded by rich farmlands, and located half way between Dublin and the coastline of north-west Europe, it was also connected to ports on the west coast by the well maintained Roman roads. If the Vikings took York, they would have access to multiple trading centers and be able to avoid the treacherous six-hundred mile sea route around the north of Scotland.

  The great heathen army arrived before York’s walls on All Saint’s Day, November 1, 866. Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, Aella fled, withdrawing to the territory of his ousted predecessor so the two could pool their resources. Unfortunately for York, it took more than four and a half months for the joint army to reach the city, and by that time the Vikings had firmly dug in.

  It was at York, that Ivar the Boneless first showed his cunning. Instead of marching out to meet the two kings, he lured them into the city by purposely neglecting a section of the walls. The Anglo-Saxon army poured in, only to find a labyrinth of carefully prepared traps, and confusing dead-ends. In the street fighting that followed, the English were wiped out and both kings were killed. What was left of the royal court fled north to Scotland.

  If Aella really did kill Ragnar, then Ivar must have relished the opportunity for revenge. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle merely states that ‘the kings of Northumbria were slain’, but the Norse sagas recount a more grisly end. Aella was captured alive and brought before Ivar who ordered that he be subjected to the dreaded ‘blood-eagle’ as a sacrifice to Odin.56 The king was stripped to the waist and tied down to the ground. A Viking warrior hacked at his ribs, breaking them and cutting a deep incision down either side of the spine. The lungs were then pulled out through the wounds and allowed to quiver like a pair of blood-stained wings until the writhing king expired.

  The stories tend to get more lurid with each telling – the latest version had Ivar pouring salt in Aella’s wounds – but Northumbria certainly suffered the most of any English kingdom under Viking domination.57 Ivar clearly saw it as a launching pad for a systematic destruction of the other three kingdoms. To lessen native resistance and free his army up for a sustained push south, he installed an Englishman named Egbert on the throne. Although he had the title of king, Egbert was nothing more than a glorified tax collector for the Vikings. Those who refused to voluntarily contribute to their coffers simply had their land and money seized.

  With the north more or less pacified, the Vikings turned on the neighboring kingdom of Mercia. The city of Nottingham fell with barely a struggle, and as he had done at York, Ivar began to fortify the walls in order to use the city as a base. As a measure of his confidence, the Vikings spent that winter in the camp away from their ships.

  When news of the invasion reached the Mercian king, Burghred, he wisely asked the king of Wessex, Athelred, for help. The two kingdoms were used to working together. Their military alliance had been sealed fourteen years before when Burghred had married Athelred’s sister, and had given a Mercian wife to Athelred’s brother, Alfred. When the appeal for aid came, both brothers responded, leading Wessex’s large army to assist Mercia.

  The next spring, the royal partners marched immediately to Nottingham and attempted to take it by storm. This was the Anglo-Saxon’s best opportunity to defeat the Vikings. The English army was considerably larger than Ivar’s force, and were fighting to defend their homes. The Vikings, on the other hand were looking for plunder - and intended to survive to enjoy it. At the first sign that they might lose the battle they would run, not make some noble last stand. Even better, from the English perspective, Ivar had foolishly left his ships, and was now cut off from reinforcements or communication with other war bands. Without the ability to replenish his forces, each Viking casualty would seriously degrade his ability to continue.

  Ivar was now presented with a difficult choice. If he attacked, the risks were obvious. Although his outnumbered troops were undoubtedly of higher quality than the English, even the best-case scenario involved heavy casualties. If, on the other hand, he stayed behind his walls, he flirted with starvation and disease.

  The issue of supplies is the unappreciated lynchpin of any campaign. As Napoleon said, “an army travels on its stomach‘. To sustain a force of a thousand men, Ivar had to come up with at least two tons of unmilled flour, and a thousand gallons of fresh water per day.58 Supplying his animals made it even more difficult. The five hundred English horses that he had commandeered were smaller
than modern cavalry ones, but each would have had a daily requirement of twelve pounds of grain and at least thirteen pounds of hay, adding up to more than six tons per day.59 There were also serious hygienic concerns with keeping five hundred animals within the confines of the fort. Although horses eat and drink large amounts, they retain very little of it. If properly fed, Ivar’s animals would have produced at least two hundred and eighty gallons of urine, and a ton of manure per day.

  Despite these obstacles, Ivar cleverly chose to stay behind his walls. The English had similar problems of supply, and since there were more of them, it was likely to become acute rather more quickly. Additionally, the Anglo-Saxon militia was composed of peasants who had limited terms of service under arms, and couldn’t stay away from their farms indefinitely. If Ivar could come up with enough food to bide his time, the English army would simply melt away.

  Fortunately for Ivar the tactic worked brilliantly. The Wessex men were needed for the urgent business of bringing in the harvest, and as the days passed the levies began to drift home. Ivar had gambled that his professional warriors could sustain restricted diets longer than their peasant opponents, and had demonstrated superior administrative skills in rationing supplies than the unwieldy Anglo-Saxon army.

  The Mercian part of the army grimly hung on, but it was suffered from desertions, and morale was low. When it had been softened up enough, Ivar proposed a truce. The terms aren’t known, but the Vikings withdrew to York, probably with a payment and some sort of acknowledgement of Burghred’s client status.

  Ivar seems to have had pressing business in Dublin because he left the army under his younger brother Ubba’s command, and crossed the Irish Sea. Without him, the great heathen army confined itself to securing its grip on Northumbria. A year of relative peace followed, allowing the fleeting belief that some sort of stability had been achieved. One English kingdom had been conquered and another maimed, but perhaps the Viking assault had been checked. In 869, however, Ivar slipped back into England and rejoined the army with fresh plans.