The Sea Wolves: A History of the Vikings

by Lars Brownworth

The next two decades saw York ruled by a succession of Viking kings, each trying to fend off Athelstan and put Sitric’s possessions back together. His son, Olaf Sitricsson, came the closest, conquering York in 941, and leading an ambitious invasion to bring the entire Danelaw under his control. If he could convince the Danish population of the north to make common cause with him, England would be divided between rival kingdoms.

  It appeared at first as if the English nightmare would become a reality. When confronted with the Hiberno-Norse army, the people of Northumbria pledged their loyalty to Olaf. When Edmund arrived, however, they switched their loyalties again, and Olaf was forced to withdraw. The English pursued them all the way to York where Olaf admitted defeat and came to terms. He accepted the English as his overlords, and was baptized with king Edmund standing in as his godfather.

  Olaf would probably have tried again, but in 944 he was expelled by the people of York, and forced to flee to Dublin. Bad news continued to plague him, as that year Dublin was sacked by the Irish High King, and Olaf only just managed to maintain control. With Dublin badly weakened, the Viking grip on York waned, and the English seized control of the city.

  As the Vikings of Ireland entered a period of relative weakness, other Viking adventurers began to cast interested eyes on York. The most ambitious of these was Erik Bloodaxe of Norway. He was one of at least twenty sons of the first Norwegian king, Harald Fairhair, and according to later accounts, showed tremendous potential as a Viking from an early age. When he turned twelve, he left Norway to go adventuring, and spent the next decade raiding up and down the coasts from France to northern Russia.

  These exploits won him the affection of his father, who made it known that he wanted Erik to succeed him. That didn’t sit well with Erik’s older half-brothers, but when two of them protested, Erik resolved the issue by murdering them with an axe. Two other siblings marshaled armies to depose Erik, but he brutally suppressed them as well, and they met the same fate. Erik – now called ‘bloodaxe’ for his method of fratricide – was accepted as king of Norway. Unsurprisingly, he was unable to keep the throne for long. The brutality he had shown in cutting his way to the crown was a prelude to how he would rule, and the increasingly despotic reign lost the support of both commoners and nobles or jarls. After only a brief time on the throne, Erik was run out of Norway by his youngest brother Håkon the Good.

  Erik seems to have resorted to what he was best at – raiding – and while pillaging in the north learned that York had expelled its king. Using the dissatisfaction with English rule, which had already alienated the Danish population, he managed to get himself crowned king of York.

  He quickly found himself between a rock and a hard place. The new English king, a capable warrior named Eadred, had no intention of letting another Viking establish himself in York, and induced the Scots to raid Northumbria. At the same time the English sovereign moved north, promising the inhabitants of Northumbria severe punishment if they didn’t expel Erik. Once again, the Danish population refused to rally around a Scandinavian monarch, and Erik was run out of England.

  That cleared the way for Olaf Sitricsson to return from Dublin, but he quickly squandered any goodwill and was driven back to Ireland by his own subjects after only three years. By that time it was clear that the constant changing of power had eroded whatever support there was in the north for Viking rule, and doomed Sitric’s old dream of a united York and Dublin. The Danes of Yorkshire may have still gone by Viking names and abided by Viking law, but they no longer considered themselves Vikings. For the most part they had accepted Christianity and developed a settled, landed class. They no longer viewed the adventurers from Norway or Ireland as kinsmen, seeing them instead as disruptive forces, if not outright enemies. They preferred the stable, Christian kings of Wessex to the violent sea-kings of the north, and that realization marked the first real assimilation of the Danelaw into the kingdom of England.

  This failure of a Scandinavian kingdom to take root was by no means inevitable. The first generation of Vikings may have been too restless to be good administrators, but their successors undoubtedly would have learned. Both Ivar the Boneless and Guthrum had given land to their veterans and styled themselves as Anglo-Saxon kings. Over time, the Viking population adopted the religion, fashions, and even the farming techniques of the English, a process which should have resulted in a strong Viking state in the north, similar to that which developed in Normandy.

  It didn’t only because Alfred and his two successors were shrewd enough to allow the Vikings of the Danelaw to maintain their traditions, while building up a strong, centralized English state. In the end, the fading Norse language and cuisine wasn’t enough to maintain a Scandinavian identity. Once the population of the Danelaw realized that they had more in common with their neighbors to the south than with the immigrants from the north, it was only a matter of time before the region was swallowed up by the English king.

  Viking York still had one gasp of life left in it. In 952 Erik Bloodaxe stormed back into England at the head of a small Viking army. He smashed a combined Scottish and Welsh army and was accepted as king in York. A man with the nickname ‘bloodaxe’, however, was hardly the one to win over a population that was disillusioned with Viking rule. After two years of Erik’s increasingly harsh reign, he was thrown out by the people of York and assassinated while trying to recruit another army.71 York was absorbed permanently into the English kingdom and never again had a Viking king.

  Chapter 9

  The Battle of Clontarf

  “Many have been brought to death by overconfidence.”

  - The Saga of Grettir the Strong

  Across the Irish Sea, the kingdom of Dublin was also faltering. In some ways, the repeated attempts to conquer and hold on to York had drained Viking Ireland of its energy. The potential conquest of Ireland had been sacrificed for the mirage of a watery empire, and now Dublin would pay the price.

  After he had been driven from York, Olaf Sitricsson tried to expand his power in Ireland, but ran into serious resistance from the growing strength of the High King Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill of Meath, an area directly west of Dublin. In 980, Olaf, by now in his late sixties, decided to put an end to the threat by recruiting Vikings from the Scottish coast and the Hebrides to help him cow the Irish into submission. The two armies met near the hill of Tara, traditional seat of the High King.

  The battle resulted in the worst Viking defeat ever suffered in Ireland, and effectively ended Dublin’s role as a dominant power on the island.72 Olaf’s oldest son and successor was killed, and the Viking army disintegrated. The victorious Irish occupied Dublin and forced its citizens to pay a heavy tribute. Olaf either abdicated or was forcibly removed from power and – in a moment rich in irony – joined the monastery of Iona where he lived out the remainder of his life as a simple monk. From that point on, the Vikings in Ireland were a subordinate power, used as allies by feuding kings, but no longer a credible threat to the native Irish.

  King Máel was the big winner in the long struggle with the Vikings. Meath emerged as the dominant kingdom, and established a virtual lock on the office of High King. Meath’s only real competition came from Munster, an area in the remote southwest, whose ambitious king, Brian Bóruma, had won a reputation by clearing the Vikings out of western Ireland.73

  Brian was a parvenu, a second rate minor lord from a backwater kingdom, but he had already shown something approaching brilliance for the equally bruising worlds of politics and war. The youngest of twelve sons, Brian had survived a Viking attack in his youth and had been educated in a monastery in Munster where he learned to play the harp; after his death the instrument was adopted as a symbol of Ireland in his honor. He became proficient in several languages, including both Latin and Greek. His study of the life of Julius Caesar in particular stayed with him, as he was struck by the great general’s ability to keep his enemies off balance, as well as his habit of memorizing battle plans to prevent them from being intercepted
.

  When he inherited the kingship of Munster, he put this into action by using the Viking’s tactics against them. He sent his armies on lightning raids into the interior, often using captured Viking ships to lead the way. With this unorthodox combination of naval and land attacks, he steadily imposed his authority throughout the southwest. Recognition of this remarkable achievement came in 997 when he forced Máel Sechnaill, the reigning High King, to share power with him. Máel would retain the title of High King, but Brian would independently control the south. For all practical purposes, there were now dual High Kings.

  However creaky the new alliance was, it allowed the main powers in Ireland to unite for the first time against the Vikings. This was put to a serious test in 999 when Sitric Silkbeard, the last great Viking figure of Irish history, joined the men of Leinster in a revolt against Brian. The two High Kings led a joint campaign, trapping the rebels in a narrow valley and slaughtering most of them. Dublin was occupied again, and Sitric only kept his throne by swearing fealty to Brian.

  The victory strained the alliance almost more than a defeat. It was galling enough for Máel to share power with a jumped-up nobody, but the next year Brian inflicted a worse humiliation by claiming the High Kingship for himself, thereby demoting Máel. This set in motion a series of intrigues – convoluted even for Irish history – to bring down the meteoric Brian Bóruma.

  The plan was hatched in Dublin by Sitric Silkbeard and aided in secret by Máel Sechnaill who was still smarting from his demotion from High King.74 They were joined in 1005 by other Irish warlords who were alarmed by Brian’s naked ambition. In that year, Bóruma had taken a pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Patrick at Armagh and left twenty ounces of gold on the altar. He had then instructed a scribe to sign his name in the cathedral’s record book with the title Imperator Scottorum – Emperor of the Irish. His grand vision, he now revealed, was to hammer together the divided tribes into a single nation, ruled over by a single king.

  This meant a demotion for every other ruling figure in Ireland, and – as Bóruma steadily made it a reality over the next decade – drove a number of sub kings into the arms of Sitric’s alliance. By 1014, Sitric felt strong enough to openly defy the High King. To bolster the rebel forces he called in Viking allies from the Isle of Man led by their earl Brodir, mercenaries from Iceland, and even the famed adventurer Sigurd the Stout of Orkney who brought with him a dreaded Raven banner of Odin.75

  This grand alliance of rebels, however, never really got off the ground. The size of the army that Brian Bóruma mustered unnerved Sitric, and he quietly withdrew from his own rebellion. His counterpart Máel came to the same conclusion, and decided to remain on the sidelines and throw in his forces with whatever side seemed to be winning.

  Even without the two protagonists that had initiated the revolt, the remaining allies decided to go ahead with the rebellion. As planned, the army assembled in Dublin, which proved somewhat awkward for Sitric since he was now attempting to play the part of loyal vassal of Brian. The two sides met on the morning of April 23, 1014, on the plain of Clontarf, just west of Dublin.

  The Battle of Clontarf, fought portentously on Good Friday, has been hailed as the most significant event in Irish history. It is traditionally said to be the defining moment in two centuries of resistance to Viking invasion, the great victory of Christian Ireland over the pagan Viking horde. Brian Bóruma, the great secular figure of Irish history, is celebrated as the man who united the country, drove out the northern invaders, and secured Irish independence.

  The reality, however, is a bit more complicated. Clontarf wasn’t fought to drive out the Viking invader, but to decide who would be High King in Ireland. There was, in fact, no longer much difference between the Norse of Dublin, and the native Irish. Sitric Silkbeard was probably more Celtic than Viking, and as Christian as Brian.76 He built the first cathedral in Dublin, minted coins with the sign of the cross, and made at least two pilgrimages to Rome. He may have called in pagan Viking allies like Brodir of Man to fight for him, but Brian did the same. Brodir’s brother Ospak fought for the High King, as did several Viking companies. Furthermore, Brian Bóruma himself – now in his late eighties – played no part in the battle. He retired to a hill above Clontarf to pray, delegating the task of leading the army to his son, Murchad.

  Medieval war was the job of the young. The two armies, evenly matched, formed into long rows, men shoulder to shoulder with their spears raised and their shields overlapping. From then on it was only a question of who would break first as the lines slammed into each other. It was an exhausting form of combat with men heaving against the opposing shields, hacking from the front or attempting to stab underneath the unyielding wooden wall.

  The brutal contest lasted all day, as both shield walls bent, but neither broke. The allied army had more to lose, and at first held the upper hand, driving Brian’s forces back. But in the murderous hand-to-hand fighting that followed, they were in turn forced to retreat toward the small bridge that spanned the Liffey River.

  Two of Brian’s grandsons were killed in the assault, but they forced the Viking, Brodir of Man, to flee, badly weakening the allied army. Fortunately for the rebel cause – at least according to a colorful Viking account – Sigurd the Stout managed to rally them by waving the Raven banner. This was a considerable act of courage for the Vikings believed that the banner would bring victory to whoever held it, but at the price of the holder’s death.77

  In a scene worthy of the best Norse sagas, Sigurd was confronted by Brian’s son Murchad. The prince – who given his father’s age was at least in his early sixties – carried a sword in each hand and was riding a white horse like some figure out of early Irish legend. With one sword he knocked Sigurd’s helmet off, and with the other he slashed his throat, killing him instantly. One of Sigurd’s men struck Murchad in the belly, spilling his intestines, but before he died, Murchad managed to pull the Viking’s chain mail over his head and stab him three times in the chest.

  As with all medieval battles, the end came quickly and bloodily. When Sigurd fell the allied shield wall broke, and Bóruma’s forces swept them from the field. Men were cut down as they attempted to flee or drowned as they tried to cross the Liffey. Roughly two thirds of those who took part were killed, and more Vikings died than in any other single battle in Irish history. Any Viking mercenary who was caught was killed, although Dublin itself was spared since Sitric had the foresight to abandon the coalition before the fighting started.

  But the losses on Brian’s side had been appalling as well. The High King’s eldest son and heir had died, along with two of Brian’s grandsons, a nephew, a brother, and innumerable other clan leaders of his allies. In perhaps the cruelest twist, the High King himself had also fallen. From his vantage point above the battle Brian Bóruma had witnessed the Viking line splintering and had withdrawn to his tent to pray, attended by a single servant. There, alone and virtually unattended, the victorious emperor of Ireland had been killed by a group of fleeing Vikings.

  The most common version of his death, says that it was Brodir of Man who dispatched him. The Viking chief stumbled on Brian’s tent with two companions as they tried to escape the carnage of the battlefield. His men mistook the king – holding a crucifix and kneeling in prayer – for a priest, but Brodir recognized Brian. With a single stroke of his battle-axe he split the old man’s skull, then fled, leaving the High King dead behind him.78

  As time passed, it became clear that the victory at Clontarf had been a pyrrhic one, and that Brian’s great dream of a united Ireland had died with him. His younger son inherited the ‘empire’, but he lacked the charisma of his father and was unable to hold it together. Within a few years his control barely extended to the old kingdom of Meath, the endless petty wars had resumed, and Máel Sechnaill had recaptured the title of High King. For those who lived through them, the decades of Brian’s rule must have seemed like a mirage. They had started with Máel as High King and Sitric as ruler of D
ublin, and now that he was gone, nothing at all had changed.

  Although Dublin kept its Viking kings for the next century and a half, it was reduced to a minor role, dominated by the nearby kingdom of Leinster. In any case, it had long since ceased to be purely Viking, and was well on the way to being completely assimilated. Its last king, Ascall mac Ragnaill, was killed by Henry II’s forces when the English invaded Ireland in 1171.

  The Viking legacy in Ireland is a tangled one. They founded the island’s first commercial cities – Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Wexford, and Waterford – but they also fully justified their reputation as destructive raiders by wrecking an Irish culture that was in its prime.79 Monasteries and churches were plundered, homes were destroyed, and countless innocents were either killed or dragged off into slavery.

  It is the latter sin that is most held against them today. Although slavery existed in Ireland before the first Viking came – St. Patrick himself had been captured by Irish slavers – it had died out by the eighth century. The Vikings reintroduced it, at first taking their slaves or thralls back to Scandinavia or selling them in Islamic markets, but later retaining their captives to serve them in Ireland. The Irish understandably considered this a mortal insult, so they retaliated by starting a slave-trade of their own – using only captured Vikings. Before long, it became a status symbol to own slaves, and as the Vikings faded, their place was taken by native Irish.

  The Church railed against the practice, citing the words of St. Patrick whose own horrified experience had convinced him of its evils, but if anything, the slave trade increased. By 1171 it had reached such a pitch that when Ireland was invaded by English armies – the start of centuries of oppression – an Irish cleric drew the damning conclusion that God had sent the English to end the slave trade.

  The real Viking legacy in Ireland is the city of Dublin. After the time of Sitric it might have been reduced to a minor political power, but the same period saw its steady growth as a center of trade. It was especially well-known for its luxury goods, and became an international hub of gold, silver, weapons, silks, and horses. It was the Vikings of Dublin who introduced the first coinage to Ireland, and gave the island its first distinct class of merchant traders.80 Thanks to the Vikings, Dublin became one of the most profitable ports in Europe, with access to the great trading routes of the Viking world.81