The Sea Wolves: A History of the Vikings

by Lars Brownworth

  80. The Irish word for penny, ‘pingin’ is a Viking word.

  81. It also had the largest slave markets in western Europe since the fall of Rome.

  82. His ancestry is still disputed, although most accept it as Norwegian. Sources that refer to him as Danish usually don’t bother to distinguish between different groups of Vikings, while pro-Danish historians like Saxo Grammaticus are tellingly silent.

  83. The Norse sagas call him Hrolf Granger – Hrolf the Walker.

  84. According to the Normans, Rollo was a part of this raid. There is no compelling reason to doubt the traditional claim, although Rollo doesn’t reliably appear until twenty-five years later. He would have been in his early thirties in 885.

  85. He provoked the Vikings into yet another doomed attack of the northern bridge, hoping that the failure would prove his point. Not surprisingly for the hard-headed Norsemen who had spent months dreaming about the riches behind Paris’ walls, this did not prove compelling.

  86. A better rendering would be Charles the ‘Straight-forward’, as in not flowery or verbose.

  87. His partner was Sigfred who would later lead the attack on Paris.

  88. Interestingly enough, he was given tacit permission to continue plundering Brittany - perhaps as an outlet for any residual Viking tendencies. Charles the Simple was determined not to repeat his cousin’s mistakes.

  89. It could be said that this was a fitting metaphor considering the relationship of later Norman dukes and their nominal French overlords.

  90. In the last glimpse we have of him, he is hedging his bets for the afterlife. He donated a hundred pounds of gold to the Church and sacrificed a hundred prisoners to Odin.

  91. A far more useful bribe was offered by the Count of Brittany who gave Hastein five hundred cows to stop attacking his territory.

  92. Robert was the great-grandfather of Hugh Capet, and therefore the ancestor of the Capetian line of kings which ruled France from 987 until 1328.

  93. This was the Moorish version of ‘Greek Fire’, the Byzantine super weapon.

  94. The ‘Blue’ men were probably Tauregs, a Berber tribe that tatooed themselves extensively. The ‘blacks’ were most likely sub-Saharans who had been captured by the Moors.

  95. The spot they were in was one of the first to be developed as a winter resort destination. In the 18th century it was the place for members of the British upper class to go. The Vikings were clearly on to something.

  96. That at least is the story. Given the Viking sophistication in choosing their targets, however, and the fact that they stayed in the Mediterranean for several years, it is difficult to believe that they would have made such an error.

  97. Luna was certainly plundered, but the way the Vikings got in is not known for sure. Perhaps it was by the following ruse, but a version of the same story is told about nearly every famous Viking or Viking descendant, including the Danish king Frodo, the Norwegian Harald Hardråda, and the Norman Robert Guiscard.

  98. At least from the west. The Vikings would eventually reach it again via Constantinople in the east.

  99. He also seems to have lost his way in a fog.

  100. The earliest Icelandic sources claim that there were some Irish monks on the island when the Vikings arrived. They got there - in what must have been a terrifying experience - by skin boats, tiny crafts without keels which would skim along the top of the waves. They had come in search of a refuge from the world, and wisely fled when the Vikings arrived.

  101. Including Flóki himself. He later returned and spent the rest of his life in Iceland.

  102. The last several centuries have seen an average of one eruption every five years.

  103. This happened as late as 1783. An eruption of the craters around Mt. Laki killed 50% of all cattle, 80% of all sheep, and 75% of all horses. Within three years a third of the population had starved.

  104. Although some Icelanders believe it, there is reason to doubt the story of the founding of Reykjavík. In 1974 during the millennial celebrations, more than a hundred marked pillars were thrown into the ocean along the southeastern and southern coast. None of them made it anywhere near Reykjavík.

  105. A huge number (some say up to a quarter) of all Icelanders were named in honor of Thor during the Viking age. This has declined in modern times, but there are still plenty of Thors, Thorgills, Thorbergs, and Tors, etc

  106. The Vikings had three social classes: Slaves (thralls), freed slaves, and free men. The middle group did not have all the rights of free men.

  107. At their height they boasted eighteen farms. What made even this possible was the presence of hot springs which the colonists used for bathing, dressing their meat, and baking their bread. Unfortunately, this geothermal activity proved the colony’s undoing. In 1346 a volcanic eruption destroyed them completely.

  108. This was the lighter of two possible sentences. The worst crimes were punished by death.

  109. The Inuit population wouldn’t arrive till the fourteenth century.

  110. When water freezes a small amount of heat is released - roughly 80 calories per gram of water frozen. The Vikings noticed that if they continuously watered a plant it would survive through even the most brutal winter.

  111. These are referred to as the ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ Settlements, which can be confusing since they are both on the west coast of Greenland. ‘Northern’ and ‘Southern’ would be more appropriate. A third colony may have been planted between them, but it’s not clear if this was just a part of the Western Settlement.

  112. There is evidence that they reached Disko Bay, two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle.

  113. Leif’s efforts were eventually successful and Greenland was christianized, but the lack of priests led to the development of some curious practices. When a man died, for example, he was buried on his farm in unconsecrated land. A stake was driven through his chest until a priest could arrive - at times more than a year later. The stake was then removed, holy water was poured in the hole, and a funeral service was conducted.

  114. According to the Norse sagas, Erik agreed to go, but fell off his horse while riding to the ship and, seeing this as a sign of bad luck, changed his mind and stayed home.

  115. This was probably the Labrador coast.

  116. Most likely Baffin Island. Viking yarn, tools, and nails have been found on the island.

  117. All of the surviving sagas portray a sad end to Bjarni’s life. Frontier societies are notoriously violent, but Bjarni’s experience was particularly brutal. Armed intruders broke into his home, killed his only son, and abducted his wife. After handing over his ship to Leif, he supposedly committed suicide.

  118. The Inuit name for the region is Auyittuq, ‘the land that never melts’.

  119. Although Leif didn’t establish a colony of Baffin Island, the Viking legacy remains in the name of several of its mountains. The highest peak is Mt. Odin, overlooking the nearby twin peaks of Mt. Asgard. The most famous, however, is Mt. Thor, a massive granite slope shaped like the thunder god’s hammer resting on its side. Its western face features Earth’s tallest vertical drop, some 4,101 feet, the height of nearly four Eiffel Towers stacked on top of each other. The first successful attempt to climb it took 33 days.

  120. This is almost certainly L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland.

  121. They were probably Algonquins.

  122. Five and a half centuries would pass before there was a second.

  123. Thorfinn named it Straumfjord, but its exact location is unknown.

  124. Why they did so is a mystery. Perhaps the pungent Viking dairy products - unknown to the natives - convinced the Skrælings that the Vikings were trying to poison them.

  125. The Icelanders were careful to preserve the stories of the new world. In 1477 Columbus, by his own account, sailed to the island to study these records about the land to the west.

  126. For comparison, Jamestown – in a far more hospitable climate and with the advantage of g
uns – dwindled from 381 settlers to only 90 in its third winter.

  127. Even Scandinavia forgot about them. In 1712, a Danish king who vaguely recalled reading about Greenland, realized that the Viking colony had probably not heard of the Reformation. He sent a protestant missionary to correct the situation, only to discover that the settlement had been abandoned nearly three centuries before.

  128. The Finns were a distinct group of people living to the east of Sweden along the shores of the Baltic.

  129. The English word ‘slave’ comes from the Greek ‘Sklávos’ which originally meant ‘captive’. ‘Slav’ derives from the same root, an indication of the frequency with which they were taken.

  130. The “Rowing Way”.

  131. When a tenth century Byzantine emperor listed the rapids along the Dneiper, he used the Viking names.

  132. Their king lists read like a passage from the Old Testament; David, Joseph, Aaron, Obadiah, etc…

  133. Hygienic standards obviously varied considerably as in Europe at this time the Viking’s bathing habits were considered slightly unmanly. After the 1002 St. Brice’s Day Massacre in England, John of Wallingford denounced the Danes for their excessive cleanliness. Among other sins, they combed their hair daily, bathed on the Sabbath, and frequently changed clothes.

  134. Askold was supposedly a grandson of Ragnar Lothbrok.

  135. Most prominent was the monumental statue of Athena from the Parthenon. It was moved to Constantinople some time before the tenth century.

  136. Even the Byzantines found the building miraculous. An old legend had it that an angel came up with the design while the workers were on a lunch break. Coming down from heaven, the angel found only a young boy who had been left to guard the tools. He sent the boy off with the solution, assuring him that he would stand guard until the boy returned. When the architects heard the plan, they realized the mysterious being was an angel, and banished the boy from the capital. The angel, who had promised to stand guard till the boy returned, was therefore forced to remain in the church and watch over it forever.

  137. Even Attila the Hun had thought better of attacking the city when he saw them.

  138. He left a catalogue of all the books he read - most now lost - complete with his notes on what he thought of each. In effect, he created the world’s first book review.

  139. The Bosporus is a notoriously treacherous stretch of water, but according to a later Byzantine source, the origin of the storm was the Virgin’s mantle that Photius had brought down to the sea and dipped into the water.

  140. His dynasty came to an end with the death of Feodor I in 1598.

  141. Today he is better known by his Slavic name, Oleg.

  142. The Russian Primary Chronicle makes the absurd claim that there were two thousand ships and eighty thousand men. Byzantine sources - for obvious reasons - pretend the attack never happened.

  143. They guarded it so zealously that even today we’re not quite sure how it was made.

  144. The fear was that overuse would allow an enemy to reverse engineer it, a worry that in the Arabs’ case proved accurate.

  145. His nickname was Basil the Bulgar-Slayer. After one battle, he is said to have gouged out the eyes of fifteen thousand prisoners.

  146. Anna icily accused her brother of selling her like a slave.

  147. Throughout their history, the Varangians were famously loyal to the throne, not necessarily to the man on it. They were sworn to serve the current occupant not avenge the previous one.

  148. They were responsible, among other things, with guarding the keys to whatever city the emperor was visiting.

  149. This was like a more dangerous Viking version of a modern cruise. The fun of travel without all the hassles of booking hotels or planning meals.

  150. A document of the period refers to the ‘language of the Varangians’ as English.

  151. Outside of the Byzantine Empire, this was the first legal tax system in Eastern Europe.

  152. He left a detailed account of the entire ceremony in a book he wrote to his son.

  153. This includes the yearly influx of Vikings from Scandinavia.

  154. She had certainly earned her saintly credentials, however, by her robust adoption of the faith. In 1547 the Orthodox Church proclaimed her a saint, giving her the title Isapóstolos ‘Equal to the Apostles’, an honor only four other women share.

  155. Constantinople was called ‘the second Rome’ because of its function as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. When it fell in 1453, Orthodox Russian Christians dubbed Moscow ‘the third Rome’.

  156. Sviatoslav apparently impressed the barbarians with his last stand. Their leader allegedly drank a toast from the skull-cup and prayed that he would have a son as brave as the dead warlord.

  157. According to one source they were Christians that Vladimir had killed as a human sacrifice to consecrate the temple.

  158. Vladimir supposedly said “Vodka is the joy of the Russians and we can’t do without it.”

  159. Generally speaking, the great religious dividing line in the east was along the forest / steppe border. The Vodka drinkers of the forests tended to embrace Christianity, while the hashish smokers of the steppes converted to Islam.

  160. This was designed by the missionary St. Cyril who discovered that the Slavs didn’t have a written language. He based it on his native Greek alphabet.

  161. The best example is the St Sophia of Novgorod that Vladimir built.

  162. At least three different kings of Norway - Olaf the Stout, Magnus Olafsson, and Harald Hardråda - were hosted at Kiev.

  163. A few Scandinavian names did cling on until the fifteenth century, but only in a corrupted form. Ivarr became Igor, Olaf became Uleb, etc.

  164. Although it is notoriously difficult to calculate value across the centuries, one silver penny would probably have fetched several chickens or a dozen loaves of bread in the mid tenth century.

  165. Having accomplished his goal, the dreadlocked king trimmed his mane, earning his surname ‘Fairhair’.

  166. According to later sagas Erik killed eighteen of his nineteen brothers.

  167. He is also called Gorm the Sleepy, or Gorm the Worm. According to tradition he was the son-in-law of Harald Klak, the petty king who had converted to Christianity to enlist the support of the Franks.

  168. Harald’s nickname is thought to be due to a conspicuous rotten tooth.

  169. This is the first mention of ‘Denmark’ as a nation and has therefore been called the country’s “birth certificate”.

  170. Obviously the chronology is confused since Thyra was already dead by this point.

  171. He was fifty-three when Harald Bluetooth converted. He lasted another eleven years on the throne.

  172. This is believed to be the earliest depiction of Christ in northern Europe. A representation of Harald’s Jelling Stone is on the modern Danish passport.

  173. This can best be seen in Viking graves. Danes began to be buried oriented east to west – so they would face the returning Christ – but they still were outfitted with representations of Thor’s hammer and other goods which would come in handy in Valhalla. The tradition of ship burials was also continued, although by this time usually with simple iron nails arranged in the outline of a ship.

  174. The lone exception to this was a twelve-year old boy who defeated a Jomsviking in single combat and was rewarded with membership.

  175. Fittingly, Harald’s name today is ubiquitous as a technology that unites disparate devices. Begun in 1994 by the Swedish company Ericsson, Bluetooth passes information wirelessly between phones and computers regardless of operating system or manufacturer. Just as the tenth century Viking king united fierce rivals, a Samsung phone will now communicate with an Apple computer. The two runes that make up the modern symbol for Bluetooth technology are the king’s initials.

  176. By the tenth century Charlemagne’s old empire had split into three parts - Western Francia ruled by Charles the Simpl
e, Eastern Francia ruled by Louis the Child, and a central kingdom ruled by Louis the Blind.

  177. He was stabbed to death while visiting a royal hall in Dorset.

  178. One of the many great-grandsons of Harald Fairhair, the first king of Norway.

  179. It was a hundred and forty eight feet long, and powered by a crew of sixty-eight rowers.

  180. To put this into context, six times as many Anglo-Saxon coins have been found in Scandinavia as in England. The largest single collection was found in Stockholm.

  181. In 2008, remains of some of the victims of the massacre were found where they had been thrown into a ditch in Oxford.

  182. They did so during a feast that got out of hand, supposedly carrying out the deed with the dinner bones. Thorkell the Tall was so disgusted that he promptly switched sides and fought for Athelred.

  183. This was the first recorded agreement between an English king and his subjects - a grandfather of the Magna Carta and subsequent constitutional history.

  184. During the second battle, Edmund’s forces were winning until Eadric Streona found a man who looked very much like the English king. Cutting off his head, Streona brandished the bloody item and shouted that Ironside was dead. The English soldiers fell back in confusion, and would have been routed but for a heroic stand by the very much alive Edmund.

  185. One English source entertainingly claims that the execution was the result of a chess game. Eadric checkmated the king and despite veiled warnings, uncharacteristically stuck to his decision and refused to change the results.

  186. Earl Godwin distinguished himself during the campaign by leading a daring night raid on one of Cnut’s enemies.

  187. He essentially created a Viking version of the Euro and the Common Market

  188. Cnut’s tradition was to build a church or chapel on the site of his important battles to commemorate those who died there.

  189. The prominent cross, displayed on every Scandinavian flag, is evidence of the thoroughness of the eventual conversion.

  190. In addition to the waning impetus for travel, the Scandinavians didn’t have the population to maintain their naval supremacy. By the fourteenth century German ships of the Hanseatic League had sacked Copenhagen and maintained a trade monopoly within most of Scandinavia.