Aelfred's Britain

by Adams, Max;

  The experimental ships built at Roskilde and elsewhere have demonstrated without doubt their virtues of speed, manoeuvrability and seaworthiness. Their design allowed them to flex like fish in heavy seas, and the subtly perfect form of the stem, or prow, ensured that high waves were swept beneath the hull: these ships planed over waves rather than plunging into them. That the tools used in their construction were so simple (for the most part axes, adzes, chisels and augers) and that the techniques used in their construction were so refined, is the unwritten testimony of more than a thousand years of seagoing tradition, of a culture umbilically joined to the waters of the Baltic and the north-east Atlantic.

  Much scholarship has been devoted to the question of Viking navigation. First-hand knowledge of inshore waters developed by generations of sailors, traders, fishermen and raiders contributed to the construction of a mental marine chart, the Viking Age ‘Tube map’ described earlier in this chapter. Out of sight of land, greater skill was required to navigate safely. Compasses were unknown in Northern waters in the Viking Age, but knowledge of the positions of the sun, moon and stars, the behaviour of waves and cloud formations, of marine animals and birds, and ‘dead-reckoning’ (calculating one’s position by estimating speed and direction over a long period) must all have been employed. The jury is, as yet, out on the possibility that Scandinavian deep-water skippers made use of crystals such as Icelandic spar, whose properties include polarizing light, to find the direction of the sun beneath cloud.∫∫

  The geography of north-west Europe offered its own characteristic advantages for navigators: sailing west from Norway the north–south alignment of Shetland’s islands and the position of Orkney close to the Scottish mainland meant that landfall was difficult to miss. Those navigating the Outer Hebrides enjoyed similar fortune: one island led south-west towards the next. Britain’s intricate, complex coastlines, with their distinctive headlands, bays and estuaries, were an unfolding chart to the experienced sailor. Local currents, tides and landmarks must all have become part of the conscious repertoire of the seafaring skipper and, as Scandinavian captains and their crews explored increasingly distant waters, their confidence grew.

  It is also a convenient truth that in springtime North Sea currents allow relatively easy passage west despite the prevailing westerlies of these latitudes; and in autumn, both currents and winds provide a reliable passage back to home waters. By the dawn of the ninth century no part of the British coastline was unexplored by Scandinavian seafarers. Orkney and Shetland may even, by 800, have undergone a first phase of Norse settlement.

  A much later source, the thirteenth-century Orkneyinga Saga or History of the Earls of Orkney, gives us an idealized picture of the dedicated Viking life, one dominated by agriculture but infused with the wandering spirit of the seafarer, as convincing a portrait as any written of the archetypal eighteenth-century frigate captain by a long-suffering grass widow. Of Svein Asleifarson we hear that:

  Winter he would spend at home on Gairsay, where he entertained some eighty men at his own expense. His drinking hall was so big, there was nothing in Orkney to compare with it. In the spring he had more than enough to occupy him, with a great deal of seed to sow which he saw to carefully himself. Then, when that job was done, he would go off plundering in the Hebrides and in Ireland on what he called his ‘spring trip’, then back home just after midsummer, where he stayed until the cornfields had been reaped and the grain was safely in. After that he would go off raiding again, and never came back till the first month of winter was ended. This he used to call his ‘autumn trip’.25

  The Roskilde collection allows us to picture the range of ships owned and deployed by these farmer-pirates. We might envision Svein Asleifarson’s vessel as a small longship like Skuldelev 5, 18 yards (16 m) long with twenty-six oars, a crew of thirty men and a maximum speed of 15 knots. Its draught, at just 2 feet (60 cm), allowed it to penetrate the shallowest waters and navigable rivers. But it is possible that he used something more modest; the sort of fishing boat represented by Skuldelev 6, carrying a crew of just fifteen or so. We must, I think, allow for a wide variety of regional and functional types, of traditional style and personal preference; and, indeed, as the Skuldelev vessels show, for conversion, upgrade and modification.

  British and Irish seagoing communities had their distinctive vessels too: there may have been dozens of local and regional forms, from the simple woven lath coracle to a modest skiff rather like the two-bench færing, to the seven-bench assault vessel inferred from the Dál Riatan Senchus fer nAlban.26 The Irish currach, in its many forms, survives as a uniquely adapted boat-building tradition, and a variety of other types is suggested by references in contemporary sources such as Adomnán’s Vita Colombae.

  Only one Insular Viking Age vessel has been recovered by excavation, to tell of an otherwise entirely lost shipbuilding tradition. The Graveney boat, recovered from a muddy channel in Kent in 1970, was a small trading vessel, not unlike a færing in size. When sunk, by accident or design, she was carrying hops and Rhineland quern stones, and must have been typical of boats engaged in small-scale cross-Channel trade in the ninth century. No warship from Irish, Scottish, Welsh or Anglo-Saxon fleets has yet been found intact.

  King Ælfred seems to have been the first to establish something like a strategic fleet for naval defence, although the Franks evidently had substantial numbers of vessels under royal control. For the Insular kingdoms, facing inwards to their rich arable lands and pastures, ships were for trading and fishing, or for small-scale transportation of warriors. With the exception, perhaps, of Dál Riata, they had no overseas ambitions. Their ships were no match for a determined marine assault. Nevertheless, in a naval engagement recorded by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the year 850, Ealdorman Ealhhere and the Kentish regent Æðelstan, eldest son of Æðelwulf, king of Wessex, fought against a Viking fleet at Sandwich in Kent and were able to capture nine ships. That speaks of competence, built up over the previous two generations, to deal with small- and medium-sized fleets.

  If the summer raiding season and the homebound wind were such reliable aids to those skippers who took their men a-Viking, the Atlantic kingdoms must have enjoyed some respite during the months of darkness, storm and ice. At least, that is, until the winter of the year 850 when, for the first time, a Scandinavian fleet, perhaps the remnants of that defeated off Sandwich, made its decision to overwinter on the Isle of Thanet: the prelude to 100 years of invasion, conquest, response and integration.

  * Cowie and Blackmore (2012) estimate some 6,000 inhabitants. I must say I am sceptical of a figure this high; but population of any Early Medieval settlement is notoriously difficult to estimate.

  † The Strand was probably at that time called Akemennestraeteliterally, the road to Bath, the Roman Spa town of Aquae Sulis, later Aquamannia (Watts 2004). The road runs in a giant curve north-west from London towards Bicester before turning south-west.

  ‡ A very useful list of those sources mentioning not just Lundenwic, but also the other major trading settlements of Atlantic Europe, can be found in Hill and Cowie 2001.

  § Boniface was a West Country son of a wealthy family, educated at a monastery near Winchester. He left England in 716 to join Willibrord, the so-called apostle of the Frisians. He was famous for having felled an oak tree sacred to the indigenous pagans. He became archbishop of the newly founded German church and was killed by bandits in 764 on a last mission in Frisia (Talbot 1954).

  # See p. 322.

  ∫ Ecgberht had been exiled in Francia in his youth by Offa and by his predecessor Beorhtric (ASC 839). He may well have known Louis personally.

  Ω A rough equivalent, perhaps, to the wergild or head-price of a hundred ealdormen.

  ≈ Hence such commonplace Middle Saxon place names as Goswick (goose farm); Keswick (cheese farm); Berwick (barley farm), and so on.

  ∂ Cartmel, on the South Cumbrian coast; Gilling in Yorkshire.

  π Died 867; possibly reigning from
849.

  ∆ See below, pp. 101–2; he was killed in battle against the heathens.

  ** A splendid museum nearby tells the story of the settlement, its graves and excavations. Danish archaeology has a long and distinguished tradition of excellence in excavation, publication and display.

  †† Oseberg lies 30 miles (48 km) or so due south of Oslo in Vestfold, Norway. The Gokstad vessel comes from a site just 10 miles (16 km) further south.

  ‡‡ Denmark consists of the northern two thirds of the Jutland peninsula and more than 400 islands. At its closest point the largest island, Sjaelland, is less than 2 miles (3 km) across the Oresund from the coast of Sweden at Helsingborg.

  §§ A keelson was a member running from stem to stern to attach internal framing to the keel below.

  ## Transom: a transverse, flat stern, as if the natural leaf shape curve towards a point has been cut off.

  ∫∫ Sunlight is refracted by the rare crystal in such a way that, in northern latitudes, weak polarization of sunlight can be detected by an observer looking through it in the direction of the sun even on a cloudy day.

  THE INCOMING TIDE

  ST FINDAN—PICTLAND—WALES—THE FIRST —OVERWINTERING—THE WEST SAXON KINGS—THE GREAT HOST—THE CONQUEST OF YORK—ÆLFRED ÆTHELING—A YEAR OF NINE ENGAGEMENTS

  3

  While æðelstan, æðelwulf’s regent in Kent, was considering how to deal with unwel- come winter visitors, the coastal communities of the Irish Sea and the Western Isles counted the human cost of Viking raids. Our most assiduous informants for these events are the monks whose accounts of the lives of saints, in an age when the first flush of monastic fervour had faded, came alive again with the threat of apocalypse and the promise of eternal glory. Martyrdom, the End of Days, miraculous deliverance from the evil heathen, divine punishment for sins: these themes resonate through contemporary literature, from Alcuin’s letters admonishing his peers to the annals of the senior Irish monastic houses. The hagiographers, experiencing the horrors of piracy and destruction at second hand, deployed a full palette of literary and theological imagery to enrich the portraits of their holy men.

  St Findan was a famous ascetic of Rheinau Abbey, founded on an island in the upper reaches of the Rhine, who died around 879 having voluntarily spent the last twenty-odd years of his life as a walled-in hermit under circumstances of extreme privation.1 His improbable life was told prosaically, and with absolute conviction, by those who had known him. He was born in Ireland, in the province of Leinster, in a generation whose parents had become accustomed to the predations of Scandinavian raiders and slave-traders and were hardened to the violence of feud and raiding among rival kindreds.

  10. MENACE ON THE HORIZON: the annals record a litany of attacks on coastal communities.

  This man’s sister, among other women, became a captive of the foreigners who go by the name of Norðmanni, in the course of destructive raids which they made on many parts of the Irish island which is also known as Hibernia. Then the father instructed his son Findan to take a sum of money, ransom his sister and bring her back to him. Accordingly, taking with him some followers and an interpreter he sought eagerly to carry out a father’s instructions and obey the urgings of a brother’s affectionate heart. But early in the course of this mission, he was waylaid by the foreigners, cast into chains and, as was to be expected, brought straight away to their ships which were moored off the nearby shore.2

  11. NORSE RUNES carved into the walls of the Neolithic passage grave at Maes Howe, Mainland, Orkney.

  Findan was bound in chains and left without food or drink. So far his story is conventional: a tale of the indiscriminate inhumanity of terrorism. But his captors, discussing his fate, decided that it was unreasonable to enslave a man who had brought ransom. They let him go, although, we surmise, they kept his money and his sister.

  For a second time, fate conspired against the Irishman. His father’s clan became embroiled in the sort of blood feud that dogged the small kingdoms of Ireland just as it did the disparate tribes of Scandinavia. Its prevalence in Early Medieval society is told in the law codes that proscribe feuding (often in vain, one suspects) and define the values of all classes of men so that their families might claim blood price from the families of perpetrators, instead of perpetuating cycles of violence. In Findan’s case, his father killed a warrior belonging to a rival clan. The chief of his enemies sent a war band to exact revenge, surrounding Findan’s father’s hall, setting fire to it and murdering him as he fled. Findan’s brother was also slaughtered; Findan, enjoying the divine protection which had favoured him before, escaped.

  Peace was eventually restored; compensation paid. But such feuds were not easily laid to rest. Findan’s enemies now conspired to lure him to a feast from which, by prior arrangement, a band of Norse slave-traders kidnapped him. Like common merchandise he was passed from one trader to another before finding himself on board a vessel heading north in company with other raiding parties: north beyond Ireland towards the Minch and Cape Wrath: the cape of storms.

  The western seaways must have bristled with ships during the ninth and tenth centuries. The Hebrides were in the process of being settled by significant numbers of Norse; traders, raiders and fishermen plied the seas during the summer months between Ireland and Norway in increasingly large fleets, raiding for slaves and church relics, fishing, sealing and whaling in the rich waters and trading with settlers in furs, antler, steatite (soapstone) and wool. The sheltered east coasts of Uist, Harris and Lewis provided harbours in which to establish longphuirt; the machair* of the west offered fertile, frost-free farming; perhaps also freedom from stifling overlordship.

  The convoy carrying Findan and his fellow slaves now encountered another fleet of Norse. They parleyed; a fight broke out and became deadly serious. Findan, shackled, nevertheless acquitted himself with distinction in the ensuing pandemonium and was rewarded by having his shackles removed. So it came about that when the fleet reached Orkney the pirates went ashore to rest and take on fresh water and Findan was given his parole until such time as favourable winds might carry them eastwards, and home.

  In an episode reminiscent of David Balfour’s Hebridean adventure in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Highland novel Kidnapped, Findan found a boulder by the shore beneath which he might hide. Between the tide-washed rock and his Norse captors, he chose exposure, hunger and the risk of drowning; after two days the pirates sailed away, having failed to discover his cave. Like David Balfour, on exploring his new world he found that he was marooned on an island—Hoy, probably—with no human habitation and with no food to sustain him. Eventually, near starving and casting his lot in with sea monsters and dolphins, he leapt into the perilous waters of Hoy Sound and was miraculously carried by the tides (the tidal races around Orkney are among the fiercest in the world) to Mainland, where he found sanctuary with a Christian bishop who happened to speak the Irish language.†

  12. ‘A FOREIGN ARMY sat in York’s crumbling ruins’: the fourth-century remains of the emperor Constantine’s tower.

  The Annals of Ulster offer a more laconic but chilling account of events: a litany of destruction. Under the year 825, for example, are listed Mag Bile (Movilla in Co. Down), burning with its oratories; the plundering of Inis Daimle and Dún Lethglaise; a great pestilence across Ireland; and a rout inflicted by the Ulaid‡ on the heathen—they did not always have it their own way. The last entry for that year, written as if in bland disgust at such a comprehensive butcher’s bill, recounts ‘the violent death of Blamac son of Flann at the hands of the heathen in Í Coluim Cille’: Iona. Walafrid Strabo, Carolingian court scholar and abbot of the island monastery of Reichenau on Lake Constance, must have felt a special affinity with his brothers far away on Iona, most celebrated of the western monasteries. A fascinating, if grisly, story of Viking predation is contained in a poem he composed about Abbot Blamac (or Blathmac), who, he wrote, had come to Iona ‘wishing to endure Christ’s scars, because there many a paga
n horde of Danes is wont to land, armed with malignant greed’.3

  Blathmac was blessed, if that is the right word, with foresight of an impending attack, sensing that ‘the approaching wolves were hastening’ towards the island. Many of the brethren scattered, taking footpaths to the remotest parts of Iona where they might hide; but Blathmac stayed behind, praying in Colm Cille’s church. The pirates (historians generally agree that they were probably Norwegians rather than Danes) burst into the abbey buildings, slaying those who had remained to celebrate mass with their abbot.§ The intruders now demanded that Blathmac surrender the shrine of Colm Cille, with its precious relics. Many of Iona’s treasures must already have been plundered or taken to safety at Kells in Ireland; what remained on the island had been buried by the monks in a barrow beneath a pile of turfs, according to Strabo. Blathmac’s refusal to give up the shrine ensured his martyrdom, ‘torn limb from limb’ by the impious barbarians, and he became a glorious exemplar for the faithful of those troubled times, his story travelling the length and breadth of Christian Europe.

  *

  The fortunes of the secular Scottish kingdoms in the ninth century,# and of the vast bulk of small, rural settlements whose labour supported them, are more difficult to track than the fates of the martyrs. Few indigenous annals survive: there is no remotely contemporary Pictish text nor any from the kingdom of Strathclyde, and only one from Dál Riata.∫ Partial genealogies of kings, surviving in later material, allow historians to reconstruct a few fragments of a lost narrative. For the most part, Scottish kingdoms feature only when Irish or Northumbrian interests there drew the attention of their annalists, or when much later Norse sagas wrote down the creation myths of their own kind. But the enigmatic art of Pictland is still a very active focus for research and, now and then, a ‘new’ sculpture turns up. Historical geography yields fresh perspectives on landscape, territory and political developments from the analysis of existing material. Only archaeology can produce substantial new material, and its wheels grind slowly, if sometimes spectacularly.