A Brief History of the Vikings
Page 24
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Halldórsson, Ó. Danish Kings and the Jomsvikings in the Greatest Saga of Óláfr Tryggvason, London: Viking Society for Northern Research.
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__________ Historical Atlas of the Vikings, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995.
Herbert, K. Peace-Weavers and Shield-Maidens: Women in Early English Society, Frithgarth: Anglo-Saxon Books, 1997.
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Jolly, K. Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf Charms in Context, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
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King, C. The Black Sea: A History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Kuparinen, E. An African Alternative: Nordic Migration to South Africa 1815–1915, Helsinki & Turku: Finnish Historical Society & Institute of Migration, 1991.
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_________ and Hermann Pálsson, trans. The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965.
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Marcus, G. The Conquest of the North Atlantic, Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1980.
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Sturluson, S. Heimskringla: History of the Kings of Norway [trans. Lee Hollander], Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964.
_______ King Harald’s Saga: Harald Hardradi of Norway [trans. Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Pálsson], Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966.
_______ The Poetic Edda [trans. Lee Hollander], Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962.
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Williams, A. Aethelred the Unready: The Ill-Counselled King, London: Hambledon and London, 2003.
REFERENCES
Introduction – Britannia Deserta
1 Myres, The English Settlements, pp.119–20.
2 Keppie, The Making of the Roman Army: From Republic to Empire, p.211.
3 Haywood, Dark Age Naval Power, pp.5–6.
4 Ibid., pp.9–10.
5 Ibid., p.35.
6 Gribbin and Gribbin, ‘Climate and History: The Westvikings’ Saga.’ This geologically brief time in the sun came to an end in the sixteenth century, with the onset of a mini-ice age and a drop in temperature of two degrees, one of the results of which was the abandonment of the Greenland colony. See Chapter 10.
7 Myres, The English Settlements, p.16.
8 Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘Arthur’ notes that Arthur first appears in the writings of Nennius, who appears to have confused and conflated earlier accounts that explicitly refer to Ambrosius.
9 Julian, Works of, Loeb Classical Library, 1, XXXIV, pp.89–91.
10 Brønsted, The Vikings, pp.36–7.
11 Wawn, The Vikings and the Victorians, p.3.
12 McEvedy and Jones, Atlas of World Population History, p.52, adds that of that number: ‘. . . perhaps half lived long enough to tell their children how they sailed with Ragnar Lothbrok, Rollo, or Sveyn Forkbeard.’
13 Jones, History of the Vikings, p.261 and 267.
14 Griffith, The Viking Art of War, p.48.
15 Kennedy, The Court of the Caliphs, p.173.
16 Ibn Battúta, Travels, p.292 and 371n.
17 These incidents are respectively from Gisli Sursson’s Saga, CSI II, p.31; Grettir’s Saga, CSI II, p.66 and Valla-Ljot’s Saga, CSI IV, p.133.
18 Haywood, Historical Atlas of the Vikings, p.45, notes that women played a much larger role in the settlement of Iceland and Greenland, as these were relatively peaceful ventures.
19 McEvedy and Jones, Atlas of World Population History, p.52.
Chapter 1 – Songs of the Valkyries
1 In summer 2003, I swam in the evening Baltic with a Dane and a Swede, listening as they argued over which of the lights above us was Thor’s Hammer – one was convinced it was the bright one, Venus, the other the red one, Mars; a nearby Finn then unhelpfully suggested it might be the other one, Sirius. See Ogier, ‘Eddie Constellations’ for an excellent appraisal of the work undertaken so far in the field. The most promising answer currently lies in the possibility of finding cognate constellations among the Sámi. See Sommarström, ‘Ethnoastronomical Perspectives on Saami Religion.’
2 Heimskringla, p.6.
3 Jones, History of the Vikings, p.323; Sawyer, Kings and Vikings, p.131.
4 Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘Sampo’.
5 Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, p.97.
6 Jones, History of the Vikings, pp.36–8. There is much more on these lines, and I have ignored several controversies within modern Viking studies, most notably the precise identity of the Geats, and whether or not they may have instead been the Jutes, a people of Jutland, north Denmark.
7 Saxo Grammaticus, History of the Danes, II, p.2.
8 Price, The Viking Way, pp.106–7.
9 Or so claims Orchard, Dictionary of Norse Myth and Legend, p.188.
10 Griffith, Viking Art of War, p.135. Saga of Grettir the Strong, CSI II, p.76. Duelling was eventually banned to prevent thugs from stealing whatever they wanted and using trial-by-combat as their get-out clause.
11 Price, The Viking Way, pp.338–9.
12 Heimskringla, p.12. It has been pointed out to me that the wealth found in the tombs of young Vikings may have been regarded as a type of compensation for dying too young, rather than a celebration of dying at the right time. Although this may be the case, it is not the spin put on it by the skalds. Edward James, personal communication.
13 This possibility is all the more obvious in those places where Christmas is still called Yule in local languages – e.g. Sweden (Jul) and Finland (Joulu).
14 A cursed sword, however, would only bring tragedy, as in the case of Legbiter, in the Saga of the People of Laxardal, CSI V, p.41; or Greysides, in Gisli Sursson’s Saga, CSI II, p.2.
15 Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, p.49.
16 Nesheim, ‘Eastern and Western Elements in Culture,’ p.108.
17 Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, p.56. As with the Viking Age itself, we must also bear in mind that Strabo was referring explicitly to a comitatus or war-band – a sector of barbarian ‘society’ more likely to have a war-god as its patron.
18 Ibid., pp.174–6.
19 Ibid., p.169.
20 The Jotunheim range was officially named as late as the twentieth century, after being called Jotunfjell (Giants’ Fells) since 1822. It is, however, mentioned in the sagas under that appellation. The prevalence of goat-herding in the region helps explain many of the Thorstories about goat husbandry and his quarrels with ‘giants’.
21 Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, p.76.
22 Ibid., p.83.
23 Price, The Viking Way, p.57.
24 For example, even though such parallels have been discussed in some scholarly circles since 1877, it was not until 1999 that DuBois published Nordic Religions in the Viking Age, a landmark work on the previously under-researched areas of connection between the Vikings and the Finnish/Sámi peoples to their immediate east.
25 Mundal, ‘The Perception of the Saamis,’ p.112.
26 Heimskringla, p.173.
27 Compare this to the gods of Finland, who are often physically weaker than the heroes.
28 Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, p.189.
29 Ibid., p.184.
30 See also Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, p.166, for the tale of another guardian with a similar name, Mimir, this time shielding wisdom itself from unwelcome thieves.
31 Saxo Grammaticus, History of the Danes, p.75.
Chapter 2 – Fury of the Northmen
1 Swanton, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, p.57n regards the original manuscript’s ‘Jan’ as a transcription error for ‘Jun’. Haywood’s Encyclopaedia of the Viking Age prefers 7 June as the date of the sack of Lindisfarne, p.122.
2 This omen was reported sometime later by Alcuin, a native of Yorkshire who feared that the Viking raids were the punishments of an angry God. Brønsted, The Vikings, p.32.
3 Simeon of Durham, A History of the Kings of England, p.43. Danger of further raids eventually caused Lindisfarne to be abandoned, and the last monks moved to Durham in 875.
4 Melvinger, Les Premières Incursions des Vikings en Occident d’après les sources arabes, p.90. Bregowine: ‘de crebris infestationibus improborum hominum in provinciis Anglorum seu Galliae regionis,’ and Dicuil ‘causa latronum Nortmannorum.’ Galliae could be a reference to Wales, rather than France.
5 Ibid., p.91.
6 Swanton, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, pp.54–55n.
7 O’Donoghue, Old Norse-Icelandic Literature, p.8. The apparent disparity between the written forms is because most extant works in Anglo-Saxon are in the Late West-Saxon dialect, and not in the northern variants that were closer to Norse.
8 Alliott, Alcuin of York, p.19.
9 Brønsted, The Vikings, p.141.
10 Magnusson, Vikings!, p.38.
11 Complete Sagas of Icelanders, vol. V, p.398.
12 Erik the Red’s Saga, CSI I, p.2; for the etymology, see Magnusson, Vikings!, p.189. Technically, knorr applies to any ship in Old
Norse, but the term has come to be used by modern marine archaeologists to refer specifically to the merchant class of vessel. Other translations for this most charming of terms include CSI’s ‘Shipbreast’, and ‘prow-tits’, from an adviser who would doubtless prefer to remain anonymous.
13 Haywood, Encyclopaedia of the Viking Age, p.132.
14 Tale of Hromund the Lame, CSI V, p.351.
15 Saga of Grettir the Strong, CSI II, p.76.
16 Saga of the People of Laxardal, CSI V, p.47.
17 Olkofri’s Saga, CSI V, p.237. See also Price, The Viking Way, p.395.
18 Brønsted, The Vikings, pp.143–6.
19 Heimskringla, p.49; Magnusson, Vikings!, p.52.
20 Jones, History of the Vikings, p.99.
21 Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘Denmark’.
22 Jones, History of the Vikings, p.109.
23 Haywood, Encyclopaedia of the Viking Age, p.193. Note that books on the Vikings published before the 1990s tend to assume that the Trelleborg forts were constructed by Svein Forkbeard to train his British invasion force, but that recent dendrochronological analysis of the timbers has now proved otherwise.
Chapter 3 – Great Heathen Hosts
1 Saga of the People of Laxardal, CSI II, p.2.
2 Richards, Blood of the Vikings, p.72.
3 Ibid., p.88.
4 Magnusson, Vikings!, p.159.
5 Ibid., p.160.
6 Haywood, Encyclopaedia of the Viking Age, p.194. It would be entertaining to believe that this devilish woman would find God and become Aud the Deep-Minded in old age – the dates do almost match but it seems unlikely.
7 Haywood, Encyclopaedia of the Viking Age, p.194. The story is suspiciously similar to that of the retaking of the Theban acropolis by the Sacred Band under Pelopidas in 379 BC.
8 Jones, History of the Vikings, p.207.1 have heavily simplified events here, as whole books have been written about the confused Olafs and Ivars of rival accounts.
9 Supposedly they were the sons of Ragnar Lothbrok, who may have been the same Ragnar who attacked Paris in 845. But the stories of Ragnar Lothbrok are so confusing that entire books have written about them. See Smyth, Scandinavian Kings in the British Isles 850–880.