Empires and Barbarians

by Peter Heather

  Like the sack of Lindisfarne, the Portland incident involved Vikings from Norway. For the most part, however, the action on this southern front in the ninth century would be carried forward by Scandinavians from Denmark. Again, this was due to facts of geographical proximity that made the eastern seaboard of England and the entire Channel zone highly accessible to Danish seafarers. This was, however, only a tendency. ‘Norwegian’, ‘Dane’ and even ‘Swede’ are anachronistic categories in the Viking period. At its opening, none of the three existed as a cohesive political unit, and leaders of note recruited manpower from right across the Baltic.

  Raiding

  Some aspects of the violent but smaller-scale raiding characteristic of the first phase of Viking activity in western Europe are better documented than others. The action in northern Britain was both dramatic and early. Already by the mid-ninth century, the island systems of Shetland, Orkney and the Hebrides had not only been raided, but were playing host to large-scale colonization. This story is largely untold in historical sources, but there were already established Norse leaders in the western isles by the year 850, and, for their northern counterparts, place-name and archaeological evidence are both eloquent. In the long run, every older layer of name-giving was wiped out in Shetland and Orkney. Every name for every place in these islands derives from the Old Norse language. The archaeological evidence mirrors the same substantial level of takeover, with Pictish settlement forms being eclipsed by new ones of Scandinavian type. Throughout the northern and western isles, the old circular and figure-of-eight building styles of native Celtic and Pictish traditions were quickly replaced by the Scandinavians’ rectilinear houses, offspring of an alternative cultural tradition. In the Hebrides, Norse-derived names are plentiful if not quite so comprehensively prevalent, and the archaeological evidence is similar. The Isle of Man and possibly also the western fringes of Wales saw both raids and some initial settlement at this point.5

  Further south, in England and Ireland and on the continent, historical sources help establish some clearer patterns. Odd references to Scandinavian attacks appear in continental and insular sources for the early decades of the ninth century, but then the raiding intensified dramatically. In Irish sources, the first named Viking leaders appear in the Chronicle of Ireland for the mid-ninth century: a greater knowledge had been born of more intense contact. And the narrative confirms the point. Monasteries within Ireland, not just coastal establishments, became subject to attack for the first time in 836. To do this, the Vikings had penetrated the island’s internal river systems and loughs: another sign of the greater knowledge they were building up of their target. At the same time, Channel ports were being heavily hit. Between 835 and 837, the port of Dorestad in Frisia was attacked in three successive years, while Sheppey in Kent was attacked in 835, and Wessex in 836. In the same era, Viking raiders forced the monks of Noirmoutier to abandon their monastery and start a prolonged retreat inland. In the next two decades, some Viking raiders ranged still further afield. In 844, one group sailed right across the Bay of Biscay to attack the Christian Spanish kingdom of Galicia in what is now north-western Spain, before moving south into Al-Andalus, the rich lands of Islamic Spain. Perhaps the most spectacular raid of all came in 858, when Spain was rounded, the Straits of Gibraltar penetrated, and the coast of Italy attacked. Overwintering in the Mediterranean, the same group attacked up the River Rhône in 859, and even kidnapped the King of Pamplona in northern Spain on its journey home in 861. He was ransomed for sixty thousand gold pieces.6

  Such long-distance raids were the exception, however, not the rule. Sustained attack went no further than south-western France, and the Garonne River system of Aquitaine. These assaults were eventually countered by the efforts of the rulers of the region – Charlemagne’s grandson Charles the Bald, and his nephew Pippin – but even Aquitaine was a sideshow compared with the increasingly intense raiding unfolding further north, on either side of the Channel. Here, the increase in Viking assault manifested itself in three ways: a growth in the number of Viking groups involved, an increase in the frequency and duration of the individual assaults, and, as in Ireland, the spread of raiding from the coast up through the river systems leading into the interiors. The rich monastery of St Wandrille was sacked in 841, the port of Quentovic in 842, and the city of Nantes in 843. Two years later a Viking leader by the name of Reginharius (as in Ireland, it is a significant moment when chroniclers start to name names) penetrated with his followers up the Seine as far as Paris itself, where he broke into what was probably the richest monastic foundation of western Europe: St Germain. But the monks had been forewarned. The monastery’s relics – including St Germain himself – and all its treasures had been evacuated further up the Seine. When the monks returned six weeks later they found only some superficial damage to their church and a couple of burned outbuildings. The real damage was to their wine cellar, which the Vikings had found, and with predictable results. The rest of Paris was not so lucky. All told Reginharius extracted for his trouble over three thousand kilos in weight of gold and silver: a mix of protection money, loot and ransom.

  From about 850, the level of assault intensified still further. For the first time, the Vikings began to overwinter in western Europe, reducing the respite that usually came between November and March when the North Sea was too dangerous for navigation. This was also ominous for the degree of detachment it suggested in the attackers’ attitudes to their Scandinavian homelands. Raiding groups occupied the isles of Thanet and Sheppey in east Kent in the winters of 850/1 and 854/5, respectively. The Seine region of northern France was subject to virtually continuous attack between 856 and 866. By this stage, Viking raiders were such an established part of the political landscape that they were being hired by opposing sides in internal political disputes. In 862 both the ruler of Brittany, Duke Salomon, and his great rival Duke Robert of Anjou, each hired their own Viking auxiliaries. Vikings were also being hired to fight other Vikings. In 860, Charles the Bald took on a Viking leader by the name of Weland to attack other Vikings who were wreaking havoc along the Seine. A certain amount of haggling delayed matters slightly, but in 861 Weland duly turned up with two hundred ships. Such were the tangled webs being woven by this stage, however, that he was paid off a second time by his intended Viking victims. But they did at least disperse into a number of separate and less threatening groups in the winter of 861/2. Paying chosen Vikings to help defend against the threat posed by their countrymen was by this stage, in fact, a well-established tactic. Charles’s father Louis the Pious had done it with a Danish king called Harold in the 820s, and Charles himself had tried it in 841 with Reginharius, who a few years later would so much enjoy his cruise up the Seine to Paris.7

  In Ireland too, the pressure had increased. Between 830 and 845 the Chronicle of Ireland records specific attacks on about fifty monasteries and another nine general assaults on people and churches in larger areas such as Leinster and the kingdom of the Ui Niell. By the mid-ninth century, the larger monastic centres such as Armagh, Kildare and Clonmacnoise represented the largest concentrations of wealth and people to be found anywhere in Ireland, and hence made excellent targets. Faced with this aggression, the kings of Ireland responded with vigour. In 848 Mael Sechnaill, High King of Tara, defeated one group of Vikings in County Meath, killing some seven hundred of them. The same year the Kings of Munster and Leinster achieved even greater success in County Kildare. The Viking Earl Tomrair and twelve hundred of his men were left dead on the battlefield. News of the Irish victories was sent to the courts of Frankish kings, but any sense of triumph was premature. In 849, an ominous new development showed itself. For the first time, the Chronicle of Ireland noted the arrival of a Viking leader whom they styled ‘king’. At the head of 120 ships, this individual set about subduing those Vikings who had already moved west, as well as extracting further tributes from the unfortunate Irish. By 853 there were two ‘kings’, identified in some sources as brothers, operating in
Irish waters, and they had forced all the Vikings already resident in Ireland to acknowledge their leadership. They stayed in Irish waters until the mid-860s.

  The identity of these kings has been much debated, but they were probably brothers – Ivar the Boneless and Olaf the White – who from 866 switched their attentions to England, where, as we shall see in a moment, they started a further dangerous escalation in the level of Viking assault with the help of perhaps a third brother, Healfdan. Although this has been disputed, it is also likely that they came to the British Isles directly from Scandinavia in the 850s, and did not originate in Scotland and/or the Hebrides as has sometimes been claimed. More legendary material, preserved only in much later sources written down over two hundred years after the events, also suggests that the three were sons of Ragnar Lothbrok (‘Hairy Breeches’), whose death in the snake pit of King Aelle of Northumbria, after a spectacular career of destruction in which he mistakenly sacked the Italian city of Luni thinking it was Rome, is said to have inaugurated the Viking conquest of England. None of this is at all likely, but the Ragnar of legend may indeed preserve some memory of Reginharius of Paris fame, and the importance of Ivar, Olaf and Healfdan requires them to have been from a very significant family. So they could well have been Reginharius’ sons, but the Reginharius of history didn’t die in Aelle’s snake pit. He met his end at the court of Horik King of Denmark, where St Germain is said to have struck him down in revenge for sacking his monastery.8 If so, this would ruin the motif of revenge that the sagas used to explain the brothers’ assault on Northumbria, but, in the broader scheme of things, even the family ties of Ivar, Olaf and Healfdan are of only passing significance. Their real importance lies in the new era of Viking activity inaugurated by their arrival on the British mainland.

  Micel Here

  This process of intensification culminated in the 860s when the violent conquest of entire Anglo-Saxon kingdoms was achieved by Viking forces, largely Danish in origin, labelled ‘Great Armies’ (in Anglo-Saxon, micel here). The first Great Army gathered in the kingdom of East Anglia in winter 866/7, extracting horses and supplies from its hosts. In 867, it attacked Northumbria, taking advantage of a succession struggle that had divided the military capacities of the kingdom and set them behind two contenders, Osbert and Aelle. The two kings eventually united, but by then it was too late. The Vikings broke into the city of York and killed them both. In 868, spurred on by this success, the Great Army turned its attentions on Mercia, but were driven back by the combined forces of Mercia and Wessex. This setback did not prevent the conquest of East Anglia in 870, and subsequent long-drawn-out campaigns eventually led to a further victory over Mercia in 874.

  Wessex under King Alfred now became the target, but a further four years of war, culminating in his great victory at Edington in 878, saw him preserve its independence – if only just. The critical moment came in winter 877/8 when the Vikings took Alfred by surprise and stormed into the heart of his kingdom. This was when he hid himself on the island of Athelney and famously burned the cakes while deciding how best to retrieve the situation. In spring, cakes notwithstanding, Alfred bounced back, concentrating his forces to win his famous victory. In the aftermath of Edington, the Viking leader Guthrum accepted Christian baptism, then retreated into East Anglia. Alfred’s victory drew a boundary around the area of Danish conquest in England, but could not prevent the distribution of the landed spoils won by the earlier victories. Either side of Edington, in separate groups, the Vikings shared parts of Northumbria among themselves in 876, and parts of Mercia in 877. Guthrum’s followers did the same with East Anglia in 880. Danelaw was born.9

  One important factor in Alfred’s success lay in the fact that the Viking forces had turned to Wessex last. All the so-called Great Armies were coalitions. This was what made them ‘great’. The first, of 865, for instance, was created by an alliance of the kings who may or may not all have been sons of Ragnar, together with more forces, some of them substantial and under independent leaders of second rank, called jarls (Norse equivalent of ‘earl’). By 878 and the attack on Wessex, some of these constituent elements had either dropped out of the action or were continuing only half-heartedly, since the land-grabbing in Northumbria in 876 and Mercia in 877 meant that some of them – those who had already received land – now had much to lose. But Edington just rang the bell on round one of the Great Army era. Some of the constituent parts of the first Great Army – and there had been plenty of comings and goings since 866 (a subject we will return to shortly) – may have been left out of the land distributions. And more Vikings, encouraged no doubt by the army’s successes, soon came to join them. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle notes the arrival of a particularly large new force, which overwintered on the Thames at Fulham – then outside London proper, of course – in 879/80.

  All of these new Vikings, together with all those who had not so far satisfied their expectations, were still ready to fight. But with opportunities in England being shut down by a combination of the resurgence of Wessex under King Alfred’s leadership, the land distributions themselves, and Guthrum’s commitment after Edington to help keep the peace, it is hardly surprising that they had to look elsewhere. Frankish sources record the renewal of large-scale Scandinavian activities on the continent from the spring of 880.

  In that year, the Fulham arrivistes departed from England in search of new areas of profit. The political situation on the continent looked particularly promising. Three kingdoms had eventually been carved out of Charlemagne’s Frankish Empire for his grandsons: a western kingdom controlled by Charles the Bald, the middle kingdom of the eldest, Lothar (Lotharingia), and the eastern kingdom of Louis the German. Lothar’s son had died childless, leaving the middle kingdom without its own ruler; Charles and Louis were quarrelling over the spoils. With a ready eye for an opportunity, the returning Vikings concentrated their attention on the coastal zone of northern Lotharingia, what is now Belgium and Holland, and the extremities of the eastern and western kingdoms. In 880, an initial success went to the Franks. One group of Vikings on the Scheldt was defeated by Louis the German, who inflicted on them losses of more than five thousand dead. Another Viking group further east, in Saxony, was more successful, though, killing two bishops and twelve counts, together with many of their followers. But the main Viking successes in subsequent years were to come in the Low Countries, the old heartlands of Lotharingia.

  In 881, despite a defeat said to have cost it nine thousand dead, the Great Army pillaged Cambrai, Utrecht and Charlemagne’s great palace at Aachen, as well as burning Cologne and Bonn. Once again, this was a composite force led by three Scandinavian kings – Godfrid, Sigfrid and Gorm. The ageing Louis the German was now too ill to intervene, dying on 20 January 882. Hence it was under Louis’s last surviving son, Charles the Fat, that Frankish forces gathered in that same year. Charles decided to echo the policy of Alfred of Wessex, making a treaty with Godfrid which included his conversion to Christianity, presumably hoping to divide and rule the Viking forces. The policy worked well enough for three years, despite Viking attacks up the Scheldt in 883 and up the Somme to Amiens in 884. At that point, the ruler of west Francia was killed while out hunting. This encouraged the Vikings to attack in greater force, and in 885 was enough to make Godfrid break his treaty. Godfrid was quickly disposed of, but Viking forces enjoyed extensive success further west, moving inland in great numbers, beyond Paris and as far as Rheims in 886 and 887. Dissension within the Frankish kingdom prevented any effective response until 891, when Arnulf, the illegitimate grandson of Louis the German and King of east Francia (who had deposed his uncle Charles the Fat in 887), caught a large Danish army in their fortifications on the River Dyle close to Louvain in modern Belgium. The Franks stormed the fortifications and inflicted a massive defeat on their enemy, killing two kings and capturing sixteen royal standards.10

  Frankish resurgence had the same effect – in reverse – as Alfred’s successes a decade earlier. With no more easy
pickings on the continent, much of the continental Great Army headed back to England, where the 880s had been quiet apart from one abortive attack on Rochester in 886. But Alfred had always understood that the Viking threat had been parried, rather than defeated. Throughout the 880s, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle noted where the Viking armies were operating in each particular year, giving a strong sense that they were being watched with trepidation. And with huge urgency, Alfred inaugurated a programme of defensive building, which established a series of fortified centres – burhs – throughout his kingdom. His policies not only built the refuges, but organized their garrisons and revamped the field army as well. In the 860s and 870s the first Great Army had been able to march unmolested across England, covering large distances in a short space of time. The fortresses changed all this. They were not easy to capture, and could not be left unsubdued in an army’s rear, since they contained an armed garrison that could conduct harassing operations. Alfred’s plan was clearly to tie up and wear down any attacking Viking force, before fighting a pitched battle with his new field army, if and when he so chose.