Viking Age England

by Julian D Richards

  The first Viking raiders whose presence is recorded in the British Isles were probably Norse. During the reign of Beorhtric (786-802) ‘there came for the first time three ships of Northmen from Hordaland and then the reeve rode to them and wished to force them to the king’s residence, for he did not know what they were; and they slew him. Those were the first ships of Danish men which came to the land of the English.’ Despite the confusion, it seems likely that the ships were from Norway because of the specific reference to Hordaland; the last sentence was probably added as a gloss by a later writer when the Danes were seen as the chief threat. Norse warriors must also have joined Knutr’s eleventh-century army; a memorial stone was erected in Galteland, Aust Agder (Norway) by Arnsteinn in memory of his son Biorr who ‘was killed in the guard when Knutr attacked England’.

  Today, Denmark comprises the Jutland peninsula and the large islands of Fyn and Sjælland, plus some 500 smaller islands as well as Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. However, during the Viking Age it also included Skåne in southern Sweden. The southern frontier at the foot of the Jutland peninsula also lay further to the south, where from AD 737 it was defended by a series of earthworks known as the Danevirke. During the Viking Age Denmark was extensively wooded with oak and beech, but much of the landscape was wasteland, sand dunes and heath. Nowhere was more than 56km (35 miles) from the sea, which provided the basis of the livelihood of much of the population.

  Denmark, and especially Jutland, was more affected by developments in western Europe than was the rest of Scandinavia. Early trading towns developed, such as those at Hedeby and Ribe, and organised central power emerged in the eighth century, at least in Jutland.

  The first references to Danes are as pirates raiding the Carolingian empire. Danes naturally looked to the North Sea coast, plundering Frisian territory, such as the trading post at Dorestad. They continued west through the English Channel to raid France and southern England. The Danes were responsible for the main concerted raids on the British Isles in the ninth century and many of them settled in the Danelaw.

  From the mid-tenth century we know of a continuous succession of kings, beginning with Gorm the Old. From the 960s royal power was extended under Gorm’s son, Haraldr Bluetooth, who rebuilt the Danevirke, constructed a series of regional tax collection centres to a standard Trelleborg fortress design, declared Christianity the official religion of Denmark, and conquered Norway. Haraldr was ousted in 987; Gorm’s grandson, Sveinn Forkbeard, and his great-grandson, Knutr, both led armies against England, the latter becoming king of England and Denmark from 1016 to 1035.

  Sweden comprises a number of regions with local variations in soil, climate and relief. To the north of Skåne, the infertile and sparsely populated plateau of Småland formed a natural boundary with Denmark. Most of the people lived in the well-forested fertile zones in the central lowlands. To the north, Norrland was sparsely populated, consisting of forest and bare rock. Off the east coast the island of Gotland was of particular importance, occupying a strategic position at the centre of the Baltic. Baltic trade had made this area tremendously wealthy and its inhabitants had penetrated as far as Byzantium. Swedish Vikings continued to look mainly to the east, sailing down the great rivers into Russia; Sweden remained relatively isolated from developments in western Europe. Several kings are mentioned in association with Birka (near present day Stockholm) but the extent of their control is unknown; Sweden only emerged as a unified state in the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. There were comparatively few Swedish visitors to the British Isles although some southern Swedes must have served with Knutr; a rune stone from Väsby, Uppland, for example, records that ‘Alle had this stone put up in his own honour. He took Knutr’s danegeld in England. May God help his soul.’

  ENGLAND AT THE BEGINNING OF THE VIKING AGE

  By the mid-ninth century England still comprised four independent kingdoms: East Anglia, Wessex, Mercia and Northumbria. Mercia was the strongest military power, extending west to Offa’s Dyke, the great earthwork constructed along its frontier with Wales, and south to the Thames. Northumbria was divided by internecine feuding between the rulers of Bernicia to the north, and Deira in the south, and its northern borders were troubled by the Scots. In the south-west, first Devon and then Cornwall had been absorbed by Wessex.

  Between some half a million and one million people lived in England at the beginning of the Viking Age. The population structure was probably comparable to that of a developing country in the modern world. In other words, life expectancy was worse than in England today, but better than during the Industrial Revolution. In the typical Middle to Late Saxon community represented in the cemetery at Raunds (Northamptonshire), the average life expectancy at birth was 21 years. Infant mortality was high; a sixth of all children died before reaching the age of two; a third were dead before they reached their sixth birthday. If one survived to the age of 12 one’s chances of a long life were better; the average life span was now 33 years, and a few individuals reached the ripe old age of 60 or more. In fact, 12 seems to have been widely recognised as the age of maturity; the laws of Æthelstan decreed that any man over 12 years old could be killed if found guilty of theft. Poor hygiene and nutrition was probably the most common causes of death. Childbearing females were most at risk; at Raunds men were much more likely to reach their late 30s than women.

  Anglo-Saxon society was rigidly hierarchical, and a small aristocracy lived off the labour of a great many peasants. At the top was the king and his ealdormen. The Danes and eleventh-century Anglo-Saxons called them jarls or earls. Then there were the thegns, or landholders, who later became knights or lords of the manor. Next there were various grades of agricultural workers, and finally a substantial slave class, possibly up to a quarter of the population.

  Most of the population lived in the countryside, where the mixed-farming economy would have been familiar to Viking settlers. In the lowland zone of southern and eastern England, towns were already emerging before the Viking Age. London and York acted as centres of royal and ecclesiastical administration, as well as of trade and industry. A special class of trading ports, or wics, such as Hamwic (Southampton) and Ipswich played an important role in foreign trade. Most people lived and worked in wooden buildings; stone was reserved for churches. The Anglo-Saxons were Christians, erecting stone crosses and burying their dead in Christian graveyards.

  Danish Vikings sailing westwards along the north-west coast of Europe would have been funnelled into the English Channel from where they could attack the wealthy south coast of England and the north coast of France. For Norse Vikings sailing directly west across the North Sea, the east coast of England was their natural landing point. It provided a number of sheltered inlets and suitable harbours, as well as unprotected monasteries; river estuaries gave access to the interior of the country. Many sailed round the north coast of Scotland to Orkney and the Hebrides and continued down into the Irish Sea, from which they could raid northwest England and south-west Scotland, together with Wales, Ireland and the Isle of Man.

  THE CAUSES OF VIKING EXPANSION

  Historians have been much exercised in trying to explain the Viking raids, although some have suggested that they were simply an extension of normal Dark Age activity made possible and profitable by special circumstances. Certainly the Viking expansion westwards would have been impossible without their famous longships. Ships were an essential means of transport around Scandinavia; in the eighth century the Scandinavians developed fast, light, easily manoeuvrable vessels which made long sea journeys possible. Their ships gave Vikings the advantage of surprise and a means of swift retreat. Yet whilst the ships may have made the raids possible they cannot be seen as sufficient cause by themselves.

  The descendants of Norse emigrants believed their ancestors were fleeing from the tyrannical growth of royal power in Norway. Certainly in the Isle of Man they seemed to avoid creating any excessive central authority, and may have been trying to preserve an archaic
form of society. Norway was also undergoing a dramatic growth of population, with massive forest clearances in the east but limited room for expansion in the west. Bjorn Myhre has played down the extent of dramatic change in Norway around ad 800. He argues that Viking raids in the late eighth and early ninth centuries should be seen as acts of chieftains acquiring wealth and silver, but probably also as part of a conflict between a heathen Germanic culture in the north and Christian kingdoms in the south and west. The beginning of the Viking Age should be defined as the point at which the Danish and Norwegian petty kingdoms were so powerful that their chieftains felt strong enough to begin raiding overseas (Myhre 1993; 1998).

  No doubt a number of factors were working in combination, but it is necessary to remember that Viking activity in England lasted, with a break, for some 250 years, during which time Scandinavian society was also undergoing considerable changes. Whereas initial raids in the late eighth and early ninth centuries may have been targeted at the acquisition of portable wealth, which could be fed back into a Scandinavian gift exchange-based economy, later activity was sometimes directed more towards the acquisition of land.

  In Denmark, excavations of Viking Age villages have revealed the emergence of magnate farms, or large privately owned estates, in the later ninth and tenth centuries. Whereas land had previously been held by an extended family group or tribe, now it was granted to individuals and passed on to their children. Rune-stone monuments may represent new inheritance claims as much as memorials to the dead. At the top, Gorm and his son Haraldr were unifying Denmark under the rule of a single king. Their power is symbolised by the distribution of Trelleborg forts throughout their kingdom, and by the royal grave at Jelling. The Viking raids may therefore represent increased competition between the elite groups. With estates being passed to eldest sons, and distributed by rulers to their followers, there would be less and less land to go round in Scandinavia. To maintain the system expansion was essential, and the easiest way to expand was overseas, where land, wealth and prestige could all be sought. No doubt the lure of easy treasure was still an incentive and Vikings may have switched between trading, raiding and settling, according to which was the most advantageous strategy. Nonetheless, an underlying trend can be observed. As the basis of status in the Scandinavian world shifted from the possession of portable wealth and the ability to give gifts of silver arm rings, so the purpose of Viking attacks shifted away from the acquisition of silver towards the acquisition of land, initially for the individual, and then later for the state.

  2

  VIKING RAIDS

  Any account of Viking raids has to be derived primarily from historical sources, which for England means the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Archaeological evidence is a poor witness to particular events. Political upheavals, such as those which affected York in the mid-tenth century, apparently went wholly unnoticed in Coppergate, where business was much as usual. Nevertheless, remains of fortifications, war cemeteries, memorials and hoards, together with Anglo-Saxon loot found in Scandinavia, all contribute to our knowledge of Viking activity.

  Historical sources are more explicit but they may also be less reliable. They were compiled by those on the receiving end of Viking attacks, and suffer from the usual problems of wartime propaganda. In particular, the size of the enemy forces seems to have been widely exaggerated. In ninth-century references to Viking forces in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle a distinction can be drawn between six small fleets of between three and 23 ships, for which the numbers of ships appear to have been counted exactly, and four larger fleets each estimated in round figures greater than 80. The armada of 350 ships recorded for 851 looks suspiciously like a multiplication of the previous largest number (35) by ten.

  It has also been pointed out that to translate the Anglo-Saxon word here used in the Chronicle to refer to Viking raiding forces as ‘army’ or ‘host’ may be misleading. In seventh-century laws any group larger than 35 is defined as a here. Given that Viking ships are likely to have had crews of some 30 men, or 50-60 at the most, then most Viking raiding parties may have been counted in hundreds, and even the larger forces may still have been under 1000. We do know that in 1142 it took 52 ships to carry a force of less than 400 mounted knights across the Channel (Sawyer 1971).

  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle does allow us to distinguish several phases of Viking activity, stretching over some 250 years. It would undoubtedly be foolish to regard the Viking Age as a single phenomenon. Viking forces surely fluctuated in nature and size as the motives for their campaigns developed.

  PHASE 1: SPORADIC RAIDS AND LOOTING, 789-864

  From the late eighth century onwards, small groups of Viking raiders were sailing up the English Channel, and round the north of Scotland into the Irish Sea, exploiting possibilities for trade or plunder as they arose.

  Some time during the reign of Beorhtric, king of Wessex (786-802), three ships of ‘Northmen’ (from Horthaland in Norway) landed at Portland on the Dorset coast (see chapter 1). The king’s local representative, or reeve (whose name was Beaduheard), appears to have assumed that the visitors had come to trade and directed them to a nearby royal estate at Dorchester. Unfortunately the supposed traders turned out to be raiders and killed the reeve with all his men (Keynes 1997). The significance of the event was obvious to the late ninth-century West Saxon chronicler who, even if he associated the raiders with contemporary Danish armies, could see with the benefit of hindsight that ‘Those were the first ships of Danish men which came to the land of the English’.

  2 England, 789-864

  It was the attacks on the Northumbrian monasteries that excited most consternation; in 793 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded:

  In this year dire portents appeared over Northumbria and sorely frightened the people. They consisted of immense whirlwinds and flashes of lightning, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air. A great famine immediately followed these signs and a little after in the same year, on 8 June, the ravages of heathen men miserably destroyed God’s church on Lindsifarne, with plunder and slaughter.

  Alcuin reacted with indignation and horror:

  Lo, it is nearly 350 years that we and our fathers have inhabited this most lovely land, and never before has such a terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race, nor was it thought that such an inroad from the sea could be made. Behold the church of St Cuthbert spattered with the blood of the priests of God, despoiled of all its ornaments; a place more venerable than all in Britain is given as prey to pagan peoples.

  Clearly Alcuin was shocked by what was reported to him although his remarks must be seen as those of an expatriate Archbishop of York now residing in Aachen. We believe that the blood-spattered monks were back looking after their monastery a matter of months later.

  The fact that in 792 King Offa was making arrangements for the defence of Kent against ‘pagan peoples’ suggests that there were other, unrecorded, raids. In 804 the monastery of Lyminge, an exposed site north of Romney Marsh, acquired a refuge within the walls of Canterbury. These early raids should be seen in the context of the Norse colonisation of Shetland, Orkney and the Hebrides. Norwegian raiding groups sporadically targeted English sites, but England was not troubled much until the second quarter of the ninth century, when the Danish attacks commenced. From 835 the Chronicle records a series of heavy raids on the south coast by Danish forces, culminating in 850, when the Danish army wintered in England for the first time:

  In this year Ealdorman Ceorl with the contingent of the men of Devon fought against the heathen army at Wicganbeorg, and the English made a great slaughter there and had the victory. And for the first time, heathen men stayed through the winter on Thanet. And the same year [851] 350 ships came into the mouth of the Thames and stormed Canterbury and London and put to flight Brihtwulf, king of the Mercians, with his army, and went south across the Thames into Surrey.

  The chronicler’s remarks suggest that these events were considered in retrospect to mark the next
stage in the escalation of Viking activity in England.

  Hoards

  In troubled times it was prudent to keep your money buried. Finds of Viking Age hoards may sometimes be related to raiding activities, but care should be exercised in their interpretation. Hoards were normally buried with the intention of recovering them later; they only stayed buried, to be retrieved much later, under special circumstances, such as the death of their owner. Dating their burial can also be problematic. The most recent coin is normally taken to indicate the date of deposition, but savers’ hoards may contain mainly old coins.

  It appears possible to distinguish between hoards deposited by Vikings and those hidden by the English (Blackburn and Pagan 1986; Kruse 1980). Viking hoards may include coins, ingots, ornaments and other fragments of silver (‘hack silver’), which has often been nicked or pecked to test its purity. Silver from the Cuerdale hoard (Lancashire) (plate 25) had been nicked from 5 to 20 times on average (Graham-Campbell, ed. 1992). The earliest Viking hoard was found at Croydon (Surrey) in 1862. It appears to date from 872, when the Vikings wintered in London, and probably represents the accumulated loot of a member of the Viking army. The hoard comprised 250 coins, three silver ingots and part of a fourth, and four pieces of hack silver, in a coarse linen bag. The coins included pennies from Wessex, Mercia and East Anglia, and Arabic and Carolingian issues (Brooks and Graham-Campbell 1986). Some Viking hoards might contain no coins at all, such as the 19 silver ingots from Bowes Moor (Durham) (Edwards 1985), the silver neck ring and Irish penannular brooch from Orton Scar (Cumbria), and the silver thistle brooch from Newbiggin Moor, Penrith (Cumbria).