Viking Age England

by Julian D Richards

  The third category, of ocean-going vessels, probably included foreign vessels from northern Europe and Scandinavia. No complete vessels of this period have been recovered from English waters, although finds from the Thames Exchange site, including a carved mast partner which would have supported a mast up to 0.45m in diameter, show that such large vessels visited Viking Age London. It has also become clear that substantial clinker-built boats were being built in the Scandinavian tradition in the British Isles during the Viking Age. Tree-ring analysis has shown that one of the longships scuttled in the Roskilde fjord, Denmark, was made from timber grown in Ireland, and a substantial fragment of a large boat incorporated into the construction of the harbour at Tiel, in the Netherlands, had been built from timbers felled in south-east England 979-1008. The ship had evidently been burnt out and it is tempting to see it as a casualty of the documented Viking raid on Tiel in 1006-7 (Sarfatij 1999, 273).

  COINAGE

  The emergence of commercial trade is often seen as requiring a monetary economy, but we should recognise that in the early medieval period there were other methods of exchange. The role of coins and the nature of its production was very different from today. During the last quarter of the eighth century a regular English coinage based on the silver penny was established by Offa of Mercia. This developed into a proper currency which had a face value far in excess of its silver value. In eighth- and ninth-century Northumbria there was also a copper coinage comprising low denomination stycas but this was terminated by the arrival of the Vikings in the late ninth century.

  The coinage of Anglo-Saxon England was not supplied by a central mint issuing to the whole kingdom (Dolley 1976). Coin production was decentralised, carried out in a number of mints, each based in a burh. At each mint a number of private individuals, men of substance in the community, acted as moneyers, taking responsibility for the coinage, on behalf of royal authority. The number of these moneyers varies according to the importance of the mint, but only in very important towns were there more than ten operating at once. It was established practice that pennies should carry on their obverse the name of the ruler whose authority was recognised at their place of minting, and on the reverse the name of the moneyer.

  The role of moneyers and the nature of Viking Age coin production has been greatly illuminated by the Coppergate finds (plate 16). An iron coin die of the St Peter’s issue, c.921-7, bearing a sword and hammer and a dedication to St Peter, was found discarded amongst the rubbish in the metalworking workshops (Pirie 1986). The die was cylindrical in shape, flaring outwards at the base, where a tang protruded which could be fixed into a bench or anvil. The head had been specially hardened. Nearby there were also two lead trial pieces, or test strikings, and the cap of a die for a penny of Æthelstan (927-39). It is possible that the Coppergate excavations accidentally stumbled upon the site of a mint, although the insubstantial nature of the timber workshops is not what anyone had imagined a tenth-century mint would look like. It seems more plausible that only the die production and engraving were carried out here. Nevertheless, the workshops must have operated under the authority of moneyers, as the dies could not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. The remains were found in two adjacent tenements, occupied by craftsmen with wide experience in metalworking. The finds must cover a 20-30 year time span, indicating some continuity of production. The lead trial pieces may have been tests; the damaged dies may have been returned for recasting. However, the discovery of a further lead trial piece for a penny of Eadwig (955-9), by the Chester moneyer Frothric, prompts an alternative explanation for the trial pieces and it has been suggested that this may have been a customs seal to show that import duty had been paid at the port of entry.

  From the death of Offa in 796 to Burgred’s defeat by the Vikings in 874, the bulk of coinage was produced at, and circulated from, three cities: London, Canterbury and Rochester. During this period there was a rapid expansion in the number of moneyers, reflecting the growing need for coinage because of increased economic activity. The Danelaw was originally poorly served by mints, but by the early tenth century mints were operating in Bedford, Chester, Derby, Leicester and Nottingham, as well as York and Lincoln.

  As Viking leaders took political control they started to mint their own coins for propaganda purposes. Although coins were not being issued in the Scandinavian homelands at this point, after his baptism Guthrum adopted Anglo-Saxon traditions and issued coins in the name of Athelstan, based on the coinage of Alfred. By the 890s silver pennies were being circulated in the eastern Danelaw bearing the legend ‘St Edmund’, in memory of the East Anglian king martyred by the Danes in 870. According to the monk Abbo of Fleury, Edmund had been tied to a tree, lashed with whips, and pierced with arrows. The reasons for this apparent U-turn, in which Vikings newly converted to Christianity recognised their victim as a saint, must have been largely political. What better way to overtake the cult of the martyr as a focus for potential opposition than to adopt the saint of the East Angles as their own? Cnut and Sithric had coins struck in York from c.890 following Carolingian designs; some bore the legend ‘St Peter’; others carried religious motifs (Dolley 1978). By the second quarter of the tenth century York was issuing more recognisably ‘Viking’ coins with Norse legends and pagan motifs such as the raven, swords, and Thor’s hammer (plate 15). After the expulsion of Erik Bloodaxe in 954, however, York was absorbed into mainstream English minting practice. From c.920, Lincoln also started minting coins, in the name of St Martin.

  Nevertheless, single finds of coins (as opposed to hoards) indicate a general decline in the usage of coins over the ninth century (Blackburn 1993). This need not indicate a general economic recession, for people may have found alternative means of conducting transactions. It is also possible that some items circulated within a full monetary system, whilst others were available for barter or credit. A lot would depend on whether transactions could rely on personal trust or were purely commercial. The population did not, apparently, have full confidence in the new coins, which in many areas were only accepted for their silver content and not their face value, as demonstrated by surface pecking to test their silver content. Many transactions may have been conducted by weight of silver.

  There are 32 burhs in which post-1960 excavations have produced Viking Age deposits but no coins; there are 23 burhs where coins have been found, but only four with more than ten:York, Lincoln, Northampton and Winchester. There was a mint in Bedford from the mid-tenth century at least, but no coin finds until the twelfth century, despite substantial excavation. In Northampton, the tenth- and eleventh-century levels at Chalk Lane yielded c.9000 potsherds, c.5000 animal bones, and 4 coins; at St Peter’s Street there were c.1500 potsherds, c.2500 animal bones, and 6 coins (Hinton 1986). Of course, both pottery and animals (apart from a few hens and pigs) also had to be acquired by trade. Both commodities can be as much a record of transactions as coins, but could have been exchanged by barter with no coins changing hands. Rural sites also yield few coins in the tenth century. Viking Age levels at Portchester yielded c.11,000 animal bones and 2 coins; those at Cheddar c.1000 bones and 5 coins. Folding scales identical to those from Chester and York (plate 17) have been found at Goltho and North Elmham.

  Finds of silver ingots, such as those discovered by metal detector from near Easingwold (North Yorkshire), suggest that even within the immediate hinterland of York a bullion economy may have been operating in the late ninth and early tenth centuries. At Cottam (East Yorkshire) only a handful of coins have been recovered from the tenth-century settlement, compared to the scores of copper-alloy stycas from the eighth- and ninth-century enclosure. However, a number of circular lead weights have been recovered from the later site, which probably indicate the weighing of silver.

  The payment of rent was the other major mechanism whereby wealth changed hands. In Middle Saxon England rent was normally paid in kind. One of the earliest records of rent being paid to a royal estate is to Offa of Mercia by the church
at Worcester, dated 793-6: ‘two tuns full of pure ale and a coomb full of mild ale and a coomb full of Welsh ale, and seven oxen six wethers and 40 cheeses and sixe long theru [untrans] and 30 ambers of unground corn and four ambers of meal’. Whilst rent was paid in perishable goods it was fairly inconvenient, as the king had to travel around his estate in order to eat up his rents. Paying in coin was simpler, and by the time of the Domesday Book most rents had been at least partly commuted to money.

  In 973 Edgar reformed the coinage, giving coins a six-year period of use, after which they were no longer legal tender. The king took a profit each time the currency was reminted; therefore Edgar’s reforms served to maximise royal profits. He also prohibited the circulation of foreign coins; all silver entering the kingdom was to be reminted and had to bear the king’s head. By the late tenth century the production of coin took place at 50-60 mints operating up and down the country. Æthelstan further regulated the minting of coins by stipulating that ‘there shall be one coinage throughout the king’s realm, and no man shall mint money except in a town’.

  By the eleventh century coinage was in general use, but it is difficult to quantify its importance for the general populace. It has been suggested that finds of pennies cut into halves and quarters in deposits in London and York shows that coins were being used for small change in everyday transactions. However, whilst a penny might sound like small change to us we have to remember that during the Viking Age it was worth a reasonable amount.

  During the eleventh century the continuous heavy wastage from the currency through the export of coin was counterbalanced by the inflow of silver in payment for exports. Despite the continued threat of Viking raids, mints continued to operate at a large number of locations, although sometimes, as at the hillfort at Cadbury, they were taken inside strongly fortified sites.

  In conclusion, the Vikings appear to have had a mixed effect on trade. International trade was disrupted, although some Scandinavians made their living by acting as middlemen for the importation of exotic goods. Internal trade grew in response to new urban markets, and although there was a decline in small-scale monetary transactions in the ninth century these appear to have been replaced by non-monetary forms of exchange. Aspects of the Viking Age economy would have been far more socially embedded than a modern market economy and many transactions may have had a social dimension. Later literary sources testify to the importance of gift exchange and the giving of silver rings as a means of rewarding followers and winning their continued allegiance. In Viking Age England land as well as goods may have changed hands in return for services.

  9

  CHURCHES AND MONASTERIES

  When the Vikings arrived in the British Isles they found a land which had long been Christian. In England a network of minster churches is believed to have grown up during the seventh and eighth centuries and now covered the country. These included major town buildings such as Edwin’s Minster in York, or the church discovered by excavation in Cirencester, and smaller churches attached to rural aristocratic sites. In Atlantic Britain – the south-west peninsula, Wales, the Lake District, and south-west Scotland – Christian roots were deeper still, reaching back at least to the fifth or sixth centuries, and probably to the Christianity of Late Roman Britain. On the Isle of Man it is believed that the system of keeils, or small Christian chapels, was already in place. Similar small chapels were also being built in the south-west from the eighth century onwards.

  In all areas monasteries provided a focus for Christian worship, but to the Vikings they were little more than unprotected storehouses of treasure. Although there are instances of Christian Anglo-Saxon leaders attacking religious sites, notably King Eadred who destroyed Ripon in 948, the Church had generally been able to depend upon spiritual sanctions for its safety. Viking raiders had no respect for such conventions, although there is little evidence that the plundering of churches by Vikings stemmed from any pagan hatred of Christianity. It was simply that they were regarded as relatively easy sources of portable wealth, and also perhaps that for the initial raiding parties they provided a good means of probing the strength of English defences.

  MONASTERIES

  Monastic sites were particularly vulnerable to attack. Anglo-Saxon monasteries were frequently major land-owners and by the eighth century had also amassed considerable portable wealth of their own, as well as often being entrusted with treasure by Anglo-Saxon kings. The eremitic origins of monastic life meant that some early monasteries were sited on isolated coastal sites, with no hope of defence against attack from the sea.

  In Northumbria the exposed coastal sites at Tynemouth, Hartlepool, Whitby, Monkwearmouth, Jarrow and Lindisfarne all appear to have been largely abandoned in the ninth century. Historical sources recount how the community of St Cuthbert, displaced from Lindisfarne, wandered for several years before finding a new home at Chester-le-Street. Hexham and Whithorn ceased to function as bishoprics and even York was reduced to relative poverty. Excavations at Beverley have demonstrated that the monastery was abandoned in the mid-ninth century; a hoard of c.851 comprising 23 Northumbrian stycas buried in a leather purse coincides with the first year the Viking army overwintered (Armstrong et al. 1991). Further south the bishoprics of Dunwich, Elmham and Lindsey came to an effective end; the bishop’s throne at North Elmham dramatically blackened by smoke. Exposed Kentish monasteries also disappear from the record, including Reculver, Dover and Folkestone. In the London area, Woking and Bermondsey did not survive into the tenth century, and Barking Abbey was burnt down.

  However, it is difficult to establish both how far such decline was the direct result of Viking attack, and also how far religious life may still have continued at some of these sites. Some communities certainly collapsed because Vikings seized their estates; others disappeared because of the replacement of the local aristocracy by Vikings who did not share their religious convictions. Along the border between Wessex and the Danelaw, Ælfred seized monastic lands to act as a buffer zone against the Vikings. In short, the Viking Age brought about a level of redistribution of monastic land comparable to the Dissolution in the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to attribute the ninth-century monastic decline entirely to the Vikings; there was general concern for falling standards and even Ælfred did not blame the Vikings for the poor state of learning in England’s monastic houses. Rather, he saw them as a punishment for earlier backsliding. Hartlepool ceased to function before the Viking raids, and although Jarrow and Monkwearmouth were apparently destroyed by fire, this could have been at the hands of the Scots, and there appears to have been some continuing religious presence into the Late Anglo-Saxon period.

  After the disruption of the Viking raids and settlements there was growing enthusiasm in the tenth century for a reform of monasticism based on the Benedictine rule. This was encouraged first by Edmund and then Edgar, both believing that the spiritual support of the Church would be valuable to them. Old communities, including Beverley, Glastonbury, Ripon, Winchester and Worcester, were reformed and new ones founded. In the second half of the tenth century the foundation and endowment of monasteries underwent rapid growth throughout eastern and southern England.

  MINSTER CHURCHES

  Minster churches frequently originated as monastic communities; the Old English mynster is derived from the Latin monasterium. By the Viking Age their function may have evolved into that of a church serving a congregation, with a community of clergy responsible for the pastoral care of a large area (Blair 1988; Radford 1973). Priests may have been sent out to preach to local communities and the laity would come for baptism and burial. Minster churches may also have been founded by the aristocracy in the middle of their estates. Early royal minsters were often set within their own precinct enclosures, a little way from the royal palace. At Cheddar, for example, the ninth-century minster and palace were placed c.200m apart, while at Bampton (Oxfordshire) traces of a large enclosure have been recognised. This was not always the case; S
t Peter’s, Gloucester, was sited within the town with the royal palace at Kingsholm outside the walls. In fact, as we have already seen (chapter 4) many of the new Anglo-Saxon towns grew around minster churches. The developing road system funnelled traffic to them, and markets were established at their gates. At Bampton excavation has revealed an urban style of cellared building, south of the church enclosure, adjacent to a possible early market area (Blair 1998).

  The wealth of minster churches depended on their monopoly as recipients of fees for burial, and a variety of other dues. Many retained, or claimed, exclusive burial rights until well after the Norman Conquest. St Oswald’s, Gloucester, for example, continued in importance, probably competing with only three or four other parish churches. At Winchester, the main cemetery was confined within the walls of the Old Minster until the fourteenth century. Nevertheless, the minsters were threatened by the rise of parish churches in the tenth century and gradually lost their special position.

  PARISH CHURCHES

  The creation of rural parishes and parish churches went hand in hand with the fragmentation of the great estates during the Viking Age (see chapter 3). The foundation of new local churches had been taking place spasmodically from the eighth century, but the great age of church building took place in the tenth and eleventh centuries. In fact, the construction of most new churches is thought by some to have taken place within the space of a few decades of 1000. By the time of the Domesday Book there were demonstrably over 2600 local churches, and arguably several thousands more. Probably almost 500 of these survive to the present day in some form or other (Morris 1989).