Vikings

by Neil Oliver

  Aethelstan died just two years after the battle, at the age of 43. Constantine had lost his own son to that butcher’s yard, but at least he lived long enough to see the death of his greatest tormentor. In 943, aged in his sixties or maybe even his seventies, he walked away from his throne, preferring to spend the years remaining to him as a holy man, in St Andrews. Aethelstan’s vision of a unified kingdom of England died with him. Like Constantine of the Scots, Olaf, King of the Dublin Vikings had also survived the battle, and when Aethelstan died it was he who siezed the kingship of Northumbria. Still unsatisfied, Olaf turned then on the Christian Anglo-Danes of eastern Mercia and, having added their submission to his tally, headed north to sack the monastery of Lindisfarne. It was further north, in East Lothian, that he seemingly met his match. Days after leading his warriors in an attack on the religious community of Tyninghame, he was dead. As far as the local tribespeople were concerned the Viking had been bested by St Baldred, whose shrine he had desecrated.

  Olaf was succeeded by his cousin, Olaf Sigtryggsson, who retained control not just of Northumbria and York but also of Dublin. Here was nothing less than a dynasty, a lineage of Vikings — all of them claiming descent from Ivarr the Boneless, the same man who had arrived in Dublin with Olaf the White in AD 853, and who may have been buried in Repton a century before, surrounded by hundreds of his followers.

  While Hastings and 1066 are familiar to most, Brunanburh and 937 are all but forgotten — yet it was there that something fundamental about Britain was written in the blood of all her peoples. Aethelstan might have ordered his coin-makers to style him King of all Britain, but in the end his reach exceeded his grasp. When the fighting was over, his Anglo-Saxon forces held the field. He was triumphant on the day, but his dream of total conquest lay dead among the rest of the carrion. Come what may, Britain would be home to more than one land, ruled by more than one king. What is remarkable too is that Vikings were there among the tribes of Britain to help settle the matter. In the manner of the times, they were fighting on both sides.

  Among the heap of slain picked over by wolves and crows were not just those led by Olaf Guthfrisson, King of Dublin, but also Viking warriors in the service of Egil Skallagrimsson of Iceland. Egil and his men fought for Aethelstan and their adventures at Brunanburh inspired some of the most famous passages in Egil’s saga.

  The Icelandic sagas amount to some of the greatest literature of the world and Egil’s saga is regarded by scholars as one of the finest of all. In the aftermath of the fighting, Egil finds his brother Thorolf among the slain. Having buried him, he makes his way to Aethelstan’s victory feast. Egil’s bravery in the battle has ensured him a place of honour, directly opposite the king, but he sits silently, consumed by grief and anger.

  Seeing the hero’s misery, Aethelstan takes a gold ring from his own arm, places it on the tip of his sword and holds it over the fire. Egil takes his own sword from his sheath and uses it to accept the offering. His sadness and wrath assuaged, he takes a hearty draught from a drinking horn and recites the following in praise:

  It was the warrior’s

  work, to hang this gold band

  round an arm where hawk’s ride

  ready to do my will.

  And see how I make my sword

  Summon the ring to its

  Arm. There’s skill in this. But

  The prince claims greater praise.

  That a thirteenth-century Icelandic poet and writer should make a point of referencing a battle fought in England more than two centuries before goes some way towards underlining the nation-shaping significance of Brunanburh. But why were tenth-century Vikings from Iceland involved?

  Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales were just the start of the westward expansion of the Norwegian Vikings. Superlative ships and generations of seafaring put the islands of the North Atlantic within reach of the bravest mariners, that much is agreed. But historians are still arguing about precisely what possessed them to take the risk.

  Some blame population pressure; others cite the harsh regime of King Harald Fairhair; yet more suggest ambitious men sought wealth abroad to finance social advancement back home. For my own part I believe some wanderers have always chased the setting sun, even if that means heading out into the sundering sea in open boats.

  For all that, however, the first human feet to splash ashore on the Faroe Islands, and on Iceland, were not Norwegian. Whatever the inspirations of the pagans, Christian hermits with a taste for isolation seem to have got there first. Christianity had been on the move much longer than any Viking. From its first home in the eastern Mediterranean, monasticism moved steadily west, and then north. Ireland and the Western Isles provided the sought-for peace and isolation, and sometime in the sixth century one of their number, St Finnian of Clonard, is said to have established a monastery on Skellig Michael, seven miles off the County Kerry coast of Ireland. It was to such rocks that early Christianity clung while Europe was racked by all the storms of the Dark Ages.

  This urge to put distance between themselves and others persuaded some holy men there were miles yet to travel, regardless of any physical dangers. While the Vikings would have their clinker-built knarr, as sea-worthy as any vessels in the medieval world, the monks put to sea in currachs. Tanned cowhides stretched over frames of slender willow saplings make vessels that sit lightly upon the swell, like resting seabirds, but it is a brave man who would climb aboard such a thing and head off into the North Atlantic in hope of finding land that may or may not even exist. Brave or merely deluded, it was Irish monks who made the first voyages of discovery, and who were therefore first to set foot upon the Faroe Islands.

  Around AD 825 an Irish monk named Dicuil wrote Liber de Mensura Orbis Terrae — ‘Measure and Description of the Sphere of the Earth’ — in which he described islands lying far to the north of the British Isles:

  A set of small islands, nearly all separated by narrow stretches of water; in these for nearly a hundred years hermits sailing from our country, Ireland, have lived. But just as they were always deserted from the beginning of the world, so now because of the Northman pirates they are emptied of anchorites, and are filled with countless sheep and very many diverse kinds of seabirds.

  As yet the archaeological evidence is inconclusive. Some place names make use of papa, suggesting the presence, once upon a time, of ‘fathers’. There have been finds of stone slabs engraved or incised with simple crosses, but so far nothing by way of domestic artefacts has come to light. Perhaps the best clue lies in the presence of the sheep. When the Viking settlers finally arrived they named the place Faereyar — the sheep islands — suggesting the four-legged inhabitants were already in residence by then. Since the sheep had not swum there, it is plausible they were the descendants of stock animals transported by the monks in their currachs more than a century before.

  According to the fourteenth-century Flateyjarbók — ‘the Flat Island Book’ — the first Viking settler on the Faroe Islands was a man called Grimur Kamban. Sometime around AD 800 he arrived with enough companions, seed crops and animals to establish a settlement. All modern Faroese claim descent from Grimur and tradition has it that he travelled via Dublin, Cape Wrath, Orkney and Shetland. To make the matter of his origins and identity even more interesting, his name is a combination of both Norse and Celtic elements. The ‘Grim’ part is common in northern Europe and Scandinavia, and means something like ‘the masked man’. But the ‘Kam’ in Kamban has its roots in an old Irish word for bent or crooked. The idea of an Irish source for the first man on the Faroe Islands simply will not go away.

  Whether or not it was Irish monks who were first to reach the islands, it is important to remember they could not have been ‘colonists’ in any meaningful sense of the word. For a start, they were all men, seeking seclusion and the peace of God rather than families in search of new lives. Whatever impact the hermits might have had on the islands, it would certainly have been superficial. When the Vikings arrived, led
by Grimur Kamban, they would quickly have swamped any Irishmen there — brushing away their traces like chalk dust from a blackboard.

  Lying approximately halfway between Norway and Iceland, the Faroe Islands have belonged to Denmark since 1814. There are 18 main islands in the group, amounting to some 540 square miles of rugged, often rocky territory that feels as lonely and far-flung as any misanthropic monk might wish. Slaettaratindur is the tallest peak, at nearly 3,000 feet, and when the length of the coastline of all the islands is added together it comes to the best part of 700 miles, much of it in the form of dramatic cliffs and waterfalls. It is a landscape of extremes, one breathtaking view after another. If movie director Peter Jackson had not selected New Zealand to stand in for Middle Earth in his trilogy of Lord of the Rings films, then the Faroe Islands would surely have been every bit as suitable, for Mordor at the very least.

  But for all that they might seem isolated they are also in a pivotal position in the North Atlantic. Look at them on a map and suddenly they appear like a central point, a hub. As recently as the Second World War both the British and the German governments understood their geographical significance, so that when Hitler invaded Denmark, Churchill immediately sent troops to occupy the little archipelago. During the Battle of the Atlantic, control of that lonely outpost proved crucial to Allied success.

  So when it came to the Vikings’ continuing adventures in the north and west, the Faroe Islands were the ideal launching pad. It was only a matter of time before some of the settlers looked farther afield once more. The first Viking footprints on Iceland, however, the next of the stepping-stones across the North Atlantic, were apparently made not by would-be settlers, but by a lost mariner. According to the Historia Norwegie, it was a Norwegian man named Naddodd, or Nadd-Oddur, who first set foot on the place, sometime around AD 850 or 860. By all accounts he was an outlaw, probably the victor of a duel and therefore a killer, cast out from among decent folk and condemned to live elsewhere. Naddodd had set sail for the Faroe Islands, but either bad weather, bad seamanship or a combination of both saw him blown far off-course. When he finally sighted land beyond the swell it was the peaks of an island as yet unknown to his people. Having managed to get ashore, he seemingly did no more than climb a nearby peak before deciding there was nothing there for him. As he returned to his boat it began to snow, and when he eventually reached the Faroe Islands he told the people there he had discovered ‘Snowland’.

  It is also in the Historia Norwegie that we read about the second Norwegian to make landfall on Iceland, this one called Floki Vilgertharson. It was he who gave the place the name we know it by today. The first winter he spent there was so bitter, the cold so unrelenting, he called it ‘Iceland’ and it was Floki’s description that stuck. A Swede named Garthar Svavarsson led another expedition to Iceland, either just before or just after Floki. But according to the Landnámabók — the twelfth-century Book of the Settlements compiled by the Icelandic historian Ari Thorgilsson — it was a Norwegian called Ingolfr Arnarson who first put down permanent roots on the island. Like Naddodd, Ingolfr was an outlaw, a man with a violent past and drawn to the Viking equivalent of the Wild West by the prospect of starting afresh. Apparently aware of the lack of trees on Iceland, he had come with timber for building a house. As his ship drew closer to land he flung overboard two instafar, the main structural posts, and watched which way the currents took them.

  By all accounts it was some time after he made landfall himself that he was able to find his timbers — but they had come ashore in a location where geothermal steam was vented from the earth. Mistaking the steam for smoke, he named the place Reykjavik — literally, ‘smoky bay’ — and eventually made his home there.

  After the false starts of Naddodd, Floki and Garthar, the settlement pioneered by Ingolfr inspired a flood of immigration. According to the Book of Settlements and also the Íslendingabók, ‘the Book of the Icelanders’, the period between 870 and 930 witnessed the arrival of as many as 20,000 newcomers. By the end of this time, Iceland was fully occupied, with all the available farming and grazing land claimed. As with the Faroe Islands, it is unclear just who else might have been resident on Iceland when the Norse settlement began.

  The sixth-century voyage of the Irish explorer St Brendan — thought by some to have taken him as far as North America — may have reached Iceland as well. Testimony from Dicuil, who wrote about Irish monks on the Faroe Islands, also places Irish holy men on Iceland before anyone else. Again there is the ‘papa’ element in several place names — but also, frustratingly, a lack of conclusive archaeological evidence. There is a general consensus, however, that it was not just Scandinavians who were drawn to the island in the years after 870. Study of the genetic make-up of modern Icelanders has revealed a Celtic component that suggests settlers from the British Isles — Irish and Scots among them — were part of the first wave.

  Like the Book of Settlements, the Book of the Icelanders is attributed, in large part, to Ari Thorgilsson (also known as Ari hinn frodi or Ari Frodi — Ari the Wise). Since he was at work centuries after the events he was writing about, all the usual caveats apply as to the likely accuracy of his words. He may have applied liberal amounts of artistic licence, but his account does seem to make plain that Iceland was settled by would-be chieftains. Ingolfr and Naddodd, and others like them, were men whose ambitions and violent tempers had made them outcasts in the land of their birth. In order to establish themselves as leaders and landowners of note, they had first to find the space, and the freedom, in which they might fulfil such destinies. Iceland has a total land area of around 40,000 square miles. It is therefore one-fifth again as large as Ireland and yet even today has a population of just over 300,000. For people intent on reinventing themselves in a new place, it must have seemed perfect.

  I often think the Norwegian Vikings were a people caught, quite literally, between a rock and a hard place, or indeed a succession of hard places. Their homeland was short on land and resources and, by the ninth century, ruled by increasingly authoritarian figures. Those with the will and the opportunity were prepared to leave their old lives behind them and seek what luck betide them. Those were brave men and women and yet the places they found, after perilous journeys across the North Atlantic, were often at least as challenging as their homeland: wind-blasted and rain-lashed Shetland and Orkney, blighted by winters as long and dark as those in Norway; more of the same in the Faroe Islands.

  Iceland may well have seemed the harshest yet. Of all the places I told people I would be visiting in search of Vikings, it was mention of Iceland that captivated most. Even in the twenty-first century the sound of the name excites curiosity. Imagine the impact such a wild and dangerous place must have had on those ninth-century pioneers and settlers: active volcanoes spewing lava; barren, sterile expanses of newborn rock; geothermal springs of boiling water, belching steam; the rotten-egg fug of sulphurous gases. Modern Reykjavik retains something of the feel of a frontier town, of being on the edge of the wild. The steam still belches out of the ground, the volcanoes still grumble and moan and the hot water coming out of the showers in the hotels still smells like old-fashioned stink bombs. As recently as April 2010 a massive pall of dust and ash from the Eyjaijallajökull volcano in south-west Iceland forced 20 countries to close their airspace, for fear the debris might bring down passenger planes. In some fundamental ways, Iceland is still a scary place where nature and geology continue to have the upper hand.

  Perhaps it was in Iceland too that the Vikings finally found a landscape that made sense of their gods and legends. Where else but in the blazing heart of a volcano would Wayland the Smith have his forge? Surely the thunder of eruptions sounded like Thor at war against the giants, mighty Mjölnir in hand?

  Theirs was a violent, dramatic cosmology and Iceland provided a violent and dramatic backdrop. The Vikings’ universe comprised several worlds, all of them coexisting. Asgard was the world of gods like Odin and Thor who lived and feasted in Val
halla, the great hall of the warriors. Midgard was the world of mortals. At the centre of it all was Yggdrasil, a towering ash tree, perpetually green:

  I know where grows an ash,

  It is called Yggdrasil,

  A tall tree, speckled,

  With white drops;

  From there comes the dew

  Which falls in the valley;

  It flourishes for ever

  Above the wells of Urd.

  All the world’s rivers sprang from between Yggdrasil’s roots. From one Odin drew his wisdom, from another came the destiny of mankind. Everything — Yggdrasil, the worlds of gods and men, a rainbow bridge linking heaven and Earth — was supported on the back of a giant serpent.

  Straddling, as it does, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge — the faultline between the Eurasian and the North American tectonic plates — the island is quite literally torn between worlds.

  It was and is a geologically dynamic environment. At Stöng, in the valley of Thjorsardalur, in the south-west of the island, archaeologists excavated a farm settlement dating from quite late in the Viking Age. Once consisting of a large hall, with an adjoining dairy and indoor toilet, and also a separate byre and smithy, it would have been home to a prosperous family. Iceland is a largely tree-less place today and the majority of the deforestation was undertaken by farmers like those at Stöng, in the first decades of settlement. What makes the Stöng farmstead so attractive to archaeologists is the spectacular preservation of the remains. Even the lower courses of the turf walls have survived intact. But while so much of the world of the Vikings has been preserved for us elsewhere by the airtight blanket provided by peat, on Iceland the miracle has been performed by volcanic eruptions.