by Neil Oliver
Cnut the Great had ruled an empire. All of England, Denmark and Norway, and part of Sweden besides, had been answerable to him in his day. But it was a creation held together by the ambition and personality of the man himself. His son Harthacnut was proclaimed King of England and Denmark in 1040, but died during a drinking session two years later. Thereafter the English throne was occupied by Edward the Confessor, son of Aethelred and Emma of Normandy.
The Norwegian Harald Sigurdarsson — known as ‘Hardrada’ or ‘Hardruler’ — was the last true Viking to attempt the invasion of England. A warrior of unequalled skill and guile, he earned his spurs during years of service in the Varangian Guard, before returning to Norway in 1045 and seizing the throne of his homeland a year later. If anyone had the ambition to rival Cnut, it was surely Harald Hardrada, and when Edward the Confessor of England died without issue in 1066 he scented blood in the water once more. In the confusion and uncertainty that followed Edward’s death, Harold Godwinson, one of the royal advisors, had been made king. Hardrada, egged on by Harold’s exiled brother Tostig, amassed a huge army and fleet and launched a surprise attack. Landing at Riccall, on the River Ouse, he was soon joined by yet more men and ships commanded by Tostig, who had been exiled by Edward on Harold’s advice, and also the Earl of Orkney. There may have been as many as 9,000 men and by September, after some early successes on the ground, they were encamped at Stamford Bridge, eight or so miles from York.
After a four-day forced march, Harold Godwinson was ready to confront his challenger by the 25 September. Legend has it that he rode out to see the enemy for himself. Hardrada asked the king how much of England he might be given in return for peace. Harold is said to have replied, ‘I will grant you seven feet of English ground, or as much more as you are taller than other men.’
The slaughter that then ensued was nightmarish. All day long they fought, in blazing sunshine, and by the end the invaders had been all but annihilated. Hardrada himself, who had fought from one end of Europe to the other and ruled whole swathes of Scandinavia in his day, was felled by an arrow through the throat.
The English success was famously short-lived, however, and word reached Harold of the arrival of a second invasion, this time on the south coast. William, Duke of Normandy, was a descendant of Rollo, the Viking who had gained the territory from the Frankish king in AD 911. Emma’s marriages to Aethelred and Cnut persuaded William of his own right to the English throne and he arrived with his own force just two days after Hardrada’s destruction at Stamford Bridge. A second forced march, this one lasting nine days, enabled Harold and his exhausted men to confront the Normans near Hastings, in Sussex, on 14 October 1066.
For a while on the day it looked as though Harold would secure his second, luminous victory — but in the end the superiority of the combined Norman cavalry, infantry and archers wore down the English resistance. Whether or not Harold was killed by an arrow to the eye can never be known for certain, but his death sealed the fate of England’s defenders. In the aftermath of the fighting the teenage Edgar the Aetheling, grandson of Edmund Ironside, was declared king by what remained of the English government. It was little more than a futile gesture, however. Though proclaimed king, Edgar was never actually crowned, and when he was eventually brought before William in early December, he agreed to step quietly aside. William the Conqueror was duly crowned, in Westminster Abbey, on Christmas Day.
William’s arrival on the throne of England is regarded by many historians as marking the end of the Viking Age. It was certainly over in spirit by then, if not in fact. A people who had thundered onto the world stage as pirates and raiders two and half centuries before had steadily and relentlessly reinvented themselves. The Vikings were never defeated; rather they allowed themselves to be assimilated. They had begun by envying their neighbours and in seeking to grow rich and powerful in their own right they had altered and shaped the economics, politics, languages and religious identities of every other country they touched.
The Vikings have haunted my imagination since childhood. In hopes of properly understanding them I went in search of unicorn horns, dragon-headed ships, battleaxes and runes carved into the marble of a Byzantine church. But although I found all those things, I find at the end that I am beguiled most of all by the little girl from Birka. Rather than warriors and mariners, my abiding image of the Viking world is that of a strange little girl in a red dress, skipping along the boardwalks of her hometown. I saw her bones and her few possessions in the museum in Stockholm and I stood by the site of her grave, on the high ground overlooking the sleeping remains of Birka.
In the scheme of things, the period of time we call the Viking Age was brief, a sudden flame that burned brightly and went out. Birka girl’s time was also brief, but in her few short years she captivated all who encountered her. She has that power even now. When she died she was granted burial in a place of honour, in the shadow of the town’s ramparts. For all who had known her, she was unique and unforgettable. A burst of flame leaves a ghost that lingers on the retina long after the light itself has gone. I cannot forget Birka girl and the world will never forget the Vikings.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
SECTION ONE
Sword, axe head and bronze pin recovered from the Ardnamurchan peninsula in 2011 (Jeff J. Mitchell / Getty Images)
Up Helly Aa festival, 25 January 2005 (Jeff J. Mitchell / Reuters / Corbis)
Vedbæk Woman, Denmark (DEA / De Agostini / Getty Images)
Egtved Girl, Denmark (Erich Lessing / AKG Images)
One of Egtved Girl’s bronze bracelets (De Agostini / AKG Images)
Bronze Age rock carvings of long ships, Tanumshede, Sweden (DEA / M. Seemuller / Getty Images)
The Brudevælte Lurs (Werner Forman / Corbis)
Petroglyphs on the walls of Bredaror burial cairn in Sweden (Christophe Boisvieux / hemis.fr / Getty Images)
Tollund Man (Christian Kober / Robert Harding / Corbis)
Pictish stone in Aberlemno churchyard, Scotland (Robert Harding / Corbis)
Headpiece from an eighth-century Irish bishop’s crozier, Helgö, Sweden (Werner Forman / Corbis)
Reliquary bust of Charlemagne, King of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor (Gianni Dagli Orti / Cathedral Treasury Aachen / The Art Archive)
Stone ships at the Lindholm Høje cemetery near Aalborg, Denmark (Ted Spiegel / Corbis)
Bronze Age ship settings on Gotland, Sweden
SECTION TWO
Lindisfarne Priory (Roger Coulam / Getty Images)
Page from the Lindisfarne Gospels (British Library / AKG Images)
A carved grave marker at Lindisfarne Priory depicting Viking raiders armed with swords and axes (Ted Spiegel / Corbis)
The Gokstad Ship (Richard T. Nowitz / Corbis)
Detail of carvings found at the Oseberg Ship burial (Heritage Images / Corbis)
Dragon head post from the Oseberg Ship (Heritage Images / Corbis)
Viking Age picture stone from Gotland, Sweden (Erich Lessing / AKG Images)
A faithfully reconstructed replica of the Oseberg Ship (David Lomax / Robert Harding / Getty Images)
Istanbul city walls (Robert Mulder / Getty Images)
Greek Fire (Sonia Halliday Photographs / Alamy)
Hagia Sophia, Istanbul (Bruno Morandi / Getty Images)
Graffito in Hagia Sofia (Ted Spiegel / Corbis)
A hoard of silver coins and jewellery, Birka, Sweden (Werner Forman / Corbis)
Viking silver coins, Birka, Sweden (Ted Spiegel / Corbis)
Excavation for Viking artefacts in Dublin (Ted Spiegel / Corbis)
The Alfred Jewel (Getty Images)
Alfred the Great (British Library / AKG Images)
SECTION THREE
Iron Age ‘wheel-house’, Jarlshof, Shetland (Patrick Dieudonne / Robert Harding / Corbis)
Thingvellir, the site of Iceland’s Althing (Werner Forman / Corbis)
Eirik the Red’s arrival in Greenland, ad 982 (Mary Evans Picture
Library / Alamy)
The Vinland Map (DEA / M. Seemuller / Getty Images)
Odin and fellow Viking gods (British Library / AKG Images)
Jelling burial mounds and church, southern Denmark (Lars Madsen / Alamy)
Jelling rune stone (Werner Forman / Corbis)
Baptism of Harald Bluetooth by Poppo, Tamdrup Church, Jutland, Denmark (DEA / A. Dagli Orti / AKG Images)
Reconstructed Viking long house, Trelleborg Fortress, Denmark (Look Die Bildagentur der Fotografen GmbH / Alamy)
The Cuerdale silver hoard (The Art Gallery Collection / Alamy)
Cnut the Great (British Library / AKG Images)
Die Reichskrone (Imagno / AKG Images)
IMAGE GALLERY
A warrior’s grave goods: the sowrd, axe head and bronze pin recovered from the first intact Viking boat burial found on mainland Britain, on the Ardnamurchan peninsula in the north-west of Scotland, in 2011.
Up Helly Aa. Shetlanders dressed as Vikings aboard a replica long ship. At the climax of the festival, held every January, they use their flaming torches to set their vessel on fire.
Vedbæk Mesolithic cemetery in Denmark. A woman and infant buried together around 6,000 years ago — she with a necklace of deer teeth, and the baby with a flint blade at its wasit, laid upon a swan’s wing.
A Bronze Age celebrity: Egtved Girl was buried near the modern village of Egtved, in the south-east of Denmark, during the second millennium BC. Acidic soil conditions preserved not just the teenager’s clothing, jewellery and grave goods, but also her well-kept blonde hair, nails, teeth, some skin and even fragments of her brain tissue.
One of Egtved Girl’s bronze bracelets.
Bronze Age rock carvings of long ships, complete with their crews, at Tanumshede in Sweden.
The Brudevælte Lurs: musical instruments, which make a sound much like modern trumpets, found during peat-cutting in the norther Sjælland, Denmark, in 1797.
The voyage of the lord of Kivik. These petroglyphs on the walls of the empty burial chamber of the Bronze Age Bredaror burial cairn in Sweden show long ships, with robed and hooded figures, some playing lurs. There are also spoked wheels and a man riding a chariot. Since such vehicles were otherwise unknown in Scandinavia at the time, these images suggest long-distance contacts.
Tollund Man. The peaceful expression on the perfectly perserved face of the most famous of the Danish Iron Age ‘bog bodies’ belies his grisly fate. The cord around his neck revealed he had been a victim of human sacrifice.
A carved Pictish stone in Aberlemno churchyard, near Angus, Scotland. One of several found in and around the village, this one is known as Aberlemno II and is thought to depict the Battle of Dunnichen (also known as Necthtansmere or Dun Nechtain) between Picts and Angles in AD 685.
This headpiece from an eighth-century Irish bishop’s crozier depicts a man in the mouth of a beast — perhaps Joanh in the belly of the whale and therefore a symbol of rebirth. It was found during excavations at Helgö in Sweden.
Reliquary bust of Charlemagne, King of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor.
Stone ships at the Lindholm Høje cemetery near Aalborg, in Denmark. The largest site of its kind in Scandinavia, it contains over 600 burials dating from the Iron Age to the Viking period.
Sailing solo — the author among the stones of the largest of the 380 Bronze Age ship settings on Gotland, Sweden.
Seaborne Norwegian warriors attacked the religious community at Lindisfarne, in Northumberland, on 8 June 793, marking the start of the Viking Age. The religious significance of hte island survived the raid, however, and the magnificent Lindisfarne Priory was built in the twelfth century.
Illuminated by faith — the beginning of the New Testament Christmas story, from the Lindisfarne Gospels.
Remembered in stone — a carved grave marker at Lindisfarne Priory depicts Viking raiders armed with swords and axes.
The Gokstad Ship is one of hte best-preserved vessels of the Viking Age. Found in the Vestfold County of Norway, it was built sometime in the first decade of the tenth century.
A detail of the rich carvings of fighting figures and intertwined serpents on the side panels of the wooden wagons, which was included among the lavish grave goods at the Oseberg Ship burial.
Intricately carved dragon head post from the Oseberg Ship, buried in the Vestfold County around AD 834.
This Viking Age picture stone from Gotland, Sweden, shows the distinctive curved prow and stern of the classic long ship, together with the square sail.
A faithfully reconstructed replica of the Oseberg Ship takes to the sea once more.
Impregnable for a thousand years, the defensive walls aroudn the city of Constantinople defied Huns, Muslims and Vikings alike.
Greek Fire. A twelfth-century depiction of the still mysterious, sticky, flammable substance used by the Byzantine navy to set fire to enemy ships and their crews.
Hagia Sophia, Istanbul. The Orthodox Christian Church of St Sophia built by Emperor Justinian in AD 537 and converted to a mosque after the fall of Constantinople to Sultan Mehmet II in 1453.
‘Halfdan made these runes’ — graffito scratched into a marble balustrade inside Hagia Sophia, perhaps by a member of the Varangian Guard, the elite Viking bodyguard of the Byzantine emperors.
Evidence of a wealthy past. A hoard of silver coins and jewellery, together with an iron sword, from Birka, Sweden.
Viking silver coins found at Birka, Sweden.
Viking Dublin. Excavations reveal wooden walkways and other structural traces of the Irish capital’s Scandinavian roots.
The Alfred Jewel. Crafted from gold, cloisonné enamel and rock crystal, it is thought to be an ornate handle for a pointer used while reading aloud from sacred texts.
Alfred the Great, as depicted within an illuminated capital in a fourteenth-century manuscript.
Iron Age ‘wheel-house’ at Jarlshof, Shetland — part of the long story of human occupation of the site, lasting from at least the Bronze Age until the seventeenth century.
Thingsvellir. The meeting place of Iceland’s Althing, or parliament, from around AD 930 until the middle of the nineteenth century.
Into the west — the arrival in Greenland, in AD 982, of Eirik the Red, father of Leif Eiriksson who, in turn, reached Newfoundland in North America around AD 1000.
The Vinland Map. Claimed by many to be a fifteenth-century pen and ink mappa mundi, it shows Greenland as an island and records the Viking discovery of Vinland. Others have dismissed it as a twentieth-century fake.
Odin and his fellow Viking gods, from twelfth-century manuscript.
Jelling burial mounds and church, southern Denmark.
The Jelling rune stone raised by Harald Bluetooth to commemorate his parents and to boast about his conversion of the Danes to Christianity. The carving is believed to show Jesus Christ freeing himself from the tangles of a thorn bush — symbolising the emergence of the new faith from the confusions of the old pagan religion.
The baptism of Harald Bluetooth by the priest Poppo, as depicted on one of the gilt plaques on display in Tamdrup Church, in Jutland, Denmark.
Reconstructed Viking long house, at Trelleborg Fortress, Denmark.
The Cuerdale silver hoard — the largest Viking hoard ever found. Buried between AD 905 and 910 beside the Ribble River in Lancashire, it amounts to around 8,500 coins, ingots and jewellery.
Cnut the Great, King of Denmark, England, Norway and parts of Sweden.
Die Reichskrone — the Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Emperor.
PRINCIPAL VIKING CHARACTERS
Aase A Ynglinga queen, mother of Halfdan the Black, King of Norway and founder of the Norwegian royal dynasty, and grandmother of King Harald Fairhair. The Osberg ship found in a huge burial mound by Oslo Fjord has been suggested as her resting place. The trees used in its construction were felled in the autumn of AD 834.
Bjarni Herjólfsson A Norwegian who, acccording to the Saga of the Greenlanders, was th
e first Viking to sight North America in 985 or 986. He had set out to follow his parents from Iceland to Greenland but bad weather blew him past Greenland to the coast of Labrador which he named Markland (‘Wood Land’) and then, turning northwards, he reported Helluland (‘Stone Land’), probably Bafffin Island, before making landfall at last in Greenland.
Björn ‘Ironside’ Jarnsida A chieftain who, together with his brother Hastein, in 859 sailed down the River Loire with a fleet of 60 ships and via the French and Iberian coasts and the Straits of Gibraltar entered the mouth of the Rhône. From there they raided settlements along the coasts of France and Italy and the Balearic Islands, returning to Brittany, depleted by Muslim attacks on the fleet, by the spring of 862.
