Children of Ash and Elm

by Neil Price;

  According to twelfth-century sources, the Norse word for the Mediterranean was Miðjarðarhaf, the ‘Midgard Sea’, and even the gateway into it had mythological overtones. The Gibraltar passage was called Nörvasund, which some scholars translate as the ‘Straits of Odin’, in his persona as Nörr, the brother of Night. That the Vikings chose names of this kind may mean that they regarded the region as unknown territory, as they headed ‘off the map’ and into an almost legendary realm.

  Once through the straits, the fleet made for the North African coast and its first real success. Mazimma, in the small Moroccan state of Nekor, was sacked and occupied for eight days. Two of the royal women—we even know their names, Ama al-Raḥmān and Khanūla—were captured, and a large ransom was paid by the emir of Córdoba for their return. The Vikings then crossed back to Spain and ravaged Andalucía and Murcia before harrying northwards along the Mediterranean coast. There are hints in the sources that they divided into smaller flotillas to do so, reminiscent of the ‘brotherhoods’ that fought in Frankia.

  The Balearic Islands of Formentera, Ibiza, Majorca, and Minorca were all raided. The fleet then continued into southern Frankish territory, assaulting monasteries and towns before wintering in the marshy Camargue region in what is now Provence. In the spring of 860, the Vikings raided along the Rhône but were forced back to the sea, at which point they sailed for Italy. We have fairly credible sources for an attack on Pisa, but it is at this point that the legend takes over. Later texts, originating in eleventh-century Normandy, conjure a stirring tale in which the Vikings launched a successful assault on what they believed to be Rome itself, only to discover it was in fact the small Tuscan settlement of Luni. Apart from the sheer unlikeliness that men who had seen Byzantium would mistake a village for the former imperial capital, the tale also includes elements repeated in other, similarly fabulous stories; sadly, it is almost certainly fiction. However, this does not mean that Luni, and also Fiesole (mentioned in another source), were not plundered in reality. Moreover, after their north Italian raids the entire fleet disappears from the record for nearly a year, and from the sources we have, it is clear they were headed into the eastern Mediterranean. Tenth- and eleventh-century chronicles have them in Constantinople and Greece, while one Arab source even puts them credibly in Alexandria, raising the extraordinary possibility that the Vikings reached Egypt.

  They are recorded as attempting to return to the Atlantic via the Straits of Gibraltar in 861. On this occasion, however, they were intercepted by a large Muslim fleet. Two thirds of the Viking ships were destroyed, but the remainder—supposedly under Björn’s command—ran the blockade and fought their way through to the open sea. They finally returned to the Loire in 862 after a further episode of raiding in northern Iberia, their ships so laden with booty and slaves that, according to yet another later text, their gunwales were almost underwater. At least some of the survivors must have managed to retain their captives from the early raids in North Africa, as the Irish chronicler Duald Mac-Fuirbis records that “after that the Norsemen brought a great host of Moors in captivity with them to Ireland… long were these dark people in Ireland”.

  Following Hástein and Björn’s raid, Viking activity in Iberia remained minimal until the mid-tenth century. At this time, new attacks targeted the Christian kingdoms in northern Spain, with Galicia bearing the brunt of the raiders’ aggression during three major assaults in 951, 965, and 966. Although it is clear that the Vikings were not universally successful in their endeavours, in 968 a raiding fleet established a base on the Ulla River, near Santiago de Compostela, and spent the next three years plundering the Galician countryside. Whether the ultimate motive was to establish a permanent settlement is unknown, but the modus operandi of the Viking force is immediately recognisable as that which had long been used, with great success, on the Loire, Seine, and Somme rivers. Further raids were conducted in the early 970s, following which there was a hiatus in attacks until the eleventh century.

  Very little evidence of Viking contact with the peoples of the Iberian Peninsula—either peaceful or violent—remains today. Encounters between Scandinavian seafarers and both Christian and Islamic populations were almost certainly more frequent than contemporaneous sources would have us believe, yet the only evidence for diplomatic contact is limited to a purported Umayyad embassy to the court of an unnamed Scandinavian king. There is also a single deer-antler box dating from the late tenth century, now in the Museo de la Real Colegiata de San Isidoro in León, which may well have been a Scandinavian royal gift. No evidence for the plunder gathered in Iberia by Hástein and Björn, or by any other raiding fleets, has been found in Scandinavia or the overseas colonies. It is possible that the mixed fortunes of those raiding groups that did venture south discouraged attempts to establish more permanent bases that would draw Iberia into the long-distance networks of trade and redistribution that the Vikings operated elsewhere. It is possible, however, that the Viking presence simply has not yet been identified in the archaeological record. Even if the raids did not take place on the same scale as in France, it is difficult to believe that there is no evidence to be found. Further research is clearly necessary if we are to better understand this peripheral but nonetheless important corner of the Viking world.

  There is a beautiful coda to these southerly ventures, an example of something so strange as to be scarcely credible, but also a demonstration of what archaeology and science can really achieve together. One of the things biologists study in connection with human migrations is the movement of animal proxies. In other words, even if people prove elusive to locate, it may be possible to track the presence of the domesticated species and parasites that moved with them. In some cases, traces of them at a certain place and time are suggestive of a larger event. One such study has mapped the presence of the common house mouse, especially those with a particular genetic signature associated with Denmark, in different areas of Europe. Tenth- or eleventh-century mouse bones of this species—which at that date are only found in places where Vikings had travelled—have now been confirmed from Madeira. There is no written record of a Viking presence there, but the brief landing of a Danish ship is the only explanation that fits, and it would not be geographically surprising. For a culture so fixated on memory, on the legacy of achievement, how ironic it is that the only trace of ‘Viking Madeira’ should be a mouse.

  The Atlantic was also the stage for another significant feature of the early diaspora: the Scandinavian discovery and settlement of first the Faroe Islands and then Iceland. Over the following centuries, the North Atlantic would prove to be one of the central zones of Norse activity, not only for the establishment of the long-lasting Icelandic commonwealth, but also for the settlement of Greenland and the first European landfall in North America. In short, while Viking raids in the British Isles and Continental Europe would continue, the northern reaches of the Atlantic Ocean would experience a different kind of Viking Age.

  According to the written sources, the Norse settlement of Iceland—the so-called landnám, or land-taking—occurred somewhere around 870. The first to stay were supposedly exiles who refused to live under the rule of the Norwegian king Harald Finehair, the most successful of the west-coast sea-kings. Until recently, this was largely supported by a form of scientific analysis that in the Viking world is unique to Iceland, in that the horizontal deposits of volcanic tephra resulting from the island’s frequent eruptions can be closely dated, very usefully if they happen to seal archaeological remains. For a long time, all known evidence for the settlement of the country post-dated a layer of tephra that fell in 871, plus or minus two years.

  There has been a long-standing debate, however, as to whether Iceland had been home to isolated communities of Irish hermits prior to the arrival of the Norse settlers. This suggestion has been based on the writings of an early ninth-century cleric named Dicuil, who wrote in his Liber de Mensura Orbis Terrae that the North Atlantic islands had been inhabited for over one hu
ndred years by monks—the papar, or ‘fathers’—who had travelled north to seek solitude. The twelfth-century Íslendingabók, the ‘Book of Icelanders’, tells a similar story, although it is possible there is an element of Christian revisionism as the land thus appears consecrated by the former presence of the monks. Iceland could have been seen by the medieval writers as having been ‘originally’ Christian, with the new faith as something latent and waiting for the settlers to later rediscover. This version ignores possible conflicts between the monks and the pagan ancestors of the later Christian Norse, and in emphasising that the papar depart prior to the settlers’ arrival, it gives them a conveniently clean slate on which to begin their own journey towards God.

  While the claims of both Dicuil and Íslendingabók have yet to find confirmed support from the archaeological record, after many years of controversy, there is now clear and accepted evidence of pre-Viking cereal cultivation on the Faroes, with the discovery of charred grains of barley preserved in burnt peat under windblown deposits at a site on the island of Sandoy. Dating to the fourth through sixth centuries, these cereals seem likely to represent the basic subsistence practices of a small community, and this would certainly fit with the presence of presumably Irish monks. There is now also some evidence to suggest an earlier Norse presence on Iceland. Recent excavations at Stöðvarfjörður, on the eastern coast of the island closest to the British Isles and Scandinavia, have yielded exciting evidence for what appears to be a Scandinavian longhouse dated by radiocarbon to around 800. However, it is uncertain whether the structure was inhabited permanently, and it could have been occupied seasonally by groups participating in fishing or whaling expeditions.

  The Norse colonists who settled in the North Atlantic islands first established their farms on the coast. The Faroes had the potential for great productivity at the time of the initial colonisation, and animals were able to winter outside. Indeed, the first settlers found the islands to be inhabited by large numbers of sheep, which might conceivably have been brought there by the monks. Early farms have been excavated at sites such as Niðri á Toft near Kvívík, and Á Toftanesi in the village of Leirvík, all with a distinctly Scandinavian layout. Following the initial period of landnám, the settlement pattern seems to have remained relatively static. Although little is known about the Faroes compared to other North Atlantic colonies such as Iceland, their position on the main sailing route from Scandinavia and the British Isles meant that they would have been frequently visited. There is clear excavated evidence for a variety of long-distance trading contacts. In the maritime world of the Vikings, the Faroes were anything but remote.

  In Iceland, the main area of initial settlement was on the west coast. It has recently been argued that colonists were drawn to this part of the island by large colonies of walrus, whose ivory was a valuable trading commodity. The initial landnám period is regarded as lasting until 930, when the first general assembly was established. During this time the settlement pattern was quite dynamic. Detailed studies of regions such as Mývatnsveit in the north of the country reveal a steady process of farm abandonment over time. The initial settlements of the ninth and tenth centuries seem to have been almost experimental, as the colonists sought the best way to adapt to their new environment. Around 20 percent of the early farms were soon abandoned, and another 30 percent disappeared over the following hundred years or so. However, this picture can be deceptive, as the pattern seems to reflect a process by which population distribution became more concentrated over time. The organisation of the landscape was also adjusted in response to environmental factors and to maximise the economic sustainability of agriculture and pasture, combined with subtle shifts in the nature of chiefly authority and its relationship to the land. In other areas of the country, such as Skagafjörður, almost no abandonment is seen in the archaeological and landholding records, and the settlers there seem to have achieved an effective balance almost immediately after the landnám.

  When the evidence from texts, genetic studies, and personal names is combined, it becomes clear that people travelled to Iceland from all regions of Scandinavia, including Gotland. There were Sámi colonists in considerable numbers—perhaps to be expected in a Norwegian context—which reinforces the suggestion that communities there were much more integrated than has traditionally been understood. Small numbers of Franks and Saxons also seem to have gone to Iceland, but this is not surprising: the Viking world was a cosmopolitan place, and people travelled for much the same reasons of economy, opportunity, and affection as they do today.

  Such freedom of choice may not have applied to all the settlers. Unlike Viking-occupied England, which seems to have included Scandinavians of both sexes, in the more marginal environments of the North Atlantic colonies a very different picture emerges. Genetic research reveals that a very large proportion—even the majority—of female settlers in Iceland were of Scottish or Irish heritage, with a particular focus on Orkney and the Hebrides. While a good many multicultural relationships can be expected, it is nonetheless striking that the first colonists seem to have been comprised very much of ‘Scandinavian’ men (mainly Norwegians) and ‘Celtic’ women. The rosy view of this would see hundreds or even thousands of Irish Sea women suddenly finding Norse boyfriends with whom to start afresh in the North Atlantic. However, there is a surely more likely, and frighteningly coercive, explanation in light of the already noted imbalance that may have developed in the Scandinavian sex ratios. There was certainly at least some element of slave-taking during the raiding and Norse overlordship in these areas of Britain, and it might also be that Viking chieftains in the Hiberno-Scottish region freed local captives in order to build up a mobile following.

  Within decades of its settlement, Iceland would grow into another social experiment, a republic of farmer chiefs. This was only the first of several ‘new worlds’ that the Scandinavians would establish across their diaspora from east to west and that would unfold within radically changing structures of society and political life. The new religion, Christianity, was beginning to have real impact in the North from the mid-ninth century onwards, and in time would fuse with the rising power of kings to create the distinctively Scandinavian nations that still exist today.

  NEW WORLDS, NEW NATIONS

  14

  THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE SHEEP FARMER

  NEW WORLDS ARE MADE THROUGH ambition and effort, with a measure of risk, sometimes with violence, and often by accident. They can be shaped by the many or by the few (often at the expense of the rest). Above all, they are created and maintained through economics. This was especially true for the later Viking Age, as the diaspora gathered momentum in the course of the tenth century. That expansion brought with it deeper changes in Scandinavian society, which were manifested at the most basic level of the community, in the organisation and management of the land itself, and in the ways people lived upon it.

  As the Scandinavians travelled ever farther afield, their trading networks grew, providing sustaining fuel for the Viking-Age economy; the hierarchical nature of the market centres and emporia became more pronounced. By the late 800s, the largest of them had developed into something that can reasonably be called towns—the first in the North, and the beginnings of the long urban trajectory of the Middle Ages.

  When one looks closer, the real power, and the means of producing it, can take unexpected forms. Some years ago, a prominent historian despaired of the constant focus on the Vikings as maritime warriors, and instead stressed the fact that most of the Scandinavian population stayed home on the land and never did any harm to anyone. The time of the Vikings, he claimed, was really “the Golden Age of the pig farmer”. He had a point, though he got the animal wrong: the Scandinavian landscape of the late Viking period was a world of sheep.

  Clearly, one of the primary components of the Viking phenomenon was the ship. The rapid developments in the technologies of water power were by no means a sole ‘trigger’, but the Scandinavian ventures into the wider wo
rld could not have happened without them. This was not just a matter of improved design, of faster ships with shallower draughts and better handling—these things brought with them a demand for raw materials and resources. Chief amongst these factors, because by its very nature it was critical to the success of Viking shipping, was the introduction of the sail.

  Although obviously common in the classical cultures of the Mediterranean, sails seem to have first appeared in the North during the eighth century, as seen in the Salme find. A great deal went into their manufacture, especially in their absolute need for wool and fibres such as hemp or flax. Viking ships seem to have carried square sails woven in woollen twill, sewn together from several strips of cloth either in parallel lines or on a diagonal. To make them less permeable to air flow, the sails would be greased with tallow, fish oil, or other substances, especially tar. For small craft, a cloth weight of 0.3–0.75 kilograms per square metre is needed, while larger vessels needed heavier sails of 0.95–1.05 kilograms per square metre. Double-coated Norse sheep of the kind common in the Viking Age produce 1–2.5 kilograms of wool per year.

  Textile archaeologists have calculated the amount of cloth that would have been required to equip the Ladby ship, a good example of a medium-sized warship found in a burial mound on the island of Fyn in Denmark. Based on a sail size of eighty square metres (probably a conservative estimate), it would have taken two person-years of ten-hour days to make just one mainsail weighing about fifty kilos, and nobody would put to sea without reserve sailcloth that might save their lives. This workload is also something of an ideal figure, so the reality would have been closer to three or even four person-years for one sail. This was not solo work, of course, but the permutations of time for increasingly large teams of textile workers are easy to calculate.