Most of the Norse were farmers, craftsmen, and merchants, but each spring a portion of them turned into raiders, pillaging monasteries, setting villages on fire, killing men, capturing women, and profaning the churches. The wealthy monasteries of the British Isles were a favorite target. A special prayer was added to the Christian liturgy in the British Isles: “Save us, O Lord, from the fury of the Northmen.” It did no good.
Surprise was a key element in the Norse raids. Their ships’ speed and maneuverability made their attacks difficult to withstand. The anonymous author of the Annals of Ulster described the raids as if they were an Atlantic storm: “The sea spewed forth floods of foreigners over Erin, so that no haven, no landing place, no stronghold, no fort, no castle might be found, but that it was submerged by waves of Vikings and pirates.”
In the 830s, Viking raids changed. Instead of attacking isolated monasteries, raiders mounted larger expeditions and constructed fortified camps, known as longphorts, which could be used as bases for further raids. Fortified camps grew into settlements. Raiders contracted marriage alliances with local kings and became involved in local political struggles, gradually transforming from Vikings to Hiberno-Norse, Normans, and Rus’.
The Norwegian Vikings built harbor strongholds on the sheltered east coast of Ireland: first Dublin, then Annagassan, Wexford, Waterford, and Cork. Initially these were simply sheltered winter camps where the Norse could refit their ships for the coming year’s expeditions against England and France. In time, these harbor strongholds became permanent commercial centers with craftsmen and industry. From Ireland, the Norwegians plundered the French port of Nantes, sailed up the Loire Valley between 843 and 862, reached Spain in the 850s, and made their way as far as North Africa, where they captured two women from the royal household and received a large ransom for their return.
The Danes concentrated on England. Beginning in 835, they established fortified bases along the River Thames. From these they mounted violent land attacks over a period of thirty years. By the end of the ninth century, the English were under Danish rule from the north of Yorkshire to the Thames. Like the Norwegians, the Danes also extended their raids to the other side of the English Channel, where they established themselves along the lower reaches of the Seine. In 911, the Danish leader Rollo signed a treaty with Charles the Simple, the king of the Franks. Rollo received the duchy of Neustria (modern Normandy) in exchange for becoming a vassal of Charles. Rollo converted to Christianity and was baptized as Robert. His Viking warriors became the Normans, who later defeated the Danish rulers of England at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
The Swedes turned eastward, first as traders in the Baltic and later as conquerors in Russia. In 858, a leader named Rurik founded a new Russian state, with its capital at Kiev. Rurik’s Vikings, now known as the Rus’, used the River Dnieper as a trade route to Byzantium. (They also used the river to launch regular and unsuccessful attacks on Constantinople, beginning in 860.) The Volga gave them access to the Caspian Sea, where they became part of the East-West trading network, selling furs and slaves and buying Chinese silk.
One surviving account of an encounter with tenth-century “Rus’” Vikings was written by a man named Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, after his party of Islamic ambassadors chanced upon the Vikings while traveling from Baghdad to modern-day Kazan (Russia).
THE WESTERN HALF OF THE Roman Empire plunged into the Dark Ages after the fall of Rome. The eastern half of the Roman Empire lived on until the mid-fifteenth century.
A VIKING BURIAL
IBN FADLAN’S PARTY, CULTURED AND RELIGIOUS Muslims seeking shelter and supplies, lands at the Viking settlement on the River Volga. After introducing themselves as best they can with no common language, they indicate their wish to trade Arabic coins for some Viking furs.
After the exchange, the Vikings permit the visitors to stay at the settlement for a period to wait out a snowstorm. The devout Muslims partake in meals provided by their hosts, but soon find themselves disgusted by the Vikings’ lifestyle of rampant debauchery, filth, and publicly vulgar sexual exploits.
Most shocking of all to the Arabian men are the strange ceremonies they witness surrounding the death and burial of a Viking chieftain—so unlike their own desert custom of a simple white cloth burial within twenty-four hours of a death. As a matter of respect, the visitors attend these rituals, which they are appalled to see will be led by a woman whom the Vikings call “the Angel of Death.”
As the proceedings begin, the woman announces that a slave girl has chosen to be sacrificed and buried with the deceased chief she had served. But before that final act, the chief’s family digs a shallow hole in the ground, where they lay the dead man’s body, and over which a wooden hut is erected to stand for ten days. The Vikings place provisions, including strong drink, fruits, and a harp, beside the chief’s body.
Over the next ten days, the community divides up the dead man’s belongings, and stitches fine new clothes for him to wear during his cremation. When the outfit is complete, Ibn Fadlan writes of the attire. The chief’s blackened body, he says, is dressed in “drawers, leggings, boots, with a kurtak and chaftan cloth of gold, with gold buttons, and a sable-trimmed cap laid on his head.” Then the dead chief is carried to his own longboat and placed upright against a bed of pillows on the deck. The people place his weapons and a variety of dead animals at his side.
The slave girl is then prepared for sacrifice, as Ibn Fadlan watches. (He will later record the ritual in vivid and horrific detail.) She first takes off her two bracelets and hands them to the Angel of Death, who seizes her by the head and drags her into a tent erected on the ship. Six men then enter the tent to have sex with the slave girl, while the other Vikings beat on their shields with staves. Soon afterward, the slave is tied by her arms and feet and stabbed to death by the Angel of Death. Finally, with the girl laid at her master’s side and the remaining Vikings assembled onshore, the chief’s ship is set on fire and pushed down the Volga River.
Under the rule of the Emperor Zeno in the fifth century, Constantinople claimed Rome’s legacy as the “center of the world.” It retained Rome’s administrative structure, but Greek replaced Latin as the empire’s official governmental and military language. Located at the crossroads between Europe and the Near East, Constantinople was a major force for several centuries.
DRAGON SHIPS
The dreaded “dragon ships” of the Vikings were swift, narrow-hulled ships with true keels and shallow drafts. Named for the fierce dragon heads carved into the upturned ends of each ship, they could sail long distances in the open sea using either oars or sails. Unlike the wider, deeper-hulled ships of Western Europe, they could land men directly at the mouth of a river or on the beach of a small island. The symmetry of the design, with an identical bow and stern and the mast at the exact center, meant the ship could go in either direction. Being able to withdraw from shore without turning around meant the ships could leave as quickly as they landed, increasing the blitzkrieg feel of a Viking raid.
THE POLYNESIANS
Viking seafaring skills were equaled, if not surpassed, by those of the Polynesians.
The first stage of the Polynesian migration took them from the islands along the northern coast of New Guinea and into the western Pacific, reaching the islands of Tonga and Samoa around 800 BCE.
Around 1100 CE, they set out again, sailing thousands of miles across open sea in large, double-hulled canoes that were about twenty feet smaller than a Viking ship. By 1200 CE they had reached virtually every habitable island in the eastern Pacific, including the Cooks, Hawaii, Australia, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), New Zealand, and the subantarctic islands.
It is the founding and history of Rapa Nui, called Easter Island by the European explorers who came upon it in 1722, that leave baffling questions. The mystery of Easter Island has only been magnified by surviving bits of oral history and the hundreds of moai— stone statues—that still stand, averaging 4.05 meters (13.2 feet) in height and 12
.5 tons. Why were these statues built? And, how, on an island with no metal, were they carved and transported? Archaeologists and anthropologists have done their best to answer these questions, with speculations that usually combine stone tools, ropes, wooden sledges, and tracks.
Beginning with the first wave of Islamic expansion in the eighth century, Constantinople was under constant attack. Its armies defended themselves against Arabs, Bulgars, and Magyars, against the Viking Rus’ in the ninth century, and against the Seljuk Turks in the eleventh century.
Worn out by centuries of fighting, with their capital’s wealth and defenses eaten away, the citizens of Constantinople were defenseless against the new power that rose in the fourteen century—the Ottoman Turks. By 1362, the Ottomans had conquered most of the Eastern Empire, and Constantinople was reduced to a city-state. It was finally captured by the Ottomans in 1453. Mehmed II renamed the city Istanbul and made it the capital of the growing Ottoman Empire. The Roman Empire of the East was dead.
Well before the end came, the threatened demise of Constantinople served as a rallying cry for popes and knights seeking treasure and control of the Holy Lands.
NOVEMBER 27, 1095. FRENCH, German, and Italian noblemen had come to the French cathedral city of Clermont to hear an announcement by Pope Urban II. The crowd was far too large to meet in the cathedral itself, so they gathered in a field outside the city’s east gate, despite the November chill. Men pulled their cloaks tightly around them and blew on their hands to keep them warm, hoping that whatever the pope had to say was worth the trip.
Urban delivered an unexpected and blistering sermon. Christendom was in danger. The Turks had attacked Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, which even now trembled in fear. Christianity’s holiest shrines were in the hands of the infidel—no, had been defaced by the hands of the infidel. It was no longer safe for Christian pilgrims to travel in the Holy Lands. He ended with a call for men of faith to cease shedding the blood of fellow Christians and to instead take up arms to reclaim the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem from the Turks.
For a moment the field was silent, and then a huge cry went up, echoing off the city’s walls. “Deus le volt!” (“God wills it!”)
As the last echo quieted, Adhemar, bishop of Le Puy, came forward, knelt at the pontiff’s feet, and became the first to “take the cross,” the cross-shaped red patch that would become the badge of the crusaders. The First Crusade had begun.
MUSLIMS, JEWS, AND CHRISTIANS had lived amicably under Muslim rule in Jerusalem since 637 CE. No one had called for Christendom to take action before. What changed in the eleventh century?
Christianity had spread more slowly in Europe than it had in the Mediterranean portions of the Roman Empire. Being a missionary to the tribes of Europe was a thankless and dangerous business in the centuries after the fall of Rome, as likely to produce martyrs as converts. As late as 785 CE, Christianity had made so little impact among the Germanic kingdoms that Charlemagne ordered the death penalty for any newly conquered Saxons who refused to be baptized. In 1095, there were still pockets of Europe that worshiped pagan gods. The Scandinavians would not be brought into the fold until the twelfth century. The eastern Slavs were converted even later. The Lithuanians were the last hold-outs, finally converting in 1386. Even with paganism thriving on its fringes, by 1095 Christendom was solidly Christian—and Roman Catholic. Pope Urban II held more political and spiritual power than his predecessors.
Europe was more prosperous than it had been since Rome’s fall. Small technological improvements in European farming techniques had combined to trigger the same mechanism that we saw in the Near East in the ninth century BCE. Surplus crops led to the creation of permanent markets, which grew into towns. Some people were released from the land to work as craftsmen. A small middle class began to form in the cities. Over the course of the eleventh century, money reappeared in an economy that had long been driven by barter and reciprocal duties. With coin in hand for the first time in centuries, the wealthiest and most devout Europeans began to go on pilgrimages—to Canterbury, Lourdes, Rome, and most important, to the Holy Lands. Pilgrims returned home with tales of religious experiences, adventure, and Islamic wealth.
Leaders and conquerors throughout Europe had amassed riches and power, but not everyone could win at this game.
It was unfortunate that the beginning of pilgrimage on a larger scale coincided with a change of power in the Near East. In 1071, the Seljuk Turks seized control of Palestine. Newly converted to Islam, the Seljuks were less tolerant of other religions than the city’s previous Islamic rulers. Christian pilgrims found themselves subjected to small indignities and large fees at every turn. They returned home complaining of their treatment at the hands of the infidels.
Leaders and conquerors throughout Europe had amassed riches and power, but not everyone could win at this game. The idea of primogeniture reduced succession battles when a king died, but it also created a group of younger sons with no land among the nobility. Nobles believed that the only legitimate occupations for their landless sons were the upper levels of the church, and war. By the eleventh century, the need to fight invading barbarians was coming to an end. Even the Vikings had settled down and become Normans, producing their own cadre of landless nobles. The prospect of a war in the east offered restless young men a chance for glory, plunder, and possibly a landed estate of their own.
UNDER THE CROSS
ON A HOT, DUSTY DAY, A YOUNG EUROPEAN NOBLEMAN named Tancred is leading the first charge of crusading knights into Jerusalem. Tancred is as ambitious as he is religious. What is at stake for Tancred and other knights like him fighting “under the cross” in Jerusalem is a singular chance at fame and wealth. Now Tancred has a chance to earn both. As they cross the gates of the city, Tancred’s knights immediately meet resistance and begin fighting their way street by street, leaving corpses in their wake.
At a lull in the action, Tancred pulls his horse to a stop and watches as hundreds of Muslim men, women, and children run in search of refuge on top of Al-Aqsa Mosque. Seeing this, Tancred calls an end to the killing, and offers the refugees the protection of his banner.
That night, Tancred prays on his knees, giving thanks for the day’s easy victory. Driven by an overwhelming sense of faith, he believes his Christian beliefs to be worth dying for and, if need be, worth killing for.
Morning comes, and Tancred returns to al-Aqsa where he anticipates making a different kind of killing when he trades the hostages he collected the day before for a considerable bounty. When he reaches the mosque, he cannot believe his eyes. Bloodied bodies of hostages lie in every direction. His soldiers have killed every one of the Muslims to whom he had promised safety! His men have gone against his orders. Such wholesale disobedience threatens his authority, and he must take action to punish those responsible. He roots out and rounds up the ringleaders among his warriors and orders them tied to posts. Tancred goes so far as to take the whip in his own hand, infusing the lashings he doles out with the fury he feels about the lost ransom he will no longer collect.
Knowing all of that, Pope Urban assumed soldiers would answer his call to arms. In fact, men and women of all social classes took the cross. The first crusaders who headed east in the spring of 1096 were not soldiers, but groups of the poor, known as the People’s Crusade. Led by men such as Peter the Hermit, they were poorly equipped and untrained, but they proudly wore the cross-shaped patch of red cloth sewed on their clothing. The first Muslim ruler to encounter the ragged crusaders didn’t even recognize them as an invading force. The Muslim armies wiped them out as if they were bands of brigands.
The second wave of the Crusades was a different story. Groups of knights and archers led by experienced military commanders, men whose only job was war, arrived in Palestine in the summer of 1097. The crusaders moved ruthlessly through Palestine, taking Nicaea, Edessa, and Antioch in turn, pillaging the countryside for both food and plunder. Muslim rulers were too busy fighting am
ong themselves to unite against the European invaders. By the time the crusaders reached Ma’arra (Maarat al-Numaan in modern Syria), the besieging crusaders were almost as desperate for food as the besieged. The crusaders sent word to the city that if they would open the city gates and surrender, no one would be harmed. But when the city surrendered, the crusaders went on a rampage. According to one witness, Albert of Aix, “Not only did our troops not shrink from eating Turks and Saracens, they also ate dogs!”
With word of the horrors of Ma’arra preceding them, the crusaders marched on relatively unopposed. They reached Jerusalem at the beginning of June 1099.
The city did not go down without a fight. At the end of a forty-day siege, the crusaders made the same offer to the people of Jerusalem that they had made to Ma’arra: surrender and no one will be hurt. Amazingly enough, Jerusalem’s citizens surrendered. Once again, the crusaders reneged on their promise. They went on a two-day spree of killing and plundering, piling severed heads, hands, and feet on the streets. Virtually none of the city’s Muslims survived. The city’s Jewish population took shelter in the main synagogue, trusting in its sanctity to protect them; the crusaders blocked the doors and torched the building. Even Jerusalem’s Christians were not spared. Because they were members of the various Eastern churches, the crusaders declared them heretics, confiscated their property, and drove them into exile.
Jerusalem had been recovered from the Turks, but the Crusades continued. For two hundred years, crusaders went east to fight for the cross, and to fill their pockets. Some crusaders settled in one of the four small kingdoms that members of the First Crusade founded near Jerusalem. Most fought in the Holy Lands for a few years, and then went home with some exotic trinkets, a little Arab gold, and a papal dispensation for their sins.
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