Recently I completed a questionnaire on the Internet - part of the BBC programme "The Vikings" - to discover whether or not I was of Viking extraction. I was not at all surprised to discover there was a 90% chance that I was! My interest in Vikings began in 1967 when I produced a TV commercial for the Sunday Sun newspaper in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. My northern background, born in Sheffield in the Danelaw part of England; my name, "Wilson" possibly derived from the Norseman Gunni, son of Olaf the Black, my love of sailing and the sea, all pointed to a Viking heritage.
The term "Viking" is used to denote the ship-born explorers, traders and warriors who originated in Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Sweden and raided the coasts of the British Isles and other parts of Europe from the late 8th century to the 11th century. (The word “Viking” was introduced to the English language in the 18th century.) This period of European history (generally dated to AD 793–AD 1066) is often referred to as the Viking Age. It may also be used to denote the entire populations of these countries and their settlements elsewhere. Famed for their navigation ability and long ships, Vikings in a few hundred years colonized the coasts and rivers of Europe, the islands of Shetland, Orkney, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, and for a short while also Newfoundland circa AD 1000, while still reaching as far south as North Africa, east into Russia and to Constantinople for raiding and trading. Viking voyages grew less frequent with the introduction of Christianity to Scandinavia in the late 10th and 11th century. The Viking Age is often considered to have ended with the battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066.
The period of North Germanic expansion, usually taken to last from the earliest recorded raids in the 790s until the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, is commonly called the 'Viking Age'. The Vikings may be seen as late joiners in the Migrations period, and thus the period links Late Antiquity with the high Middle Ages. Geographically, a "Viking Age" may be assigned not only to the Scandinavian lands (modern Denmark, and southern Norway and Sweden), but also to territories under North Germanic dominance, mainly the Danelaw, Scotland, the Isle of Man and Ireland. Contemporary with the European Viking Age, the Byzantine Empire experienced the greatest period of stability (circa 800–1071) it would enjoy after the initial wave of Arab conquests in the mid-seventh century.
Viking navigators also opened the road to new lands to the north and to the west, resulting in the colonization of Shetland, Orkney, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, and even a short expedition to Newfoundland, circa AD 1000.
During three centuries, Vikings appeared along the coasts and rivers of Europe, as traders, but also as raiders, and even as settlers. From 839, there were Varangian mercenaries in Byzantine service (most famously Harald Hardrada, who campaigned in North Africa and Jerusalem in the 1030s). Important trading ports during the period include Birka, Hedeby, Kaupang, Jorvik (York), Staraya Ladoga, Novgorod and Kiev. Generally speaking, the Norwegians expanded to the north and west, the Danes to England, settling in the Danelaw, and the Swedes to the east. But the three nations were not yet clearly separated, and still united by the common Old Norse language. The names of Scandinavian kings are known only for the later part of the Viking Age, and only after the end of the Viking Age did the separate kingdoms acquire a distinct identity as nations, which went hand in hand with their christianization. Thus it may be noted that the end of the Viking Age (9th–11th century) for the Scandinavians also marks the start of their relatively brief Middle Ages.
After trade and settlement, Christianity was introduced into Scandinavia by the 11th century, and the process of Christianization was completed during the Middle Ages. The coming of Christianity, and with the inclusion into a wider European civilization, as well as technical advances in warfare, made the Viking raids less desirable and less profitable, and eventually the political structures based on them were replaced by structures based more on continental feudalism.
The earliest date given for a Viking raid is 787 AD when, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a group of men from Norway sailed to Portland, in Dorset. There, they were mistaken for merchants by a royal official, and they murdered him when he tried to get them to accompany him to the king's manor to pay a trading tax on their goods. The next recorded attack, dated June 8, 793 AD, was on the monastery at Lindisfarne – the "Holy Island" – on the east coast of England. For the next 200 years, European history is filled with tales of Vikings and their plundering.
Adam of Bremen records in his book 'Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum' (vol 4)
‘There is much gold here (in Zealand), accumulated by piracy. These pirates, which are called wichingi by their own people, and Ascomanni by our own people, pay tribute to the Danish king.‘
Vikings exerted influence throughout the coastal areas of Ireland and Scotland, and conquered and colonized large parts of England (see Danelaw). They travelled up the rivers of France and Spain, and gained control of areas in Russia and along the Baltic coast. Stories tell of raids in the Mediterranean and as far east as the Caspian Sea.
The development of the Viking ship
with its many features made this expansion possible. The flexible clinker-built, lap-strake hull; its long, straight keel and steering oar 1; the square-rigged sail of linen or coarse wool could be trimmed fore-and-aft to sail into the wind; its double bank of oars; the Viking langskip, drakkar or longship was superior to all other vessels of the period. Viking trade routes from Scandinavia reached down the Danube and Dnieper rivers to the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, onwards towards Constantinople, around the Iberian peninsula into the Mediterranean sea to Italy and Sicily and across the Atlantic as far as Greenland and Newfoundland.In addition to being marauding vandals of folklore, the Vikings were essentially skilled navigators. During the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries AD the famous dragon prows of Viking longships were seen throughout Europe from Scandinavia to the Black Sea and across the Atlantic as far as Greenland and north America. Using their knowledge of astronomy taught by the Arabs, Vikings possessed a primitive technology to navigate far and wide. They may even have had a simple compass - a lodestone, a piece of magnetite that has been magnetized dangled from a thread or floating in a dish of mercury2.
The first magnetic compass was probably first made in China during the Qin dynasty (221-206 B.C.). Chinese fortune tellers were the first to use lodestones (iron oxide) which aligns itself in a north-south direction. They designed the compass on a square slab which had markings for the cardinal points and the constellations. The pointing needle, a spoon-shape lodestone, the handle pointing south. Magnetized needles appeared in the 8th century. between 850 and 1050 they seem to have become common as navigational devices on ships. Between AD850 and 1050 they become common in China as navigational devices on ships.
Arab scholars translated texts from Greek and Persian into Arabic. These texts formed the basis of Islamic scientific understanding of astronomy which had an important religious significance, determination of latitude and longitude. Using the stars, particularly the pole star, as guides, tables were compiled which calculated the latitude and longitude of important cities in the Islamic world. Using this information, the Arabs knew they were praying towards Mecca, as specified in the Koran.
Islamic astronomers accepted the Ptolemaic model of the universe3 One who had an impact on Western science was al-Farghani (Abu'l-Abbas Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Kathir al-Farghani) writing in the 9th century on the motion of celestial bodies. Aside from religious uses, astronomy was used as a tool for navigation. The astrolabe, an instrument which calculated the positions of certain stars in order to determine direction, was invented by the Greeks and adopted and perfected by the Arabs.
The Vikings could have been using a telescope hundreds of years before Dutch spectacle-makers supposedly invented the device in the late 16th century. This remarkable possibility has emerged from a study of sophisticated lenses from a Viking site on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. Made from rock-crystal, these lenses are an almost perfect ellipsoid, an accurate shape that betrays the work of a master craftsman4. The Gotland crystals provide the first evidence that sophisticated lens-making techniques were being used by craftsmen over a 1,000 years ago.
Is it purely coincidental that only decades following the Vikings' encounter with Arabic culture in Spain and Turkey they have the ability to navigate west discovering and colonising Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland?
Whether you believe the Vikings founded modern Russia or not depends on your point-of-view. The Normanist Theory suggests that Kievan Rus' may have been named after its Scandinavian overlords (as was the case with Normandy). According to the Primary Chronicle, an historical compilation attributed to the 12th century, the Rus was a group of Varangians who lived on the other side of the Baltic sea, in Scandinavia. The Varangians were first expelled, then invited to rule the warring Slavic and Finnic tribes of Novgorod.
This theory claims that the name Rus, like the Finnish name for Sweden, is derived from an Old Norse term for 'the men who row' (rods-) as rowing was the main method of navigating the Russian rivers, and that it is linked to the Swedish province of Roslagen (Rus-law) or Roden, from which most Varangians came. The name Rus would then have the same origin as the Finnish and Estonian names for Sweden: Ruotsi and Rootsi. It was the German historian Gerard Friedrich Miller (1705-1783), who was invited to work in the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1748 who, romaticising the superiority of the Germanic people, instigated a Slavic backlash - The Antinormanist theories. Based mainly on etymoligical evidence of Slavic place-names, they suggested the Rus were an indigenous people.
Four Slavic tribes who had been forced to pay tribute to the Varangians, - Chuds, Slavs, Merians, and Krivichs - drove the Varangians back beyond the sea, refused to pay them further tribute, and set out to govern themselves. But there was no law among them, and tribe rose against tribe. Discord thus ensued among them, and they began to war one against the other. They said to themselves, "Let us seek a prince who may rule over us, and judge us according to custom. Thus they went overseas to the Varangians, to the Rus. These particular Varangians were known as Rus, just as some are called Swedes, and others Normans and Angles, and still others Gotlanders, for they were thus named. The Chuds, the Slavs, the Krivichs and the Ves then said to the Rus:
"Our land is great and rich, but there is no order in it. Come reign as princes, rule over us."
Three brothers, with their kinfolk, were selected. They brought with them all the Rus and migrated (The Primary Chronicle, AD859-862). Later, the Primary Chronicle tells us, ...they conquered Kiev and created Kievan Rus'. The territory they conquered was named after them as were, eventually, the local people.
The Normanist theory is also based on Ibn Fadlan (Rusiyyah) for a group of people who are usually recognised as Vikings near Astrakhan, and on the Persian traveller Ibn Rustah who allegedly visited Novgorod and described how the Rus exploited the Slavs.
"As for the Rus, they live on an island ...that takes three days to walk round and is covered with thick undergrowth and forests; it is most unhealthy....They harry the Slavs, using ships to reach them; they carry them off as slaves and...sell them. They have no fields but simply live on what they get from the Slav's lands....When a son is born, the father will go up to the newborn baby, sword in hand; throwing it down, he says, 'I shall not leave you with any property: You have only what you can provide with this weapon'."
The annals of Saint Bertan relate that Emperor Louis II's court in Ingelheim, AD839 (the same year as the first appearance of Varangians in Constantinople), was visited by a delegation from the Byzantine emperor. In this delegation there were two men who called themselves 'Rhos' (Rhos vocari dicebant). Louis enquired about their origins and learned that they were Swedes. Fearing that they were spies for their brothers, the Danes, he incarcerated them.
contemporary Scandinavian sources suggest Eastern Europe was occasionally called 'Greater Sweden' or 'Sweden the Cold' beside a much popular name Gardarike (land of cities). A similar way of naming an area of colonies has been used for southern Italy, Magna Graecia (Greater Greece).
Vikings or Varangians had been trading in the Baltic as far back as the seventh century and in AD839 first appear in the Byzantine world as mercenaries hired by the emperor Theophilus who negotiated with the Varangians, whom he called Rhos, (see Rus) to provide mercenaries for his army. The Varangians began to raid throughout the Baltic, establishing rule over the Slavic populations in Novgorod in AD852 and Kiev in AD858. It was from here in AD860 that the Varangians launched an attack on Constantinople. This initial attack was a failure but the Varangians continued their efforts as they sailed down the River Dnieper. Although the Varangians often had peaceful trading relations with the Byzantines, aggression against Constantinople came again in AD860, 907, 911, 941, 945, 971, and finally 1043. These raids were successful only in causing the Byzantines to re-arrange their trading arrangements; militarily, the Varangians were always defeated by the superior Byzantine forces, especially by the use of Greek fire.
The Varangians were hired by the Kievan and Novgorodian princes as mercenaries from the ninth to the eleventh centuries. The last mention of Viking or Varangian mercenaries in Russia occurs in 1043. Whether this is because they were no longer needed or because the mercenaries themselves had been assimilated into Russian society and were no longer considered Varangians or Vikings but as Russians, is open to speculation.
The Varangians served along with Dalmatians as marines from their naval expeditions against Crete in AD902 and again in AD949 under Constantine Porphyrogenitus. As early as AD911, Vikings are mentioned as being in the Byzantine army. It is recorded that there were Varangian contingents among the forces that fought the Arabs in Syria in AD955. This service elevated their rank from members of the 'Great Companions (Greek) of mercenaries to the Imperial Guard.
Basil's distrust of the native Byzantine guardsmen, whose loyalties often shifted with fatal consequences, as well as the proven loyalty of the Varangians led to Basil employing them as personal bodyguards. This new force became known as the Varangian Guard. Over the years, new recruits arrived from as far abroad as Sweden, Denmark, and Norway.
Perhaps the most famous member of the Varangian Guard was the future king Harald Sigurdsson III of Norway, known as Harald Hardråde ('Hardreign'), which means ruthless. Having fled his homeland, Harald went first to Russia and then onto Constantinople, where he arrived in 1035. He participated in eighteen battles and during his service fought against Arabs in Anatolia and Sicily under General George Maniakes as well as southern Italy and Bulgaria. During his time in the Varangian guard he earned the title of Akolouthos (Acolyte: title of the commander of the guard.) But, his service ended with his imprisonment for misappropriation of imperial plunder taken during his command. He eventually escaped his imprisonment and returned home in 1043.
The exiled English prince Edgar Ætheling may also have served with the Guard around 1098. The Varangian Guard is also mentioned in Njal's Saga in reference to Kolskegg. A Dane, Kolskegg is said to have gone first to Russia and then onto Constantinople: '...and there took service with the Emperor. The last that was heard of him was, that he had wedded a wife there, and was captain over the Varangians, and stayed there till his death day'.
By the mid 9th century there were Viking attacks on the coastal kingdom of Asturias in the far northwest of the peninsula, though historical sources are too meagre to assess how frequent or how early raiding was. By the reign of Alfonso III Vikings were stifling the already weak threads of sea communications that tied Galicia in the north to the rest of Europe. Concern over Viking raids on the Galician coastline around AD858: led to this reaction: 'Alfonso III was sufficiently worried by the threat of Viking attack to establish fortified strongpoints near his coastline'.5
In AD968 Bishop Sisnando of Compostela was killed, the monastery of Curtis was sacked, and measures were ordered for the defence of the inland town of Lugo. After Tuy was sacked early in the 11th century, its bishopric remained vacant for the next half-century. Ransom was a motive for abductions: Fletcher instances Amarelo Mestáliz, who was forced to raise money on the security of his land in order to ransom his daughters who had been captured by the Vikings in 1015. Bishop Cresconio of Compostela (ca. 1036–66) repulsed a Viking foray and built the fortress at Torres del Oeste (Council of Catoira) to protect Compostela from the Atlantic approaches.
Meanwhile, in the Islamic south, the Moorish navy of the Emirate was formed after the humiliating Viking ascent of the Rio Guadalquivir estuary from the Gulf of Cadiz to Seville in AD844. The Moors were tested in repulsing Vikings again in 859AD. Soon after the dockyards at Seville were extended and the navy was employed to patrol the Iberian coastline under Caliphs Abd al-Rahman III (AD899-961) and Al-Hakam II (AD915-976). By the following century Ben Yussef's Saracen piracy from Africa superseded the Viking scourge.
During the reign of Offa, gold coins were minted. Called the mancus, from the arab word man-kuss 'stamped with a die', these coins bear the inscription "Offa Rex" on one side and an inscription in arabic on the reverse.
Norse mythology, Norse sagas and Old Norse literature tell us about their religion through tales of heroic and mythological heroes. However, the transmission of this information was primarily oral, and we are reliant upon the writings of (later) Christian scholars, such as the Icelanders Snorri Sturluson and Sæmundr fróði, for much of this. An overwhelming amount of these sagas were written in Iceland by Harald Finehair, who is credited with writing the Viking sagas in the 13th century.
Vikings in those sagas are described as if they often struck at accessible and poorly defended targets, usually with impunity. The sagas state that the Vikings built settlements and were skilled craftsmen and traders.
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Runes are an ancient Germanic alphabet, used for writing, divination and magic. They were used throughout northern Europe, Scandinavia, the British Isles, and Iceland from about AD100 to AD1600. Runic inscriptions of great age have even been found in North America, supporting stories that the Vikings arrived in America long before Columbus. Many rune stones in Scandinavia record the names of participants in Viking expeditions. Other rune stones mention men who died on Viking expeditions, among them the around 25 Ingvar stones in the Mälardalen district of Sweden erected to commemorate members of a disastrous expedition into present-day Russia in the early 11th century.
The Ramsund carving in Sweden depicts 1. how Sigurd is sitting naked in front of the fire preparing the dragon-heart, from Fafnir, for his foster-father Regin, who is Fafnir's brother. The heart is not yet finished and when Sigurd touches it, he burns himself and sticks his finger into his mouth. As he has tasted dragon-blood, he starts to understand the birds' song. 2. The birds say that Regin will not keep his promise of reconciliation and will try to kill Sigurd, which causes Sigurd to cut-off Regin's head. 3. Regin is dead beside his own head, his smithing tools with which he re-forged Sigurd's sword 'Gram' are scattered around him, and 4) Regin's horse is laden will the dragon's treasure. 5. is the previous event when Sigurd killed Fafnir, and 6) shows Otr from the saga's beginning. |
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A thing or ting (Old Norse and Icelandic: þing; or other modern Scandinavian: ting) was the governing assembly in Germanic societies, made up of free men of the community and presided by lawspeakers. Today the term lives on in the official names of national legislatures, political and judicial institutions in the north-Germanic countries. The English word 'thing', meaning 'object' is derived from this Norse word. The German word, Tag (day, as in Bundestag the German parliament or Tagung) is so-called because tings were held at daylight and often lasted all day. The Scandinavian equivalent is Dag (day) and Riksdag, (Parliament).
To begin with, their chart was upside-down! Seen from a Scandinavian viewpoint where Norway, Sweden and Denmark were situated at the 'bottom' of the map. In ascending order the Faeroe Islands were next with Britain upside-down at the 'top' of the chart - not located at the north or 'top' as in a modern Mercator's atlas. After the Faeroes they settled the Orkney Islands then the Shetland Islands, finally settling the northern-most tip of Scotland.
The Vikings attack on the holy island of Lindisfarne off the northern coast of Northumbria is the earliest recorded and the best known of the Viking raids in the west. There was situated the monastery of St. Cuthbert, one of the most sacred places of pilgrimage in Britain, and it was there that the Lindisfarne gospels had been copied and illuminated. For more than one hundred and fifty years, Lindisfarne had been a sanctuary of learning and a repository for riches bequeathed by both the pious and the wicked for the repose of their souls. In its chapels and on its altars were golden crucifixes and crosiers, silver pyxes and ciboria, ivory reliquaries, tapestries, and illuminated manuscripts. All were plundered between c.AD789 and AD 793. These attacks were unprecedented and horrified those who wrote of it.
"In the same year the pagans from the northern regions came with a naval force to Britain like stinging hornets and spread on all sides like fearful wolves, robbed, tore and slaughtered not only beasts of burden, sheep and oxen, but even priests and deacons, and companies of monks and nuns. And they came to the church of Lindisfarne, laid everything waste with grievous plundering, trampled the holy places with polluted steps, dug up the altars and seized all the treasures of the holy church. They killed some of the brothers, took some away with them in fetters, many they drove out, naked and loaded with insults, some they drowned in the sea."
For seven decades the Vikings continued raiding the coast of Britain and it seemed inevitable that they would eventually launch a full-scale invasion of England. This is precisely what occurred in the year AD866, when a huge army of Danes invaded East Anglia from their well established bases in the Low Countries of the Continent. They arrived under the leadership of Ivar the Boneless and his brothers, Halfdene and Hubba and after camping the winter, turned their attention to Northumbria.
The Danes were well aware of the civil war that had weakened the great northern kingdom and as warriors the Danes were extremely opportunistic. After crossing the Humber, they headed for York, a great defensive stronghold, still well protected by its Roman walls. On November 1st, the city was sacked and captured by the Danes, despite fierce Northumbrian resistance.
Ivar the Boneless6 (disabled son of Ragnar Lodbrok) was the nickname of Ivar Ragnarsson, a Viking chieftain and, by reputation, also a berserker. In AD865 along with brothers Halfdan (Halfdene) and Ubbe (Hubba), led the invasion of East Anglia where he is also attributed with the slaying of St Edmund. An accommodation was quickly reached with the East Anglians. The Vikings were well aware of the civil war that had weakened the great northern kingdom and the following year he led his forces north on horseback and, despite his disability, was carried on a shield to easily captured Jorvik (York) from the Northumbrians who at that time were engaged in a civil-war.
The Cuerdale Hoard was found in 1840, by workmen working on the south side of the River Ribble at Cuerdale, near Preston, Lancashire. The hoard had been buried in a lead chest and the presence of bone pins suggests that some of the treasure had been parcelled into separate bags. It is the greatest Viking silver treasure trove ever found, outside Russia, far exceeding in scale and range any hoard found in the Scandinavian homelands or in other Viking settlements. Over 8,000 items of silver coins and bullion were found weighing some 40kg.
Coins found with the hoard reveal that it was buried in the years between AD905 and AD910, shortly after the expulsion of the Vikings from Dublin (AD902). The Ribble Valley, was at that time the main route between Jorvik (York) and the Irish Sea. This fact, plus the Irish Norse origins of much of the bullion and the presence of newly minted coins made by Vikings in York, led scholars to believe that this massive treasure may have been a war-chest, assembled by Irish Norse exiles intending to mount an expeditionary force to re-occupy Dublin.
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Found on the Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland, some time before 11 April 1831, the chess pieces, were probably made in Norway, about AD1150-1200. They consist of elaborately worked walrus ivory and whales' teeth in the forms of seated kings and queens, mitred bishops, knights on their mounts, standing warders and pawns in the shape of obelisks. They were found in the vicinity of Uig on the Isle of Lewis in mysterious circumstances. Various stories have evolved to explain why they were concealed there, and how they were discovered. The precise spot seems to have been a sand dune where they may have been placed in a small, drystone chamber. Who owned the chess pieces? Why were they hidden? While there are no firm answers to these questions, it is possible that they belonged to a merchant travelling from Norway to Ireland. This seems likely since there are constituent pieces for four chess-sets. By the end of the eleventh century, chess was a very popular game among the aristocracy throughout Europe. The Lewis chess pieces form the largest single surviving group of |
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A board large enough to hold all the pieces arranged for a game played to modern rules would have measured 82 cm across. Records state that when found, some of the Lewis chessmen were stained red. Consequently the chessboard may have been red and white, as opposed to the modern convention of black and white.
12. The DanelawThe Danelaw (from the Old English Dena lagu) is an 11th century name for an area of northern and eastern England under the administrative control of the Vikings (or Danes, or Norsemen) from the late 9th century. The term is also used to describe the set of legal terms and definitions established between Alfred the Great and the Viking Guthrum which were set down following Guthrum's defeat at the Battle of Edington in AD878. Later, c. AD886, the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum was created which established the boundaries of their kingdoms and made provision for relations between the English and the Danes.
The area occupied by the Danelaw was roughly the area to the north of a line drawn between London and Chester. Five fortified towns became particularly important in the Danelaw: Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, Stamford and Derby, broadly covering the area now called the East Midlands. These strongholds became known as the "Five Boroughs". Borough derives from the Old English word burg, meaning a fortified and walled enclosure containing several households — anything from a large stockade to a fortified town.
From about AD800 onwards, waves of Danish assaults on the coastlines of the British Isles were gradually followed by a succession of settlers. Danish raiders first began to settle in England starting in AD865, when brothers Halfdan Ragnarsson and Ivar the Boneless wintered in East Anglia. They soon moved north and in 867 captured Northumbria and its capital, York, defeating both the recently deposed King Osbert as well as the usurper Ælle. The Danes then placed an Englishman, Ecgberht, on the throne of Northumbria as a puppet king.
In response to this invasion, King Æthelred of Wessex and his brother, Alfred, led their army against the Danes at Nottingham, but the Danes refused to leave their fortifications. King Burgred of Mercia then negotiated peace with Ivar, with the Danes keeping Nottingham in exchange for leaving the rest of Mercia unmolested.
The Danes under Ivar the Boneless continued their invasion in AD870 by defeating King Edmund at Hoxne and thereby conquering East Anglia. Once again, the brothers Æthelred and Alfred attempted to stop Ivar by attacking the Danes, this time at Reading. However, this time they were repulsed with heavy losses. The Danes pursued, and on January 7, 871 Æthelred and Alfred defeated the Danes at Ashdown. The Danes retreated to Basing (Hampshire), where Æthelred attacked and was in turn defeated. Ivar was able to follow up this victory with another in March at Meretum (Marton, Wiltshire).
Shortly thereafter, on April 23, 871, King Æthelred died and Alfred succeeded him as King of Wessex. However, his army was weak and he was forced to pay danegeld to Ivar in order to make peace with the Danes. During this peace the Danes turned to the north and attacked Mercia, a campaign that would last until AD874. The Danish leader, Ivar, and the Mercian leader, Burgred, died during this campaign; Ivar being succeeded by Guthrum the Old, who finished the campaign against Mercia. The Danes in ten years had gained control over East Anglia, Northumbria and Mercia, leaving only Wessex to resist.
Guthrum and the Danes brokered peace with Wessex in AD876 when they capture the fortresses of Wareham and Exeter the following year. Alfred laid siege to the Danes, who were forced to surrender after reinforcements were lost in a storm. Two years later Guthrum once again attacked Alfred, this time surprising him by attacking him while he wintered in Chippenham, Wiltshire. King Alfred was saved when the Danish army coming from his rear was miraculously destroyed by inferior forces at Countisbury Hill. Alfred was forced into hiding for a time, returning in the spring of 878 to gather an army and attack Guthrum at Edington. They were defeated and retreated to Chippenham, where King Alfred laid siege and soon forced the Danes to surrender. As a term of the surrender King Alfred demanded that Guthrum be baptized a Christian, which he did (King Alfred serving as his godfather).
This peace lasted until AD884, when Guthrum once again attacked Wessex. He was defeated, with Guthrum and Alfred agreeing to peace through the aptly named Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum. The treaty outlined the boundaries of the Danelaw and allowed for Danish self-rule in the region. The Danelaw represented a consolidation of power for Alfred; the subsequent conversion of Guthrum underlines the ideological significance of this shift in the balance of power.
The reasons for these wave of immigrations are complex and bound to the political situation in Scandinavia at that time; moreover, they occurred at a time when the Viking forces were also establishing their presence in the Hebrides, in the Orkneys, the Faroe Islands, in Iceland, in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine (Kievan Rus').
The Danelaw was gradually eroded by Anglo-Saxon raids in later years. Edward the Elder (reigned AD899 to 924) later incorporated it to his newfound Kingdom of England.
The Danelaw was an important factor in the establishment of a civilian peace in the neighbouring Anglo-Saxon and Viking communities. It established, for example, equivalences in areas of legal contentiousness, such as the amount of reparation that should be payable in weregild.
Many of the legalistic concepts were very compatible; for example the Viking wapentake, the standard for land division in the Danelaw, was effectively interchangeable with the Anglo-Saxon hundred.
Four of the five boroughs became county towns — of the counties of Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.
The influence of this period of Scandinavian settlement can still be seen in the North of England and the East Midlands, most evidently in place names: name endings such as 'by' (as in Whitby) or 'thorp'(Scunthorpe). Old Norse and Old English were still mutually comprehensible, and the mixed language of the Danelaw caused the incorporation of many Norse words into the English language, as well as the third person plural pronouns they, them, and their. Many Old Norse words still survive in the dialects of Northeastern England.
Our Viking inheritance includes the basis of the English legal and monetary systems including the word 'law' itself, and many words of Norse origin. The very word law is a Viking word. Norse names are found in six of the seven days of the week:
Berserkers were Norse warriors who had sworn allegiance to the sky god Odin and worked themselves into a frenzy before a battle. They had the habit to go into battle without armour, or often completely naked.
A thing or ting (Old Norse and Icelandic)the governing assembly made up of the free men of the community and presided by lawspeakers. Today the term lives on in the official names of national legislatures, political and judicial institutions in the North-Germanic countries. The English word 'thing', meaning "object" is also derived from this word.
Viking place names can still be found in many countries in Europe outside Scandinavia: In France (Normandy), Russia, Ireland but especially in Scotland and down the east coast of England. Some areas retained their Viking links longer than others. The old earldom of Orkney and Shetland remained distinctly Viking and did not become part of the Kingdom of Scotland until 1468.
The Battle of Maldon took place on 10 August 991 near Maldon beside the River Blackwater in Essex, England, during the reign of Ethelred the Unready. The Anglo-Saxons, led by Byrhtnoth and his thegns (thanes), fought against a Viking invasion, a battle which ended in defeat for the Anglo- Saxons. An account of the battle, embellished with many speeches attributed to the warriors and with other details, is related in an Anglo-Saxon poem which is usually named The Battle of Maldon. A modern embroidery created for the millennium celebration in 1991 and, in part, depicting the battle can be seen at the Maeldune Centre in Maldon.
The Viking fleet is said in one manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to have been led by a Olaf Trygvasson. The Viking force is estimated to have been between 2,000 and 4,000 fighting men. A source from the 12th century, Liber Eliensis, written by the monks at Ely, suggests that Byrhtnoth had only a few men to command: "he was neither shaken by the small number of his men, nor fearful of the multitude of the enemy". Not all sources indicate such a disparity in numbers.
The Vikings sailed up the Blackwater river (then called the Panta), and Byrhtnoth called out his levy. The poem begins with him ordering his men to stand and how to hold weapons. His men, except for his household guard, were peasants and householders from the area. He ordered them to "send steed away and stride forwards": they arrived on horses but fought on foot. The Vikings sailed up to a small island in the river. At ebb, the river leaves a land bridge from this island to the shore; the description seems to have matched the Northey Island causeway at that time. This would place the site of the battle about two miles southeast of Maldon. Olaf addressed the Saxons, promising to sail away if he was paid with gold and armour from the lord. Byrhtnoth refused.
The etymology of 'Viking' is somewhat vague. One path might be from the Old Norse word, vík, meaning 'bay', 'creek', or 'inlet', and the suffix '-ing', meaning 'coming from' or 'belonging to'. Thus, Viking would be a 'person of the bay', or 'bayling' for lack of a better word. In Old Norse, this would be spelled víkingr. Later on, the term, 'viking', became synonymous with 'naval expedition' or 'naval raid', and a víkingr was a member of such expeditions. A second etymology suggested that the term is derived from Old English, wíc or 'trading city'.
The word viking appears on several rune stones found in Scandinavia. In the Icelandic sagas 'víking' refers to an overseas expedition (fr. Old Norse farar i vikingr, 'to go on an expedition'), and víkingr, or a seaman or warrior taking part in such an expedition.
In Old English, the word wicing appears first in the Anglo-Saxon poem, Widsith, which probably dates from the 9th century. In Old English, and in the writings of Adam von Bremen, the term to a pirate, and is not a name for a people or a culture in general.
The word disappeared in Middle English, and was reintroduced as 'viking' during 18th century Romanticism with the 'Viking revival', with heroic overtones of 'barbarian warrior' or noble savage. During the 20th century, the meaning of the term was expanded to refer not only to the raiders, but also to the entire period; it is now, somewhat confusingly used as a noun both in the original meaning of raiders, warriors or navigators, and to refer to the Scandinavian population in general. As an adjective, the word is used in expressions like 'Viking age', 'Viking culture', or 'Viking colony' etc., generally referring to medieval Scandinavia.
