Viking Age From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Viking Age is the term denoting the years from about 800 to 1066 in Scandinavian History. The Vikings explored Europe by its oceans and rivers through trade and warfare. Historical considerations In England the Viking Age began dramatically on June 8, 793 when Norsemen destroyed the abbey on Lindisfarne, a center of learning famous across the continent. Monks were killed in the abbey, thrown into the sea to drown or carried away as slaves along with the church treasures. Three Viking ships had beached in Portland Bay 4 years earlier, but the incursion may have been a trading expedition that went wrong rather than a piratical raid. Lindisfarne was different. The devastation of Northumbria's Holy Island shocked and alerted the royal Courts of Europe. Never before has such an atrocity been seen, declared the Northumbrian Scholar, Alcuin of York. More than any other single event, the attack on Lindisfarne demonized the perception of the Vikings for the next twelve centuries. Not until 1890s did scholars outside Scandinavia begin seriously to reassess the achievements of the Vikings, recognizing the artistry, the technological skills and the seamanship.
Until Victoria's reign in Britain, Vikings were portrayed as violent and bloodthirsty. The chronicles of medieval England had always portrayed them as rapacious 'wolves among sheep'. During the nineteenth century public perceptions changed. In 1920 a winged-helmeted Viking was introduced as a radiator cap figure on a new Rover car. That marked the cultural rehabilitation of the Vikings in Britain.
The first challenges to the many anti-Viking images in Britain emerged in the 17th century. Pioneering scholarly editions of the Viking Age began to reach a small readership in Britain. Archaeologists began to dig up Britain's Viking past. Linguistic enthusiasts started to work on identifying Viking-Age origins for rural idioms and proverbs. The new dictionaries of the Old Norse language enabled the Victorians to grapple with the primary Icelandic Sagas.
In Scandinavia Thomas Bartholin and Ole Worm, the 17th-century Danish scholars and Olaf Rudbeck in Sweden were the first to set the standard for using runic inscriptions and Icelandic Sagas as historical sources. During the Age of Enlightenment and Nordic Renaissance historical scholarship in Scandinavia became more rational and pragmatic in the works of a Danish historian Ludvig Holberg and Swedish Olof von Dalin. The latter half of the 18th century the Icelandic Sagas were still used as important historical sources but the Viking Age was not regarded as a golden age but rather as a barbaric and uncivilized period in the history of the Nordic countries. Until recently the history of the Viking Age was largely based on Icelandic Sagas, the history of the Danes written by Saxo Grammaticus, the Russian Primary Chronicle and the The War of the Irish with the Foreigners. Few scholars still accept these texts as reliable sources; historians nowadays rely more on archeology and numismatics, disciplines that have made valuable contributions toward understanding the period. Historical background The Vikings that travelled to western and eastern Europe were essentially from Denmark, Norway and Sweden. They also settled Iceland, Greenland and (briefly) North America.
It is believed that Denmark was largely settled by Germanic people from present-day Sweden in the fifth and sixth centuries. Their language became the mother-tongue of present-day Scandinavian languages. By 800, a strong central authority appears to have been established in Jutland, and the Danes were beginning to look beyond their own territory for land, trade and plunder.
Norway had been settled over many centuries by Germanic peoples from Denmark and Sweden who had established farming and fishing communities around its coasts and lakes. The mountainous terrain and the fjords formed strong natural boundaries, and the communities remained independent of each other, unlike the situation in Denmark which is lowland. By 800, some 30 petty kingdoms existed in Norway.
The sea was the easiest way of communication between the Norwegian kingdoms and the outside world. It was in the eighth century that ships of war began to be built and sent on raiding expeditions to initiate the Viking Age, but the northern sea rovers were traders, colonizers and explorers as well as plunderers.
Prior to 1000, details of Swedish events are obscure. It is known that there were two tribes in the country during Roman times: the Suiones (Swedes) in the north Svealand; and the Gothones (Goths), in the south (hence called Gothia). Probable causes of Viking expansion Viking society was based on agriculture and trade with other peoples and placed great emphasis on the concept of honour both in combat (for example, it was unfair and wrong to attack an enemy already in a fight with another) and in the criminal justice system.
It is unknown what triggered the Vikings' expansion and conquests, although it coincided with the Medieval Warm Period (800 – 1300) and stopped with the start of the Little Ice Age (about 1250 – 1850). The lack of pack-ice would have allowed Scandinavians to go "a-Viking" or "raiding". Vikings traded with the Muslim world, and large quantities of Arabic coins have been found in Scandinavia.
With the means of travel (longships and open water), their desire for goods led Scandinavian traders to explore and develop extensive trading partnerships in the territories they explored. It has been suggested that the Scandinavians suffered from unequal trade practices imposed by Christian advocates and that this eventually led to the breakdown in trade relations and raiding. British merchants who declared openly that they were Christian and would not trade with heathens and infidels (Muslims and the Norse) would get preferred status for availability and pricing of goods through a Christian network of traders. A two-tiered system of pricing existed with both declared and undeclared merchants trading secretly with banned parties. Viking raiding expeditions were separate from and coexisted with regular trading expeditions. A people with the tradition of raiding their neighbours when their honour had been impugned might easily fall to raiding foreign peoples who impugned their honour.
Historians also suggest that the Scandinavian population was too large for the peninsula and there were not enough crops to feed everyone. This led to a hunt for more land to feed the ever growing Viking population. Particularly for the settlement and conquest period that followed the early raids, the internal strife in Scandinavia resulted in the progressive centralisation of power into fewer hands. This meant that lower classes who wanted not to be oppressed by greedy kings went in search of their own lands. Thus, Iceland became Europe's first modern republic, with an annual assembly of elected officials called the Althing. Historic overview The beginning of the Viking Age in the British Isles is commonly given as 793, when it is recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that the Northmen raided the important island monastery of Lindisfarne.
"AD. 793. This year came dreadful fore-warnings over the land of the Northumbrians, terrifying the people most woefully: these were immense sheets of light rushing through the air, and whirlwinds, and fiery dragons flying across the firmament. These tremendous tokens were soon followed by a great famine: and not long after, on the sixth day before the ides of January in the same year, the harrowing inroads of heathen men made lamentable havoc in the church of God in Holy-island (Lindisfarne), by rapine and slaughter." -Anglo Saxon Chronicle.
In 794, according to the Annals of Ulster, there was a serious attack on Lindisfarne's mother-house of Iona which was followed in 795 by raids upon the northern coast of Ireland. From bases there, they were able to attack Iona again in 802, cause great slaughter amongst the Céli Dé Brethren, and burn the abbey to the ground.
The end of the Viking Age is traditionally marked in England by the failed invasion attempted by Haraldr Harðráði, who was defeated by Saxon King Harold Godwinson in 1066 at the Battle of Stamford Bridge; in Ireland, the capture of Dublin by Strongbow and his Hiberno-Norman forces in 1171; and 1263 in Scotland by the defeat of King Hákon Hákonarson at the Battle of Largs by troops loyal to Alexander III. Godwinson was subsequently defeated within a month by another Viking descendant, William, Duke of Normandy (Normandy had been acquired by Vikings (Normans) in 911). Scotland took its present form when it regained territory from the Norse between the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries.
The traditional definition is no longer accepted by most Scandinavian historians and archaeologists. Instead, the Viking age is thought to have ended with the establishment of royal authority in the Scandinavian countries and the establishment of Christianity as the dominant religion. The date is usually put somewhere in the early 11th century in all three Scandinavian countries, but for Denmark it can be argued to be much earlier, and for Sweden much later.
The end of the Viking-era in Norway is marked by the battle of Stiklestad in 1030. They proclaimed Norway as a Christian nation, and Norwegians could no longer be called Vikings.
The clinker-built longships used by the Scandinavians were uniquely suited to both deep and shallow waters and thus extended the reach of Norse raiders, traders and settlers along coastlines and along the major river valleys of northwestern Europe. Rurik also expanded to the east and in 859 founded the city of Novgorod (which means "new city") on Volkhov River. His successors moved further founding the first East Slavs state of Kievan Rus with the capital in Kiev, which persisted until 1240, the time of Mongol invasion. Other Norse people, particularly those from the area that is now modern-day Sweden and Norway, continued south on Slavic rivers to the Black Sea and then on to Constantinople. Whenever these Viking ships ran aground in shallow waters, the Vikings would reportedly turn them on their sides and drag them across the land into deeper waters.
The Kingdom of the Franks under Charlemagne was particularly hard-hit by these raiders, who could sail down the Seine with near impunity. Near the end of Charlemagne's reign (and throughout the reigns of his sons and grandsons) a string of heavy raids began, culminating in a gradual Scandinavian conquest and settlement of the region now known as Normandy.
In 911, French King Charles the Simple was able to make an agreement with the Viking warleader Rollo, a chieftain of disputed Norwegian or Danish origins. Charles gave Rollo the title of duke and granted him and his followers possession of Normandy. In return, Rollo swore fealty to Charles, converted to Christianity, and undertook to defend the northern region of France against the incursions of other Viking groups. The results were, in a historical sense, rather ironic: several generations later, the Norman descendants of these Viking settlers not only thereafter identified themselves as French, but carried the French language, and their variant of the French culture into England in 1066, after the Norman Conquest, and became the ruling aristocracy of Anglo-Saxon England.  Geography There are various theories concerning the causes of the Viking invasions. For people living along the coast, it would seem natural to seek new land by the sea. Another reason was that during this period England, Wales and Ireland, which were divided into many different warring kingdoms, were in internal disarray and became easy prey. The Franks, however, had well-defended coasts and heavily fortified ports and harbours. Pure thirst for adventure may also have been a factor. A reason for the raids is believed by some to be over-population caused by technological advances, such as the use of iron. Although another cause could well have been pressure caused by the Frankish expansion to the south of Scandinavia and their subsequent attacks upon the Viking peoples. Another possibly contributing factor is that Harald I of Norway ("Harald Fairhair") had united Norway around this time, and the bulk of the Vikings were displaced warriors who had been driven out of his kingdom and who had nowhere to go. Consequently, these Vikings became raiders, in search of subsistence and bases to launch counter-raids against Harald. One theory that has been suggested is that the Vikings would plant crops after the winter and go raiding as soon as the ice melted on the sea, then returned home with their loot, in time to harvest the crops. They became wandering raiders and mercenaries, like their Celtic cousins.
One important center of trade was at Hedeby. Close to the border with the Franks, it was effectively a crossroads between the cultures, until its eventual destruction by the Norwegians in an internecine dispute around 1050. York was the center of the kingdom of Jorvik from 866, and discoveries there show that Scandinavian trade connections in the 10th century reached beyond Byzantium (e.g. a silk cap, a counterfeit of a coin from Samarkand and a cowry shell from the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf), although they could be Byzantine imports, and there is no reason to assume that the Varangians travelled significantly beyond Byzantium and the Caspian Sea. England According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, after Lindisfarne was raided in 793, Vikings continued on small-scale raids across England. Viking raiders struck England in 793 and raided a Christian monastery that held Saint Cuthbert’s relics. The raiders killed the monks and captured the valuables. This raid was called the beginning of the “Viking Age of Invasion”, made possible by the Viking longship. There was great violence during the last decade of the 8th century on England’s northern and western shores. While the initial raiding groups were small, it is believed that a great amount of planning was involved. During the winter between 840 and 841, the Norwegians raided during the winter instead of the usual summer. They waited on an island off Ireland. In 865 a large army of Danish Vikings, supposedly led by Ivar, Halfdan and Guthrum, arrived in East Anglia. They proceeded to cross England into Northumbria and captured York (Jorvik), where some settled as farmers. Most of the English kingdoms, being in turmoil, could not stand against the Vikings, but Alfred of Wessex managed to keep the Vikings out of his country. Alfred and his successors continued to drive back the Viking frontier and take York. A new wave of Norwegian Vikings appeared in England in 947 when Erik Bloodaxe captured York. The Viking presence continued through the reign of the Danish King Canute the Great (1016-1035), after which a series of inheritance arguments weakened the family reign. The Viking presence dwindled until 1066, when the Norwegians lost their final battle with the English.
The Vikings did not get everything their way. In one situation in England, a small Viking fleet attacked a rich monastery at Jarrow. The Vikings were met with stronger resistance than they expected: their leaders were killed, the raiders escaped, only to have their ships beached at Tynemouth and the crews killed by locals. This was one of the last raids on England for about 40 years. The Vikings instead focused on Ireland and Scotland. Influence of Viking settlement on the English language The long-term linguistic effect of the Viking settlements in England was threefold: over a thousand words eventually became part of Standard English; a large number of places in the east and north-east of England have Danish names; and many English personal names are of Scandinavian origin. Words that entered the English language by this route include landing, score, beck, fellow, take, busting, and steersman. The vast majority of loan words do not begin to appear in documents until the early twelfth century; these include many modern words which use sk- sounds, such as skirt, sky, and skin; other words appearing in written sources at this time include again, awkward, birth, cake, dregs, fog, freckles, gasp, law, neck, ransack, root, scowl, sister, seat, sly, smile, want, weak, and window. Some of the words that came into use by this route are among the most common in English, such as both, same, get, and give. The system of personal pronouns was affected, with they, them, and their replacing the earlier forms. Old Norse even influenced the verb to be; the replacement of sindon by are is almost certainly Scandinavian in origin, as is the third-person-singular ending -s in the present tense of verbs.
There are over 1,500 Scandinavian place names in England, mainly in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire (within the former boundaries of the Danelaw): over 600 end in -by, the Scandinavian word for "farm" or "town" — for example Grimsby, Naseby, and Whitby; many others end in -thorpe ("village"), -thwaite ("clearing"), and -toft ("homestead").
The distribution of family names showing Scandinavian influence is still, as an analysis of names ending in -son reveals, concentrated in the north and east, corresponding to areas of former Viking settlement. Early medieval records indicate that over 60% of personal names in Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire showed Scandinavian influence. Technology The Vikings were equipped with the technologically superior longships; for purposes of conducting trade however, another type of ship, the knarr, wider and deeper in draught, were customarily used. The Vikings were competent sailors, adept in land warfare as well as at sea, and they often struck at accessible and poorly-defended targets, usually with near impunity. The effectiveness of these tactics earned vikings a formidable reputation as raiders and pirates, and the chroniclers paid little attention to other aspects of medieval Scandinavian culture. This is further accentuated by the absence of contemporary primary source documentation from within the Viking Age communities themselves, and little documentary evidence is available until later, when Christian sources begin to contribute. It is only over time, as historians and archaeologists have begun to challenge the one-sided descriptions of the chroniclers, that a more balanced picture of the Norsemen has begun to become apparent.
Besides allowing the Vikings to travel vast distances, their longships gave them certain tactical advantages in battle. They could perform very efficient hit-and-run attacks, in which they approached quickly and unexpectedly, then left before a counter-offensive could be launched. Because of their negligible draught, longships could sail in shallow waters, allowing the Vikings to travel far inland along the rivers. Their speed was also prodigious for the time, estimated at a maximum of 14 or 15 knots. The use of the longships ended when technology changed, and ships began to be constructed using saws instead of axes. This led to a lesser quality of ships. Together with an increasing centralization of government in the Scandinavian countries, the old system of Leidang — a fleet mobilization system, where every Skipen (ship community) had to deliver one ship and crew — was discontinued. Shipbuilding in the rest of Europe also led to the demise of the longship for military purposes. By the 11th and 12th centuries, fighting ships began to be built with raised platforms fore and aft, from which archers could shoot down into the relatively low longships.
There is an archaeological find in Sweden of a bone fragment that has been fixated with in-operated material; the piece is as yet undated. These bones might possibly be the remains of a trader from the Middle East.
The nautical achievements of the Vikings were quite exceptional. For instance, they made distance tables for sea voyages that were so exact, that they only differ 2-4% from modern satellite measurements, even on long distances, such as across the Atlantic Ocean.
There is a find known as the Visby lenses from the island of Gotland in Sweden that might possibly be components of a telescope, from long before the usually accepted date of invention of the telescope in the 1600s. Religion and archaeology At the start of the Viking age, the Vikings adhered to the Norse religion and system of beliefs. They believed in a pantheon of gods and goddesses, as well as Valhalla, a heaven for warriors. If you were in the lower-class of society you went to a place called "hel", where it was a bit like life on earth. According to Viking beliefs, Viking chieftains would please their war-gods by their bravery, and would become "worth-ship;" that is, the chieftain would earn a "burial at sea." They also performed land burials which often still included a ship, treasure, weapons, tools, clothing and even live slaves and women buried alive with the dead chieftain, for his "journey to Valhalla, and adventure and pleasure in the after-life." Then, sages would compose sagas about the exploits of these chieftains, keeping their memories alive. Freyr and his sister Freyia were fertility gods. They were responsible for ensuring that people had many children and that the land produced plentiful crops. Some farmers even called their fields after Freyr, in the hope that this would ensure a good harvest. Towards the end of the Viking Age, more and more Scandinavians converted to Christianity. The introduction of Christianity did not instantaneously bring an end to the Viking voyages, but it may have been a contributing factor in bringing the Viking Age to an end. Trading cities Some of the most important trading ports during the period include both existing and ancient cities such as Jelling (Denmark), Ribe (Denmark), Roskilde (Denmark), Hedeby (modern Germany), Aarhus (Denmark), Vineta (Pomerania), Truso (Poland), Bergen (Norway), Kaupang (Norway), Birca (Sweden), Bordeaux (France), Jorvik (England), Dublin (Ireland) and Aldeigjuborg (Russia).
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