The Vikings: A Very Short Introduction (13 page)

Outside the enclosure five bodies had been unceremoniously 83

dumped in the ditch. One had been thrown on top of a child; his wrists had been tied behind him, and he had suffered a sharp blow to the left eye. Another adult had been placed face down with his arms tied in front of him. These must represent the victims of a raid. Llanbedrgoch was an early princely site or estate centre, and became an important focus for trade in the 9th and 10th centuries. It is very tempting to see the bodies as evidence that it was attacked by Vikings, and possibly occupied by them.

The Isle of Man

The Isle of Man first appears as a historic entity, along with the Western Isles, under its first Norwegian king, Godred Crovan (1079–95), and it had a series of Norse rulers until it was ceded by Norway to Alexander III of Scotland in 1266. The Scandinavian
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overlay on Man was considerable and the present-day Manx are
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proud of their Viking heritage. The Manx Parliament – the Tynwald
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– traces its origins to the meetings of the Norse open-air assembly,
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or Thing, and still assembles annually at Tynwald Hill, St John’s, to promulgate those laws passed during the previous year. Many believe that the basic land unit, the
treen
, each with its chapel or
keeil
, is Norse, although others have suggested it may even be pre-Norse. It has also been argued that the number of surviving Scandinavian place names is only compatible with a substantial Norse settlement, and even that Man was for a while completely Norse-speaking, until Gaelic was reintroduced
c
.1300, although others have claimed that the Scandinavian element was confined to the ruling elite and chief landowners.

Archaeologically, it has been hard to find traces of Norse settlements, which may be under modern farms. There are few excavated sites, other than reoccupied coastal promontories such as Cronk ny Merriu and Close ny Chollagh, and upland shielings, such as Doarlish Cashen and the Braaid. Given the likely continuity of Norse building styles these sites are hard to date.

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The burial record is more informative, and there is a relatively large number – over 25 – for such a small island. Many are under low mounds overlooking the sea and they appear to indicate competition for land ownership and the importance of using the landscape to lay claim to farms. During the Second World War, the German archaeologist, Gerhard Bersu, was interned on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien and was allowed to excavate a number of sites, including Balladoole. Here a boat grave had been superimposed upon a Christian cemetery, disturbing several recent burials. The ship was a small rowing boat in which a male was the main burial. He was buried with riding equipment and a number of costume items, including a Carolingian silver buckle and a Hiberno-Norse ringed pin. A substantial wooden pole had been
Raider

erected at the edge of the mound, which was covered by a layer of cremated bones from sacrificial animals.

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Bersu also excavated a chamber grave at Ballateare, on the
ader

north-west coast. A young male had been placed in a coffin at the
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foot of the chamber. He was buried with a sword – broken into three
d th
pieces and replaced in its scabbard – and wrapped in his cloak.

e Irish Sea

A shield and two spears – also mutilated – had been put into the burial pit. A mound had been thrown up over the burial, in which cremated animal offerings had again been placed – along with the skeleton of a young woman who had been killed by a sword cut which had removed the top of her skull. A large pole had again been erected over the mound.

These burials, and other accompanied graves from the Isle of Man, have been dated to the late 9th or early 10th centuries. They are unlike the majority of Scandinavian graves, but they have come to stand for the Viking stereotypical warrior burial, with young men buried with all they need for Valhalla – their weapons, their horses and hounds, and even their slave girls. It is as if, in the competitive environment facing the first colonists, it was necessary to develop and exaggerate a Viking identity, as the defining part of who they were, and what they stood for.

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By contrast, amongst over 300 cist burials in an early cemetery on St Patrick’s Isle, Peel, only seven included any form of grave-goods, and most of these were costume items. Only the so-called ‘Pagan Lady’ stood out, with her necklace, comb, knives, shears, workbag, and cooking spit, or sorceress’ staff. However, she was not wearing Scandinavian dress, which has led to the suggestion that she was a native Celt who had married a settler. The Peel cemetery appears to represent an alternative strategy of assimilation, and within a few generations the Hiberno-Manx elite were being buried in churchyards, under stone cross slabs. As in England, there was a flourishing school of stone sculpture when the Norse arrived, and following their conversion they produced a series of distinctive crosses from 930–1020, frequently combining Christian elements with Scandinavian mythology. At Kirk Andreas church, Sigurd is shown in a conical helmet, roasting three slices of dragon heart over flames. The thumb of his other hand is in his mouth, the tasting of
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the dragon’s blood providing a crude metaphor for the Christian
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Eucharist. A second cross shows Oðinn, with spear and raven, his
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foot in the jaws of Fenrir, the wolf, counterbalanced on the other
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face by a Christian scene of a figure holding a book and cross.

Many of the crosses incorporate runic inscriptions. Most are commemorative and follow a common formula of ‘N put this cross up in memory of M’. Of the 44 named individuals, 22 have Norse names, while 11 have Celtic ones. Some were erected in the memory of women, including another example from Kirk Andreas, where

‘Sandulfr the Black raised this cross for his wife Arinbjörg’. The earliest surviving runes, from the 10th century, show a clear connection with Norway, but at the same time they show Norsemen accommodating to a Western tradition which has Celtic elements, and the development of a new hybrid cultural identity.

As in England, therefore, it is impossible to speak of a pure Viking cultural identity in the Irish Sea region, although we can observe different strategies of accommodation between raiders and settlers, sometimes emphasizing their cultural difference, and often creating 86

new cultural norms. As we travel northwards, in the next chapter, we will visit areas where it has been argued that the Norse achieved complete cultural dominance.

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Chapter 9

Vikings and Picts: genocide

or assimilation?

Interpretations of the character of Norse settlement in the Northern and Western Isles embrace the full spectrum of possible relationships between the Norse and the native Picts – from wholesale genocide to peaceful assimilation. Modern genetic evidence is consistent with large folk migration to the Northern Isles, and smaller scale settlement in the Western Isles, but both genetics and place names lack chronological resolution. The Hebrides may have been repopulated by Celtic peoples during the Middle Ages and the high proportion of Scandinavian ancestry in Orkney and Shetland may relate to the long period of close political, economic, and social ties with Norway, maybe commencing before the Viking Age. On balance, the archaeological evidence implies large-scale migration, followed by Norse political, linguistic, and cultural domination, but with some coexistence of indigenous and immigrant identities, expressed differently in each area.

The Hebrides

The Hebrides were linked with the Isle of Man as a single kingdom under the Lordship of the Isles, and shared a Norse inheritance, including traces of a ship levy and clinker-built vessels. It has been argued that the linguistic evidence suggests Gaelic was a later 88

overlay on an almost entirely Old Norse-speaking population, although the place names are a mixture of Gaelic and Old Norse.

Much of the archaeological evidence was discovered so long ago that its value is limited. The picture has been dominated by graves, often chance discoveries as a result of erosion of sand dunes, such as Machrins on Colonsay and Ballinby on Islay. We do know the dead were dressed in full Scandinavian costume, and were well equipped.

At Kiloran Bay (Colonsay), and Carn a’Bharraich (Oronsay), they were placed in rowing boats. The cemetery of a small community has been excavated more recently at Kneep on the Isle of Lewis. It includes men, women, and children, some buried with grave-goods, and some without. Isotope analysis of the teeth of a middle-aged
Vikin

woman buried in the late 10th century and dressed in traditional
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Norwegian folk costume reveals that she had been brought up in
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western Scotland. As a second-generation settler it is significant
ict

that, in death, her relatives were still keen to dress her in
s: genocide or a

Scandinavian costume. As on the Isle of Man it appears that the Hebridean Norse settlers were negotiating their cultural identity through an emphasis on Scandinavian dress and custom. Unlike the
s
Isle of Man, it seems that this strategy embraced their wives as well.
similation?

Norse settlements have been identified within grass-covered mounds on the sand dunes of the
machair
. Recent excavations on North and South Uist tell a similar story of takeover of native sites, with limited cultural continuity. At the Udal, on North Uist, characteristic Norse longhouses were built amongst the ruins of Pictish farms, on five settlement mounds, although the first structure built by the new occupants was a defensive enclosure, on the highest point of the site. New Norse styles of pottery, metalwork and combs appear, and the introduction of ceramic platters for baking barley cakes indicates a change in cuisine as well.

On South Uist settlement mounds are found throughout the
machair
and indicate that although farms again kept the same location from prehistoric times, new artefacts and new buildings 89

appear during the Norse period. At Cille Phaedir a 10th-century timber hall represents a radical departure from local building tradition, accompanied by the characteristic consumption of barley cakes. At Bornish, a long-lived Pictish settlement was levelled during the creation of a 10th-century Norse farmstead, and the builders appear to have feasted before they laid the floor. By the late 11th century they were living in a classic Scandinavian-style bow-sided hall, 20 metres long, with substantial stone footings, robbed from an adjacent Pictish structure. The inhabitants of Bornish were more affluent – they were importing pottery from Wessex, and making antler combs. They were also maybe displaying mixed cultural messages. Niall Sharples has suggested that a Norwegian bone mount was deliberately buried because of its personal association with the owner, while houses were rebuilt overlapping earlier structures to demonstrate an ancestral link with the past.

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Orkney

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The Life of Findan, a 9th-century continental source, is the most important contemporary document regarding the settlement of Orkney. It provides an apparently historical account of an Irish aristocrat’s escape from Norse slave traders on Orkney and his subsequent stay with a bishop, generally assumed to have been a Pict; the incident is dated
c
.840. The accepted origin myth, however, is to be found in the
Orkneyinga Saga
, written
c
.1192–1206. It claims that Orkney was settled by Earl Rognvald, fleeing from Norway in the 9th century, and it paints a vivid picture of life in Norse Orkney. Certainly from the mid-9th to the 12th centuries Orkney was the political focus of a semi-independent Norse state, whose ambit extended into Caithness. It did not become part of Scotland until 1468 when it was given to James III as part of the dowry of Margaret of Denmark.

A few place names and carved Pictish symbol stones and settlements indicate an indigenous pre-Norse Pictish population, 90

but Scandinavian names obliterated all but a handful of the indigenous names. They extend to the smallest farmstead and every landscape feature and suggest little interaction.

Excavation of a number of sites around the Bay of Birsay indicates Norse takeover of an embryonic native power centre on the tidal promontory. According to the
Orkneyinga Saga
Earl Thorfinn ‘had his permanent residence at Birsay, where he built and dedicated to Christ a fine minster, the seat of the first Bishop of Orkney’. In the second half of the 9th century, Pictish buildings are overlain by rectangular structures ascribed to the Norse. A number of substantial Norse halls were constructed, with wall benches and box beds. Iron-working took place on the island, and silver was also
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