The Vikings: A Very Short Introduction (9 page)

wealth in Scandinavia that was the driving force for overseas expeditions. Scandinavian leaders took tribute from those who were
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in a weaker position, and in turn passed on gifts in order to acquire status and gain support. If gifts were not forthcoming then they could be extracted by force instead. In the later saga literature strong leaders were characterized as ring-givers since they gave
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silver arm rings to their followers to secure and reward their
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allegiance. Silver hoards are characteristic finds in the homelands,
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and in areas of Viking raids.

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When the Hiberno-Norse Vikings were expelled from Dublin
c
.900

(p. 78) they took with them the ‘pay chest’ of their army, but in 905

they were forced to bury it in a lead-lined chest on the banks of the River Ribble at Cuerdale, and were never able to recover it. The Cuerdale hoard had been collected over several decades by an international force. It comprised
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.7,500 coins, including
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.5,000

contemporary Viking issues,
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.1,000 Anglo-Saxon coins, and
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.1,000 Frankish and Italian coins. There were also
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.1,000 pieces of bullion silver in ingots and ornaments, including some complete Irish silver arm rings. In total there was
c
.40 kg of silver; estimates of its value in today’s prices range from £300,000 to £4,000,000.

The Cuerdale hoard was probably amassed through a mixture of trading and raiding activity; slaves acquired through raiding in 53

Ireland might have been sold in York, for example. Scandinavians played a decisive role in trade in many of the areas where they took political control. They traded not only in luxury goods, but also increasingly in ordinary bulk commodities. They also acted as middlemen between the East and the West, and after Muslim incursions in the Mediterranean closed the traditional trade routes, they opened new ones through the Baltic and Russia. Economic expansion was fuelled by population increase, manufacturing growth, and new wealth – which was itself often derived from plunder and tribute. It was facilitated by Scandinavian political domination, with the fact that exchange was easy within an area under the same language and culture.

Scandinavian lords such as Ohthere operated in several different economic spheres. They took tribute and gifts at home, where social obligation was as important as monetary value. Hoards were part of
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the process of amassing wealth to be used in gift exchange. Traders
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regularly exchanged to gain luxury items (particularly silver), to win
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friends, influence the powerful, and purchase allies. However, when
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they came to trade their goods and slaves in the blossoming markets of Northern Europe they would meet other merchants with whom they had never previously met and whom they might never meet again. Here it was necessary for royal authority rather than social obligation to ensure fair play, and economic transactions were separated from social relations. The minting of coinage under royal control became necessary to facilitate the conduct of purely monetary transactions.

As gift exchange declined in importance, the ownership of land became more important than portable wealth. Hoarding ended not because peace finally reigned but because the basis of political power changed. Land and estates became the main source of power, not territories and followers, and the later Viking raids were directed to the acquisition of new places to settle. In the North Atlantic there were underpopulated and virgin territories, but in the British Isles land had to be seized from those already inhabiting it, 54

and there were various strategies to accommodate the indigenous population, dependent upon the local balance of power. Viking leaders were often simply able to seize land, from kings and abbeys whose power base they had destroyed, and redistribute it to their followers, although in England there is also documentary evidence for their involvement in cash transactions for the purchase of land.

Silver was now used in buying and selling; not in competitive gift-giving.

Vikings in Western Europe

The first recorded raids on Western Europe date from the close of
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the 8th century. Whether in continental Europe or the North or Irish Seas, raiding followed a similar pattern. Unprotected coastal
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and riverine sites, including monasteries and markets, were the first targets, normally for small bands of Vikings in two or three ships who returned home as the winter storms began. In the 790s they attacked the Northumbrian monasteries and in 799 raided the
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Carolingian Empire. The first Viking raid on the Irish coast took
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place in 795, and movement inland is first recorded
c
.830. From the
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830s larger forces raided along the Frisian coast (the modern
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Netherlands) and devastated the south coast of England. The wealthy trading town of Dorestad was plundered for four successive years in 834–8.

The Viking armies were quick to exploit local rivalries and weakness. After the death of Louis the Pious in 840 the Carolingian Empire was divided amongst his sons. With civil war and independent warlords intent upon carving out their own territory, Viking commanders hastened further fragmentation. In 841

Vikings ravaged Rouen and in 845 an attack on Paris was only prevented by the payment of 7,000 pounds of silver. In 852 a Viking fleet wintered on the Seine and in 853 on the Loire. The fleet continued to exploit these river systems until Charles the Bald built fortified bridges and protected the towns and abbeys, forcing the Viking armies to focus their attention on England.

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In 850 a Viking force over-wintered in England for the first time, signalling the beginning of a new phase of more sustained attack by highly mobile forces. In 865 reference is made for the first time to the payment of Danegeld, in return for which the people would be left in peace. The clearest evidence for this phase of Viking activity in Europe comes from Scandinavia itself, where there are thousands of Carolingian and Anglo-Saxon coins.

This extraction of wealth must also have helped weaken the Carolingian Empire, but the Scandinavian impact has otherwise left little trace in the archaeological record in Frankia. There are Scandinavian influenced place names along the line of the Lower Seine to Rouen, but almost all the artefacts are confined to Normandy and Brittany in the north-west. In Normandy, as in England, interaction between the native Franks and Scandinavians led to the rapid formation of a distinctive local Norman culture.

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There are also a handful of coastal burial sites, including a 10th-g

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century ship burial on the Île de Groix in Brittany. A longship with a
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smaller boat inside had been dragged along a processional way of
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standing stones, and then filled with a rich assemblage of objects, including weapons, riding gear, gold and silver jewellery, ivory gaming pieces, smith’s tools, and farming equipment. The bodies of an adult male and an adolescent – possibly a sacrifice – were placed in the ship, which was surrounded by 24 shields and set alight. This is the only known example of the burning of a ship as part of the burial rite, although it has become an essential part of the Viking stereotype. In fact it was carried out at a time when most Scandinavian warriors had been converted, and represents the reinvention of a pre-Christian identity in the face of widespread assimilation.

There are other examples of the retention and reinvention of Viking identity in the Scandinavian colonies in the British Isles and the North Atlantic and these form the subject of subsequent chapters.

First, however, it is necessary to consider Scandinavian expansion eastwards.

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Expansion in the East

While Scandinavians from Denmark and Norway looked predominately westwards, those from Sweden looked eastwards, where they encountered very different cultures. The significance of a Viking presence to the development of Russia has been much debated and views have swung in time with the pendulum of internal Russian politics and the East–West relationship. It has been claimed, alternately, that Scandinavians were responsible for founding the great towns of European Russia (the so-called Normanist view), or that the Russian state was established by people of Slavonic origin (the anti-Normanist view), according to
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whether the dominant views of the time are pro- or anti-Western.

Much depends upon the identity of a people known as the Rus who
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were invited to bring order to Central Russia in 860–2, and whether they were Slavic or Scandinavian.

There is no dispute that Scandinavians from the Baltic were active
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down the great Russian river routes such as the Don, the Dnieper,
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and the Volga. With overland portage to transfer boats and goods
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from one river to the next they could have reached the Caspian and
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Black Seas and gained access to the treasures of Byzantium, but did they come as traders or raiders? Over one hundred Swedish rune stones testify to men who died in the East, including many on an ill-fated expedition led by one Ingvar, but the purpose of their journeys is rarely given. Exotic Eastern objects and Byzantine silks are found throughout Scandinavia, and there are over 60,000

Arabic coins, but were these acquired as loot, protection money, tribute, or through trade?

In truth there was probably an element of all four. Tenth-century Arabic texts refer to people described as the Rus as traders in furs and slaves in the Bulghar region. The traveller Ibn Fadlan observed their alien dress styles and their strange mortuary practices, which included the sacrifice of slave girls. He also says that the king of the Rus had a personal retinue of 400 warriors.

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The Eastern Emperor in Byzantium (modern Constantinople) had a Varangian bodyguard comprising Scandinavian mercenaries. In 860 there was a famous Viking raid on Byzantium, and in 910–12 a fleet of 16 ships was based in the Caspian Sea, attacking Abaskun, and killing many of the Muslim inhabitants.

How far does archaeological evidence help us understand the nature and extent of activity? The best evidence that peoples of Scandinavian origin lived in Russia is provided by their burials. Up to 26 boat graves are known, including ten from Plakun, near the early trading site at Staraja Ladoga. The burials included people of high social standing, and the presence of women suggests that they were a settled group. At Gnezdovo, near Smolensk, some 600

burials have been excavated out of a large cemetery of
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.3,000

mounds. These show a variety of burial customs, comprising 80 per
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cent cremation and 20 per cent inhumation, some in chamber
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graves. There were also 11 boat graves, although some contained
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cremations, unknown in Scandinavia. Over a tenth of the burials
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contain weaponry, but almost as many contain weighing scales and Arabic coins. The richest burials are the chamber graves and although they often contain Scandinavian jewellery, cauldrons, swords, and drinking horns, they also have Byzantine imports. In fact it appears as if the cemetery population at Gnezdovo comprised at least three components: Scandinavians mainly of the 10th century; Slavs in unfurnished cremations, or buried with just a few objects such knives, pottery, single beads, but including females with eastern Slavonic wire rings; and lastly Balts with Moravian-style jewellery.

At Tjernigov, also near Smolensk, there are further chamber graves, many containing double male and female burials, although it has been noted that while the men had Scandinavian weapons and belt fittings, the women never had Scandinavian brooches. Elsewhere, but particularly in those cemeteries associated with important centres are further graves with Scandinavian objects, or goods 58

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8. Russia and the East

produced locally in a Scandinavian style. Generally these do not stand out as being particularly rich, nor isolated from other burials exhibiting Finnish, Baltic, and Slavic customs. Scandinavians, therefore, appear to have formed one relatively small element in a very mixed population, and seem to have been regarded as settled members of the community. Some were mercenary warriors, others were traders, and it is not always possible to distinguish between them.

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Archaeological research has also revealed considerable consistency in settlement patterns in Russia 900–1200. The cultural landscape of the medieval Rus consisted of clusters of settlements located near rivers and lakes, surrounded by extensive woodlands. Patches of man-made landscape were small compared with the area of unsettled territories, although there was rapid growth in rural settlements from between the late 9th to 11th centuries and the 13th century.

The first towns lay on or near the river routes. Staraja Ladoga was sited where the Scandinavian route into the East splits into two: the Volga and the Dnieper. It was situated not on open water where it would have been exposed to surprise attack, but 12 kilometres up the River Volkhov. The site is on a high bank by a ravine; an earth rampart, enclosing an area of
c
.650,000 square metres, gives further protection. The earliest levels, tree ring dated to 760–840,
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were built on undisturbed natural soil. Large timber houses were
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constructed, and some appear to have served as workshops for
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