FIGURES

All the maps and some other drawings were made for the Danish edition of this book in 1987 by Orla Svendsen, Moesgård Museum, Denmark. Place-names on maps were revised in 1990 for the English edition.

1–3 Orla Svendsen, 1987

4 After A. W. Brøgger and H. Shetelig, The Viking Ships, 1951, p. 107

5 Orla Svendsen, 1987

6 Flemming Bau, Moesgård Museum

7 After E. Nylén, Bildstenar, 1978, p. 73

8 After Vikingatidens ABC (ed. L. Thunmark-Nylén et al.), 1981, pp. 55, 201

9 Orla Svendsen, 1987

10 After K. Schietzel, ‘Haithabu’, Ausgrabungen in Deutschland, Monografien der Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums 1, 1975, Teil III, p. 60

11 Orla Svendsen, 1987, after S. B. F. Jansson, Runinskrifter i Sverige, 1977, p. 27

12 After J. Skaarup, Stengade II, 1976, p. 57

13 After J. Graham-Campbell, The Viking World, 1980, p. 34. Drawing Frances Lincoln

14 Jens Kirkeby, Moesgård Museum, after E. Moltke, Runerne i Danmark, 1977, p. 211

15 After H. Hildebrand, Sveriges Medeltid 1879–1903, reprinted 1983, vol. 1, p. 71

16–17 The Viking Ship Museum, Roskilde

18 Orla Svendsen, 1987, after a plan and information from the excavator Steen Hvass, Vejle Museum

19 a–c after P. Hauberg, Myntforhold og udmyntninger i Danmark indtil 1146, 1900, Tab. I. d–f after B. Malmer, Mynt och människor, 1968, pp. 136–8, drawing B. Malmer, Stockholm

20 Orla Svendsen, 1989, after H. Jankuhn et al. (ed.), Archäeologsche und Naturwissenschaftliche Untersuchungen an länd-lichen und frühstädtischen Siedlungen, vol. 2, 1984, pp. 5, 11, 14, 186, 199

21 Flemming Bau, Moesgård Museum, Denmark

22 After O. Olsen and H. Schmidt, Fyrkat: En jysk vikingeborg, 1, 1977, p. 83. Drawing H. Schmidt, Copenhagen

23 Orla Svendsen, 1987

24 After Vikingatidens ABC (ed. L. Thunmark-Nylén et al.), 1981, p. 271

25 After H. Arbman, Birka I: Die Gräber, 1943, p. 189 (grave no. 581)

26 After K. J. Krogh, ‘The Royal Viking-Age Monuments at Jelling’, Acta Archaeologica, vol. 53, 1982, p. 189. Slightly adapted.

27 Orla Svendsen, 1989, after a photograph

28 After S. Margeson, ‘The Völsung Legend in Medieval Art’, Medieval Iconography and Narrative: A Symposium, Odense, 1980, p. 192

29 Left: Orla Svendsen, 1989, after a photograph. Right: after D. M. Wilson and O. Klindt-Jensen, Viking Art, 1966, 1980, p. 72. Drawing Eva Wilson, London

30 After D. M. Wilson and O. Klindt-Jensen, Viking Art, 1966, 1980, p. 95. Drawing Eva Wilson, London

31 After E. Wilson, Early Medieval Designs from Britain, 1983, no. 48. Drawing Eva Wilson, London

32 Orla Svendsen, 1987

33 After E. Roesdahl, Viking Age Denmark, 1982, p.211. Drawing Orla Svendsen, 1979

34 Orla Svendsen, 1987, based on L. Musset, ‘Naissance de la Normandie’, L’Histoire de la Normandie (ed. M. de Boüard), 1970, p. 104

35 Orla Svendsen, 1987

36 Orla Svendsen, 1987, based on D. M. Wilson, The Viking Age in the Isle of Man, 1974, p. 6, and on P. H. Sawyer, Kings and Vikings, 1982, p. 112

37 After D. M. Wilson and O. Klindt-Jensen, Viking Art, 1966, 1980, p. 113. Drawing Eva Wilson, London

38 Orla Svendsen, 1987

39 Patrick Wallace, National Museum of Ireland, reconstruction drawing 1986

40 Orla Svendsen, 1987, based on N. P. Brooks and J. A. Graham-Campbell, ‘Reflections on the Viking-Age Silver Hoard from Croydon, Surrey’, Anglo-Saxon Monetary History (ed. M. A. S. Blackburn), 1986, p. 108

41 Orla Svendsen, 1987

42 After P. H. Sawyer, The Age of the Vikings, 2nd ed. 1971, p. 161 (the map was first published by H. Smith in 1956)

43 Orla Svendsen, 1987

44 Orla Svendsen, 1987, based on B. Linderoth Wallace, ‘Resultaten av de senare grävningarna vid l’Anse aux Meadows’, Hus, gård och bebyggelse (ed. G. Ólafsson), 1983

45 Orla Svendsen, 1989, after a photograph

46 Left and right: Orla Svendsen, 1989, after photographs in Duisburg und die Wikinger (ed. Niederrheinisches Museum der Stadt Duisburg), 1983, pp. 74, 81. Centre: Orla Svendsen, 1987, after J. Herrmann, ed., Wikinger und Slawen, 1982, p. 287

47 After D. M. Wilson and O. Klindt-Jensen, Viking Art, 1966, 1980, p. 152. Drawing Eva Wilson

PLATES

2–3, 6–8, 11, 19, 23 University Museum of National Antiquities, Oslo

4, 15–16 Antikvarisk-Topografiska Arkivet, Stockholm

12, 14, 18, 20–21 National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen

1 Statens Lantmäteriverk, Gävle, Sweden

5 York Archaeological Trust. Photo A. K. G. Jones

9 Riksantikvarieämbetet, Stockholm. Photo Jan Norrman. Drawing Orla Svendsen

10 Lars Bergström, Stockholm

13 Erling Simonsen, Ducan Foto, Hobro

17 University Museum, Trondheim

22 The Museum of London

24 Sigrid Kaland, Historisk Museum Bergen

25 Else Roesdahl

26 Reproduced by courtesy of The Trustees of the British Museum

27 The British Library, London

28 Knud J. Krogh, National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen

WRITTEN SOURCES

In the past, the study of the Viking Age was based chiefly on written evidence. Since the early twentieth century, however, extensive studies have shown that many of the exciting stories about the Viking Age are more like ‘historical novels’ than accurate accounts; they were composed a long time after the events they describe, perhaps with the deliberate intention of glorifying a particular family in order to legitimize its rights to land, or to a kingdom, or to endorse a certain policy.

This is the case with many of the Icelandic sagas, written down mainly between about 1200 and 1400, including Snorri Sturluson’s great work Heimskringla, ‘The Circle of the World’, a history of the Norwegian kings from the earliest saga age to 1177, which dates from around 1230. It is also true of the account of the first Scandinavian rulers in Normandy written by the cleric Dudo, c. 1020, De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae Ducum, and of Saxo’s work on the deeds of the Danes, Gesta Danorum, written around 1200. Historical events and their interpretation, which had been passed on by word of mouth, often acquired a deliberate bias when they were eventually written down, or a new episode might be added to the life of a well-known person. Very few writers had reliable knowledge of what had happened and what things were like a hundred or more years ago. In addition, many of the stories are only preserved in copies of copies, which gives further scope for errors and improvements on the original manuscript.

It is often impossible, therefore, to distinguish pure fiction from an embellished version of an event, and improvements and additions to make the story more coherent, from what was once objective reality. The writers themselves were clearly not always sure which was the most accurate version and in any case their perception of ‘historical truth’ was quite different from the one most people have today. They wrote for their own age and their work was often dedicated to a person of high rank and social standing. Their works must be seen against this background, and not as attempts to reproduce historical reality in the modern sense. Sometimes it seem that eveything in a story is fiction, with the possible exception of the main characters’ names, for as time went on, Vikings and the Viking Age became a literary motif. However, the stories are often works of exceptional literary merit, expressing a deep fascination with the Viking Age.

The saga of the Jomsvikings, for example, written down in Iceland around 1200, tells the story of a group of professional warriors who spent the winters in a fortress, Jomsborg, on the south coast of the Baltic, and went on expeditions during the summer. They were subject to strong discipline, performed great exploits and were closely involved in Danish politics. In the end, they suffered a crushing defeat at Hjørungavåg in Norway. Many of the protagonists, among them Norwegian earls and Danish kings, are historical figures from the end of the tenth century, but most of the rest is probably just a good yarn. Works of this kind have been instrumental in creating stereotypes of the Viking period.

Not all later written sources on the Vikings have to be rejected or used so cautiously, however. The fifteenth-century Irish Annals, for example, contain a reliable version of the original Viking Age annals which related much about the activities of the Vikings. Many scaldic poems, composed by Scandinavian poets, or scalds, whose names we know, in public eulogy of Viking princes, are thought to have been quite faithfully handed down from generation to generation, even though they were not written down until after the Viking Age, mostly at the end of the twelfth century, or in the thirteenth century, as part of the Icelandic sagas.

Many are preserved in Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla, and Snorri, himself a scald, argues for the authenticity of the poems in his preface. He singles out the old scaldic poems and the historical writing of his compatriot Ari þorgilsson as his most important sources but ends by saying that even though Ari had learnt from ‘old intelligent persons’ and was himself ‘anxious for information, intelligent, and of excellent memory’, the most accurate information came from the poems ‘if the metrical rules are observed in them and if they are sensibly interpreted’. Snorri also relates that there were scalds at the court of the Norwegian king Harald Finehair around 900 ‘… whose poems people know by heart even at the present day, together with all the sagas about the kings who have ruled in Norway since his time’. He goes on:

Some of the poems about gods and the great heroes of the past, known as eddaic poems, also go back to the Viking Age, though their date is often debatable. The eddaic poems are known mainly from a manuscript called Codex Regius, which is a copy made in Iceland at the end of the thirteenth century from a slightly earlier manuscript. This collection of poems is often called The Elder Edda, in contrast to Snorri Sturluson’s book on the art of poetry, which he himself called Edda, and which is often referred to as The Younger Edda, or Snorri’s Edda.

Many Scandinavian poems thus give information about people, events and the cultural history of the Viking Age, as well as being a distinctive, exciting and often complicated form of poetry. It is fortunate, too, that most of the surviving scaldic poems tell of the situation in Norway, as hardly any other contemporary written sources about that country have survived.

Another source of information is laws written down in the Middle Ages containing provisions which go back to the Viking Age, or provisions which prohibit certain activities customary in former pagan times. It is often difficult, however, to distinguish the earlier provisions, since the laws in general reflect social conditions of the time when they were written down. Much had changed since the Viking Age, not least because of the influence of Christianity.

Whatever the problems with such sources, an account of the Viking Age would be meagre indeed if all the later prose accounts, the eddaic poems and legal provisions were dismissed out of hand. This is particularly true of the major works of Norse literature which dramatize the fact and fiction of the Viking Age, chronicling events such as Harald Finehair’s struggle to unite Norway, the colonization of Iceland, the conversion of Greenland, and the expeditions to America. Although the historical framework and the chronology may be distorted or wrong, and although additions may have been made for literary or other reasons, many sagas, if read as the literary works they are, undoubtedly contain as much of the reality of the Viking Age as anything that can be reconstructed today. The sagas were closer to the events, and were produced in an age whose ideals and outlook on life were in many ways akin to those of the Viking Age.

The most reliable written information about the Viking Age is of course contemporary, but there are very few sources dealing with Scandinavia, and there are many gaps, both chronologically and geographically. Furthermore, many contemporary sources are difficult to understand today, and they can sometimes give misleading information, either intentionally, or because the writer was badly informed.

The alphabet of Viking Age Scandinavia consisted of sixteen symbols, runes, which were used mostly for messages on wooden sticks (of which very few survive), or to indicate ownership of an object, or for scribbles on all sorts of objects, and most importantly, on stone memorials or rune stones. There are around forty-five Viking Age and early medieval rune stones in Norway, about 180 in modern Denmark, and around 2,500 (including many small fragments) in modern Sweden, of which about half are in Uppland in central Sweden. In addition, a number of inscriptions with Scandinavian runes have been found in the Viking colonies.

Much less research has been done into the information on rune stones than into traditional records written on parchment and kept in libraries, but, in particular, the large, late Viking Age group of rune stones from central Sweden gives a good insight into matters of cultural history, politics and social organization. A large stone at Runby (between Stockholm and Uppsala) records:

The laðbro is presumably a quay or jetty for the loading and unloading of ships, very useful at Runby, which lay on an important Uppland waterway. In Sjusta in the same district there is a splendidly ornamented stone which commemorates Spiallbuði, among others. He lost his life in a church in Novgorod (Hólmgarð) in Russia which was dedicated to St Olaf, the Norwegian king who was killed in 1030. The inscription reads:

Apart from rune stones, contemporary written information about the Viking homelands is almost exclusively the work of foreign clerics, few of whom had visited Scandinavia. Nearly all these texts are in Latin and they were usually written following political or military confrontations on Denmark’s southern border, or attempts to convert the pagan northmen to the true Christian faith. Particular light is shed on Denmark as most missionary and political activity was directed towards this country. The Frankish Annals, for example, record that in 808 Godfred, King of the Danes, wished to fortify his southern border with a wall stretching from the North Sea to the Baltic. This arose because of a dispute with Charlemagne.

A few foreign sources mention the situation in other Scandinavian countries. When the Norwegian chieftain Ohthere visited the court of King Alfred the Great in England he described his life and wealth in northern Norway, and his sea journey to Hedeby in southern Denmark c. 890; Alfred’s account of his tales still survives (cf. p. 105). The experiences of Ansgar, later Archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, and other missionaries in Sweden and Denmark in the mid-ninth century were recorded by Rimbert, Ansgar’s successor, who describes life in Birka in central Sweden. There is also a fairly comprehensive description of all the Scandinavian countries written c. 1075 by the German cleric Adam of Bremen. The account is part of his great work about the history of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum. It contains many interesting pieces of information, including the only contemporary description of a pagan Scandinavian temple, the main shrine of the Svear in Uppsala in Sweden.

Far more written evidence exists of Viking activities outside Scandinavia, but here too there are gaps. It is largely a matter of chance what has survived in a reliable form and what has been lost; only those regions which were Christian or Islamic early on – Western Europe, the British Isles, Byzantium and the Middle East – had a literary tradition; and the evidence is of a very varied nature. The Christians mention Scandinavia and the Vikings chiefly in annals and in some histories, while the Muslims refer to them in geographical works, but both see the Vikings as pagan barbarians.

In the Baltic countries and in the Russian realm Christianity did not gain a foothold until the second half of the tenth century at the earliest, and large parts of these areas remained pagan, and hence virtually undocumented, until well into the twelfth century. But a number of Swedish rune stones, such as that from Sjusta mentioned above, tell of journeys to these areas and to lands further south, and Arabs or travellers from Byzantium who encountered or heard tell of the exotic northmen in Eastern Europe mention them in their writings.

The Faroes, Iceland and Greenland were converted to Christianity around AD 1000. As they were remote from literate Europe, there is virtually no written evidence about them dating from the Viking Age itself. There is also very little about Scotland and the Scottish islands. Adam of Bremen gives us a few glimpses, but otherwise we must look to other sources, especially place-names and archaeological finds, or try to extract information about the Viking Age from later literature.

Another problem in understanding the Viking expansion is that the written accounts of events and impressions are so one-sided. The Vikings’ settlements abroad, their way of life, trade and other peaceful pursuits rarely interested Western European writers. Contemporary sources recorded dramatic events such as plunder, extortion of money, slaughter and killing, battle and conquest, peace treaties and political alliances. For example, in Regino’s Chronicle (Regino was abbot of the monastery at Prüm, between the rivers Maas and Mosel), the entry for the year 892 records the following:

The problem of interpreting the meaning of any thousand-year-old word, whether in Old Norse, Old English, Latin or Arabic, is often disregarded, yet the meaning of many words has altered so fundamentally that today we cannot be sure what they originally signified. Viking Age people naturally knew what the Old Norse konungr (king) meant and what the title represented, but it is clear that the role of a konungr was very different to that of a modern European king, and we only have an incomplete picture of the duties, rights and resources of Viking kings. Some words may also have had different meanings in different parts of Scandinavia, or may have undergone a semantic change during the three centuries of the Viking Age.

Despite the reservations discussed above, there are quite a few reliable written sources on the Viking Age, though most of those dealing with Scandinavia are about the later rather than the early Viking Age. For the first time in Scandinavian history these sources become numerous enough in the Viking Age to give us a framework of events and to contribute to our understanding of the development of the period and its culture, as well as recording the deeds of specific people and contemporary attitudes.

PLACE-NAMES

Many place-names established during the Viking Age are still in use both in Scandinavia and in Scandinavian settlements abroad. The name types which were common in the homelands can generally be identified on the basis of the linguistic analysis of the names’ form and meaning, by analysing the status and geographical locations which are associated with settlements of various name types, and by comparing place-names at home with place-names in the colonies. In many areas, new names arose after the Scandinavian conquests and settlements, such as Stearsby in northern England, where both the prefix Stear-, derived from the Scandinavian personal name Styrr, and the suffix -by (settlement) are Scandinavian, or Toqueville in Normandy with the Scandinavian personal name Toke as prefix and a French suffix: ville. An analysis of place-names also makes it possible to distinguish between areas settled mainly by Norwegians and those settled mainly by Danes.

As well as supplying evidence of Viking settlements abroad and of the geographical distribution of settlements within Scandinavia, place-names obviously provide information about naming customs (both with regard to persons and places) and about language. They can also shed some light on such matters as religion. For example, place-names compounded with the name of the god Odin (such as Odense, in Denmark) are evidence of the worship of this chief god, and the number of place-names based on the names of various gods reflects their popularity in different parts of Scandinavia.

In the colonies the number and character of Scandinavian or partly Scandinavian names depended both on how many settlers arrived and on their status in the community, and also on how much influence their language came to have on the local dialect. The latter was partly determined by how closely the original language was related to Scandinavian, and perhaps also by the character of the Scandinavian settlement: whether it was peaceful co-existence or total domination. Danish and English, for example, were not very different, and people soon learnt to live peacefully together in England, so here a kind of mixed language came into being. Swedish and Slav, however, belonged to two completely different language groups, so in Russia no mixed language arose. The local language prevailed, with a number of Scandinavian loan-words, and Scandinavian names given to rapids in the river Dniepr, which many had to pass in order to reach Byzantium, were presumably used only by the Scandinavians themselves.

In the Orkneys and Shetlands, however, the local language was completely replaced by Scandinavian and developed into the dialect Norn, which has survived almost to this day. Virtually all place-names here are Scandinavian, but a number were obviously created long after the Viking Age. In England, too, not all the Scandinavian place-names are the result of name-giving and acquisition of property immediately after the ninth-century conquests. Those containing Scandinavian nature words borrowed by the English language, such as beck (Old Norse bekkr: brook) and fell (Old Norse fell: fell, mountain), are especially likely to have been created long afterwards.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS

The major advances made in our understanding of the Viking Age are due to archaeology and to interdisciplinary research based on recent archaeological finds, which have done much to stimulate popular and academic interest in the subject.

If archaeological remains are reasonably intact, they can be understood to a certain extent without specialist knowledge: a complete ceramic cooking-pot gives immediate information about the form of cooking-pots, and a silver arm-ring about fashion, aesthetics and wealth. But further research into contemporary ceramic vessels may identify a pottery sherd found in Scandinavia as an English import, and weighing large numbers of silver arm-rings may reveal that they represent units of weight in systems of Oriental origin.

Objects and structures rarely survive intact, however. A hinge may be all that remains of a casket, the lower ends of the supporting timbers all that is left of a bridge, and dark traces in the soil from posts which have completely rotted away the only sign of a house. Many iron objects, such as swords, and all wooden objects, even if the entire form has survived, usually bear scant resemblance to the original.

A model or a drawing can give a good impression of the original appearance of structures and objects, how they functioned, and what technology and labour were used in their manufacture. A full-scale reconstruction made in the original materials, using the original technology, is best of all. Such reconstructions have been made of ships and houses, not just small objects, fulfilling both scholarly and popular demands.

Unlike written sources and place-names, archaeological sources increase constantly. New material is added almost daily and occasionally sensational finds turn traditional interpretations upside down. The discovery of the Trelleborg fortress in Denmark in the 1930s and the excavations of Scandinavian Dublin and York between the 1960s and 1980s took the world by storm.

Apart from grave-goods and valuable items hidden for safekeeping, most excavated objects tend to be discarded possessions and rubbish, which can make it difficult to draw a coherent picture of, for instance, the development of crafts in a particular town. Comparisons and generalizations about burial customs are also often problematic, since local circumstances affected what the dead were given to accompany them in their graves in pagan times. As with nearly all archaeological remains, it is mere chance which graves are known today and to what extent their contents have survived.

Recent advances in archaeology are largely due to systematic research into subjects such as the role of iron in the economy, the significance of the town of Hedeby in southern Denmark, coins and other means of payment, ships, or the relationship between Scandinavian and Lappish settlements in northern Scandinavia. New excavation methods and scientific analysis have also played an important part, raising new questions about the period and solving some of them. Perhaps the most revolutionary of the new excavation methods has been the use of machines to uncover large areas quickly and cheaply. As a result, a whole Viking Age village, Vorbasse, in central Jutland, has been discovered. When shovels and manual labour were the only tools in rural excavations, hardly more than a handful of houses were uncovered. Underwater archaeology is also relatively new. Divers can now examine

The principles of dendrochronology. The date 737 corresponds to the felling of timber for a phase of the Danish border wall, Danevirke.

wrecks in fairly deep water, while in shallow water several conventional excavations have been carried out after isolating the area with sheet piles and pumping out the sea water. The harbour area at Hedeby was investigated in this way. The water-logged conditions there were exceptionally good for the preservation of items which normally rarely survive, such as clothes.

AD