Viking

   

For other uses, see Viking (disambiguation).
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Viking refers in a loose sense to the North Germanic (ethnically Scandinavian) population of Northern Europe in the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th centuries, which during this time colonized, raided and traded the lengths of the coasts, rivers and islands of Europe and the northeastern shores of North America.

More narrowly, and originally, the name Viking refer to traders, settlers, and most famously, raiders or pirates from Scandinavia.

They called themselves Norðmenn (Northmen), which was rendered as Normanni in Latin, Norsemen in English, and Norman in French. Modern Scandinavians still refer to themselves as the people of the North, nordbor or nordmenn.

The Northmen were also known as Ascomannii by the Germans (perhaps due to their mythological ancestor Ask), Lochlanach by the Irish and Dene (Daner) by the Anglo-Saxons. The Slavs, the Arabs and the Byzantines knew them as the Rus' or Rhos (probably from various uses of roþs-, i.e. "related to rowing", hence Russia). The Slavs and the Byzantines also called them Varangians (Væringjar, meaning "sworn men"), and the Scandinavian bodyguards of the Byzantine emperors were known as the Varangian Guard.

The modern day nations descended from the Viking population are Icelanders, Norwegians, Danes, Swedes and Faroe Islanders. A significant part of the populace of modern England, Scotland, Russia, Belarus, the Ukraine, eastern Ireland and northern France has Viking ancestry as well.

Etymology

The etymology of "viking" is somewhat unclear. 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, 'vikings' would be "people of the creeks". Later on, the term became synonymous with "raider of the sea". A second etymology suggested derives from Old English wíc, i.e. "trading city", (cognate to latin vicus, "village").

The word vikingr appears on several rune stones found in Scandinavia. In the icelandic sagas, víking refers to an overseas expedition, and víkingr to a seaman or warrior taking part in such an expedition. In Old English, the word wicing appears first in the 6th or 7th century in the Anglo-Saxon poem Widsith. The word disappeared in Middle English, and was re-introduced as viking during 19th century Romanticism.

Historical records

The Viking propensity for trade is easily seen in large towns such as 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 the year 1050. York, England, was the center of a Viking kingdom of Jorvik from 866, and discoveries there show that Viking trade connections in the 10th century reached beyond Byzantium: a silk cap, a counterfeit of a coin from Samarkand and a cowry shell from the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf reveal the extent of the Varangian network.

The earliest date given for a Viking raid is 789, when according to the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, Portland was attacked. A more reliable report dates from June 8, 793, when the monastery at Lindisfarne on the east coast of England was pillaged by foreign seafarers. For the next 200 years, European history is filled with tales of Vikings and their plundering.

Vikings exerted influence throughout the coastal areas of Ireland and Scotland, and conquered 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 Viking World

The Vikings built settlements and were skilled craftsmen and traders. Their ruthlessness and courage in battle is well documented by contemporary chroniclers, and they were feared along the western coast of France and in Britain. They were equipped with the then technologically superior longships; for purposes of conducting trade, however, another type of ship, the knarr, wider and deeper in draught were customarily used. They were competent sailors, adept in land warfare as well as at sea, and they often struck at accessible and poorly defended targets, usually with impunity. It is the effectiveness of these tactics that earned them their formidable reputation as raiders and pirates, and the chroniclers paid little attention to other aspects of Viking culture. This is further accentuated by the absence of contemporary primary source documentation from within the Viking 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.

The Vikings founded cities such as Dublin. The Danes sailed south, to Friesland, France and the southern parts of England. In the years 1013-1016, Canute the Great succeeded to the English throne. The Swedes sailed to east into Russia, where Rurik founded the first Russian state, and on the rivers south to the Black Sea, Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire. The Norwegians travelled to the north-west and west, to the Faroe Islands, Shetland, Orkney, Ireland and the northern parts of England. Apart from Britain and Ireland, Norwegians mostly found largely uninhabited land and established settlements.

In about the year 986 A.D, North America was discovered by Bjarni Herjólfsson. Leifur Eiríksson (Leif Ericsson) and Þórfinnur Karlsefni from Greenland attempted to settle the land which they dubbed Vinland about the year 1000 A.D. A small settlement was placed on the northern peninsula of Newfoundland, near L'Anse aux Meadows, but previous inhabitants and a cold climate brought it to an end within a few years (see Freydís Eiríksdóttir). The archaeological remains are now a UN World Heritage Site. It has now been scientifically established that at the height of the Viking expansion, the northern hemisphere entered into a period of unusual and long-lasting cold which continued for several hundred years. This miniature ice age decimated the Greenland colonies, stopped the Viking westward expansion and hampered the Viking homelands.

Besides allowing the Vikings to travel far distances, their longships gave them tactical advantages in battles. They could perform very efficient hit-and-run attacks, in which they attacked quickly and unexpectedly and left before a counter-offensive could be launched. Longships because of their negligible draught could sail in shallow waters, allowing the Vikings to travel far inland along the rivers. Their speed was prodigious for the time, achieving speeds estimated to be up to 14 or 15 knots.

A reason for the raids is believed by some to be overpopulation caused by technological advances such as the use of iron, although another cause could well be pressure caused by the Frankish expansion to the south of Scandinavia.

For people living along the coast it seems natural to seek new land by sea. Another reason is that in that period several European countries (particularly England, Wales and Ireland) were in internal disarray and 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. 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 and together with an increasing centralisation 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.

Sagas

Norse mythology, Norse sagas and Old Norse literature tell us about their religion with 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 Snorri Sturluson and Sæmundur "fróði" ("the Wise") Sigfússon for much of this, both whom were Icelanders and an overwhelming amount of the sagas were written in Iceland.

Decline

After decades of trade and settlement Christianity was introduced into Scandinavia by the 11th century, and the process of Christianization was mostly completed during the Middle Ages. However, elements of the old faith and secret blóts remained until the 19th century. The influence of the Norse seeing themselves then as part of 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.

Romantic Viking revival

Main article 19th century Viking revival.

Early modern publications dealing with what we now call Viking culture appeared in the 16th century, e.g. Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (Olaus Magnus, 1555) and the first edition of the 13th century Gesta Danorum of Saxo Grammaticus in 1514. The pace of publication increased during the 17th century with Latin translations of the Edda (notably Peder Resen's Edda Islandorum of 1665).

Sweden

According to the Swedish writer Jan Guillou, the word Viking was popularized, with positive connotations, by Erik Gustaf Geijer in the poem The Viking, written at the beginning of the 19th century. The word was taken to refer to romanticized, idealzed sea warriors, who had very little to do with the historical Viking culture. This renewed interest of Romanticism in the Old North had political implications: A myth about a glorious and brave past was needed to give the Swedes the courage to retake Finland, which had been lost in 1809 during the war between Sweden and Russia. The Geatish Society, of which Geijer was a member, popularized this myth to a great extent. Another author who had great influence on the perception of the Vikings was Esaias Tegnér, another member of the Geatish Society who wrote a modern version of Frithiofs Saga, which became widely popular in the nordic countries, the United Kingdom and Germany.

Great Britain

A focus for early British enthusiasts was George Hicke, who published a Linguarum vett. septentrionalium thesaurus in 1703–5. During the 18th century, British interest and enthusiasm for Iceland and nordic culture grew dramatically, expressed in English translations as well as original poems extolling Viking virtues, and increased interest in anything Runic that could be found in the Danelaw, rising to a peak during Victorian times.

Myths about Vikings

Horned helmets

There is no evidence whatsoever that the Vikings on any occasion wore horned helmets. This is a latter-day myth created by national romantic ideas in Sweden at the end of the 19th century, notably the Geatish Society, and further imprinted by cartoons like Hagar the Horrible or Asterix and numerous fictitious movies. The people living in Scandinavia during the Bronze Age did, however, wear horned helmets during ceremonies, as testified by rock carvings and actual finds. See Bohuslän.

Skull cups

The use of human skulls as drinking vessels is also unhistorical. The rise of this myth can be traced back to a mis-translation of an icelandic kenning: In the Latin translation of the Krakumal by Mágnus Ólafsson (in Ole Worm's Runer seu Danica literatura antiquissima of 1636), warriors drinking ór bjúgviðum hausa [from the curved branches of skulls, i.e. from horns] were rendered as drinking ex craniis eorum quos ceciderunt [from the skulls of those whom they had slain]. Scandinavian skalle, skal means simply "shell" or "bowl".

Uncleanliness

The image of wild-haired, dirty savages sometimes associated with the Vikings in popular culture has hardly any base in reality. The Vikings used a variety of tools for personal grooming such as combs, tweezers, razors or specialised "ear spoons". In particular, combs are among the most frequent artefacts from Viking Age graves, and one can conclude that a comb was the personal equipment of every man and woman. The Vikings also used soap long before it was re-introduced to Europe after the fall of the Byzantine Empire. The Vikings in England even had a particular reputation of excessive cleanliness, due to their custom of bathing once a week (as opposed to the local Anglo-Saxons). As for the Rus', Ibn Rustah explicitly notes their cleanliness, while Ibn Fadlan is disgusted by their sharing the same vessel as the men wash their faces in the morning. Ibn Fadlan's disgust is thus probably motivated by ideas of personal hygiene particular to the Arab world, while the very example intended to convey the disgusting customs of the Rus' at the same time records that they do in fact wash every morning.

Famous Vikings

See also:

Culture:

Historians:

Archaeology:

Bibliography

  • The Vikings, Johannes Bronsted, trans. Kalle Skov, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1971
  • Viking Age Denmark, E. Rosedahl
  • Medieval Scandinavia, P.H. Sawyer
  • The Age of the Vikings, P.H. Sawyer
  • The Viking World, J Graham-Campbell
  • The Viking Road to Byzantium, H.R. Ellis Davidson
  • Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, H.R. Ellis Davidson

External links



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