Norse activity in the British Isles

Norse activity in the British Isles occurred during the Early Mediaeval period, when members of the Norse populations of Scandinavia traveled to the British Isles for trade, raiding and settlement. The Norse peoples that came to the British Isles have often been referred to in modern scholarship as Vikings;^[1][2] however, there is a dispute among scholars as to whether the term Vikings should be used to apply to all Norse settlers or simply the Norse raiders.^[3]

At the start of the Early Medieaval period, the Norse kingdoms in Scandinavia had developed trade links stretching all the way into southern Europe and the Mediterranean that gave them access to imports such as gold. Such trade links also extended westward into the British Isles.^[4]

In the final decade of the 8th century CE, Norse raiders attacked a series of Christian monasteries located in the British Isles. This started in 793, with an attack on the monastery at Lindisfarne off of England's eastern coast, and the following year they sacked the nearby Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Abbey. In 795 they once again attacked, this time raiding Iona Abbey on Scotland's west coast.^[5]

Background

British Isles

During the Early Mediaeval period, the British Isles were culturally, linguistically and religiously divided into various groups. In Ireland, Western Britain (modern Cornwall and Wales) and Northern Britain (modern Scotland), the populations, who were the descendents of the earlier Iron Age peoples, spoke Celtic languages and had already been predominantly converted to Christianity from their older, pre-Christian polytheistic religions. In contrast to this, across much of southern Britain, in what is considered to be Anglo-Saxon England, Anglo-Saxon migrants from continental Europe had settled in the 5th century CE, bringing with them their own Germanic language (known as Old English), as well as their own polytheistic religion (Anglo-Saxon paganism) and their own distinct cultural practices.

At this time, the Isle of Man supported an agrarian population of Celtic-language speakers who were also Christian. The island had not yet developed any towns, and little had changed in Manx society since the Iron Age.^[6]

In northern Britain (the area that is the rough equivalent of the modern nation of Scotland), three distinct ethnic groups lived in their own respective kingdoms, all of whom Christians and who were speakers of Celtic-languages: the Picts, Scots and Britons.^[7] The Pictish cultural group dominated the majority of Scotland, with major populations concentrated between the Firth of Forth and the River Dee, as well as in Sutherland, Caithness and Orkney.^[8] The Scots were, according to written sources, a tribal group who had crossed to Britain from Dalriada in northern Ireland during the late 5th century. Archaeologists have not been able to identify anything that was particularly unique to the kingdom of the Scots, noting similarities with the Picts in most forms of material culture.^[9] The Britons were held to dwell in southern Scotland, and by the 7th or 8th centuries had apparently come under the political control of the Anglo-Saxons.^[10]

By the mid-9th century, Anglo-Saxon England was divided into four separate and independent kingdoms; East Anglia, Wessex, Northumbria and Mercia, the latter of which was the strongest military power.^[11] Between half a million and a million people lived in England at this time, with society being rigidly hierarchical. This class system had a king and his ealdormen at the top, under whom were the thegns, or landholders and then the various forms of agricultural workers below them. Beneath all of these was a class of slaves, who may have made up as much as a quarter of the population.^[11] The majority of the populace lived in the countryside, although a few large towns had developed, namely London and York, which were centres of royal and ecclesiastical administration, although there was also a number of trading ports, such as Hamwic and Ipswich, that were involved in foreign trade.^[11]

Scandinavia

A 20th century replica of a Viking longship, known as the Hugin.

Society in 8th century Scandinavia was (unlike the British Isles) still pre-literate, existing in the final state of European prehistory, in a period known by archaeologists as the Iron Age. In Scandinavia, the 8th century proved to be "a period of rapid technological, economic and social development" which would lead the region out of the Iron Age and into what has come to be known as the Viking Age.^[12]

At the start of the Early Mediaeval period, the Norse populations saw themselves primarily as inhabitants of specific regions such as Jutland, Vestfold and Hordaland. It would only be by the later centuries of this period that national identities developed amongst the Scandinavians, dividing them up into Danes, Swedes and Norwegians.^[13]

The Late Iron Age peoples of Scandinavia had not yet been converted to Christianity as the peoples of the British Isles had, and they instead followed Norse paganism, a polytheistic set of beliefs that revered such deities as Odin, Thor, Frey and Freyja.^[14]

Scandinavian society was heavily sea-faring, allowing Norse sailors to navigate around much of Europe during the Early Mediaeval period.^[15] The Norse populations of Scandinavia had developed trade links with many other areas of Europe, obtaining large quantities of gold in the late 5th century, most of which was found in Sweden, and to a lesser degree Norway.^[4]

Viking raids: 793-850

In the final decade of the 8th century CE, Norse raiders attacked a series of Christian monasteries located in the British Isles. In the British Isles, Christian monasteries had often been positioned on small islands and in other remote coastal areas so that the monks could dwell there in seclusion, devoting themselves to worship without the interference of other elements of society. At the same time, it made them isolated and un-protected targets for attack.^[16] Historian Peter Hunter Blair remarked that the Viking raiders would have been astonished "at finding so many communities which housed considerable wealth and whose inhabitants carried no arms."^[16] These raids would have been the first contact many Norsemen had with Christianity, but such attacks were not specifically anti-Christian in nature, rather the monasteries were simply seen as 'easy targets' for raiders.^[14]

"Lo, it is nearly 350 years that we and our fathers have inhabited this most lovely land, and never before has such a terror appeared as we have now suffered from a pagan race, nor was it thought that such an inroad from the sea could be made. Behold the church of St Cuthbert spattered with the blood of the priests of God, despoiled of all its ornaments."

Archbishop Alcuin of York on the sacking of Lindisfarne.^[17]

The first known account of a Viking raid taking place in Anglo-Saxon England comes from 789, when three ships from Hordaland (in modern Norway) landed in the Isle of Portland on the southern coast of Wessex. They were approached by the royal reeve from Dorchester, whose job it was to identify all foreign merchants entering the kingdom, and they proceeded to kill him.^[17] It is likely that other raids (the records for which have since been lost) occurred soon after, for in 792 King Offa of Mercia began to make arrangements for the defence of Kent from raids perpetrated by "pagan peoples".^[17]

The next recorded attack against the English came the following year, in 793, when the monastery at Lindisfarne, an island off of England's eastern coast, was sacked by a Viking raiding party on 8 June.^[17] The following year they sacked the nearby Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Abbey.^[5]

In 795 they once again attacked, this time raiding Iona Abbey on Scotland's west coast.^[5] This monastery would be attacked again in 802 and 806, when 68 people dwelling there were killed. Following such devastation, the monastic community at Iona abandoned the site and fled instead to Kells in Ireland.^[18]

In the first decade of the 9th century CE, Viking raiders began to attack coastal districts along Ireland.^[19] In 835, the first major Viking raid in southern England took place and was directed against the Isle of Sheppey.^[20]

Treasure hoards

Various hoards of treasure were buried in England at this time, some of which may have been deposited by Anglo-Saxons attempting to hide their wealth from Viking raiders, and some of which may have instead been buried by the Viking raiders themselves as a way of protecting their looted treasure.^[17]

One such of these hoards was discovered in Croydon, Surrey in 1862. Containing 250 coins, three silver ingots and part of a fourth as well as four pieces of hack silver in a linen bag, it was believed by archaeologists that this was the loot collected by a member of the Viking army. By dating the artefacts, archaeologists came to believe that it was likely that this hoard had been buried in 872, when the army wintered in London.^[17] The coins themselves came from a wide range of different kingdoms, with Wessex, Mercian and East Anglian examples being found alongside foreign imports from Carolingian dynasty Francia and the Arab world.^[17] Not all such Viking hoards in England contained coins however, for example at Bowes Moor, Durham, 19 silver ingots were discovered, whilst at Orton Scar, Cumbria, a silver neck ring and penannular brooch were uncovered.^[21]

The historian Peter Hunter Blair believed that it was the success of the Viking raids and the "complete unpreparedness of Britain to meet such attacks" which was the major factor in the subsequent Norse invasions and colonisations of large parts of the British Isles.^[16]

Invasion and Danelaw: 865-896

From 865 the Norse attitude towards the British Isles changed, as they began to see it as a place for potential colonisation rather than simply a place to raid. As a result of this, larger armies began arriving on Britain's shores, with the intention of conquering land and constructing settlements there.^[22]

England

Main article: Danelaw

In 866, Norse armies captured York, one of the two major cities in Anglo-Saxon England.^[22] In 871, King Æthelred of Wessex, who had been leading the conflict against the Vikings, died, and was succeeded to the throne by his younger brother, Alfred the Great.^[22] Meanwhile, many Anglo-Saxon kings began to capitulate to the Viking demands, and handed over land to the invading Norse settlers. In 876, the Northumbrian monarch Healfdene gave up his lands to them, and in the next four years they gained further land in the kingdoms of Mercia and East Anglia as well.^[22] King Alfred continued his conflict with the invading forces, but was driven back into Somerset in the south-west of his kingdom in 878, where he was forced to take refuge in the marshes of Athelney.^[22]

Alfred regrouped his military forces and defeated the armies of the Norse monarch of East Anglia, Guthrum, at the Battle of Ethandun. Following Guthrum's defeat, in 886 the Treaty of Wedmore was signed between the (Norse-controlled) East Anglian and Wessex governments that established a boundary between the two kingdoms. The area to the north and east of this boundary became known as the Danelaw because it was under the control of Norse political influence, whilst those areas south and west of it remained under Anglo-Saxon dominance.^[22] Alfred's government set about constructing a series of defended towns or burhs, began the construction of a navy and organised a militia system whereby half of his peasant army remained on active service.^[22] Although there were continuous attacks on Wessex by new Viking armies, the kingdom's new defenses proved a success and in 896 the invaders dispersed, instead settling in East Anglia and Northumbria, with some instead sailing to Normandy.^[22]

Alfred's policy of opposing the Viking settlers was continued under the regime of his daughter Æthelflæd, who married Æthelred, Ealdorman of Mercia, and also under the regime of her son Edward the Elder. In 920 the Northumbrian government and the Scots governments both submitted to the military power of Wessex, and in 937 the Battle of Brunanburh led to the collapse of Norse power in northern Britain. In 954 Erik Bloodaxe, the last Norse King of York, was expelled from the city.^[23]

Norse settlement in the British Isles

The early Norse settlers in Anglo-Saxon England would have appeared visibly different from the Anglo-Saxon populace, wearing specifically Scandinavian styles of jewellery, and likely also wearing their own peculiar styles of clothing as well. There was also a difference in the style of hair worn by Norse and Anglo-Saxon men, with the former typically wearing a hair style that was shaved at the back and left shaggy on the front, whilst in contrast to this the latter typically wore their hair long.^[24]

Second invasion: 980-1012

Cnut the Great's domains, in red.

England

Under the reign of Wessex King Edgar the Peaceful, England came to be further politically unified, with Edgar coming to be recognized as the king of all England by both Anglo-Saxon and Norse populations living in the country.^[25] However, under the regimes of his son Edward the Martyr, who was murdered in 978, and then Æthelred the Unready, the political stength of the English monarchy wained, and in 980 Viking raiders from Scandinavia once more started making attacks against England.^[25] The English government decided that the only way of dealing with these attackers as to pay them protection money, and so in 991 they gave them £10,000. This fee did not prove to be enough, and over the next decade the English kingdom was forced to pay the Viking attackers increasingly large sums of money.^[25] Many English began to demand that a more hostile approach be taken against the Vikings, and so, on St Brice's Day in 1002, King Æthelred proclaimed that all Danes living in England would be executed.^[25]

In 1013 King Sveinn Hákonarson of Denmark invaded England with a large army, and Æthelred fled to Normandy, leading Sveinn to take the English throne. Sveinn died within a year however, and so Æthelred returned, but in 1016 another Norse army invaded, this time under the control of the Danish King Cnut.^[26] After defeating Anglo-Saxon forces at the Battle of Assandun, Cnut became king of England, subsequently ruling over both the Danish and English kingdoms.^[26] Following Cnut's death in 1035, the two kingdoms were once more declared independent, and remained so apart from a short period when from 1040-42 Cnut's son Harthacnut ascended the English throne.^[26]

Norman Invasion: 1066

In 1066 the Normans invaded Anglo-Saxon England, aided by Norse.

Evidence

Written records

Archaeologists James Graham-Campbell and Colleen E. Batey noted that there was a lack of historical sources discussing the earliest Viking encounters with the British Isles, which would have most probably been amongst the northern isles of Britain, which are closest to Scandinavia.^[27]

The Irish Annals provide us with accounts of much Norse activity during the 9th and 10th centuries.^[28]

The Viking raids that affected Anglo-Saxon England were primarily documented in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a collection of annals initially written in the late 9th century, most probably in the Kingdom of Wessex during the reign of Alfred the Great. The Chronicle is however a biased source, acting as a piece of "wartime propaganda" written on behalf of the Anglo-Saxon forces against their Norse opponents, and in many cases greatly exaggerates the size of the Norse fleets and armies, thereby making any Anglo-Saxon victories against them seem more heroic.^[29]

Archaeological evidence

The Norse settlers in the British Isles left remains of their material culture behind, which archaeologists have been able to excavate and interpret during the 20th and 21st centuries. Such Norse evidence in Britain consists primarily of Norse burials undertaken in Shetland, Orkney, the Western Isles, the Isle of Man, Ireland and the north-west of England.^[28] Archaeologists James Graham-Campbell and Colleen E. Batey remarked that it was on the Isle of Man where Norse archaeology was "remarkably rich in quality and quantity".^[3]

However, as archaeologist Julian D. Richards commented, Scandinavians in Anglo-Saxon England "can be elusive to the archaeologist" because many of their houses and graves are indistinguishable from those of the other populations living in the country.^[2] For this reason, historian Peter Hunter Blair noted that in Britain, the archaeological evidence for Norse invasion and settlement was "very slight compared with the corresponding evidence for the Anglo-Saxon invasions" of the 5th century.^[28]

See also

• Kingdom of the Isles
• Scandinavian Scotland
• Orkney
• Earldom of Orkney
• History of Shetland
• Orkneyinga saga
• Viking Age
• See also Category: Norse activity in Scotland.

References

Footnotes

1. ^ Keynes 1999. p. 460.
2. ^ ^{a b} Richards 1991. p. 09.
3. ^ ^{a b} Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998. p. 03.
4. ^ ^{a b} Blair 2003. pp. 56-57.
5. ^ ^{a b c} Blair 2003. p. 55.
6. ^ Richards 1991. p. 14.
7. ^ Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998. p. 05.
8. ^ Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998. pp. 05-07.
9. ^ Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998. pp. 14-16.
10. ^ Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998. p. 18.
11. ^ ^{a b c} Richards 1991. p. 13.
12. ^ Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998. p. 01.
13. ^ Richards 1991. p. 11.
14. ^ ^{a b} Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998. p. 32.
15. ^ Richards 1991. p. 12.
16. ^ ^{a b c} Blair 2003. p. 63.
17. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} Richards 1991. p. 16.
18. ^ Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998. p. 24.
19. ^ Blair 2003. p. 66.
20. ^ Blair 2003. p. 68.
21. ^ Richards 1991. p. 17.
22. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h} Richards 1991. p. 20.
23. ^ Richards 1991. p. 22.
24. ^ Richards 1991. pp. 11-12.
25. ^ ^{a b c d} Richards 1991. p. 24.
26. ^ ^{a b c} Richards 1991. p. 28.
27. ^ Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998. p. 02.
28. ^ ^{a b c} Blair 2003. p. 64.
29. ^ Richards 1991. p. 15.

Bibliography

Academic and Popular Books

• Blair, Peter Hunter (2003). An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England (Third Edition). Cambridge, UK and New York City, USA: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521537773. 

• Crawford, Barbara E. (1987). Scandinavian Scotland. Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Leicester University Press. ISBN 978-0718512828. 

• Graham-Campbell, James and Batey, Colleen E. (1998). Vikings in Scotland: An Archaeological Survey. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0748606412. 

• Richards, Julian D. (1991). Viking Age England. London: B.T. Batsford and English Heritage. ISBN 978-0713465204. 

• Keynes, Simon (1999). "Vikings". The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England (Eds: Michael Lapidge, John Blair, Simon Keynes and Donald Scragg) (Oxford: Blackwell): pp. 460-461.