Miscellaneous Page - 2

The Saga of the Vikings










                       A Viking Warrior  


Vikings! The word conjures up images of wild, barbaric,
sea faring men, intent on setting their mark on their less
warlike neighbours with fire and sword. From the land of
ice and giants, they swept across Europe like a forest fire
raping, pillaging and destroying all in their path. Sound
familiar? It should do, it's the image that the writers of the
time recorded.

It is inescapable that in a bloodthirsty age they were more
bloodthirsty than most, but the mask of enduring ferocity
slips a little when you consider that the people that did the
writing were those that stood between the Vikings and
their silver - the clerical staff of churches and abbeys.

Let us look briefly at the roots and achievements of the
Viking age.















Ships:

When the very distant ancestors of the Vikings reached
the end of their long migration from - probably - the Indus
valley, they ran into a real problem. The sea. They were a
nomadic people from an area with few areas of open water
and certainly with no seaboard. Yet, within a few
generations, they seem to have invented more or less from
scratch a design of hull that became common throughout
Europe for several centuries. It is possible to follow a line
of development through previous boat designs found on
the European west coast, but around the beginning of the
seventh century after Christ, some northern genius
invented the long narrow hull that became known as the
Longship.

Construction:

Long, lean and above all flexible, the hulls were usually of
oak planks that had been split from felled trunks. With axe
and adze, the planks were trimmed to shape then riveted
together with iron nails. At the junction of the planks, a
thin rope of twisted hair soaked in pitch (boiled birch tree
sap) was trapped. This acted as a flexible waterproofing
membrane. The hulls were built first, the distortion of the
planks leading to the upwards curvature of the bow and
stern. It was soon found that this type of hull was very
seaworthy and this aspect of the design was exaggerated
to create the soaring curve that became such a
characteristic of the shape of Northern vessels. When the
hull was finished, the ribs were tied in with the thin fibrous
roots of the Larch tree. At sea, the hulls were watertight
and because of their flexible nature, would often twist and
bend where a more solid structure might break.

Uses:

At first, they were only used as rowing boats, but within a
hundred years, ships were being built that were obviously
intended as sailing
ships. With their
square sail and single
mast, they could
largely only sail down
wind, but there is
good evidence from
ship replicas that
they could sail across
the wind to some
extent.

                                       A Viking War Party

Oars were mostly used for times when the wind did not
suit the purposes of the ship master and for manoeuvring
in port. However, it was quite possible with a big crew to
maintain a steady pace but crossing the North Sea under
oars alone was not practiced by raiding ships as it was
simply too far.

Viking ships and boats:

It is important to understand that there were many
different types of ship. There were small rowing boats that
might be handled by a couple of men each pulling two oars
each called Faerings. Trading vessels which had a virtually
fixed mast and only four oar ports in their fifty foot length
known as Knarrs. Also
the great Drakkars, the
warships that were over
a hundred feet long and
had crews of more than
a hundred men. There
were Karvs, a sort of
multi purpose ship that could trade and/or raid and it is
one of these ships that was found at the end of the last
century at Gokstad in Norway. This find gave birth to
many replicas, based upon this well-preserved hull. In the
closing years of the nineteenth century, the first of these
was sailed across the Atlantic to the World's Fair in
Chicago. I understand that the hull is still to be seen by the
shore of Lake Michigan and is itself one of the oldest ships
on the North American continent!

During this century, several other ship finds have been
made, adding to our knowledge of this fascinating type of
vessel. The importance of the ship to the Scandinavians of
a thousand years ago cannot be overstated. Truly, without
them, there would have been no Viking age and Europe
would be a very different place today.


Trading:

The mobility of their shallow draft vessels allowed the
Vikings to travel far up the rivers which flow into the seas
surrounding the European continent. The Swedes seem to
have specialised in trading down the river systems from
the Baltic into central Europe and so to Constantinople.
They called the place 'Miklagard', literally 'The Great City'.
From this trade route, luxury goods like silk and spices
were brought north and sold in specialist trading
communities like Birka and Hedeby.

Vikings! Raiders or traders?

Norwegian and Danish Vikings tended to look more to the
west. They traded and raided around the western
seaboard of Europe and its islands. It was these people
who explored and settled Iceland, Greenland and finally
North America. There is now no doubt that there was a
Viking settlement in Labrador. However, this represented
the limit of reach
of their settlements
and it is unlikely
that they stayed
there long,
possibly only a
few years. It is my
opinion that when
Leif Erikson went
to North America,
he did so knowing
that it was there.
It was likely that
the expedition went there for wood more than from the
pure spirit of exploration. The site in New Foundland
known as Lans aux Meadows, is now beginning to throw
up finds that suggest they even went further south.

There are records of other visits to America, some of
whom never returned. Sailing the North Atlantic in an open
boat - however seaworthy - is a dangerous business and it
is more than likely that those who never returned were
simply lost at sea. It is fun to speculate, though, on the
report that Cortez brought back. He said he was initially
welcomed by the inhabitants of South America as a
representative of those pale-skinned seafarers who had
visited that part of the world centuries before........

Raiding:

It must have seemed like a continuing nightmare to the
largely peaceful settlements around the coasts of Europe
and its islands. Suddenly, in the closing years of the
eighth century, the
Viking raids began.
They often came in on
the morning sea mists,
their shallow-draft
vessels creeping
quietly through the
reeds of the river
mouths or sliding
silently up on sandy
beaches. Quickly, the
raiding party would assemble and work its way inland.
Their early targets were the churches and monasteries,
looking for silver, gold and slaves. Soon, these were
depleted and the raiders attention turned to the more
mundane victims of farm and village for food and horses
to make their getaway. As the years slipped by, so the sea
raiders came more and more often. Sometimes, they would
stay over-winter and gradually the raiders camps turned
into settlements. At one time, most of England was under
the Viking heel and they called this part of the country the
Danelaw.

The turning point came when Alfred the Great beat
Guthrum in a straight fight and forced him and his
important men to become Christians. After that, every year
saw first Alfred and then his kin pushing the Danish
invaders further and further north. They did this steadily,
setting up Burhs or fortified towns. (One example of this
as place name evidence is Middlesbrough.) Eventually, in
the reign of Æthelstan, the whole of Britain came under his
kingship.

A Viking warband prepares for the
worst:

Around the turn of the millennium there followed a period
of state-organised invasion. Hundreds of ships would turn
up regularly each year with thousands of men. They were
intent upon making Britain politically part of Scandinavia
and they could only be bought off with ever increasing
sums of Danegeld, as it became known. 20,000 pounds
weight of silver was a not unusual sum and it proved a
crippling load on the economy of the English state. But
curiously, despite the vast sums of money going out of the
country, it held together and only fell to Cnut after a large
defeat in battle at Ashington in Essex.

Eventually, in 1016, the English Witan turned to Cnut, king
of Denmark and asked him to become king of England. He
proved to be a good king and spent much of his early
reign settling the affairs of ravaged parts of the kingdom
and re-settling them. For instance, there is some evidence
that he spent a whole year in the Isle of Wight, setting
things to rights there.

Substantially, the reign of Cnut (or Canute) represented
the end of Viking military incursions into England,
although there were sporadic raids around the coast for
some time. The last great fete of Scandinavian arms in this
country was in 1066, when king Harold Godwinsson, last
Saxon king of the English, brought King Harald Hardrada
of Norway to open battle at Stamford Bridge near York. In
a crushing decisive victory, King Harold broke the power
of the Scandinavian kings to wage overseas war on a large
scale. It was the final major Viking raid.

At Home - The Law:

For a people who were so careless of the rights of the folk
they fought against, the Vikings were surprisingly
organised and careful of their rights at home. There was a
strict system of law, enforced by the people that lived
under it. Regular meetings - called Things or Althings -
were held at which the Law was read aloud. (This
custom survives to this day in the Manx Tynwald.) At
these meetings, cases were judged and punishments
imposed by a council of important men who were
changed from time to time.
Every free man or woman
had the right to speak at an
Althing, and women were
generally held to be the
equal of men under the law.
Women retained their rights
to manage their own money
and property after marriage
and could obtain a divorce
with the same ease - or
difficulty - as a man. Women
only became second-class
citizens after the imposition
of Norman Law!


                             A Viking lady looks out of the hall   


Eating and Drinking:

The Vikings ate a wide range of foodstuffs, but there are
no real surprises. Beef, mutton, pork and venison were
common meats, and communities close to the coast could
expect to widen their diets with fish and shellfish. A heavy
bread made from barley flour was common, but there is
evidence that at least some people had wheaten bread
available to them. It was often the custom to eat gruel - a
porridge augmented by scraps of meat as a morning meal.
Boiled meat was much more common than roasted,
something which was normally only eaten during
ceremonies. Boiled sausages known as 'cauldron snakes',
were a special delicacy. Other sought after foodstuffs
were sun-dried cod, ling and pork that had been preserved
in whey, then boiled to rags in its juice. Yuk!

It is reasonable to assume that rich folk ate better than
poor, but their range of foodstuffs would not have been
very different.

Housing:

Their houses were constructed of wood and/or stone.
They were long lived structures and - barring accidents -
might last at least 150 years with normal maintenance. The
traditional Longhouse would have been a dark, smoky
place in which to live and work, but there is emerging
evidence that the Vikings often used two storey buildings
with balconies on the upper floor, much as might be seen
in rural Scandinavia to this day. The roofs were thatched,
turfed or covered in wood shingles, depending on available
local resources.

To Sum Up:

The Vikings were a proud, honourable, law-abiding people
who valued warfare and personal reputation (they called it
'word fame') above almost anything else. In the latter years
of the Viking Age, they became involved in their own myth,
starting such organisations as the Jomsvikings.

They brought the seafaring ship to Europe and, by their
constant depredations, spread its use far and wide. In only
250 years, they set their mark on the law and language of
many countries and made many European communities
see themselves in the light of a nation state for the first
time. In terms of human history, if you blinked, you would
have missed them! But the image the Vikings promoted of
the brave, hardy individualist, unafraid of the world in all
its forms, remains with us all as an example of how a man
should conduct himself in adversity.

'Wealth dies, kinsmen die. Cattle die and the wheat, too.
But this thing never dies: word-fame!
Word-fame never dies for he that achieves it well.'

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