Viking Britain: A History. Thomas Williams
master, the first Holy Roman Emperor. It is easy to indulge the imagination by picturing the great ruler brooding here amid the magnificence of his rule, chin resting on one hand as he gazed on the holy altar to the east, considering the price of power and the promise of salvation.
In June 810 Charlemagne’s eldest daughter, Hruodtrude, died and the emperor may well have found himself in sombre and reflective mood; whether he ever burst from his throne in rage or retreated to it in search of holy guidance can never be known, but the events that followed can have done little to improve his mood:
he received the news that a fleet of two hundred ships from Denmark had landed in Frisia, that all the islands off the coast of Frisia had been ravaged, that the army had already landed and fought three battles against the Frisians, that the victorious Danes had imposed a tribute on the vanquished, that already one hundred pounds of silver had been paid as tribute by the Frisians, and that King Godofrid [Godfred] was at home.10
The chronicler, evidently concerned that his Frankish readership would find this all rather hard to swallow, felt compelled to affirm that ‘that, in fact, is how things stood’. As if this were not bad enough, the elephant which Charlemagne had been given by Harun al-Rashid, caliph of Baghdad, died suddenly soon afterwards: a bad summer indeed.
Charlemagne, of course, was not prepared to let Godfred’s belligerence stand. He began to raise an army and would no doubt have pursued his opponent with all of his customary zeal, had not the Danish king died as suddenly as the elephant, apparently murdered by his own people (who would, understandably, have been worried that their king’s pathological warmongering was leading them into the teeth of Charlemagne’s war machine; before his death, Godfred had reportedly boasted that he was looking forward to fighting the emperor in open battle). What the Annals fail to conceal, however, is the extent to which the Frankish Empire had been rattled; Godfred, one might say, had given even Karolus Magnus the willies.
This may all seem like something of a digression: what, one might ask, do the border wars of Frankish kings have to do with the story of Viking Britain? But the story of Godfred and his dealings with the emperor brings a number of issues into perspective. Firstly, it highlights the critical point that, at precisely the same time as the first Viking raids in Britain were taking place, continental Europe was dominated by a mighty superpower at the height of its strength. Charlemagne’s Empire was economically and militarily superior to any other regional power, and its presence fundamentally affected the way in which rulers dwelling in its shadow (including Anglo-Saxon kings) could operate. Faced with the prospect of poking the monster on the doorstep, some Scandinavian warlords may have been prompted to exploit new avenues of adventure away to the west. Secondly, it highlights the political and economic importance of towns and trade and the maritime technology by which these could be exploited, defended and harassed. Places like Reric, Hedeby and the coastal settlements of Frisia formed part of a much larger network. Such networks, and the opportunities for long-distance trade they presented, opened new frontiers for the most ruthless and entrepreneurial individuals – particularly those with access to effective maritime technology.11
Finally, the belligerent career of Godfred indicates that by the late eighth and early ninth century there were individuals in parts of Scandinavia who were able to wield resources and military power that had the potential, at the very least, to disrupt and dismay even their most powerful neighbours. They were, moreover, human beings (not merely the demonic hordes of clerical imagination) – people who dealt in the pragmatic realities of early medieval politics and trade. They were people with aspirations towards lordship and power on an increasingly grand scale; and, to achieve and maintain it, they would need the trappings, the wealth, the loyalty and the prestige that society demanded of them.
At over 260 feet in length, the house at Borg on Vestvågøy is – by any standard – a massive structure. Dark, squat and muscular, the great hall holds fast to the Norwegian soil, its eaves reaching almost to the ground. It is a dwelling of the earth, rooted in the soil, rising from it like the gently arching back of some giant slumbering beast. In winter, if the snows come – despite the latitude, the Gulf Stream keeps the Lofoten Islands relatively warm – it is given back to the landscape: one more gentle mound among undulating drifts of white – betrayed, perhaps, only by the thin drift of wood smoke that rises from the roof-spine. And though massive, it represents an utterly different expression of power from that expressed by Charlemagne’s palace at Aachen. Where the Palatine Chapel soars, tiers of columns and arches reaching upward to heaven, the long-house at Borg spreads in the horizontal, hugging the skyline, long, low and narrow (only around 30 feet wide). Aachen is an expression of a cosmopolitan outlook, its stylistic cues taken from the architecture of Rome and Byzantium, its fixtures literally transplanted from elsewhere – signifiers of a pan-continental imperialism, rendered in imported stone. Borg, on the other hand, is a creature of the vernacular. Its form – the long, bow-sided plan and gently curving roof-line – is peculiar to early Scandinavian architecture, an evocation perhaps of the curving keels of the ships which defined northern life. More fundamentally, the hall itself is built from the very tissue of the land: the trees that were felled to raise its skeleton, the turf blocks that were cut and stacked to flesh it and to bind it to the earth. The hall is fashioned from its environment, moulded into a new form, clinging to the shores of a sheltered tidal estuary (Inner Pollen), the glittering peaks of Himmeltinden and Ristinden looming to the west.
The traveller rides from his ship on the lakeside, up, past outbuildings and over fields, to the great house hunkered in the snow, atop the low hill before the mountains. There are four doors along its eastern side, but the southernmost entrance is grander than the others, with its pillars and lintel carved with the images of writhing creatures, biting and twisting and gripping each other in a tangle of sinuous limbs and gaping mouths. The traveller dismounts and a thrall-boy appears from another door; he runs to take the reins of the horse, leading it away towards the north-easterly end of the building. The traveller follows for a few steps, catching the soft shuffle of heavy feet inside, a low whinny, the hot stench of dung and warm animal bodies. Cattle and horses, pungent and comforting: a homely smell. He smiles and turns back to the carved portal, ducks his head and passes through.
Inside the cold violet of the Lofoten dusk gives way to a deep orange glow of firelight, bouncing from tapestries and the rich umber of the timber walls. The flames cast shadows that set the carved beasts wriggling on the pillars that run in two aisles down the length of the building. Between them the long hearth lies sunken in the floor, flames licking up to light the rafters, heat filling the hall that extends to the right of the door. There are older men seated at benches along the sides of the hall, and they rise as he enters, bringing the wide world indoors, shaking the smell of winter from his cloak.
The long-house, as experienced today, is a reconstruction of the building as it may have looked between the early eighth century when it was constructed (on the site of an earlier, sixth-century building), and the mid-tenth century when it was demolished. The original hall lay a few hundred yards to the east; the position of its timber pillars, long since rotted away, are marked now with modern posts, its outline clearly visible from the air. At nearly 270 feet, the building was 30 feet longer than Westminster Hall. Unlike that great sepulchral eleventh-century chamber, however, the hall at Borg was the social hub of a whole farming community, and saw all of life swirling through its portals. Archaeological investigation of the site suggests that the building was divided into five rooms. The largest of these – at the north-east end of the building – was a cattle byre and stable-block, a home to precious animals over the cold, dark winter months and a source of living warmth to the human inhabitants of the building. Perhaps for obvious reasons, the slope on which the building stands drops away to the north-east, meaning that the north-east end of the building lies around 5 feet lower than the part of the building that contained the domestic and human-centred areas – nobody wants a river of shit pouring through their living room all winter.12