Britain in the Middle Ages: An Archaeological History. Francis Pryor

       CHAPTER TWO Enter the Vikings

      THE LATE SAXON PERIOD (850–1066) has been poorly taught at schools, and I cannot blame the teachers altogether for this. There are too many kings with strange names beginning with Æ. Viking armies seem to whizz about the place generally wreaking havoc, and worst of all, it seems somehow rather uncivilised. In actual fact, and largely thanks to archaeology, we now realise that many of the advances made in Middle Saxon times were consolidated and built upon in the Late Saxon period. Indeed, it must now be seen as one of the most creative periods in English history. Certainly there was strife and conflict, but at the same time the administrative framework of the country was being established. The Church was gaining a firm foothold, patterns of land ownership and tenure were being established, and urban life was to be transformed by the setting up of the first burhs.

      Maybe the neglect of archaeology is a reason why so many popular history books relegate the entire Saxon period to a single introductory chapter which usually reads as a prologue to the main business, which happened after 1066. Having considered the Middle Saxon period in the barest outline in Chapter 1, I plan to devote this and the next two chapters to the Late Saxon period. Although it will be impossible to avoid some degree of overlap, the present chapter will mainly be about the Vikings and the historical events surrounding their conflict with the Saxons. Chapters 3 and 4 will consider more general themes, such as the changes that took place in the administration of town and country.

      The Late Saxon period is very much better documented than the Middle Saxon period, largely thanks to The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, which as we will see shortly were set up in the late ninth century. But in both the Middle and Late Saxon periods evidence from field archaeology is having a most dramatic effect on the way we now view the first four centuries of medieval Britain. If one takes the historical record at face value, it would appear that people thought about Dane and Viking raids almost obsessively. Little else, it would seem, occupied their thoughts. But it now appears that the reality was rather different. Yes, raiding did affect people, especially in eastern and northern Britain, but as we have seen, farming, trade and communication were very much more important. But now we must come to grips with the bare bones of the political history – which is another way of saying that it is time to introduce the Vikings.

      At first glance there is something wonderfully romantic, even ‘prehistoric’, about those wild Scandinavian warriors. They are strangely attractive, in a horribly bloodthirsty way. I remember on my first visit to Denmark meeting a university colleague who specialised in the archaeology of the Earlier Neolithic. Like me he was fair-haired, with an orange beard. As he shook my hand he said with a broad smile, ‘So you are Viking, I think?’ Suddenly – and quite irrationally – I felt I was part of a Band of Brothers. Had he offered me a horned helmet I would have grabbed it with both hands.

      In fact horned helmets are part of the romanticising of the Vikings which began in the nineteenth century. Sadly, despite their evocative profile and terrifying appearance, they were never worn by Nordic warriors. I do, however, know of a very fine Late Iron Age example (probably first century BC), complete with rather fat, straight horns, which was dredged from the River Thames at Waterloo Bridge in 1868.¹ Its Celtic-style decoration firmly marks it as being some eight centuries earlier than the first Viking raids.

      The word ‘Viking’ does not appear in any contemporary accounts of the period. Instead we read of raids by Danes or Norsemen. Sometimes they simply referred to their attackers as ‘heathen’. The word (which is Old Norse in origin) gained public acceptance in the nineteenth century with the publication of the Icelandic Sagas, and the heroic deeds of the semi-mythical Viking sailors and warriors that appear in them. The Sagas were enormously popular and influential in Victorian Britain, and indeed across much of northern Europe. Today archaeologists tend to use ‘Viking’ as shorthand for ‘Anglo-Scandinavian’, which is the correct way of describing the Norse-influenced way of life to be found at places such as Jorvík (York). In general terms, what one might term the ‘Viking Age’ ends in England in the mid-eleventh century with the Norman Conquest, but we should not forget that places like the Western Isles of Scotland and the Isle of Man remained under Viking rule until 1266. Orkney and Shetland were Norwegian until as late as 1469.

      The warlike reputation of the Vikings was justified, because we do know that they raided extensively in northern Europe, and even crossed the Atlantic to Greenland and Newfoundland in Canada. But there was a great deal more to them than that. Raiding was part of what they did, but it was probably a relatively minor part. In fact they were very much more constructive and, dare I say it, useful. Today many archaeologists question whether there was ever a group of people who saw themselves as distinctively Viking, as opposed to something less immediately identifiable, such as Nordic or Norse. It is also questionable to what extent the term Viking can actually be attached to a defined ethnic group. This is perhaps understandable: viewed from the perspective of a Saxon peasant in eastern England, it wouldn’t matter a jot whether the raiders were members of the same tribe, nation or kingdom, because they were all equally unwelcome.

      The Vikings are as popular in print as they have ever been, and some of the more recent accounts are also very well illustrated.² The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles contain the earliest account of a Viking raid on a British monastery, which took place on 8 January 793 on the island of Lindisfarne, just off the Northumberland coast. The ‘heathen’ raiders sacked the buildings, killed several monks and took others captive. They also desecrated altars and helped themselves to valuables which may have included the richly decorated original covers of the world-famous Lindisfarne Gospels, now in the British Museum.

      The picture of heathens from abroad mercilessly raiding Christian shrines is a vivid one, but raiding was characteristic of the times. We know of many raids, especially around the Irish Sea, by British on Irish and vice versa. The Vikings were not the only people doing it. We also tend to think of northern and eastern England – what was soon to be called the Danelaw – as the main object of Viking depredations. But in fact other parts of the British Isles also received many and repeated visits from Viking raiders and settlers. It was a complex picture, not least because the Vikings were coming from many parts of Scandinavia. As a rule of thumb, people from Norway colonised the north and west of Britain, and Ireland. Danes came to eastern England and north-west France (Normandy).