Viking Raiding in Outline

Small Beginnings

Viking raids on Europe began on a small scale. Three ships attacked the Isle of Portland in Dorset, southern England, at the end of the eighth century, thirteen came to Flanders in 820, and thirty-five appeared in Somerset, western England, in 836.

The 820 raids bring out some of the themes of Viking violence. Burning of buildings is legion, not surprisingly at a time when most buildings were made of readily flammable materials; this was an easy way to terrorise the popula­tion, widely employed in warfare far beyond Viking raids. When the early Vikings encountered regular military units or otherwise organised resistance, they typically either fled or were defeated (as during the 820 attacks on Flanders and the Seine). This may be why the early Vikings are often reported to have attacked islands. They could easily and quickly reach islands thanks to their ships, while the armed forces of Europe's kingdoms (in the ninth century typically lacking navies) were slow to cross the water. It was also on islands, such as Noirmoutier close to Bouin, and Thanet in Kent, England, that Vikings first organised more lasting encampments.

Larger Bands and the ‘Great Army’

The size of Viking bands increased decidedly around the middle of the ninth century. The chronicler Prudentius noted increased Viking activity in 845, when 600 ships (led by King Horik of Denmark) entered the Elbe and 120 the Seine, or so he claimed. English chroniclers noted the arrival of 350 ships in the Thames in 851, bringing a force of Vikings who stormed both London and Canterbury and also put the army of the Mercian king Berhtwulf to flight. That force then attacked the West Saxons, who were well organised and ‘made the greatest slaughter of a heathen raiding-army that we heard tell of up to this present day', as a chronicler put it.^[141] In 850, we hear for the first time about Vikings wintering in Europe, on Thanet near the mouth of the Thames.

An even greater conglomeration of Viking bands showed up in 865, when we first hear about the ‘great (heathen) army', which was to become a constant feature of English and also continental history for the next thirty years until it broke up in 896. This was an army that behaved much like other early medieval armies. The great heathen army marched purposefully, laid cities under siege, sometimes taking and holding them, and fought in pitched battles, for example winning most of the nine battles it fought in 871, except at Ashdown, where ‘many thousands [of the Vikings] were killed’.^[142] When the great army arrived, England was divided into four kingdoms; the Vikings would conquer three of them (Northumbria in 867, East Anglia in 869 and Mercia in 874) and only Wessex under Alfred the Great (871-99) held out. In the mid 870s, the Viking army broke into two, based in Northumbria and East Anglia, respectively.

Constellations of Viking troops similar or even partially identical to the great army operated in similar ways on the continent, for example when a large contingent in 888 tried to storm the city walls of Meaux in northern France. When the attempt failed, the Vikings settled in for a long siege, much as any other western European army would at the time. When the defenders were unable to last much longer, they took up negotiations with the besie­gers. They agreed that the inhabitants of Meaux would give up the city with all its valuables to the Vikings.

A new era in the history of Viking raids had clearly begun in the mid ninth century, with sustained and forceful assaults. The increase in size of the bands suggests new organisation, new methods and new needs. Contemporaries noticed the increase. In 863, a first-hand observer, Abbot Ermentarius, depicted the situation as he experienced it, after his monastery had been attacked repeatedly and the monks had already been forced to move further inland twice (the monks would move three more times before the century was over):

The number of ships increases, the endless flood of Northmen grows. Everywhere Christians are the victims of massacre, plunder, devastation, burnings... They arrive at and capture cities without anyone resisting: Bordeaux, Perigueux... Limoges, Angouleme, Toulouse; Angers, Tours, and Orleans are destroyed... It is as the Lord threatened through his prophet: ‘From the north evil shall break out on all the inhabitants of the land' (Jer. 1:14)... Ships past counting voyage up the Seine and throughout the region evil grows no less weak. They seize Rouen and plunder and burn it, likewise Paris. They capture Beauvais and Meaux; they devastate the stronghold at Meldun; Chartres is taken; they loot Evreux and they seize Bayeux and cities everywhere. No place, no monastery remains intact. Everyone flees and only rarely does anyone say ‘Stay, stay and resist! Fight for your country, your children, and the people!' Thus those who ought to defend us with arms are lazy and fight among themselves, and they redeem us with tributes, devastating the Christian kingdom.^[144]

Ermentarius was well versed in rhetoric and his panorama of Viking devasta­tion in France is a tour-de-force displaying his rich literary skills.

Taxing and Conquering England

While ninth-century observers may have thought there were too many Vikings and were disappointed at secular government, which often preferred to pay them off with a tribute, even larger contingents began to show up towards the end of the tenth century. In response, the English in particular paid ever larger tributes to the threatening Vikings. A new chapter in the history of Viking endeavour began in 991 when the Norwegian Olav Tryggvason arrived with ninety-three ships, ravaged south-eastern England, and defeated ealdorman Byrhtnoth in a staged battle in Maldon, which has become famous thanks to a partially preserved Old English poem celebrating the stiff upper lip of the English in the face of defeat. After their defences had been thwarted and at the advice of the archbishop of Canterbury, the English for the first time paid the Danegeld; Olav received 10,000 pounds of silver. When he came back three years later, in 994, and now accompanied by King Sveyn of Denmark, the tribute increased to 16,000 pounds. Huge troop contingents arrived for new payments in 1002, 1006 and 1012, the sum increasing each time. In 1013, Sveyn and his army ravaged so widely that the English King Ethelred fled first to the Isle of Wight, and then to his wife's brother, Duke Richard of Normandy. On Christmas Day, Sveyn was accepted as king of England, but he was unable to enjoy his position for long, since he died suddenly in early February 1014. His son Cnut arrived with a large army in 1016, and when two English kings, Ethelred and Edmund, died in close succession apparently from natural causes, Cnut became king of England and imposed a final, enormous Danegeld of 82,500 pounds. Cnut was succeeded on the English throne in turn by his two sons, ruling until 1042. Troops that were capable of conquer­ing England outright must obviously have been comparable to the English army in terms of size, weapons and tactics.

The last major Viking attack on England occurred in 1066, when King Harald Hardrada came from Norway with ships, variously given as 300 and 500 in number. He was defeated by the English under King Harold Godwinson, who however lost the next battle three weeks later at Hastings against William the Conqueror, a French-speaking descendant of Vikings who had colonised Normandy.

Eastern Europe

While the drama of the Viking raids played out in western Europe, other Scandinavians penetrated the plains of eastern Europe, which at this date were not densely populated. Their original goal clearly appears to have been to acquire trade goods, particularly fur (in which northern Russia was particularly rich), and perhaps slaves. Scandinavians together with other ethnic groups were firmly entrenched in the town of Staraya Ladoga (east of St Petersburg) by 800, at the latest, which they used as a basis for acquiring goods from its large hinterland. Over the following century, they similarly settled in other towns, such as Gorodishche (a predecessor of Novgorod) and, eventually, Kiev. Scandinavians were included in, and may at times have dominated, the grouping known as Rus, which took political leader­ship in the towns mentioned. By the late tenth century, Grand Prince Vladimir, apparently of Scandinavian descent, created a strong state centred on Kiev.

Unlike for western Europe, no written sources provide any details about how these Scandinavians got what they sought, but it is reasonable to assume that as in western Europe here they also used a combination of peaceful and violent means to acquire what they desired. Arab geographers bear witness to trading procedures known as ‘silent trade', in which buyer and seller never actually meet, clearly in order to avoid violence. This suggests that violence was very much a possibility while trading.

If the Scandinavians appear to have first gone to northern Russia to acquire trade goods, they soon enough discovered that the large networks of rivers there allowed them to reach new markets. The twelfth-century Russian Primary Chronicle describes Viking Age trade routes between the Baltic and the Black Sea, and also from that route to the Volga via portages over the watersheds. Those routes allowed traders, some of whom must have been Scandinavian, to reach the markets of the Byzantine empire as well as the great market town of Bulghar on the Volga, which was also visited by Arab merchants. An Arab diplomat testifies to Rus traders in Bulghar in 921, selling slaves and furs. The large number of Viking Age Arab silver coins found in Scandinavia testifies not only to profits from trade, but surely also to booty from violence.