Vikings (45 page)

Floki Vilgertharson
The second Norwegian to make landfall on Iceland, according to the
Historia Norwegie.
It was he who named it ‘Iceland’.

Garthar Svavarsson
A Swede who led an expedition to Iceland around the same time as Floki Vilgertharson.

Godfred
A powerful Danish king who in
AD
808 occupied the trading port of Hedeby in Jutland and, having destroyed the
Slavic port of Reric, forcibly transplanted all its merchants to Hedeby. He subsequently commissioned his own Hadrian’s Wall, called the Danevirke, which stretched from the Baltic to the North Sea. He was a constant menace to the Byzantine emperors before being assassinated by one of his own men. It was during Godfred’s reign that a sense of identity, a unified country, first emerged.

Gorm the Old
Generally recognised as the first King of Denmark. Claimed descent from Ragnar Lodbrok, father of Ivarr the Boneless. Came to power in 936 and died in 958. His sons were Canute, who was killed fighting in Ireland, Harald ‘Bluetooth’, who succeeded his father as King of Denmark, and Toke. He erected the rune stone to his wife which first mentions Denmark as a nation: ‘King Gorm made this monument in memory of Thyre, his wife, Denmark’s grace’.

Grimur Kamban
First Viking settler on the Faroe Islands, around 800 according to the fourteenth-century
Flateyjarbók
, ‘the Flat Island Book’.

Gunnbjörn Ulfsson
Blown off-course in a storm, visited Greenland in 900.

Guthrum
Together with the Viking leaders Oscetel and Anwend, led one half of the breakaway force of the Great Heathen Army, which for ten years terrorised England in the latter half of the ninth century and which had split in two at Repton. He masterminded the defeat of Alfred the Great at Chippenham in the winter of 877/8. Alfred defeated Guthrum’s forces at the Battle of Edington in May 878. The subsequent settlement saw Guthrum baptised a Christian, and the acquisition of territories which became known as the Danelaw, where the Norse legal system held sway.

Haakon Sigurdsson
King of Norway in all but name who was overwhelmed by Olaf Tryggvasson in 995.

Halfdan the Black
c. 810–60, King of Vestfold in Norway. A Ynglinga, he was founder of the Norwegian royal dynasty and father of King Harald Fairhair.

Halfdan Ragnarsson
King of part of Northumbria. Sources are contradictory but he was possibly the brother of Ivarr the Boneless, leader of the other half of the Great Heathen Army which first landed in England in 865. Ruler of London 871–2 where he minted coins in his name. He took his army north to Northumbria, where he is described by The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 876 as king of part of Northumbria, where he ‘shared out the land of the Northumbrians’ amongst his followers. He died in 877.

Harald II
King of Denmark 1014–18. Son of Svein Forkbeard and brother of Cnut the Great.

Earl Harald
The twelfth-century
Orkneyinga
saga describes his voyage from Stromness when bad weather forced him to take shelter in Maes Howe, where he and his party carved graffiti into the stone walls.

Harald ‘Bluetooth’ Gormsson
c. 935–985 or 986. King of Denmark from 958 to 985 or 986 and parts of Norway around 970. Son of Gorm the Old. Famous for welding the disparate Danish tribes into a unified whole and uniting them with their Norwegian neighbours. He converted to Christianity in 965 and erected a rune stone in Jelling which states he ‘made the Danes Christian’. He died of wounds received in an uprising against him in 985 or 986 and was succeeded by his son Svein Forkbeard.

Harald Fairhair
King of Norway between 872 and 930. Son of Halfdan the Black. His rule, according to later sagas, may have caused many of his opponents to seek new lands to settle in Iceland, Orkney, Shetland, the Western Isles and the Scottish mainland. The
Orkneyinga
saga recounts Harald making a gift of Orkney and Shetland to Rognvald, a chieftain from the
west of Norway, whose son Einar’s descendents were the earls of Orkney until 1231. His grandson was Olaf Tryggvasson, King of Norway, who invaded England in 991.

Harold Godwinson
King of England in succession to Edward the Confessor. Defeated the invading army of Harald Hardrada at the battle of Stamford Bridge on 25 September 1066 and was himself killed by Duke William of Normandy’s forces at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066. William was crowned King of England on 25 December.

Harald ‘Hardrada’ Sigurdarsson
1015–66. King of Norway from 1046. Known as ‘Hardrada’ (Hard-ruler), he was the last true Viking to attempt an invasion of England. He had served in the Varangian Guard before returning to Norway in 1045 where he seized the throne. Invading England in the uncertainty after the death of Edward the Confessor, he was killed at Stamford Bridge by the forces of Harold Godwinson, Edward’s successor as King of England in 1066.

Harthacnut
c. 1018–42. King of England 1040–42 and Denmark from 1035–42. Son of Cnut the Great and his wife Emma, daughter of Richard Duke of Normandy and widow of Aethelred.

Horik
Sole King of Denmark 827–54 (he had taken power in 811 with one of his brothers). Son of Godfred. Although a confirmed pagan, he allowed in 850 the Christian missionary Ansgar to build churches in the Danish towns of Hedeby and Ribe.

Ingolfr Arnarson
The first Viking settler, originally an outlaw, to put down permanent roots in Iceland. He made his home in 874 in a place he named Reykjavik – ‘smoky bay’. It is likely that monks from Ireland had preceded him but had abandoned the island.

Ivarr the Boneless
A king in Ireland who may have been one of the leaders of the Great Heathen Army before it split in two
at Repton. Ivarr died in 873 and some archaeologists believe he was interred at Repton.

Lord of Kivik
According to archaeologist Sir Barry Cunliffe a sixteenth-century
BC
chieftain who led his band of warriors on an epic journey, scenes from which were later carved on the stones of his burial chamber.

Naddodd
Or Nadd-Oddur, a Norwegian who, according to the
Historia Norwegie
, first set foot on Iceland around 850 or 860. Probably headed for the Faroe Islands, he was blown far off-course.

Olaf Guthfrisson
King of Dublin, co-leader with the Scots king Constantine, a Welsh contingent under Owain and the Britons of Strathclyde of an invasion force which was convincingly defeated by Aethelstan and his half-brother Edmund according to The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle at the Battle of Brunanburh in 937.

Olaf Sigtryggsson
Cousin of Olaf Guthfrisson, King of Dublin, ruled Dublin and a swathe of surrounding territory between 950 and 980 until his defeat by Máel Sechnaill II brought Viking supremacy to an end.

Olaf Tryggvasson
960s–1000, King of Norway 995–1000. Grandson of Harald Fairhair. Exiled as a child, he was brought up amongst the Rus. He was a formidable warlord. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records his invasion of England in 991 with a fleet of 93 Viking ships. His forces defeated the English army at the Battle of Maldon and Aethelred agreed to pay Danegeld of 10,000 pounds (in weight) of silver. This was to increase dramatically in future years until twenty years later, in 1012, it was 48,000 pounds. 60,000 English coins of the period have been found in Scandinavia by comparison with only 10,000 in England. In 994 he returned again with Svein Forkbeard, now King of Denmark.

Olaf the White
Ruled Dublin with his kinsman Ivarr c. 853 to
870, when Ivarr the Boneless ruled alone until his death in 873.

Oleg of Kiev
A leader of the Rus who moved their capital from Novgorod to Kiev, on the banks of the Dniepr. The emergent state was to become known as Russia. In 907 he set out to attack Constantinople. Faced with a force many times the size of the expedition of some forty years before, the inhabitants sued for peace, which established Rus trading rights in the city.

Ongendus
A powerful Danish king who, according to written records, violently opposed the attempts made by the Frankish Christians to convert him and his people in the early decades of the eighth century.

Riurik
The eldest of three brothers of the Rus who, according to the Russian Primary Chronicle (also known as the Tale of Bygone Years), compiled about 1113, went to rule the tribal federation of Slavs in north Russia at their invitation and established a capital in what is now Novgorod (the ‘new fortress’), beside the Volkhov River, in 860. Riurik’s brothers Sineus and Truvor founded towns also but within a short time died, leaving Riurik to rule the Slavs alone.

Rodolf
Or Rothlaibh. His long port, a Viking fortress beside a river, probably Dunrally near modern-day Vicarstown in County Laois, was described in the Annals of the Four Masters as being destroyed in 862. In 863 the Rhine Valley was targeted by a Viking fleet, and it was possibly the same Rodolf who in 864 exacted tribute from the Frankish King Lothar II to prevent his followers from further depravation. According to some scholars Rodolf was the son of Harold, a former King of Denmark who was expelled in 827 and settled in Frisia.

Rollo
Charles the Simple, King of France from 898, ceded the town of Rouen and a tranche of surrounding territory
to Rollo, a Viking leader of either Norwegian or Danish descent, in about 911 in return for feudal allegiance. This territory was to become the land of the Northmen – the
Nor manni
that is known today as Normandy. Rollo’s descendants became Dukes of Normandy and in due course, through his great-great-great grandson William, kings of England.

Sihtric
King of York. Married the sister of Aethelstan, King of the Angles. Died in 927.

Snæbjörn Galti
An outlaw who led a party of adventurers to Greenland about 980. The survivors headed back to Iceland after enduring the extreme rigour of a Greenland winter.

Svein Asleifsson
Born before 1135, described in the
Orkneyinga
saga as making annual raiding trips to the Hebrides and Ireland, returning home to Gairsay in the Orkneys for the yearly round of farming duties, perhaps behaviour typical of many Viking raiders.

Svein Forkbeard
960–1014, King of Denmark after the death of his father Harald Bluetooth in 896 or 897, and first of the Viking kings of England. Involved in continual raids against England in the first decade of the tenth century, he commanded a fleet which invaded England in 1013. He drove Aethelred into exile in Normandy and was proclaimed King of England on Christmas Day 1013 but died a few weeks later. Father of Cnut the Great.

Thorfinn Karlsefni
Led the third expedition from Greenland to North America c. 1010 (after Leif Eiriksson and his brother Thorvald). Three ships and several hundred settlers set sail. After three years a combination of severe winters, attacks from hostile natives and tension between Christians and pagans amongst the group caused the settlement to be abandoned and the survivors returned to Greenland. The remains of this settlement were uncovered on the eastern coast of Newfoundland by archaeologists in the 1960s though the site
of ‘Vinland’, thought to be further south, still remains to be discovered.

Thorgeirr
The ‘law speaker’ of Iceland who proclaimed in 1000 that the country would convert to Christianity to prevent hostility between pagans and Christians.

Thorkell the Tall
A
Jomsviking
, or mercenary, Torkell led a force of Vikings which ravaged eastern England until Aethelred paid them off with 48,000 pounds in weight of silver. In 1010 his men raided Canterbury and carried off many high-status captives including the archbishop, who was beaten to death. Appalled, Thorkell abandoned his colleagues and served Aethelred instead, helping defend London against an attack by Svein Forkbeard in 1013.

Thorvald
Brother of Leif Eiriksson. Following the exploits of his brother led an expedition to North America where he was killed by the
skraelingar
– ‘ugly people’ – either North American Indians or Inuit.

Turgesius
Or Thorgils, a Viking warrior described by
Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh
, or ‘The War of the Irish Against the Foreigners’, as conducting a reign of terror through Ireland and who was eventually captured by King Máel Sechnaill, sewn into a sack and thrown into the waters of Loch Owel, near Mullingar.

Vladimir
the Great Successor to Riurik as ruler of the Rus. After sampling Christianity, Islam and Judaism, in 988 he had statues of the old pagan gods torn down and thrown into the River Dnieper and converted his subjects to Christianity.