The Vikings: A Very Short Introduction (10 page)

craftsmen working with glass, bronze, and antler. The buildings are
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not Scandinavian, however, but built of logs with notched and overlapping ends in a block-house type, familiar from earlier Finnish inhabitants of the region. Furthermore, most of the material from the earliest levels is also native, with some Slavonic imports and a few Scandinavian objects, including an early type of oval brooch. Combs were made here, apparently by itinerant craftsmen who also worked in the Baltic. The settlement was destroyed by fire
c
.860, but was soon rebuilt and fortified with a stone wall before the end of the century. The number of Scandinavian finds increases from this point, and includes a Norse rune stick. The Scandinavian-style boat burials nearby at Plakum also date to this period.

At Ryurik Gorodishche a hillfort site functioned as an administrative, trading and craft-production centre of the 9th century, and may have been a tribute collection centre for a Scandinavian chieftain. It was probably succeeded by Novgorod, 60

known to Scandinavians as Holmgardr. According to the Nestorian Chronicle the first Scandinavians settled there under Rurik in 862, although it had previously been occupied by Slavs. Excavations have revealed a winding timber main street, resurfaced with new planks until
c
.1600. There is not much explicitly Scandinavian material, however, apart from a few items of jewellery.

At Gnezdovo, a 4-hectare unfortified settlement of the 9th century was given sand ramparts and wooden walls
c
.900–25. By 1000 the hillfort contained a cemetery and an irregular settlement and manufacturing site. Craft activities included the working of ferrous and non-ferrous metals, and the manufacture of jewellery,
Across th

including moulds for casting Scandinavian-style brooches. Iron knives were produced according to a three-fold welding technique
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which was unknown to the Slavs, and which disappeared with the decline of Gnezdovo, and its replacement by Smolensk. Unlike early Scandinavian trading sites, Gnezdovo was unplanned and appears to have lacked a hinterland; it did not become a town.

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Kiev, on the other hand, became the centre of the medieval Russian
ver
state. The town was founded in 882 on the west bank of the
sea

s expansion

Dnieper, at a point where the river narrows. The Emperor Constantine recorded that Scandinavians gathered there in early summer, leaving for the journey to Byzantium in June. The town is said to have been ruled by Scandinavian princes, although archaeological evidence suggests that the majority of the population was again mainly Slavonic.

In summary, the post-Glasnost view is that a balance between internal (mainly Slavonic) growth and external Western (Scandinavian) stimulus underpinned the development of medieval Russia. There was already economic and social development amongst the Slavs before the Swedes arrived. The Vikings stimulated and expanded trade, but were not alone in their activities. As in many other areas, they are said to have adopted many native customs and became part of a vigorous mixed group 61

involved in a combination of exchange and raiding which has been labelled ‘aggressive trading’, although it is not always clear whether this compromise term refers to haggling in the bazaar or to extortion at sword point.

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Chapter 7

Settlers in England

For the present-day inhabitants of England, it is the Anglo-Saxons who have generally been regarded as the ancestral English, whereas the Vikings are definitely
them
, not
us
. The English may have a sneaking admiration for their amoral and carefree existence, but apart from a few hotheads who claim they carry Viking blood, they are not really our ancestors. The English language, English laws, customs, and system of government, even the English countryside and villages, are somehow Anglo-Saxon and not North European or Scandinavian, despite the irony that the Angles and Saxons arrived from much the same area as the Danes, some 400 years earlier. It is still Ælfred who was the first king of England, and it was he who united the warring Anglo-Saxon kingdoms against the Viking invader. In 793 there were four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms: East Anglia, Mercia, Wessex, and Northumbria; by 900 there was just one: Wessex.

However, it was Ælfred’s own scribes who recorded events in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and since the Vikings did not write history it is little wonder that we have been sold a one-sided story.

Historians are now less inclined to accept Wessex propaganda at face value. Although the scale of Scandinavian settlement is still debated, its positive impact is widely acknowledged. Archaeologists have emphasized the Scandinavian contribution to urbanism, to the development of industry, and to the changes taking place in rural 63

settlement patterns; and from new artefact types and artistic styles they are able to talk about a hybrid Anglo-Scandinavian culture.

Present-day school children are taught to appreciate ethnic diversity, and in history lessons they learn about multiple waves of raiders and settlers, each contributing to the national character.

With England and Denmark once again joined together in a political union for the first time since Cnut, the Vikings have a more positive image.

Academics discussing the scale of Scandinavian settlement in England have danced to the rhythms of the ongoing debate between those who see the history of England as one of successive waves of invaders, and those who emphasize internal evolution and change.

According to whom you believe, immigration was confined to a small group of elite land-takers, or it was a secondary mass migration in the wake of the raiding parties. Part of the problem is
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that the different categories of evidence do not describe a coherent
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kin

story, and so each discipline has taken a different perspective. The
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Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records three partitions of land between the
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Danes and the English in the 870s – in Northumbria, Mercia, and East Anglia. Following the Treaty of Wedmore in 886 a boundary was established between Ælfred and the Danes, running: ‘Up the Thames, and then up the Lea, and along the Lea to its source, then in a straight line to Bedford, then up the Ouse to Watling Street’.

The area to the north and east of this line later became known as the Danelaw, to distinguish that part of the country where Danish custom prevailed.

Place-name scholars have found that there is some correspondence between their maps of Scandinavian-influenced names and the boundaries of the Danelaw. In Yorkshire, for example, there are 210

place names that end in -
by
(the Old Norse name for village); in Lincolnshire there are 220, the majority combined with Old Norse personal names. However, it is important to emphasize that the distribution maps show the influence of the Scandinavian language, not the location of Scandinavian settlements. Initially, at least, there 64

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ers in En

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9. Scandinavian activity in England

must have been two distinct Old English and Old Norse language-using communities in the Danelaw, although the languages were so similar that there would have been sufficient mutual intelligibility for most transactions, without the need for widespread bilingualism or for specialist interpreters. During the 10th and 11th centuries, however, there was extensive hybridization and language borrowing between the two cultures. The place-name evidence is late, most 65

names being first recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, by which time the Anglo-Saxons had been undergoing 200 years of cultural mixing with speakers of Old Norse.

Archaeologically, Scandinavian settlements have been difficult to detect. In the upland areas of northern England, isolated farmsteads such as that at Ribblehead have often been assumed to be the homes of colonists, and further south, the appearance of bow-sided halls at sites like Goltho might indicate the residences of new Scandinavian lords – although of course there is nothing ethnically Scandinavian about the shape or form of a building. At Wharram Percy, Borre-style belt fittings, probably manufactured in Norway, have been found on the site of what became one of the medieval manors, and it seems likely that the village was first laid out with regularly divided plots in the 10th century. This process of village nucleation is repeated throughout lowland England
s

during the 10th century, and may represent part of an ongoing
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kin

process of land privatization. Former great estates, previously
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owned by the king or the church, were divided up into smaller
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units held by individual lords. This process was happening both in the Danelaw and in Wessex and was not a direct result of Viking raids, although the disruption of the monasteries and the subsequent dislocation of landholdings clearly accelerated the process.

The recording of finds recovered by metal-detectorists has also transformed knowledge of settlement patterns. The population of Viking Age England acquired a taste for costume jewellery mass-produced in copper alloy. Although some retain Anglo-Saxon forms, such as the disc brooch, they are frequently decorated with Scandinavian-style motifs, and therefore represent a hybrid culture which it is appropriate to call Anglo-Scandinavian. There are also completely new types, such as tiny copper alloy bells, which may have been amulets or costume fittings. Although they are not known from Scandinavia itself, they have been found in settlements as far apart as Iceland, Scotland, and Yorkshire, and may represent 66

the spread of a fashion developed in the Irish Sea region. Metal objects produced according to Anglo-Scandinavian taste have been found in large numbers in eastern England. Whereas we cannot choose our genes and we can only modify our language to a limited extent, we can choose our jewellery, and these finds indicate widespread acceptance of an Anglo-Scandinavian cultural identity in 10th-century England.

At Cottam, in East Yorkshire, I excavated a settlement first discovered by metal-detectorists. In the 8th and 9th centuries there had been an Anglo-Saxon farmstead, possibly an outlying dependency of a royal estate at Driffield. The residents had been part of a trading network and there were large numbers of low-denomination Northumbrian copper alloy coins, or
stycas
. In the late 9th or early 10th century the Anglo-Saxon farm was abandoned and replaced by a new planned farm set within rectangular
Settl

paddocks and with a rather grand gated entrance. The new
ers in En

occupants, who from their dress may well have been Scandinavian colonists, were no longer able to buy and sell with coins as the
glan

Northumbrian mints had ceased production, but this did not
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prevent them trading west with York and south of the Humber to Lincolnshire, weighing out bullion to conduct their transactions.

They lived in their new farm for only a couple of generations before relocating to the site of what became the planned medieval village.

The Scandinavian settlement also brought major changes to towns and provided a stimulus for the largest urban regeneration since Britain under the Romans. In Mercia and Wessex, systems of fortified towns, or
burhs
, were established by royal decrees in response to the Viking threat. They also functioned as civil and ecclesiastical administrative centres, and mints were established in them. In some cases, such as Chester, Gloucester, Exeter, and Winchester, Roman sites were refortified; in other cases they used natural defences. Elsewhere, such as at Cricklade, Wallingford, and Oxford, new defences were constructed based upon Roman models.

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Many became important markets; at Chester a community of Hiberno-Norse traders settled between the Roman fort and the River Dee.

Although Viking raids initially disrupted trade organized through the urban markets or
wics
, at places such as Hamwic (Southampton), Lundenwic (London), and Eoforwic (York), these towns flourished in the 10th century. In most cases the trading sites were brought within, or adjacent to, the walls of the old Roman forts, and were then subject to rapid development. York is the best known, with the street at Coppergate established in the early 10th century, and four tenements used by a variety of merchants, manufacturers, and craftsmen. Within 50 years the pressure on urban space – in common with many other English towns – led to the development of planked two-storey buildings, with cellars for storing raw materials and finished products, and upstairs for living,
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working, and trading. The city was an important commercial and
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manufacturing centre and by 900 York’s new Viking rulers were
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minting their own coins. These were partly for propaganda
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purposes, demonstrating that the Viking kingdom was as respectable as other Western Christian states, but the volume of coinage indicates high levels of transactions. By 1000 York may have had a population of 15,000, dependent upon food supplied from the hinterland, and with access to cereal crops, animals, and marine resources. The Life of St Oswald records that the city was ‘enriched with the treasures of merchants, who come from all parts, but above all from the Danish people’.

In the East Midlands the Danes themselves established a series of urban strongholds, described as the Five Boroughs, comprising Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, and Stamford. Excavations have failed to reveal anything specifically Scandinavian about these towns and they may have been based upon English models. Some of the new industries which grew up within their shadow, such as the production of glazed Stamford-ware pottery, may have resulted from immigrants moving in with the Scandinavian traders, but 68