The Vikings: A Very Short Introduction (19 page)

disappearance of the Norse on Greenland may have been a consequence of poor environmental management. The volume editors accepted the lack of evidence for long-term Viking settlement in America, but noted that (p. 24): Perhaps the most important outcome of contact was the familiarity Native Americans gained about European habits, behavior, and materials which helped them take best advantage of future interactions.

Jorvik, DNA, and Vikings today

In the 21st century, in Europe, Scandinavia, and North America, the Vikings carry huge popular interest: they sell books and television programmes, advertise goods, and persuade people to visit
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museums. When the decision was taken to create a new type of
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museum in York, the subject chosen was not Romans or Anglo-entin

Saxons, but Vikings. When it opened in 1984, the Jorvik Viking
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Centre attracted over 800,000 visitors in its first year, taking it into
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the top three tourist attractions. Shortly after Jorvik was reopened
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by Tony Blair in 2001, following a £4 million facelift, the 12

s

millionth customer passed through the door. Visitors are now invited to go back in time and travel through 10th-century Jorvik in suspended time capsules, for the ‘authentic Viking encounter’. With ambient sound systems, directional aerosol sprays, and robotic chickens, this is a truly 21st-century Viking experience.

For those seeking a more active Viking lifestyle, re-enactment groups have flourished in Europe, Scandinavia, and North America.

These cater for all tastes, from those with an eye for detail and rigorous policing against any anachronistic costume items, to those which just provide a legal excuse for a good fight, and even some which combine both. For the descendants of ‘Briese-Bane’ (or bone-breaker) there is even an active Viking re-enactment group in Queensland, Australia. Although some groups initially focused upon the Viking warrior and raider stereotype, they have moved 129

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19. Street scene, Jorvik

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with the times and now have Viking camps in which traders and craftsmen, women and children, are welcome. In Britain, The Vikings, originally founded in 1971 as the Norse Film and Pageant Society, is the oldest Dark Age re-enactment group. They regularly appear at English Heritage sites, and as battle extras in films and TV documentaries. Membership is rigidly stratified, as
unfree thralls
,
fri-halls
,
drengr
, and
jarls
. The society has a membership of over 600, and its own website at

www.vikingsonline.org.uk!

Another way in which Vikings have taken over leisure time is though metal-detecting. In eastern England and some parts of Scandinavia this popular hobby has begun to provide evidence for dense Viking Age settlement. Official schemes to record finds are now starting to put some of this information into the public domain

(www.finds.org.uk). Some me
tal-detectorists are no doubt motivated by financial gain, which has brought them into conflict 130

with archaeologists, but many took up the hobby because of a genuine interest in the past.

Other people believe that they are Vikings or are descended from Vikings. DNA research has raised misguided expectations that it might be possible to identify a Viking gene and I occasionally receive letters and email messages from those whose hair colour, family name, or temperament leads them to believe that they are the direct descendants of Viking settlers. In fact it is very hard to say anything about individuals from their DNA, although stronger statements can be made about populations. Identifying Vikings from hair colour or skull shape is even more unreliable, as physical characteristics bear only an approximation to genes, and environment can be an important factor, although blood groups provide a closer proxy for DNA.

Rein

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A major genetics survey carried out for the BBC in 2001 took DNA
entin

samples from men at a number of sites. In the main, small towns
g th

were chosen and the men tested were required to be able to trace
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their male line back two generations in the same rural area. The aim
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was to reduce the effects of later population movements, assuming
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that in-between the Norman invasion of 1066 and the 20th century movement would have been limited. The tests looked at the Y

chromosome, which is only carried by men. Samples taken in modern-day Norway were used to represent the Norwegian Vikings, and samples from Denmark represented the Danish input.

The results were disappointing but probably not surprising. Eastern England has been subject to invasion from adjacent areas of the continental mainland for countless millennia. Some migrations are historically attested although the majority, going back into prehistory, are undocumented. In England the survey team encountered difficulties in distinguishing between the DNA of Saxon and Danish invaders. The outlying Scottish isles provided the most conclusive evidence of a Scandinavian presence. In the Northern and Western Isles, as well as in the far north of the Scottish mainland, Norwegian genetic signatures were found. In 131

Shetland and Orkney 60 per cent of the male population had DNA of Norwegian origin, although again it is very difficult to establish the date that this was transmitted from modern populations. Other research has found that the DNA of the modern-day populations of the Central Lakes and north-east Derbyshire differs from that of the surrounding areas, in a way that is much closer to that of Denmark.

Attempts have been made to extract ancient DNA from excavated human remains, but there are great risks of contamination. Indeed, results of a recent test appeared to show that a Viking warrior from Repton had come from Africa! Techniques are still being refined but for the present they may be unreliable. Oxygen and strontium isotope analysis of teeth appears to be more promising. Put crudely, we are what we drink, and the chemical composition of the water consumed in childhood is preserved in our teeth. Given the distinctive geology of some areas, including Norway, it is possible to
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define a fingerprint for the local water, making it possible to identify
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those who grew up there, such as the Norwegian woman from
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Adwick-le-Street (p. 71).

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However, it is important not to confuse race and identity, by talking of ‘Viking blood’ or ‘Viking genes’. Our genes determine neither the language we speak nor the clothes we wear, and cultural factors are just as important as DNA in determining who we are. We are also acutely aware of the dangers of developing attitudes based on biological race. Modern archaeologists and historians have adopted the term ethnicity to indicate identity which is cultural rather than racial.

Jacquetta Hawkes famously wrote that ‘Every age gets the Stonehenge it deserves’, by which she meant that Stonehenge has been a Druid temple, a landing site for flying saucers, or an astronomical calendar, according to the interests of the times. The same could be said about our stories about Vikings, and they have been alternately, noble savages, raiders, marauders and rapists, peaceful traders, entrepreneurs, explorers, early democrats, or 132

IKEA sales personnel, according to what we want them to be. This small volume has attempted to use recent archaeological research to introduce what is important to know about the peoples who inhabited Scandinavia in the 9th to 11th centuries and to trace those expansions which brought them into contact with other early medieval societies. It has explored how the term Viking came to be applied to them, and examined how they have been reinvented many times, from the Icelandic Sagas to 21st-century heritage attractions.

In each of the situations in which we encounter Scandinavian settlers their Viking identity is rather different, and nowhere is it unmodified. A Scandinavian settler in early 10th-century Northumbria may have retained the Norse tongue, but with various English borrowings. When he went to the growing urban market in
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Jorvik he would have seen new cellared and plank-built workshops,
einv
unlike the old Anglo-Saxon or Danish houses. In Jorvik he may have
entin
bought new brooches for his new English wife, neither in the style
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her mother wore, nor like those worn by the women back home, but
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in a hybrid form, reflecting elements of both fashions. When he
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g

died, if he were wealthy, he might expect to have a stone memorial
s

erected over his grave, not like the grave of his father, nor like the graves of the English. If study of the Vikings has a contemporary message for us it is that identity is not an immutable concept.

Further research should continue to help elucidate the circumstances in which new identities are formed and the ways in which they are expressed, not just for Vikings, but for all societies.

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Further reading

For a non-literate society Vikings are good booksellers. There is a huge number of general books, many lavishly illustrated. I have largely avoided listing these, and have preferred instead to cite edited volumes of papers in English, many of which also provide accessible introductions to Scandinavian material. Most of these also have full bibliographies to other sources and primary evidence.

Because of the rapid growth of new archaeological discoveries I have also emphasized recent works and generally avoided works more than 15 years old.

General introductions

J. Graham-Campbell (ed.),
Cultural Atlas of the Viking World
(Andromeda, 1994)

J. Hines, A. Lane, and M. Redknap (eds),
Land, Sea and Home
(Maney, 2004)

J. Jesch,
Women in the Viking Age
(Boydell & Brewer, 1991) P. Sawyer (ed.),
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings
(Oxford University Press, 1997)

Scandinavia

E. Christiansen,
The Norsemen in the Viking Age
(Blackwell, 2002) E. Roesdahl,
Viking Age Denmark
(British Museum Publications, 1982) J. Adams and K. Holman (eds),
Scandinavia and Europe 800–1350:
Contact, Conflict and Coexistence
(Brepols 2004) 137

Religion

N. Price,
The Viking Way
(Dept of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala, 2002)

Ships

O. Crumlin-Pedersen and B. Munch Thye (eds),
The Ship as Symbol in
Prehistoric and Medieval Scandinavia
(The National Museum

[Copenhagen], 1995)

A. Nørgård Jørgensen
et al
. (eds),
Maritime Warfare in Northern
Europe
(The National Museum [Copenhagen], 2002)
Vikings in Literature and Runes

R. I. Page,
Chronicles of the Vikings
(British Museum Press, 1995) B. Sawyer,
The Viking-Age Rune-Stones
(Oxford University Press, 2000)
England and Wales

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D. M. Hadley and J. D. Richards (eds),
Cultures in Contact:
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Scandinavian Settlement in England in the Ninth and Tenth
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Centuries
(Brepols, 2000)

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R. A. Hall
et al
.,
Aspects of Anglo-Scandinavian York
(Council for British Archaeology, The Archaeology of York 8/4, 2004) J. D. Richards,
Viking Age England
(new edn, Tempus, 2004) J. Graham-Campbell, R. Hall, J. Jesch, and D. N. Parsons (eds),
Vikings
and the Danelaw
(Oxbow Books, 2001)

M. Redknap,
Vikings in Wales: An Archaeological Quest
(National Museums & Galleries of Wales, 2000)

Scotland

J. Graham-Campbell and C. Batey,
Vikings in Scotland: An
Archaeological Survey
(Edinburgh University Press, 1998) A. Ritchie,
Viking Scotland
(Batsford, 1993)
Ireland

H. B. Clarke, M. Ní Mhaonaigh, and R. Ó Floinn (eds),
Ireland and
Scandinavia in the Early Viking Age
(Four Courts Press, 1998) A.-C. Larsen (ed.),
The Vikings in Ireland
(Viking Ship Museum, 2001) 138

The North Atlantic

J. H. Barrett (ed.),
Contact, Continuity, and Collapse: The Norse
Colonization of the North Atlantic
(Brepols, 2003) C. E. Batey, J. Jesch, and C. D. Morris (eds),
The Viking Age in
Caithness, Orkney and the North Atlantic
(Edinburgh University Press, 1993)

W. W. Fitzhugh and E. I. Ward (eds),
Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga
(Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000)

S. Lewis-Simpson (ed.),
Vinland Revisited: The Norse World at the
Turn of the First Millennium
(Historic Sites Association, 2004)
Reinventing the Vikings