Vikings Read online

  It is this paucity of evidence that makes it so important to consider the wider world of which the Scandinavian tribes were a part in those years before the Viking Age. Our view of the most northerly territories at that time is one made of shadows and fragmentary glimpses. It helps therefore to remember they were always part of a busy, dynamic world. If they lived a relatively sheltered life in the backwaters until the first millennium AD, then it seems to me vitally important to keep in mind the rising tide of population elsewhere.

  By the time Rome was encroaching upon the territories of the tribes in the far north — as well as the lands of their restless, populous neighbours around the shores of the Baltic and the North Sea — the hitherto mysterious figures in Denmark, Norway and Sweden had come to the end of whatever isolation they had ever enjoyed.

  With its standing army — and, after 261 BC, its navy — the will of Rome was hard to resist. Soon the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea — they called it Mare Nostrum, our sea — were either Roman or in Rome’s sights. Yet, dominant though they undoubtedly were, the Romans were hardly the only players.

  The peoples that would in time be known as Celts (to archaeologists and historians, if not to themselves) emerged in central and northern Europe sometime after 500 BC. Around the same time there were Iberians on the southern and eastern coastlines of the peninsula of the same name, and Thracians — sometime allies of the Trojans — on territory occupied today by parts of Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey.

  For the most part it is a litany of lost names, of whole peoples largely forgotten by history, or at least hard to see in the darkness of the long shadow cast by superstars like Greece, Rome and Carthage. Among the Iberians were the Airenosi and the Andosini; the Bastetani and the Bergistani; the Castellani and the Contestani; the Edetani and the Iacetani; the Laietani, the Oretani, the Sedetani and the Turdetani. Their descendants are still with us of course, among the peoples of Portugal and Spain, but they were swallowed whole long ago.

  By the turn of the millennium there were yet more characters readying themselves to pour in from the wings. As the centuries AD progressed, the Germanic barbarians in the north provided strident interludes from time to time, as did the nomads riding and walking out of the eastern steppes, and plenty of others besides.

  Always there was Rome, however — sometimes subdued but never silenced. Between AD 117 and 138 Emperor Hadrian adopted a policy of securing the boundaries of empire. Rather than seeking to push ever outwards, he preferred to consolidate his demesne. It was in AD 122 that work began on the great white wall across Britain that would bear his name. (Emperor Antoninus Pius would push further north during the 140s, commissioning work on his own barrier, the Antonine Wall, in AD 142, but within 20 years it was accepted that Hadrian’s Wall was indeed the northern limit of Roman ambitions on the island.)

  And all the while Rome strove to impose a peace of sorts — with varying degrees of success — a new glacier was on the move. It was made of people and it could not be stopped. Beyond the imperial frontiers the barbarian populations were growing, and it was the strife of overcrowding that left people no option but to push back against whatever barricades Rome might seek to build. The restless folk movements severed trade and exchange networks — east and west, north and south — that had connected disparate peoples for millennia. Europe was being reorganised, shuffled like a deck of cards. The Romans absorbed as many bellicose foreigners as possible into their army, as auxiliaries, and whole tribes were invited to settle lands within the Empire. But as the third century AD progressed the story of Europe was about what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object.

  Despite Roman efforts, more and more peoples pressed against the frontiers or spilled over them, looking for space in which to live and breathe. On the North Sea coast there were the Angles and Saxons, who would in time turn their attentions west towards Britain. In southern Germany were the Alamanni, a loose agglomeration of many different tribes; the Franks were making their presence felt for the first time in territory that would one day take their name — France. Elsewhere, and as land-hungry as the rest, were Goths and Vandals.

  Rome’s fortunes waxed and waned, largely dependent upon the skill and vision of her leaders. Diocletian, an able soldier, was made emperor in AD 284 and quickly accepted the job was too big for any one man. He split the whole into two: a western empire ruled from Rome and an eastern empire centred on the ancient Greek city of Byzantium, modern-day Istanbul. Each had its own emperor: Diocletian in the east and Maximian, also a soldier, in the west. To spread the load yet further, each emperor had a Ceasar as second in command and heir apparent.

  This, then, was the Rome that made and developed contacts with the peoples of Scandinavia from the first century AD onwards — an empire fighting to retain control of the core, while at the same time increasingly embattled or harassed on multiple fronts. From their lofty heights, at the top of the world, the Scandinavians looked downwards and outwards at a hectic Europe, thronged with peoples hungry for land and resources. As well as trade and exchange with Rome — an empire keener than ever to curry favour with any potential allies — there were also goods and luxury items to be swapped with the neighbours.

  In contrast to the tumult gripping much of Europe at this time, life in the far north was relatively stable. The disruption of the trade routes that had connected them to the south and east enforced a degree of isolation that served to insulate Scandinavia from much of the chaos. The climatic deterioration of the Early Iron Age was past as well, and across southern Scandinavia were scattered numerous prosperous villages of longhouses, surrounded by fields used for a mix of arable and animal farming. There is even evidence of animal husbandry being practised by communities north of the Arctic Circle at this time.

  The volume and variety of Roman imports into Denmark, as well as parts of southern Norway and Sweden, increased steadily during the early centuries AD. As usual, a great deal of it wound up in the hands, and especially the graves, of the elite. While the Bronze Age had been dominated by those able to gain control of just one luxury material, Iron Age Scandinavia was increasingly in thrall to those in a position to take advantage of the new range of imports available from the south.

  At Himlingoje on the Danish island of Sjælland archaeologists found a cemetery of graves furnished with rich collections of grave goods. Many were found to contain Roman weapons and horse-riding equipment. In the grave of a woman there were high-status Roman items together with the very best locally crafted objects — all of it dated to the early part of the third century AD.

  At Hedegaard on the Jutland peninsula archaeologists were called in to investigate land about to be disturbed by the construction of a new gas pipeline. What they unearthed there was an Iron Age settlement occupied both before and during the time of contact with Rome. Perhaps most exciting of all was the discovery of a cemetery containing 200 graves of people laid to rest between the end of the first century BC and the first century AD. While the earlier graves contained cremations — evidence of commitment to older traditions — those buried during Roman times were dominated by inhumations of the whole body.

  Accompanying one of the later burials was what initially appeared as no more than a large lump of corrosion. Closer examination, however, followed by careful conservation, revealed a pair of iron shears — exactly like those used centuries later for clipping sheep’s fleeces in the years before the advent of electricity — a small iron knife about nine inches long and an unusual iron lance head. All were Roman in style but the prize of the collection was a large Roman dagger of a distinctive sort, known as a pugio. The dagger had been buried alongside, but not inside, its own highly decorated iron sheath. Clearly these had once been among the possessions of a Roman legionary; but through the process of trade and exchange they had found their way into the grave of an important member of Iron Age Danish society.

  Another grave contained several small items of bronze jewellery but also a
spiral of thick gold wire and two large beads of solid gold. The smaller of the two weighed 19 carats, the larger 23 carats — and both were clearly once among the possessions of a rich, high-status individual.

  Elsewhere in the cemetery was a grave altogether more in keeping with our expectations of Scandinavian people. Though reduced by time and the processes of decay to no more than an impression in the soil, one of the Hedegaard graves contained a boat burial. The oak-built craft, long gone but clearly identifiable nonetheless, had been 10 feet long by around two to three feet wide.

  Hedegaard had been home to a community whose leaders learnt to covet and enjoy the status symbols available to those with connections both to the Roman Empire and to their nearer neighbours in northern Europe. Farming intensified during those first centuries of the new millennium, producing surplus for trade, and there was, as always, an appetite, throughout Europe and even further east, for the natural resources of the north.

  Commodities moving in the other direction — from southern and central Europe towards the northern coastlines — followed two distinct routes. One was via the Elbe and Rhine rivers to the North Sea, from where ships and boats could depart for journeys along the western seaboard of Denmark and then onwards to the Atlantic coast of Norway. The alternative route followed the Oder and Vistula rivers to the Baltic coast, from where it was a relatively short hop to the island of Gotland. Ideally located in the heart of the Baltic, Gotland was the perfect distribution point for goods headed for Sweden.

  Many archaeologists are of the opinion that it was during the centuries of the Roman Iron Age that the leaders of some powerful families in Scandinavia began to exert their authority over more than just secular concerns. Towards the end of the period it seems some of the chieftains were also positioning themselves as the intermediaries between the world of men and the world of the gods and goddesses.

  A farming settlement was established at Gudme, towards the eastern side of the Danish island of Fyn, sometime in the first century BC, and occupation there continued for over 500 years. During that time the village grew both in terms of size and prosperity until, by the end of the fourth century AD, it was clearly an important centre and home to some powerful and wealthy individuals.

  The settlement remains are unremarkable — the usual longhouses built around frameworks of upright posts — but excavation of the site produced exceptional amounts of gold and silver. Decorations from weapons, gold rings and scrapped gold and silver cut into pieces were recovered in volumes that suggest Gudme was a village like no other at the time. Just three miles from Gudme itself, at a place called Lundeborg, archaeologists discovered traces of a port that appeared to have been used during the months of spring and summer. It was here that goods intended for Gudme arrived and there was also evidence of boat-building and repair. The elite of Gudme had clearly established their village as a centre for the distribution of high-value goods — likely serving a wide area. Gudme being a focal point for trade, the people there were also engaged in some kind of religious activity. The archaeologists recovered human figures stamped into gold foil — items normally found on sites related to pagan worship. The evidence is slight, but suggestive of a ruling group — perhaps a chief and his family — controlling not just luxury imports and exports but also the spiritual well-being of the surrounding population. It is also tempting to suggest that power was now hereditary, passed from parent to child, so that we also see the seeds of ruling dynasties — families retaining control down through the generations. Gudme after all means ‘God’s home’.

  If the first four or five centuries AD were a time of relative calm and growing prosperity for the peoples of Scandinavia, much of the rest of Europe was periodically convulsed by seismic change. The Christian religion had begun in the Middle East and by the fourth century AD had won over Rome herself. Constantine I, proclaimed by his legions, in York, was the first emperor to embrace the upstart faith. His rise to supremacy was challenged by Maxentius and their opposing factions clashed at Milvian Bridge, outside the gates of Rome, in AD 312. The story goes that Constantine looked up at the sky on the day before the battle and there beheld a Christian cross. That night Christ himself visited the emperor in a dream and told him, ‘By this sign, conquer.’ So it was that Constantine’s soldiers painted chi-rho symbols — the first Greek letters of Christ’s name — on their shields and marched to victory.

  When Constantine formally accepted the religion the following year he changed the destiny not just of Christians but also of the Roman Empire itself. For one thing, he ended the Tetrarchy — the rule of the Empire by two Augusti and two Caesars.

  Perhaps even more significant in the long run, it was Constantine who made Byzantium his eastern capital in AD 324, changing its name to Constantinople in the process. By creating a new Rome in the east, the emperor altered the very fabric of Europe. It was as though yet another strong centre of gravity had spun into existence, towards which much else in Europe — and in Asia — began to be drawn. In time the Vikings would feel the pull there too.

  Looked at cold-bloodedly, it is easy to see how and why Constantinople came to eclipse mighty Rome. While the old imperial capital was ideally sited to dominate a European world centred on the Mediterranean Sea, the new city straddled the crossroads of an altogether bigger domain. To the west, via the Dardanelles, lay Egypt and the Nile delta; the riches of Crete, Sicily and the Italian peninsula; the sea routes around the Mediterranean coastline and, ultimately, the Straits of Gibraltar and the Atlantic world beyond. Trailing south-eastwards from the city, like threads of a spider’s web, were the ancient overland routes into the Middle East leading to the trading centres of Aleppo, Baghdad and Damascus. Eastwards, beyond the constricting throat of the Bosphorus, lay all the wealth of central Asia … furs, gold and slaves from the Russian steppes; amber, ivory and pearls from the Orient; caviar harvested from the giant sturgeons of the Caspian Sea. As well as a nexus of trade routes from far and wide, Constantinople was close to the corn, olive and wine of Anatolia, as well as to all the timber, limestone and marble required for the building of a great city.

  While the people of Gudme were in their pomp, her chieftains dispensing both worldly favour and spiritual enlightenment, and while the sun of Constantinople rose like the dawn in the east, Rome’s light began to fade in the west. By the last quarter of the fourth century AD the pressure being exerted by the Germanic tribes upon the borders of the Empire became unbearable.

  Constantine had reunited the Empire and had championed the establishment of the new city, but it was under the rule of Theodosius I — also known as Theodosius the Great — that Constantinople became the home of emperors. The son of a soldier, Theodosius was the last to rule east and west together, from AD 379—395.

  Constantine oversaw the construction of a defensive wall around his city, but during the fifth century the place expanded beyond that original boundary. It was during the reign of Theodosius II (known as the boy emperor, since he ascended the throne when he was just seven years old) that the legendary Theodosian Wall was erected. In its first incarnation this defence would turn back Attila the Hun, in AD 447 — and when it was razed by an earthquake later the same year, the panic-stricken population turned out en masse to rebuild it in double-quick time.

  Soon after the rise of Constantinople came the end of days for old Rome. The teenager Romulus Augustulus, set in place by his father, was the last ruler of the Roman Empire in the west. He played the part for just a matter of months before being deposed in the summer of AD 476.

  Historians have long debated the causes of Rome’s fall; Edward Gibbon needed six volumes for his own version of events. More recently Kenneth Clark claimed that the end of Rome had something to say about the nature of civilisation itself. ‘It shows that however complex and solid it [civilisation] seems, it is actually quite fragile. It can be destroyed.

  ‘What are its enemies?’ he asked. ‘Well, first of all fear — fear of war, fear of invasion, fe
ar of plague and famine, that make it simply not worthwhile constructing things, or planting trees, or even planting next year’s crops … So if one asks why the civilisation of Greece and Rome collapsed, the real answer is that it was exhausted.’

  Constantinople was not only the inheritor of the notion of empire, but also a focal point for the Christian religion. So while it seems distant from the world of the Vikings still it is key to their story. The Europe and Asia the men of Norway, Denmark and Sweden encountered when they put to sea in their long ships and headed west, south and east in the dying moments of the eighth century, were a battleground of faiths. The Vikings are remembered as villains because they set upon those who had recently learnt to think of themselves as good, or at least within reach of goodness. If they were accurately to be described as pagans, it was because they splashed ashore from their long ships and set their Godless feet onto lands only recently purified, in the north and west at least, by a religion that had been spreading like incense smoke from fires in the east.

  There was no state-sanctioned Christianity in Rome. It was, as it always had been, a pagan city and Christianity just another faith. Justinian was made emperor in Constantinople in AD 527 and immediately began sending his soldiers westwards to reclaim Mediterranean Roman territories lost to the Germanic tribes. What he helped create was the Byzantine Empire and he would expend a great deal of its energy and resources in his determination to regain the glories of his predecessors. It took him 30 years, but by the end he had reclaimed most of the Mediterranean world. He also ordained and oversaw the rebuilding of the Church of Hagia Sophia — the Church of the Divine Wisdom — and lived to see its dedication in 537.