Vikings Read online

  Added to the technical difficulties of navigation — of attempting to work out where they were, how far they had travelled and how much of the journey might still remain — there was also the ever-present threat of shipwreck. Voyages across stretches of the North Atlantic certainly exposed those Viking sailors to storms, icebergs and hidden reefs. When Eirik the Red set out from Iceland, making for Greenland, he was at the head of a fleet of 25 ships. Only 15 completed the journey while the rest — vessels, passengers and crew — were lost.

  If drakkar like the Sea Stallion were the warships, it was vessels of a substantially different shape that were employed in the business of moving large cargoes — or many passengers. The Vikings called them knarr and they were generally shorter and broader, with high sides to afford more protection from the swell and room fore and aft for all manner of goods. While they might have been rowed for short distances, or while moving about within harbours, these were primarily sailing ships. Since they were wider the knarr were also slower, as well as less manoeuvrable. But what they lacked in speed and agility they more than made up for by being better suited to the wild waters of the North Atlantic. The dragon ships carried warriors as far as the British Isles, that much is demonstrably true; but it was the more businesslike merchant ships that would, in time, carry Viking men (not to mention women, livestock, cargo and belongings) on their great voyages of colonisation to Iceland, Greenland and beyond.

  The skill of the ship-builders is amply demonstrated by two Norwegian vessels consigned to the ground 12 centuries ago as part of high-status burials and now on display in the Viking Ship Museum, in Oslo. The Oseberg Ship is arguably the more celebrated of the two and was found during the excavation in 1904–5 of a huge burial mound beside the Oslo Fjord. Dendrochronology revealed the trees used in its construction were felled in the autumn of AD 834. Nearly 70 feet in length and 17 feet wide, it is clinker-built and of a type known to Viking ship specialists as a karv, a versatile vessel that could have been used either as a small warship or for transporting cargo. She has a dozen strakes on each side and measures over four feet high amidships between her keel and her gunwales. What makes the Oseberg Ship especially memorable, however, is the quality of the carving featured on the timbers of both the bow and the stern. Appearing as an endless line of interwoven animals and other designs, the artistry is even reminiscent of the later styling known to art historians as Romanesque. Certainly nothing greater or more accomplished has survived the Viking Age.

  The Oseberg Ship secured its immortality on land rather than at sea, however, and was the centrepiece for the funeral of two women. The younger of the pair is thought by some to be the Ynglinga Queen Aase, mother of Halfdan the Black, founder of the Norwegian royal dynasty, and it follows, therefore, that the older woman was a servant or slave dispatched as company for her mistress, or indeed owner.

  More recently, scientists have examined the DNA of the younger woman and found evidence that she may have been born far to the east of Scandinavia, even as far away as the Middle East. Since the elder woman seems to have died of cancer — revealed by telltale marks on some of her bones — a quite different explanation suggests itself. Some archaeologists are now allowing for the possibility that it was the elder woman who was the mistress and the young foreigner her slave girl. If so, she might have been sacrificed so as to accompany her owner into the next world.

  As well as being placed inside a specially constructed timber chamber within the boat, the women were accompanied by all manner of grave goods. The mound had been raided in antiquity and any metal jewellery removed at that time, but there was plenty more to tell a story of rank and privilege. Both women wore woollen dresses. That of the younger woman was especially fine and featured details of appliquéd silk. Perhaps most impressive was a richly carved, four-wheeled wooden wagon. The terminals of the cradle supporting the detachable passenger compartment were shaped as human heads and the front is carved with a scene depicting a man in a pit of snakes. Transport during the months of winter (if such a season exists in the next life) had been catered for too by the provision of three sledges. There was also a fourth, smaller sledge intended for hauling personal belongings. There were five beds, and the bedding to go with them, a chair, looms, kitchen utensils, storage chests and oil lamps. A fragment of a tapestry wall-hanging featured men and women on horseback as well as wagons not unlike the one buried in the boat. There were also two buckets bound with brass hoops, one with detailing in the form of human figures sitting cross-legged.

  Even without the jewellery that such a woman would have been expected to possess in death, as in life, the Oseberg Ship burial is a reminder of the elevated status of the people who actually owned such vessels.

  Almost as impressive is the Gokstad Ship, found and excavated in 1880 and dated, again by dendrochronology, to sometime during the first decade of the tenth century. Though not as grand as that from nearby Oseberg, it is the larger of the two at over 76 feet long. While in use, it would have been crewed by around 32 men who would have powered it with oars projecting through closable hatches. When the wind was up the vessel would have swept along at an estimated 12 knots, thanks to a sail measuring perhaps 1,200 square feet. Whether or not the Oseberg Ship was commandeered as the funeral ship of Queen Aase, the Gokstad Ship was certainly constructed during the reign of her grandson, Harald Fairhair. Dates obtained from dendrochronological analysis of some of the oak timbers of the hull revealed the trees were felled in AD 890. The ship was the means of transport into the next life for a man who had died in old age. Like the women in the Oseberg Ship, he had been laid to rest inside a specially constructed timber chamber within the body of the ship. Since no weapons were found inside, it is thought the Gokstad mound had also been plundered in antiquity. His grave goods did, however, include three smaller boats, a sledge, horse furniture and a tent.

  The people of Denmark, Norway and Sweden had grown so dependent upon their ships they needed them in death as well as in life. Even more revealing, however, is the extent to which the innovations of the Scandinavian shipwrights affected their opposite numbers across Europe. Despite the fact that people living in northern Europe and the British Isles had plentiful reasons for hating and fearing the ships as much as their occupants, still they found time to admire their effectiveness. Communities that had suffered at the hands of the Vikings found it worthwhile to redesign their own vessels in the image of the dragon ships. The sleek lines — from keels to gunwales — would be mimicked again and again and the essentials of the design would long outlive the culture that first produced them. Even the design of the ships that carried William the Conqueror’s soldiers to England’s shores in 1066 would owe a debt to their Viking predecessors.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SWEDISH VIKINGS IN THE EAST

  ‘Legend is the live part of history. The past, as such, is dead …’

  Vladimir Volkoff, Vladimir, the Russian Viking

  My own fascination with the Vikings was inspired neither by archaeology, nor by reading their own sagas. It was no earnest pursuit of learning that brought me face to face with the people who broke upon our shores like a great wave, before crashing across the length and breadth of Europe and the Middle East and setting foot in North America half a millennium before the birth of Columbus. It was no teacher and no book that set me on my way. Rather it was a childhood Saturday afternoon at home, spent watching Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis.

  I suspect that no small boy who enjoyed the 1958 epic The Vikings and saw Kirk Douglas run along the oars of that long ship (a stunt he insisted on performing himself!) or climb up the ladder of axes thwacked into the barred gates of the Northumbrian castle prior to a sword-fight to the death with Tony Curtis on top of its highest tower, was ever quite the same again. At least one small boy was driven for weeks thereafter to emulate the devil-may-care feats until a near-death experience involving an ill-advised gallop across the top of a set of iron bicycle stands in the playground of his primar
y school finally made him accept his physical limitations.

  After a few moments spent flat on my back, winded and stunned but essentially unhurt, my head cleared and I found to my surprise that not only was I still alive, I was quite able to stand. My ambition to run the oars had almost completely departed, but my affection for the wild men of the north stayed put. Maybe it is unwise to confess as much — that the deepest roots of my interest in the so-called Viking Age, beloved by historians and archaeologists alike, lie in the shallow soil of Hollywood — but I care not a jot. This has been the story of my life, and of my love of the past. As Vladimir Volkoff wrote, ‘Legend is the live part of history,’ and I am with that man all the way. If you ask me, a fascination triggered by a story heard in childhood — be it from a novel, action-movie or whatever else — is the purest of all.

  But having encountered them first in the realm of the action movie, it took a long time before I was able to accept the Vikings had ever been real. The truth of the matter of course is that most of the people who populated Scandinavia between the eighth and eleventh centuries spent no more time sailing, raiding and pillaging than anyone else in Europe. The vast majority of people in Denmark, Norway and Sweden were peaceable farmers, working only to provide for their families and to meet their obligations to those above them in a clearly defined hierarchical society.

  In general physical appearance the Viking Age population was little different to that in Scandinavia today. Examination of skeletons reveals an average height for men of around five feet eight inches, while that of women was perhaps five feet three — slightly shorter than today but not by much. Some taller specimens have been found and the state of bones and teeth suggests many people enjoyed a reasonable diet. Lives were based around hard physical labour — even the majority of the landowning farmers had to put the hours in on their farms — and while the work took its toll in the form of early onset of osteoarthritis and other skeletal evidence of heavy wear and tear, it also produced robust and in many cases impressively built men and women. Coarsely ground flour was hard on the teeth, and the usual mouthful was often fairly worn down as a result; but an absence of sugar in the typical diet meant tooth decay was almost unknown.

  Something of the order of 50 per cent of children died before their tenth birthday, but for those making it into adulthood there was the chance of a reasonable life expectancy. Skeletons from Danish cemeteries revealed the majority of those examined had made it to between 35 and 55 years of age, which by the standards of people living a thousand and more years ago is certainly respectable.

  Archaeological evidence reveals equipment for spinning and weaving wool was commonplace in Viking homes and farmsteads and it is certainly safe to assume the majority of clothes were home-made. Burials provide scraps of textiles from time to time, but a considerable amount of educated guesswork has gone into imagining how the majority of the population dressed. Men wore either ankle-length trousers or something more akin to plus fours, tied below the knees, and long-sleeved tunics reaching to mid-thigh and drawn in at the waist by a buckled belt. Lastly they wore woollen cloaks, draped to leave the sword arm free and fastened by a pin or a brooch at the shoulder. Women seem to have worn long woollen dresses, reaching to mid-calf or ankle, over undergarments of linen. The dresses were fastened at the shoulder by pairs of usually oval brooches. Shoes for both sexes were made of tanned animal skins.

  Most items of clothing were woollen, often with undergarments of linen. Once the Viking Age was properly under way, silk was imported from the east — indeed from as far away as China — but was too expensive to have been used for whole garments. The luxury commodity was employed instead in the addition of colourful panels and details on woollen dresses and cloaks.

  Animal furs were in plentiful supply, sourced especially from the Saami peoples living and hunting in the most northerly Scandinavian territories, and would have been used both for the production of warm outer garments and for extravagant detailing. While the excavated textile fragments are usually stained dark grey or black by their time in the ground, scientific analysis has demonstrated the Vikings were fond of bright colours and obtained dyes from many sources. Large quantities of walnuts recovered during excavations at Hedeby, for instance, were used to produce brown dye.

  One of the most famous and detailed contemporary descriptions of Vikings was made by Ibn Fadlan, an Arab writer who accompanied an embassy sent by the Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad to the Bulghars of the Volga in AD 921. The Bulghars wanted money and support from the Arabs and Caliph al-Muqtadir was demanding homage in return. In the heart of the Bulghar territory, the embassy encountered a people Ibn Fadlan described as the ‘Rusiyyah’ and his account of them is as vivid now as it was when he wrote it down more than a thousand years ago.

  I saw the Rūsiyyah when they had arrived on their trading expedition and had disembarked at the River Ātil. I have never seen more perfect physiques than theirs — they are like palm trees, are fair and reddish, and do not wear the qurtaq or the caftan. The man wears a cloak with which he covers one half of his body, leaving one of his arms uncovered. Every one of them carries an axe, a sword and a dagger and is never without all of that which we have mentioned. Their swords are of the Frankish variety, with broad, ridged blades. Each man, from the tip of his toes to his neck, is covered in dark green lines, pictures and such like. Each woman has, on her breast, a small disc, tied around her neck, made of either iron, silver, copper or gold, in relation to her husband’s financial and social worth. Each disc has a ring to which a dagger is attached, also lying on her breast. Around their necks they wear bands of gold and silver. Whenever a man’s wealth reaches ten thousand dirhams, he has a band made for his wife; if it reaches twenty thousand dirhams, he has two bands made for her — for every ten thousand more, he gives another band to his wife. Sometimes one woman may wear many bands around her neck. The jewellery which they prize the most is the dark green ceramic beads which they have aboard their boats and which they value very highly: they purchase beads for a dirham a piece and string them together as necklaces for their wives.

  Though he was undoubtedly impressed by some aspects of the appearance of those Scandinavian travellers and merchants, he was less taken with what he saw of their approach to personal hygiene:

  They are the filthiest of all Allāh’s creatures: they do not clean themselves after excreting or urinating or wash themselves when in a state of ritual impurity [after coitus] and do not even wash their hands after food. Indeed they are like wayward donkeys, asses that roam in the fields. They arrive from their territory … and moor their boats by the Ātil … building on its banks large wooden houses. They gather in the one house in their tens and twenties, sometimes more, sometimes less … They cannot, of course, avoid washing their faces and their heads each day, which they do with the filthiest and most polluted water imaginable. I shall explain. Every day the slave-girl arrives in the morning with a large basin containing water, which she hands to her owner. He washes his hands and his face and his hair in the water, then he dips his comb in the water and brushes his hair, blows his nose and spits in the basin. There is no filthy impurity that he will not do in this water. When he no longer requires it, the slave-girl takes the basin to the man beside him and he goes through the same routine as his friend. She continues to carry it from one man to the next until she has gone round everyone in the house, with each of them blowing his nose and spitting, washing his face and hair in the basin.

  Ibn Fadlan’s writings, fascinating and colourful though they are, have been the subject of much debate over the years. While most historians are happy enough to accept that his ‘Rusiyyah’ were indeed of Scandinavian origin, some have suggested the Arab writer had come into contact with a group or tribe in the process of assimilating aspects of the cultures and traditions of the peoples they were spending so much time living among. In other words, while some details of their appearance and behaviour were ‘Viking’, other elements might have been ac
quired from the locals with whom they were now accustomed to spending time. The Rusiyyah he describes may in short have been the product of some sort of hybrid culture — part Scandinavian and part Bulghar — and therefore unique.

  If the Vikings often seem to be more the stuff of legend than flesh and blood, then much of the mystery results from their first portrayals in the written record. Every schoolchild knows about (or at least used to know about) that first shocking, murderous raid on the monastery at Lindisfarne. But when in search of the real Vikings it is important to understand just how precious a jewel Lindisfarne was for eighth-century Christians — and therefore the depth of the horror caused by its desecration by those they considered unclean.

  The community on Lindisfarne was initially a product not of Roman Christianity, but its Irish-Celtic variant. The conversion of Ireland had begun in the fifth century, and because the society there had never been part of the Roman Empire, the early Church followed its own path, significantly independent from the dictates and fashions of Rome. It was therefore Celtic Christianity that came to Scotland with St Columba towards the end of the sixth century, and that took root most tellingly on that other northern British Holy Island, Iona, just off the west coast of the larger island of Mull.

  The first Christian mission to Northumbria had been led by a Roman-educated churchman called Paulinus. His patron had been King Edwin, but when that ruler died in battle in 633 the man of God was forced to flee. Oswald, Edwin’s successor, had grown to maturity not in Northumbria but in exile among the Gaels of Dál Riata, the kingdom founded in western Scotland by Irishmen at the turn of the sixth century. Oswald had been converted to Christianity by the monks of Iona, so when he decided in AD 635 that his people needed a bishop, it was to that same community that he turned for a suitable candidate. A monk named Aidan arrived from the west, and Oswald granted him the tidal island of Lindisfarne as the setting for a monastic community.