Vikings Read online

  Birka is surrounded by a vast cemetery of burial mounds and it was those that first attracted archaeologists to the place. From the early 1870s until almost the turn of the twentieth century, over 1,000 mounds were excavated — a third of the total — and they yielded a revealing array of grave goods. Amber, imported pottery, carnelian beads and jewellery are all well represented and certainly testify to the wealth of those buried. But it was the discovery of the very expensive silk fragments found in many of the graves that has been most impressive of all. Collars, cuffs and inset panels of silk added real glamour to outfits worn by people in Birka in the ninth and tenth centuries, and the way in which the silk was woven tells archaeologists that most of it originated in the Middle East. Elsewhere in Sweden, at Valsgärde, close by Uppsala, a ship burial of a warrior had two pieces of Chinese silk among other grave goods.

  Birka was abandoned sometime towards the end of the tenth century for reasons not yet fully understood, and its mantle taken on by the nearby settlement of Sigtuna, to the north. Perhaps Birka had been comprehensively raided and its population displaced for good. In any case the entire island of Björkö remained abandoned from that time on so that for a thousand years the only inhabitants have been sheep.

  The intervening millennium seems to have mattered hardly at all. Walk up onto the ramparts today, or through one of the gateways leading into the stone fortress (known as the Borg and once occupied by Birka’s defenders) and the Vikings do not seem so very far away. There is nothing to be seen of the houses, workshops and jetties that once buzzed with life and trade, but the burial mounds are everywhere. If so many people died and were buried in Birka, clearly many once lived there too. Most of our modern cities, towns and villages are the continuations of much older places. Squatting on top of ancient foundations, they make the past hard to see, let alone to feel. But the abandonment of Birka for a thousand years has quietly preserved an atmosphere that would otherwise be smothered by the present. In many of the ways that matter it is as they left it — a Viking Brigadoon — and of all the sites I visited in search of those people, it was easiest to imagine them there.

  Silk is delicate stuff too, easily destroyed, and its survival in the graves of Birka only adds to that sense of a past uniquely preserved. I was able to see some of the Birka silk in Stockholm’s Museum, close by cases containing the Helgö treasure. They are poor scraps now — whatever vibrant colours they once had have long since faded away or been stained dark grey and black by the chemistry of the soil. But although most of their luxury is gone, the mere fact of their continued existence after as much as 1,200 years in the ground seems miraculous.

  It is in the Stockholm Museum that the remains of one of Birka’s Viking inhabitants are displayed too, and I will admit I found the sight of them hard to bear. Birka Girl, as she is known, was found during the nineteenth-century excavations of the burial mounds. She had apparently been laid to rest in what was effectively a family plot, in the shadow of the Borg fortress. It is a prime location, looking out over the town and the lake beyond, and that even a tiny portion of it was set aside for the burial of a child says much about her status in life. Her grave was also in the shadow of a conspicuous white obelisk of a stone built into the ramparts of the fortress. It stands like a giant tooth, clearly visible from all over Birka and believed (by archaeologists at least) to mark the grave of one the town’s founding fathers — perhaps the great chief himself. In any event, Birka Girl was granted an intended eternity in a place of honour.

  She once lay among the great and the good, but she is displayed now in a little glass case. Her excavator had the wisdom — unusual indeed by the general standards of nineteenth-century excavation — to remove her in one piece. This he achieved by cutting out the whole rectangle of soil upon which she lay, still among the fragmentary remains of her wooden coffin pinned together with iron rivets. She had been laid down wearing a dress of expensively made material, and with her in the grave were a gilded circular brooch on her chest, 21 brightly coloured glass beads around her neck and a small container, crafted from animal bone and holding sewing needles. Everything declared that she had been a person of some significance, not just to her grieving family but also to the community as a whole.

  Most striking of all about Birka Girl is her tiny size. The bone specialists who have examined her skeleton most recently estimate she was no more than six years old when she died. Less than half of Viking Age children are thought to have lived to the age of 10, but Birka girl was not granted that much time on Earth. Even for a six-year-old, however, her skeleton is so fine as to appear almost birdlike. The fragility of her being is exaggerated by the bones of her skull. Found crushed into fragments by the weight of the soil, it has been painstakingly rebuilt — and the effect is haunting. Specialists in facial reconstruction have built up an approximation of how she must have looked in life and the little figure that stands by the skeleton, an image of how she may once have appeared, is heartbreaking. The mannequin wears a red dress — an expensive and luxurious colour that seems fitting given the relative richness of her burial — but it is the face that lingers in the memory.

  If this was indeed what Birka Girl looked like, then she could safely be described as otherworldly. Her eyes are set quite far apart and there is something unfamiliar about the space between the bottom of her nose and her top lip. The specialists who have studied her have recently wondered if she suffered from some sort of syndrome — perhaps the result of her mother having consumed a lot of alcohol during her pregnancy.

  That she was granted such a high-status burial after so few years of life suggests she had managed to matter a great deal to those who saw her every day. For some reason I have been unable to shake off the image I have of her: slight as a sparrow, clad in her bright red frock and skipping barefoot along the wooden walkways and alleyways of Birka; bright and eye-catching as a string of carnelian beads, and as fragile. Did she seem unique and therefore special to the townsfolk she lived so briefly among, so that they came to regard her as a lucky charm? Was her early death a source of heartbreak for her neighbours as well as for her family?

  It is in these personal connections that the past is brought to life, and made to matter I think. It might be impressive enough just to visit a site like Birka in the knowledge that there, a thousand and more years ago, lived people who knew all about goings-on in Russia, in Byzantium and in China and India too. They prepared exotic furs and fine jewellery and sent them off in ships, expecting Arabic silver and silk in return.

  But having a sense of what one of their number actually looked like — a little girl who bobbed and skipped along jetties lined with ships and boats unloading strange cargoes and stranger passengers — adds immediacy to it all, as well as intimacy.

  If the Danes and Norwegians took that little bit longer than the Swedes to start making their mark upon the world, when they finally set sail they proved every bit as daring, ambitious and intrepid. While the Swedes concentrated their efforts in the east, the Danes made their presence felt at first along the southern coast of England and around the English Channel. By then the Norwegians were already hard at work of course, all around Scotland — east, north and west — and down into the Irish Sea as far south as the Isle of Man.

  Strangely enough, one of the first Viking blows inflicted on the mainland of western Europe — at Schleswig, on the border between Denmark and Frankia, in AD 810 — was rather more than the smash and grab raid that usually typifies the first appearance of the Vikings. Instead it served to demonstrate the power and confidence of the Danish King, Godfred. Having already used force to establish an emporium of his own, at Hedeby two years before, and underlined his authority by extending the Danevirke border defences between himself and the empire of Charlemagne, he was apparently prepared to go to war. The emperor responded to the Dane’s sabre-rattling by building a new fortress of his own, on the Frankish side of the border, and was busy massing his forces there when Godfred ‘came with a fl
eet with all the cavalry of his kingdom’. According to The Frankish Annals there were 200 Viking ships and before Charlemagne knew what was happening Frisia had been plundered. It took a hefty payment of silver — in tribute — to make the invaders back off. In response Charlemagne marched an army to the banks of the Weser River and battle seemed inevitable until, in a bizarre twist, Godfred was assassinated by one of his own men. Charlemagne was succeeded as emperor by his son, Louis the Pious, who successfully sued for peace instead.

  It is worth pausing to notice how far down the road to statehood Denmark had come by the turn of the ninth century. During the seventh and eighth centuries all three Scandinavian countries had seen the rise of powerful chieftains and dynasties. But the reign of Godfred of Denmark demonstrates a further step — this time towards the emergence of a unified country with a sense of its own identity and of its separateness from its neighbours. The rise of kingship was noticeable first in Denmark but would spread to Norway and Sweden as the Viking Age progressed. If the rapid development of international trade had played a role in inspiring the avaricious activities of some, then the emergence of kings was also a contributory factor. Once power was centralised in the hands of just a few individuals — and being passed down to their descendants — men whose ambitions felt thwarted at home might look abroad for opportunities for self-advancement.

  Godfred’s posturing in 810 was nonetheless an exception and the rest of the early Viking jabs and feints were directed at undefended targets. Isolated religious communities elsewhere in the western extremities of the Frankish Empire received unwanted attention in the last year of the eighth century and on into the early decades of the ninth but it was arguably the British Isles that bore the brunt early on. By around 850, however, the Viking virus had spread right down the Atlantic coastline and even through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea.

  Just as the Swedes had done in the Baltic, the Danes and Norwegians used the great rivers to penetrate the interior of the lands that had captured their imaginations. From the seventh century onwards the town of Dorestad, in the Netherlands, had established itself as one of the key emporia of north-west Europe. Fought over again and again by Franks and Frisians, it was a hub for trade goods moving in all directions. Despite sitting approximately 50 miles inland, its location by both the Rhine and Lek rivers meant it was easily within reach of Viking dragon ships and knarrs — and was raided repeatedly during the 830s. Rouen on the Seine was likewise a target in 841. Up and down the Atlantic coast and all around the southern and eastern coastlines of the British Isles it was the same story, with the raiders picking off targets seemingly at will. Hamwic (Southampton) and Quentovic (possibly modern Étaples-sur-Mer or Montreuil-sur-Mer) were raided in 842, probably by the Danes, and in 843 it was the turn of Nantes on the Loire. Toulouse, on the Garonne, was attacked the following year and then, on 28 March 845, Easter Sunday, it was the turn of Paris.

  Charlemagne had died in AD 814. He had planned to divide his empire into more manageable parts but the premature deaths of sons gifted it in its entirety to his only survivor — Louis. Charlemagne’s unique personality had been necessary to ensure cohesion, however, and his grandsons accepted the inevitability of partition after Louis’ death. The Treaty of Verdun in 843 split the whole into three and in doing so effectively laid the territorial foundations of modern France, Germany and Italy. By 845 Paris was part of the ‘French’ kingdom ruled by Charles the Bald, and he it was who had to endure the humiliation of watching Vikings plunder a whole swathe of territory on both banks of the Seine as well as the fortified Île de la Cite of Paris itself. In the end it required a payment of 7,000 pounds of silver to bring it to a halt. But it was only a temporary respite, and the Vikings would return for more in the years to come.

  By the 860s the incessant nature of the Vikings’ activities would move a monk named Ermantarius, in his monastery on the little Atlantic-facing Island of Noirmoutier, to write:

  The number of ships grows: the endless stream of Vikings never ceases to increase. Everywhere the Christians are victims of massacres, burnings, plunderings: the Vikings conquer all in their path, and no one resists them: they seize Bordeaux, Périgeux, Limoges, Angoulême and Toulouse. Angers, Tours and Orléans are annihilated and an innumerable fleet sails up the Seine and the evil grows in the whole region. Rouen is laid waste, plundered and burnt: Paris, Beauvais and Meaux taken, Melun’s strong fortress levelled to the ground, Chartres occupied, Évreux and Bayeux plundered, and every town besieged.

  The western Franks were hardly alone in their suffering, though, and by the middle years of the ninth century communities scattered along the entire length of the Atlantic façade had reason to fear the Northmen. A number of sources, including the Frankish Annals of St Bertin as well as records made by Arab and Scandinavian writers, testify to an extraordinary voyage begun in 859 by the chieftains Björn ‘Ironside’ Jarnsida and Hastein. Having sailed down the Loire with a combined fleet of 60 ships they turned south along the French and Iberian coastlines, east along North Africa, and then through the Straits of Gibraltar before finding a safe anchorage at the mouth of the Rhone. From there the Vikings had their pick of targets along the south coast of France and beyond.

  In his Historia Normannorum — History of the Normans — written over 150 years later, the historian Dudo claimed the pair finally mistook the northern Italian town of Luna for Rome itself and led their men in an audacious attack. Whether or not they were mistaken — and it seems unlikely given their obvious maritime experience and talents for navigation — they also raided Pisa and other Italian towns before eventually withdrawing and turning for home after an expedition that had lasted three years. Although two-thirds of the fleet was lost to Muslim attacks from around the Iberian coastline, those who made it back to the Loire were received as conquering heroes.

  Throughout the remainder of the ninth century the Vikings continued to harass the peoples of the western European mainland. Since it was the rivers that gave them access to the interior, fortified bridges proved an effective deterrent. In truth, however, the attackers were just too numerous to be held entirely at bay. Several different Viking armies were abroad in the Frankish realms simultaneously, so that from time to time it was possible for kings like Charles the Bald to recruit one force to provide protection from the others. Broadly speaking it seems this put the raiders in a win-win situation. While the local rulers sought to gain the upper hand by double-dealing, the Vikings may well have come to their own agreements with one another so that large swathes of territory might be divided between them.

  While bridges and city walls were partially effective deterrents inland, it was much harder to keep the raiders away from coastal areas and, in particular, the mouths of rivers. The estuaries of both the Rhine and the Scheldt were periodically under Viking control, but it was the Seine that granted one chieftain the greatest triumph of all. Charles the Simple, King of France from 898 and a descendant of Charlemagne, found it impossible to clear out his own infestation of Vikings from their nest around the lower reaches of the Seine. Finally, around 911, he ceded the town of Rouen, together with a whole tranche of surrounding territory, to a princely Viking leader named Rollo. This was the land of the Northmen — the Nor manni — that we know today as Normandy.

  Ireland attracted some of the same Norwegian Vikings that had targeted Northumbria at the end of the eighth century. By AD 794 The Annals of Ulster recorded ‘the devastation of all the islands of Britain by the pagans’. It was a note that carried a grim portent of things to come, for in 795 monastic communities on Irish soil began to suffer the same fate. The language of the Irish chronicle can be hard even for experts to decipher, but it appears there were attacks either on Rathlin Island in the north-east or on Lambay Island in the east — perhaps both. The remote north-westerly islands of Inismurray and Inisbofin suffered brutal attacks around the same time. Three years later the heathens sacked and burnt the community on the island of Ini
s Patraic, close by the site later settled and developed as Dublin, and forced the locals in the surrounding area to buy them off with payments in the form of cattle. In 807 the annals recorded Vikings carrying out a second raid on Inismurray — before travelling more than 30 miles inland to attack a monastic community at Roscommon. That the Vikings were confident enough to stray so far from the coast seems to suggest those incidents were more than just hit-and-run raids by opportunists.

  Historian Alex Woolf suggests it is the contemporary sources themselves that are misleading — since the monks may only have been bothering to record what happened to their fellow churchmen, ‘so our Irish chronicler recounts the sack of Roscommon as if, like Iona and Inismurray, it were an isolated island and not in the very heart of the kingdom of Connacht. This is a salutary warning of how misleading our sources can be.’

  Woolf believes it unlikely the Vikings would have departed from the Dublin area in 798 and stayed away from the whole of Ireland, such an attractive source of income, for nine years. ‘Had the Northmen really been absent since 798 or had they simply confined their attentions to laymen — and women?’

  Far from it, apparently: these were the Vikings of Horoaland — from the ‘north way’ — the same that knew the Shetland Isles were just a day or two’s sail across the North Sea and that from there they could plunder the neighbouring islands and coastlines at will. By the time of the attack on Roscommon they may well have been operating from all over northern Scotland and the islands, regarding the locals around them — Scots, Irish and English — as prey.

  It is even possible the Shetland and Orkney Islands had Scandinavian colonists fully a generation or two before the first raids — and that it was those settlers who made raiding a part of their seasonal round. Prospectors who put to sea from the fjords, where farms were hemmed in along the narrow strips of flat land and clustered at their necks, would have been delighted by the wide open spaces they found in the Scottish islands. The soils and climate were much the same as those at home and men with the necessary will could carve out whole new futures for themselves.