Jonathan Clements - A brief history of the Vikings: the last pagans or the first modern Europeans?

JONATHAN CLEMENTS, is the author of The Pirate King, The Moon in the Pines and Confucius: A Biography. He divides his time between Jyvskyl and London and his website is www.muramasaindustries.com

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF

THE LAST PAGANS OR THE FIRST MODERN EUROPEANS?

JONATHAN CLEMENTS

ROBINSON
London

In Memory of
Thorkill Clements

born in Reykjavik, died in London

Constable & Robinson Ltd

5556 Russell Square

London WC1B 4HP

www.constablerobinson.com

This edition published by Robinson,

an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd 2005

Copyright Muramasa Industries Ltd 2005

The right of Jonathan Clements to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in

Publication Data is available from the British Library.

ISBN 1845290763
eISBN 978-1-47210-775-6

Printed and bound in the EU

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 2 4 6

Introduction: Britannia Deserta
The Dark Ages

1 Songs of the Valkyries
Myths and Legends of Scandinavia

2 Fury of the Northmen
From the First Raids to Harald Bluetooth

3 Great Heathen Hosts
Highlands, Islands, Ireland and England

4 Brother Shall Fight Brother
Harald Fairhair and Sons

5 The Road East
Vikings, Russians and Varangians

6 Advent of the White Christ
From Harald Greycloak to Olaf Crowbone

7 Beyond the Edge of the World
Iceland, Greenland and Vinland

8 London Bridge is Falling Down
From Svein Forkbeard to Olaf the Stout

9 The Thunderbolt of the North
The Life and Legends of Harald the Ruthless

10 Children of Thor
One Thousand Years Later

The Gokstad longship (wood), Viking, 9th century/Viking Ship Museum, Oslo, Norway.
Bridgeman Art Library

Fragment of a painted stone showing Odin on his eight-legged horse Sleipnir. Gotlandic, 8th/9th century.
Photo: akg-images, London

Carriage from the Oseberg grave (burial mound with stones shaped like a ship), Norway, ninth century AD.
Photo: akg-images, London

Oseberg ship, oak ship from a grave mound (9th century), which included the grave found in Oseberg, Norway.
Photo: akg-images, London

Wooden post with carved animal head. From the Oseberg grave. Norway, ninth century AD.
Photo: akg-images, London

Trelleborg Fortress.
C M Dixon/Ancient Art & Architecture Collection Ltd

Reconstruction of the Viking barracks at the fortress of Trelleborg. It is considered to have been built by Harald Bluetooth. Slagelse, Denmark, AD 980981.
Werner Forman Archive

Interior reconstruction of the Viking barracks at Trelleborg, built following the pattern of the original foundation post holes. Trelleborg, Denmark, AD 9101020.
Werner Forman Archive

St Olaf, patron saint of Norway (Olaf Haraldsson), Norway, 13th century, found in Gotland.
Werner Forman Archive/Statens Historiska Museet, Stockholm

Smiths mould for casting both Christian crosses and Thors hammers.
Werner Forman Archive/National Museum, Copenhagen

LAnse aux Meadows National Historic Park (Newfoundland, Canada), Viking settlement, c.AD 1000: (oldest known European settlement in North America).
Photo: akg-images, London/Jrgen Sorges

A berserker, chewing on his shield, amid the piece of the Lewis chess set.
C M Dixon/Ancient Art & Architecture Collection Ltd

The Lindisfarne stone, depicting a raiding party of Vikings.
C M Dixon/Ancient Art & Architecture Collection Ltd

There are already several excellent books on the Viking Age, such as the works of Magnusson, Brnsted, Sawyer and Roesdahl, and my personal favourite for all-round factual information, Gwyn Jones revised History of the Vikings. Accordingly, I have tried to steer a course between the other available authorities, concentrating on the personalities of the Viking era, who made up that remarkably small handful of families and interlocking dynasties who were the prime movers of the Viking expansion. In order to accomplish this, I have included several family trees to aid the reader in appreciating the Viking Age not as the clash of armies but as a series of family dramas, complete with feuds and reunions, as descendants of local leaders in Scandinavia entwine with the kings and queens of medieval Europe. In a small way, I hope to achieve something of the sense of the sagas that preserve so much of Viking culture for us, showing the people of Scandinavia through their personal lives, or at least, as romanticized and distorted by their later descendants in Iceland. When saga claims veer far from the evidence of archaeology or other orthodox sources, I have endeavoured to strike a balance.

I have stayed clear of some of the more famous passages that can be found in the works of others. Ibn Fadlans infamous treatment of Rus funeral rites, human sacrifice, gang rape and all, features largely in the works of Brnsted and Jones, and need not be repeated here. Instead, I have concentrated on a passage in Ibn Fadlan that I find far more evocative of the Viking experience in the East an account of declining trade and the desperation that can ensue. Similarly, nothing encapsulates the Vikings relationship with the Native Americans better than Gudrids heart-rending conversation with a Skraeling in her tent, which I have chosen to quote in place of the more usual tales of Vinland. With such an approach, I hope this book will provide a new perspective even for those who already familiar with other studies.