The history of another town, the port of Hedeby, or Haithabu, situated on the Baltic side of Schleswig where Denmark and Germany meet one another, helps us connect the Baltic to the North Sea world. It has been said that ‘the remains of Haithabu lie in one of the richest archaeological zones in all of Europe’.26 Although an earlier and much smaller trading settlement may have existed nearby, the foundation of Haithabu can be securely dated to the war between King Godfred of Denmark and his neighbour Charlemagne around 810, since timbers found on the site date from 810 or soon after. While campaigning on the eastern side of Denmark against Charlemagne’s allies, Godfred raided a port established by the Slav people known as the Obodrites close to present-day Lübeck, and deported its merchants to his own new town of Haithabu. The Obodrites had obligingly provided the Frisian merchants from the North Sea, and their customers in northern France, with goods that came through the Baltic, most importantly furs and amber.27 Godfred’s idea was, then, to create a Danish entrepôt that would dominate traffic between the Baltic and the North Sea. Charlemagne regarded this as intolerable interference and set off with an army (accompanied by the elephant that Harun ar-Rashid, caliph of Baghdad, had presented to him). Godfred built up his defences, but there was rivalry at court and he was murdered by Danish foes.
All the same, Haithabu survived and flourished, particularly between about 850 and 980. It was a centre of amber crafting, and its mixed population included Scandinavians, Slavs and Frisians, who found the town’s location much better than anything that had existed before: it lay on an inlet as close as one can get to the western flank of Jutland, so that goods unloaded in the North Sea could be funnelled through to Haithabu very easily – the analogy in the ancient Mediterranean would be with two-facing Corinth. Haithabu was surrounded on its land side by a strong defensive wall, while its harbour offered plenty of jetties to incoming boats. Among goods that reached this port were tin and mercury that may have originated in Spain or England.28 A canal ran through the middle of the town and, rather as at Dorestad, the houses were built of timber and wattle, on their own little plots of land connected to one another by narrow pathways. The expansion of Haithabu marked the first stage in the creation of commercial networks that linked two regions which were experiencing exponential economic growth: the North Sea and the Baltic.29
The Baltic was coming alive. Its many chains of small islands fostered sea traffic by their very nature. The Åland Islands between Sweden and Finland became a meeting point between Scandinavians from the west and Finno-Ugrians from the east; many of the stories in the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, only recorded in the nineteenth century, probably originated in the watery world around these islands.30 Nowhere was the liveliness of Baltic networks more obvious than on the island of Gotland off the southern coast of Sweden. The decline of Birka brought Gotland to the fore, for the island was beautifully situated with easy access across the sea to all the shores of the Baltic. Silver dirhams from the Abbasid caliphate have been found at Paviken on Gotland, which was only one centre among many for the trade of the Gotlanders.31 The Gotlanders hoarded even greater quantities of German and other continental coins, and this thésaurisation of bullion that flooded into the region, whether it was acquired through trading or raiding, must have placed quite a severe strain on the economies of both western Europe and western Asia. Exotic luxuries sometimes reached Scandinavia along with the silver – the most famous example is a small Buddha cast in Kashmir that turned up in central Sweden.32
Generally, the fate of Islamic dirhams was to be melted down, for the only Viking coins before the end of the tenth century were some imitations of Carolingian money made in Haithabu soon after it was founded.33 Sometimes, as the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf poet shows, precious metals were deployed in gift exchange, as kings and famous warriors conferred armbands and other signs of status on one another. Often too European coins were sent back to Germany as payment for Rhineland wines, for one constant feature of the Viking world was its love for strong drink, confirmed by the mass of fragments of Rhenish wine jugs found in Scandinavia. What the merchants of Haithabu, Birka and Gotland knew was that there was persistent demand for the goods they sent out of the Baltic and brought into the Baltic, demand that extended to England, France and beyond, and that servicing this demand provided them with a good livelihood.
That this trade was conducted by sea goes without saying, but the connections with the Muslim world were only rendered possible by the penetration of the river systems that flowed south towards the Steppes, and by the creation of a Varangian-ruled polity based at Kiev, the principality of Rus; Scandinavian merchants trading towards Staraya Ladoga and Novgorod pioneered routes into the interior that gave access to seemingly limitless supplies of furs and that were once again to become important in the heyday of the German Hansa.34 One important town that linked the Baltic to the Eurasian landmass was Wolin, whose site lies just across the present-day German–Polish border; it flourished from the tenth to the twelfth century, and, like Haithabu, it was no mere village: its houses were strung along four kilometres of wooden pathways, and they were impressive structures, sizeable and handsomely decorated. Wolin supplied the Baltic and areas beyond with goods from the interior, and vice versa, but it also had its own lively potteries, amber workshops and glass-makers. Adam of Bremen, who wrote in the late eleventh century, claimed that ‘it is truly the largest of all cities that Europe has to offer’, and insisted that the inhabitants even included Greeks. But the local population ‘all still remain captive to their pagan heresies’, which he regretted, as they were in all other respects as trustworthy and friendly as it was possible to imagine. Christians were best advised to keep their beliefs secret.35 Adam of Bremen wrote a history of the archbishops of Hamburg, and he played up the success of the Christian Church in defeating the heinous pagan beliefs of its opponents – he wrote with lurid fascination of Viking human sacrifice at Uppsala. The fact that he lived not very far away should not mask his delight in exaggeration; but there was an underlying truth about the importance of Wolin.
III
Ships were a matter of exceptional pride to the Vikings. Memorial stones for dead warriors often depict Viking longboats, carrying a complement of warriors, with their big square sail fully set. The island of Gotland has yielded large numbers of these stones, portraying the entry of the warrior into Valhalla and scenes from Norse mythology, as well as one stone showing a majestic ship, battle scenes and the sacrifice of a human victim on an altar – a brief Swedish history of Gotland known as the Gotlanders’ Saga also tells of human sacrifices conducted by a supreme council of the entire island.36 The evidence from the Gotlandish picture stones goes back before the Viking period, beginning around AD 400; the Gotlanders at first used these stones as grave markers, but, as with the inscribed rune stones found across Sweden, they were increasingly set up at the roadside to draw attention to the person they commemorated. In the Viking world it was entirely appropriate that the journey to the next world should be aboard a ship, even if not everyone merited the elaborate ship burials that were already conducted by the Angles in England. If one could not be buried in a ship, then to be buried under or near a stone that displayed a ship in bright colours was the next best option. In the Bronze Age (before about 500 BC), the Gotlanders already buried their dead in boat-shaped graves lined with stone, and there and on the mainland carvings on rock showing oared ships were common currency. The picture stones from the Viking period include sails and rigging, and are detailed enough to show that sails were being made out of strips of cloth plaited together, because local looms could not produce single pieces of cloth wide enough to serve as sails. Plaiting was a more efficient way of bonding the strips than sewing, because it meant that there were no seams and the wind would not tear the sail apart; in the 1980s a replica Gotlandish boat was built and sailed all the way to Istanbul, and its plaited sails, though heavy, were well up to the task and did not disintegrate. The strips out of which sails
were made were of different colours, arranged in a lozenge or chessboard pattern; the striped sails beloved of modern film-makers did exist, but appear less often.37 More importantly, the masts that carried these sails were now sturdy enough to function as the main source of propulsion when the wind was favourable.
Such advances in shipping technology rendered possible the great Viking voyages in the North Sea and the Atlantic. The Vikings continued the tradition of clinker-built ships, constructing the hull out of overlapping strakes before they inserted a relatively light frame which was bonded to the hull by rivets or nails.38 As has been seen, this method of shipbuilding produced flexible boats that were well suited to the high seas of the Atlantic. Fortunately, several magnificent examples survive, of which the oldest is the Oseberg ship from Norway, built out of oak around 820 and used for a ship burial roughly fourteen years after that; one of the two skeletons found in the boat was that of a woman who died around the age of eighty, and must have been either a queen or a high priestess.39 The Oseberg ship was excavated at the start of the twentieth century, and nearly all the original boat survives; in addition to superb carvings decorating the prow and stern, it contained a burial chamber with a wonderful assortment of grave goods. On the other hand, its mast cannot have been particularly strong, and its low sides made it unsuitable for journeys across the high seas. It has been suggested that it was a ‘royal yacht’, used for display, but rarely sent out to sea. It is 21.5 metres long and a maximum of 4.2 metres wide, and there were fifteen oar-holes on each side, as well as a steering oar, so the size of its crew can easily be calculated.40 Another very fine ship, the Gokstad ship, unearthed around the same time, is a little longer and wider, with one more oar-hole on each side; this was constructed towards the end of the ninth century and buried around 910; its sides were built up rather higher, and the fact that little round shutters were attached to each oar-hole, so they could be closed off in high seas, suggests that this vessel did venture across the ocean. The mast and keel were strong enough to take the strain of a large and heavy sail.41 But whether its greater seaworthiness compared to the Oseberg ship reflects increasing sophistication in shipbuilding, or whether it reflects different use, cannot be said for certain.
In the early ninth century, it is quite likely that Viking ships were used indiscriminately for raiding and trading. The Oseberg, Gokstad and other ships offered plenty of space in their hull for the storage of goods, whether obtained by trade or seized as booty. The ‘longship’ was well suited to quick and devastating ventures across the open sea, and it could penetrate deep into rivers such as the Thames and the Seine, allowing its crew to wreak havoc far inland. The sturdiest Viking warships reached Spain and entered the Mediterranean. The geographer az-Zuhrī, who wrote in Muslim Spain (al-Andalus) in the mid-twelfth century, knew of Viking raids by Viking ships in earlier times:
There used to come from this sea [the Atlantic] large ships which the people of al-Andalus called qarāqīr. They were big ships with square sails, and could sail either forwards or backwards. They were manned by people called majūs, who were fierce, brave and strong, and excellent seamen. They only appeared every six or seven years, never in less than forty ships and sometimes up to one hundred. They overcame anyone they met at sea, robbed them and took them captive.42
The term qarāqīr passed into European languages as ‘carrack’, though carracks were late medieval cargo ships that looked quite different to Viking longships. The fearsome nature of these people was further emphasized by the use of the term majūs to describe them; originally applied to Zoroastrian magicians (or Magi), it was now being applied to ruthless heathens from the edges of the known world. The terror they brought with them extended as far as southern Spain.43 In 844 they sailed by way of Lisbon and Cádiz to the mouth of the Guadalquivir River, and then made their way, still aboard their ships, to Seville, where they are said to have looted the city for a whole week, enslaving or killing men, women and children – modern research shows, however, that the often lurid descriptions of the havoc they created are embroidered accounts of embroidered accounts of embroidered accounts of an attack that did, for sure, take place.44
This ability to reach southern Spain, and on later occasions the Mediterranean as well, speaks for advanced skills in navigation, although the leiðarstein, or lodestone, a very basic form of compass, is only mentioned in texts from the fourteenth century or later. It is a little more likely that Norsemen navigated with the sólarstein, also, however, first mentioned in texts from the late Middle Ages: these were light-sensitive crystals of cordierite that enabled sailors to locate the sun even through thick cloud; an Icelandic saga relates how a king challenged a certain Sigurð to tell him where, above snow-laden clouds, the sun actually stood. Sigurð was sure he knew, and so the king asked for the ‘sun stone’ to be brought, which enabled him to verify Sigurð’s claim: ‘then the king made them fetch the solar stone and held it up and saw where light radiated from the stone and thus directly verified Sigurð’s prediction.’ Viking navigators were helped on their way at night by close observation of the Polar Star, while in the Faroes the inhabitants developed a system for measuring the declination of the sun over the year, though, once again, it may not have been known to their Viking ancestors.45
The discovery of a group of ships at Skuldelev near Roskilde in Denmark has enlarged our understanding of the types and functions of the vessels used in this period. Roskilde lies at the end of a short and shallow fjord, and at some point in the Viking age several ships were scuttled to block sea access to Roskilde itself.46 These ships, which survive in a much more fragmentary state than those preserved in Oslo, were built rather later than the Oseberg and Gokstad ships, and several date roughly from the time of the Norman Conquest of England – the Bayeux Tapestry includes images of ships not very different from the Roskilde ones, though one especially large longship from Roskilde may have been constructed somewhat earlier in the eleventh century for King Cnut, ruler of Denmark, Norway and England, or for one of his successors.47 Cargo ships, less obviously associated with the image of Viking marauders, have received less attention, but one of the ships found at Skuldelev was a cargo boat, eleven metres long, and built in western Norway in the early eleventh century. It is thought to have been manned by only a dozen oarsmen, though it also had a mast, and its shallow draft was well suited for navigation around the sandbanks and creeks of the Danish and Frisian coasts. Another, rather larger, Skuldelev ship built out of Norwegian pine in the early eleventh century had a carrying capacity of about twenty-five tons, and sat lower in the water, so that it would have needed to make use of the jetties at Haithabu or other ports it might have visited; and Haithabu has yielded fragments of a trading vessel that might have been able to load as much as sixty tons of cargo. This is the type of ship that would have been described as a knǫrr; they were ocean-going cargo ships that were well suited to voyages to Iceland and beyond, carrying not just colonists but cattle and even household furniture. The deeper draught of the knǫrr made it much safer in unpredictable seas.48 Scandinavian ships, whether they were built for war or trade, possessed flexible shells of a sort that seems not to have been perpetuated in later centuries. As ships grew in size, so did it become necessary to make them sturdier. Lightness gave way to solidity.
In the early days of the Viking raids, then, light longships best suited the tactics of hit-and-run raiders who swooped down on the monasteries of Northumbria or the little ports of northern France. With the growth of Haithabu and the emergence of a lively trading network which in some respects replicated that of the Frisian merchants, it became more likely that the colourful Scandinavian sail poking over the horizon belonged to a rather tubby cargo boat whose passengers proposed to pay for what they wanted, rather than seizing it, and who were Christian rather than pagan. Moreover, these ships, whether longships or cargo vessels, were making more and more ambitious voyages, carrying them over the top of Scotland and out of the North Sea, towards Orkney,
Shetland, the Faroes, Iceland, and far beyond. This was the ocean that, in Norse mythology, was encompassed by the vast body of the Miðgarðr serpent; when the monster released its tail from its mouth, the world would come to an end. These were risky waters.49
20
New Island Worlds
I
It has been seen that the attack on Lindisfarne Abbey in 793 attracted special attention because it was the work of heathen raiders who desecrated a Christian shrine. That does not mean that the history of Viking raids began on the north coast of England. Quite probably raids across the North Sea reached Orkney and Shetland before they penetrated England, and it is even possible that the raiders of 793 arrived from the Scottish isles, rather than from Norway. Heading westwards, Vikings began to harass the Hebrides and to work their way into Irish waters, as far south as the Isle of Man and western Ireland. Under the year 794, the Annals of Ulster state that there was ‘a laying waste by the heathen of all the islands of Britain’. Viking graves on Orkney and Shetland, and a hoard of silver found in the Shetlands, can be dated back to about 800, while the Scandinavian settlement at Jarlshof in Shetland included a substantial farmhouse that dates back to the early ninth century.1 This does not prove that the northern isles were settled before raids on England began, but settlement is very likely to have followed a period of raiding and exploration, so we can safely say that it was at the northern tip of the British Isles that the Vikings first arrived; and their descendants would remain loyal to the Norwegian Crown right up to the fifteenth century. They created a maritime empire, if that is not too grandiose a term, that stretched down into the Irish Sea, and that was ruled at various times by earls, or jarls, of Orkney and by kings of Man.
The Boundless Sea Page 49