by Michael Pye
46 Bischoff, Manuscripts and Libraries, p. 15.
47 Ibid., pp. 18, 20.
48 Brown, The Book and the Transformation, p. 40.
49 Gameson, ‘Anglo-Saxon Scribes and Scriptoria’, in Gameson, Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, pp. 103–4.
50 Emerton, Letters of St. Boniface, p. 145 for towels; pp. 101–4 for Mercia; p. 42 for ‘solace of books’.
51 Richard Gameson, ‘The Circulation of Books between England and the Continent c.871–c.1100’, in Gameson, Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, p. 344.
52 Emerton, Letters of St. Boniface, p. 42.
53 Bede (tr. J. E. King), Historia ecclesiastica, book V, pp. xxiv, 384–8.
54 Rosamond McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge, 1989), p. 194.
55 Bischoff, Manuscripts and Libraries, p. 148.
56 Ibid., pp. 67–8.
57 Emerton, Letters of St. Boniface, pp. 34–5.
58 Ibid., p. 167.
59 Ernst Dümmler (ed.), Epistolae Karolini aevi, vol. IV (Berlin, 1925), p. 17.
60 Gameson, ‘Circulation of Books’, p. 366.
61 Bischoff, Manuscripts and Libraries, p. 12.
62 See Patrick Sims-Williams, ‘An Anglo-Latin Letter in Boulogne-sur-Mer’, Medium Ævum 48 (1979), pp. 1ff. and especially 11ff. for commentary; pp. 15ff. for other women’s letters.
63 Philippe Depreux, ‘Ambitions et limites des réformes culturelles à l’époque carolingienne’, Revue Historique 304, 3 (2002), p. 729.
64 Bischoff, Manuscripts and Libraries, p. 104.
65 McKitterick, Carolingians and the Written Word, pp. 261–3.
66 Bede, Lives of the Abbots, in Webb and Farmer, Age of Bede, p. 203; for the value of the land, see Michelle P. Brown, ‘Bede’s Life in Context’, in Scott de Gregorio (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Bede (Cambridge, 2010), p. 19.
67 Bischoff, Manuscripts and Libraries, p. 76.
68 G. Waitz (ed.), Vitae Anskarii et Rimberti (Hannover, 1884), p. 32.
69 McKitterick, Carolingians and the Written Word, p. 135.
70 Quoted in Peter Sawyer, The Wealth of Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 2013), pp. 103–4.
71 McKitterick, Carolingians and the Written Word, p. 217 for Gerald; pp. 247, 258; pp. 223–5 for Dhuoda (I have adjusted the translation).
72 Rosamond McKitterick, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 218–19.
3. MAKING ENEMIES
1 Anne-Marie Flambard Héricher, Introduction to Héricher (ed.), La Progression des Vikings des raids à la colonisation (Rouen, 2003), pp. 9–10.
2 Abū Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Bakir al-Zuhrī in his Book of Geography; from Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone, Ibn Fadlān and the Land of Darkness (London, 2012), p. 110.
3 Cf Helgakvida Hundingsbana in Fyrri 26 in Carolyne Larrington’s translation of The Poetic Edda (Oxford, 1996): ‘the nobles hoisted up / the well-sewn sail in Vasrinsfjord’. Other translators prefer simply ‘woven’ but the notion of sewing is present. (Carolyne Larrington, personal communication.) The army leaving port is based on the same poem, verses 26–9, pp. 117–18.
4 See Jan Bill, ‘Viking Age Ships and Seafaring in the West’, in Iben Skibsted Klæsøe (ed.), Viking Trade and Settlement in Continental Western Europe (Oslo, 2010), pp. 34, 38 for sails; p. 27 for oars and status; pp. 22, 23 for sailing season and times.
5 Cf. John Haywood, Dark Age Naval Power (London, 1991), pp. 71ff. for the limited evidence that Saxons used sails.
6 In Óláfs Saga Helga, ch. 175; at p. 464 in Snorri Sturluson (tr. Lee M. Hollander), Heimskringla (Austin, 2009).
7 Else Mundal, ‘The Picture of the World in Old Norse Sources’, in Gerhard Jaritz and Juhan Kreem (eds.), The Edges of the Medieval World (Budapest, 2009), pp. 40, 43–5.
8 Cf. Søren Thirslund, Viking Navigation (Roskilde, 2007), passim.
9 Cf. Kristel Zilmer, ‘The Representation of Waterborne Traffic in Old Norse Narratives’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 2 (2006), p. 242.
10 On the construction, see H. Hellmuth Andersen, ‘Danevirke’, in Pam J. Crabtree, Medieval Archaeology: An Encyclopedia (New York, 2001), p. 72; on politics, see Stéphane Lebecq, ‘Aux origines du phénomène Viking’, in Héricher, Progression des Vikings, pp. 17ff.
11 Cf. Knut Helle, ‘The History of the Early Viking Age in Norway’, in Howard B. Clarke, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh and Raghnall Ó Floinn (eds.), Ireland and Scandinavia in the Early Viking Age (Dublin, 1998), p. 244.
12 Wilhelm Holmqvist, ‘Helgö, an Early Trading Settlement in Central Sweden’, in Rupert Bruce-Mitford (ed.), Recent Archaeological Excavations in Europe (London, 1975), pp. 121–3; pp. 119–20 for the crozier; cf. Jutta Waller, ‘Swedish Contacts with the Eastern Baltic in the pre-Viking and Early Viking Ages: The Evidence from Helgö’, Journal of Baltic Studies 13, 3 (1982), p. 259.
13 Thomas S. Noonan, ‘Why the Vikings First Came to Russia’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 34, 3 (1986), pp. 321ff.; for the cataracts, see Sigfús Blöndal and Benedikt S. Benedikz, The Varangians of Byzantium (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 8–12.
14 Dagfinn Skre, ‘Town and Inhabitants’, in Skre (ed.), Things from the Town: Artefacts and Inhabitants in Viking-Age Kaupang (Norske Oldfunn XXIV; Aarhus/Oslo, 2011), pp. 443ff.
15 Inger Storli, ‘Ohthere and His World – a Contemporary Perspective’, in Janet Bately and Anton Englert (eds.), Ohthere’s Voyages: A Late 9th-Century Account of Voyages along the Coasts of Norway and Denmark and Its Cultural Context (Roskilde, 2007), pp. 89 for fishing; pp. 91, 93 for oil production; p. 94 for reindeer.
16 Janet Bately’s edition and translation of Ohthere’s testimony, slipped into the text of the Anglo-Saxon version of Orosius’ Historiarum adversum Paganos Libri Septem, is in Bately and Englert, Ohthere’s Voyages, p. 46 for riches; p. 44 for ambition in his voyages.
17 Anton Englert, ‘Ohthere’s Voyages Seen from a Nautical Angle’, in Bately and Englert, Ohthere’s Voyages, p.119 for winds.
18 Rudolf Simek, ‘Elusive Elysia, or Which Way to Glasisvellir?’, in Rudolf Simek, Jónas Kristjánsson and Hans Bekker-Nielsen (eds.), Sagnaskemmtun (Graz, 1986).
19 Francis J. Tschan (ed. and tr.), Adam of Bremen: History of the Archbishops of Hamburg–Bremen (New York, 2002), p. 206.
20 Ibid., p. 211.
21 Stefan Brink with Neil Price (eds.), The Viking World (Abingdon, 2012), pp. 564, 571 for Iceland; p. 606 for Tyrkir.
22 See Michael McCormick, ‘New Light on the “Dark Ages”: How the Slave Trade Fuelled the Carolingian Economy’, Past and Present 177 (November 2002), pp. 42–3 for Muslim economy and slave prices; p. 46 for quotation from Paul the Deacon.
23 Wilfried Hartmann (ed.), Die Konzilien der Karolingischen Teilreiche 843–859 (Hannover, 1984), p. 124.
24 Brink with Price, Viking World, p. 545.
25 Howard B. Clarke, ‘Proto-Towns and Towns in Ireland and Britain in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries’, in Clarke et al., Ireland and Scandinavia, p. 336.
26 Ibrāhīm ibn Ya‘qūb reported so in 965; in Lunde and Stone, Ibn Fadlān, p. 163.
27 Hávamál, verse 13, in Andy Orchard (tr. and ed.), The Elder Edda (London, 2011), p. 16.
28 Stéphane Lebecq, Marchands et navigateurs frisons du haut Moyen ge, vol. 1: Essai (Lille, 1983), vol. 1, p. 129.
29 Black skin in a dead body might mean nitre in the soil where it was kept, or even some crude kind of mummification; nitre would account for the preservation.
30 In Orchard, Elder Edda: Thrymskvida 17, p. 99, for Thor; Helgakvida Hjörvardssonar 20, p. 130, for Atli.
31 Ibn Fadlān’s account is in Lunde and Stone, Ibn Fadl‚n, pp. 45ff.
32 David Wyatt, Slaves and Warriors in Medieval Britain and Ireland 800–1200 (Leiden, 2009), p. 142.
33 Pierre Baudin, ‘L’Insertion des Normands dans le monde franc fin IX–Xème siècles: l’exemple des pratiques matrimoniales’, in Héricher, Progression des Vikings, pp. 114–15.
34 Lunde and Stone, Ibn Fadlān, p. 163.
35 Carolyne Larrington (tr. and ed.), The Poetic Edda (Oxford, 1996), in Atlamal, the Greenland poem of Atli, verse 98, p. 232.
36 Judith Jesch, Women in the Viking Age (Woodbridge, 1991), pp. 91, 95, 176–8.
37 Oliver Elton (tr.), The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus (London, 1894), p. 277 for the generalization and pp. 229–30 for the story of Alvid.
38 Wyatt, Slaves and Warriors, p. 177; the interpretation is mine.
39 Ethelwerd’s Chronicle, in J. A. Giles (ed. and tr.), Old English Chronicles (London, 1906), p. 19.
40 Michael Swanton (ed. and tr.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (London, 1996), pp. 54–5.
41 Ibid., pp. 54–7.
42 Angelo Forte, Richard Oram and Frederik Pedersen, Viking Empires (Cambridge, 2005), p. 55 for the speculations on which this is based.
43 Swanton, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, pp. 56–7.
44 Ernst Dümmler (ed.), Epistolae Karolini aevi, vol. II (Berlin, 1895), letter 16, p. 42.
45 Ibid., letter 20, p. 57.
46 Ibid., letter 6, p. 31.
47 Ibid., letter 20, p. 57.
48 Ibid., letter 21, p. 59.
49 Ibid., letter 22, p. 59.
50 Kevin Crossley-Holland, The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology (Oxford, 1999), p. 26, cites Wihtred’s laws from Dorothy Whitelock, English Historical Documents, vol. I (London, 1979).
51 Peter Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography, accessible at www.esawyer.org.uk, item 134: ‘nisi expeditione intra Cantiam contra paganos marinos cum classis migrantibus’.
52 Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, items 160, dated 804, and 186, dated 822.
53 Timothy Reuter, ‘Plunder and Tribute in the Carolingian Empire’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, vol. 35 (1985), pp. 75–94. He quotes the Annales Fuldenses for 885 and notes a similar Frisian victory over the Northmen in 876 where the winners ‘took away the treasure and divided it among themselves …’
54 Henry Mayr-Harting, ‘Charlemagne, the Saxons and the Imperial Coronation of 800’, English Historical Review 111, 444 (November 1996), pp. 1113ff.
55 Charles H. Robinson (tr.), Anskar: The Apostle of the North 801–865, Translated from the Vita Anskarii by Bishop Rimbert, His Fellow Missionary and Successor (London, 1922), pp. 54, 56, 116, 105.
56 Florin Curta, ‘Merovingian and Carolingian Gift Giving’, Speculum 81, 3 (2006), p. 690.
57 Robinson, Anskar, p. 38.
58 Eric Vanneufville, Heliand: L’Évangile de la Mer du Nord (Turnhout, 2008), pp. 27–8.
59 I have used Vanneufville, Heliand, but also G. Ronald Murphy SJ, The Heliand, the Saxon Gospel (Oxford, 1992), especially for his notes and commentary. For a critique of Murphy, his interpretation and the possible errors in his translation, see the review by Joseph Wilson in the Journal of English and Germanic Philology 94, 3 (July 1995), pp. 454–6; I have moderated my account accordingly. With those caveats, G. Ronald Murphy, The Saxon Savior: The Germanic Transformation of the Gospel in the Ninth-Century Heliand (New York, 1989), is invaluable.
60 Murphy, Heliand, song 48, p. 130.
61 Ibid., song 2, p. 8.
62 Ibid., song 26, p. 72.
63 Ibid., song 14, p. 41, for nailed ships; song 27, p. 75, and song 35, p. 95. for ‘high-horned’.
64 Ibid., song 16, p. 48 for salt.
65 Ibid., song 18, p. 52 for oaths; pp. 57, 157 for the cup and the toast; pp. 45, 122–3 for the moneychangers; pp. 50, 135 for ‘arrogant men’; pp. 64, 177 for ‘evil clan’.
66 Ibid., song 16, pp. 45–7, for these military Beatitudes.
67 Haywood, Dark Age Naval Power, pp. 118–19.
68 Annales regni Francorum for 804, 808 and 810, cited in Lebecq, Marchands et navigateurs frisons, vol. 2: Corpus des sources écrites, pp. 303–4.
69 Haywood, Dark Age Naval Power, p. 119.
70 Stéphane Lebecq, ‘Les Vikings en Frise: chronique d’un échec relatif’, in Pierre Baudin (ed.), Les Fondations scandinaves en Occident et les débuts du Duché de Normandie (Caen, 2005), p. 102.
71 Quoted from Ermentar, De translationibus et miraculis Sancti Philiberti Libri II, in Janet L. Nelson, ‘England and the Continent in the Ninth Century: II, the Vikings and Others’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, vol. 13 (2003), p. 9.
72 Nelson, ‘England and the Continent’. I have slightly adjusted Julia Barrow’s translation from the Liber Eliensis, I, ch. 41.
73 Mechthild Pörnbacher, Walahfrid Strabo, Zwei Legenden (Sigmaringen, 1997), pp. 36ff. for Latin text of Versus de Beati Blaithmaic Vita et Fine, esp. lines 17, 95–8, 132–64. The English version is mine.
74 Christopher D. Morris, ‘Raiders, Traders and Settlers: The Early Viking Age in Scotland’, in Clarke et al., Ireland and Scandinavia, p. 77.
75 Dicuil (ed. J. J. Tierney), Liber de mensura orbis terrae, 7, 15 (Dublin, 1967), pp. 76, 77. Dicuil writes ‘nimis marinarum avium’; ‘nimis’ suggests too many, not just very many.
4. SETTLING
1 Quoted in Luigi de Anna, Conoscenza e Immagine della Finlandia e del Settentrione nella Cultura Classico-Medievale (Turku, 1988), p. 111.
2 Charles Doherty, ‘The Viking Impact upon Ireland’, in Anne-Christine Larsen (ed.), The Vikings in Ireland (Roskilde, 2001), p. 33.
3 Quoted in Judith Jesch, Women in the Viking Age (Woodbridge, 1991), p. 106.
4 See Donnchadh Ó Corráin, ‘The Vikings and Ireland’, in Stefan Brink and Neil Price (eds.),The Viking World (Abingdon, 2012), pp. 428ff.; and ‘The Vikings in Ireland’, in Larsen, The Vikings in Ireland, pp. 17ff.
5 Annals of Ulster for 840, quoted in Thomas McErlean, ‘The History of Nendrum’, in Thomas McErlean and Norman Crothers, Harnessing the Tides: The Early Medieval Tide Mills at Nendrum Monastery, Strangford Lough (Belfast, 2007), p. 313.
6 Ó Corráin, ‘Vikings in Ireland’, in Brink and Price, Viking World, pp. 17ff.
7 Egon Wamers, ‘Insular Finds in Viking Age Scandinavia’, in Howard B. Clarke, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh and Raghnall Ó Floinn (eds.), Ireland and Scandinavia in the Early Viking Age (Dublin, 1998), p. 60.
8 Donnchadh Ó Corráin, ‘Bilingualism in Viking Age Dublin’, in John Bradley, Alan J. Fletcher and Anngret Simms (eds.), Dublin in the Medieval World (Dublin, 2009), pp. 71–2.
9 David Wyatt, Slaves and Warriors in Medieval Britain and Ireland 800–1200 (Leiden, 2009), pp. 96–7.
10 Ibid., pp. 70–82.
11 Doherty, ‘Viking Impact upon Ireland’, in Larsen, Vikings in Ireland, p. 34.
12 Jan Petersen, ‘British Antiquities of the Viking Period, Found in Norway’, in Haakon Shetelig, Viking Antiquities in Great Britain and Ireland, vol. V (Oslo, 1940), p. 7.
13 A. T. Lucas, ‘The Plundering and Burning of Churches in Ireland, 7th to 16th century’, in Etienne Rynne (ed.), North Munster Studies (Limerick, 1967), p. 176. Lucas examined and counted up the evidence for who raided which church and when, which is the basis for the arguments that follow.
14 Thomas McErlean, ‘The Mills in Their Monastic Context: The Archaeology of Nendrum Reassessed’, in McErlean and Crothers, Harnessing the Tides, pp. 324ff.
15 Doherty, ‘Viking Impact upon Ireland’, in Larsen, Vikings in Ireland, p. 32.
16 See McErlean and Crothers, Harnessing the Tides; and also Thomas McErlean, Caroline Earwood, Dermot Moore and Eileen Murphy, ‘The Sequence of Early Christian Period Horizontal Tide Mills at Nendrum Monastery: An Interim Statement’, Historical Archaeology 41, 3 (2007), pp. 63–75.
17 See Lucas, ‘Plundering and Burning’, in Rynne, North Munster Studies, for a forensic account of the evidence.
18 Patrick F. Wallace, ‘Ireland’s Viking Towns’, in Larsen, Vikings in Ireland, pp. 39ff.
19 Howard B. Clarke, ‘Proto-Towns and Towns in Ireland and Britain in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries’, in Clarke et al., Ireland and Scandinavia, p. 342.
&nbs
p; 20 James Graham-Campbell, ‘The Early Viking Age in the Irish Sea Area’, in Clarke et al., Ireland and Scandinavia, p. 106.
21 Cf. Harold Mytum, ‘The Vikings and Ireland’, in James H. Barrett (ed.), Contact, Continuity and Collapse: The Norse Colonization of the North Atlantic (Turnhout, 2003), p. 128.
22 Jean Renaud, Les Vikings et les Celtes (Rennes, 1992), p. 167.
23 Christopher D. Morris, ‘Raiders, Traders and Settlers: The Early Viking Age in Scotland’, in Clarke et al., Ireland and Scandinavia, p. 90.
24 Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘The Vikings in Medieval Irish Literature’, in Larsen, Vikings in Ireland, pp. 99, 100, 101, 102.
25 See Richard Hall, ‘York’, in Brink and Price, Viking World, pp. 379ff.; and R. A. Hall et al., Aspects of Anglo-Scandinavian York (York, 2004), in the series The Archaeology of York, 8/4, especially David Rollason, ‘Anglo-Scandinavian York: The Evidence of Historical Sources’, and Allan Hall and Harry Kenward, ‘Setting People in Their Environment: Plant and Animal Remains from Anglo-Scandinavian York’.
26 Michael Swanton (ed. and tr.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (London, 1996), p. 111, from Worcester ms. (D) for 943.
27 Lesley Abrams, ‘The Early Danelaw: Conquest, Transition and Assimilation’, in Anne-Marie Flambard Héricher (ed.), La Progression des Vikings des raids à la colonisation (Rouen, 2003), pp. 59, 61, 62, 65.
28 Swanton, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, pp. 74–5.
29 See Hall and Kenward, ‘Setting People in Their Environment’.
30 Quoted in Rollason, ‘Anglo-Scandinavian York’, p. 322.
31 Swanton, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. 109, from Winchester ms. (A) for 937.
32 Wyatt, Slaves and Warriors, p. 125, quoting the twelfth-century Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh.
33 Quoted in Wyatt, Slaves and Warriors, p. 339.
34 Egge Knol, ‘Frisia in Carolingian Times’, in Iben Skibsted Klæsøe (ed.), Viking Trade and Settlement in Continental Western Europe (Copenhagen, 2010), pp. 47, 55, 57.
35 Jens Christian Moesgaard, ‘Vikings on the Continent: The Numismatic Evidence’, in Klæsøe, Viking Trade and Settlement, pp. 135, 140.
36 Quoted in Wyatt, Slaves and Warriors, pp. 99, 169.
37 See Sigfús Blöndal and Benedikt S. Benedikz, The Varangians of Byzantium (Cambridge, 1978), p. 8 for the Chinese; p. 180 for Palm Sunday; p. 190 for satires; p. 200 for death; pp. 62–3 for rape; p. 223 for Swedish law; pp. 54ff. for Harald Hardrada; p. 61 for poem; p. 64 for Jerusalem.