Children of Ash and Elm

by Neil Price;

  10

  MARITORIA

  THE VIKING RAIDS WERE VIOLENT, brutal, and tragic. They were also very profitable indeed, albeit with inherent risks. As such, the raids were deeply political and also represented the manifestation of economic policy—often in ways that many of their participants (as distinct from their commanders) might not have recognised at the time.

  The centuries prior to the start of the Viking Age saw the rise of what might best be called maritoria, a form of power that combined the aspirations of petty kings with the control of territory, closely connected to a new form of market, and all linked by a relationship with the sea. The reasons for the raids can be found in these special polities and their underpinnings.

  As with so much of the early history of the North, these developments had their roots in the gradual decline of the Western Roman Empire, and in the changes that rolled over Scandinavian societies as the imperial institutions to the south contracted or failed. The rising aristocracies—those ‘new elites’ with their hall culture, skaldic self-honour, and monumental burial mounds—were only part of the picture. Set alongside them, but intimately meshed with their ambitions, was the revival and reorientation of the post-Roman economy. It was the revolution in these market forces, as much as the rise of the warlords, that laid the foundations for the Viking Age.

  By the sixth and seventh centuries, at the latest, the Scandinavian elites were already expanding beyond localised economies and subsistence strategies to embrace more organised, long-distance activities. Thus a North Atlantic right whale caught off the Norwegian coast supplied a local market with oil, blubber, and meat, while its hide and especially its eminently carveable bones were exported to the rest of Scandinavia. These connections extended still further, both to the nascent European empires that remade themselves along pseudo-Roman models, and also to the east with the trade routes of the maritime Silk Roads through the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean and ultimately even to distant China. The key to all this was control of the system, which was exercised through the establishment of specialised market centres, founded as deliberate strategies of economic power with an eye to both domestic and foreign trade.

  This reorientation, from networks of redistribution and gift exchange to more disembedded trade, was not an isolated development. The new mercantile horizons of Scandinavia were a reflection of a general north-west European phenomenon: the resurgence of the post-Roman economy with an international platform. In England and Frankia, new ‘emporia’ of this kind were known as wics, a component preserved today in east-coast town names such as Ipswich (Gipeswic) and Norwich (Norvic). They included Hamwic (today’s Southampton) and Lundenwic (London, centred south-west of the Roman city), and also extended into other, more northern kingdoms such as Northumbria, with sites like Eoforwic (York).

  In a form of settlement known as ‘ladder development’, several of these places initially took the form of two streets running parallel with the shore, one above the other, with cross streets (the ‘rungs’ of the ladder) connecting them at intervals. The waterside thoroughfare linked directly with the incoming marine traffic, which was either drawn up on the sand itself or, later, served by docks and jetties. It is no accident that the main street of Lundenwic was strond (now cocooned within the city of Westminster as the Strand)—literally ‘the beach’, as the name implies. On the street behind stood the residences, workshops, and commercial heart of the settlements. The ‘ladders’ soon expanded by adding more streets both away from the water and along its frontage.

  Within the Frankish Empire, there was a similar market centre at Quentovic, a now-lost settlement on the Canche River near Étaples in the Pas-de-Calais, its trading activities primarily directed across the Channel to Kent. In addition to Quentovic, Frisia—roughly the modern Netherlands—emerged as a particular fulcrum of the north-west European trade. Frisia was central precisely because it was also liminal, bordering the territories of the Franks, Saxons, and Danes, and thus critical to them all—especially as a conduit of trade. It had maritime connections west and south, north-east to the base of Jylland, and also to the lands of the Germans. The key site here was Dorestad, located in the Utrecht region near a crucial fork of the Rhine that afforded excellent communications. From the seventh century onwards, it grew rapidly into the primary northern market and port of the Frankish Empire. By far the largest entrepot of its kind, Dorestad developed into an extraordinary linear development running for several kilometres along the river. Its broad timber jetties stretched far out into the stream and were so tightly packed as to essentially form a wooden, overwater extension of the market itself.

  By the early 700s the same phenomenon was appearing in Scandinavia.

  In Denmark, the earliest Scandinavian region to consolidate higher political authority, this development centred on Ribe in south-west Jylland, close to the border of the kingdom. Probably the first of the expanding Scandinavian emporia, it seems to have been founded early in the eighth century, stimulated by proximity to the English and Frankish wics, and the Frisian trade in particular. Within a few years, a series of long, regular plots were laid out along a basic street system, bounded by low fence lines and containing workshop areas for the production of beads, metalwork, and other crafts. It was probably not much to look at initially, and perhaps was only seasonally occupied, but Ribe was the beginning of an economic and political experiment that was to have far-reaching consequences.

  17. The first market. A reconstruction of early Ribe, as it looked in the late eighth century—small plots, divided by low fences with simple workshops and craft activity. This place would grow into one of Scandinavia’s first towns. Image by and © Flemming Bau.

  By around 770 or so, a second major Danish market had been founded on the opposite coast of Jylland at Hedeby (now Haithabu in northern Germany, but at the time firmly in Viking-Age Denmark). Situated on the Schlei River, Hedeby lay farther south than Ribe and was integrated into the Danevirke defensive rampart that guarded the border. A note in the Royal Frankish Annals, one of the official court histories of Charlemagne’s empire, relates how in 808 the Danish king, Godfred, had been raiding in the Slavic territories to the east, where he destroyed the trading settlement of Rerik (modern Groß Strömkendorf in northern Germany). Allied at the time with the Franks and serving as a sort of free port, Rerik was essentially a kind of West Slavic Ribe, and it is clear Godfred appreciated its potential. Rather than occupying a site far from his home base, the Annals record how Godfred simply ‘transferred’ its merchants wholesale to Hedeby, installing them there under his patronage.

  The same process was playing out elsewhere in the North. In Sweden, something similar was set up on an island in Lake Mälaren, which was some distance from the sea but provided a sheltered, deep-water harbour and ready access both to the Baltic and to the river routes inland. In this settlement of Birka, the earliest occupation layers date to around 750—somewhere between the foundation of Ribe and Hedeby. What may perhaps have been a local market site was quickly made permanent with houses, workshops, and streets arrayed in a crescent with its open edge against the water, the lanes running down to stone-founded wooden jetties that extended into the lake. The first Christian mission to Sweden reached Birka in 829 under the leadership of a senior priest (and later archbishop) named Anskar, and the records of his largely unsuccessful efforts also contain details of the market. It was apparently under royal stewardship, run by an agent while the local king had one of his hall complexes across the water on a neighbouring island. Archaeology tells us that the interior of the settlement was cramped, full of small structures, and probably unsanitary. At Birka’s northern periphery, a number of large longhouses stood apart, each on its own artificial terrace elevating it above the lake—perhaps the ‘villa’ community of wealthier inhabitants who did not want to mix with the dirt and squalor of the main settlement. A defended hillfort was established at one end of the settled area, and soon the entire market centre would be enclosed
by a wall that also divided it from the growing numbers of cemeteries outside.

  These beach emporia and markets—sites such as Hedeby and Birka—were manifestations of the changing economic history of post-Roman Europe, as it was rewritten by upwardly mobile societies. In the new academic vocabulary, they are seen as ‘nodal points’ in international networks, connecting different petty kingdoms and allowing them to trade as peers. In the course of the Viking Age, some of them would grow into true urban centres.

  There was a clear hierarchy of markets, at its lower end the everyday transactions made amongst the rural population, either between themselves or through itinerant peddlers. Right from the beginning of the later Iron Age, at least, there were interconnected webs of smaller trading places—anything from a single jetty with sales made directly over the side of a boat, to local fairs and markets. An in-depth study of Gotland, for example, has shown that the entire coastline of viable landing places was covered by tiny harbours—some fifty sites in all—most of them just a stone-set slipway, an area with a cleared path to the sand, and little more, but sufficient for local needs.

  As regional trading places, they could also act as intermediaries for the wider distribution of goods from the bigger markets. In the same way, all the major coastal and riverine installations not only served the primary maritime trade, but also acted as connectors—gateways, as economic historians term them—into the overland mercantile routes of the interior. These in turn fed into the pre-existing networks of local exchange that had probably been there for millennia, thus ensuring that the long-distance commodities that arrived in, say, Ribe, could make their way to rural communities and farms.

  One function that the larger markets such as Birka and Ribe clearly served was as ports of trade for the importation of goods from overseas. However, numerous layers of exchange operated through early Viking-Age societies. An emphasis on the controlled import of foreign goods both exotic and mundane can tend to overshadow the value of domestic production, which of course can also be managed and appropriated. There also seems to have been a concept of ‘commodity money’, whereby produce and raw materials of various kinds—whether textiles, combs, or even foodstuffs—were exchanged at agreed-upon rates literally as money, not as barter. In the eighth century, with the rise of the emporia, these things were produced in the countryside and moved into the markets; later in the Viking Age proper, the market towns themselves would take over this production.

  The archaeology of the major markets brings out one of their qualities above others—namely that they were carefully planned in regular plots, often laid out on a basic street grid, with fences demarking clear zones of property and control. In short, these places were organised, although whether by a central authority or through collective, communal endeavour is another matter. It is not hard to see how this zoning could also take on other dimensions, in the form of exclusive rights of trade or even a form of protectionism.

  Given this level of organisation, a perennial question in Viking studies has concerned the roles played by elites in the establishment of these early market centres. While economic impetus was provided by patrons among the petty kings and other regional rulers, places like Ribe were also driven by larger patterns of trade. The introduction of the sail into Scandinavian shipping technology seems to coincide with the rise of these mercantile centres, and was thus another possible component of these economic developments.

  Many market centres also doubled as assembly sites, and the dual function brought people together in ever-greater numbers; Birka was a major one, for example. It is hard to be sure, but some of the names of the regular regional markets also hint at cultic overtones, such as the Disting, ‘the Dísir assembly’, held in Uppsala. Perhaps the beings connected with such occasions also functioned as something akin to a patron saint of commerce.

  Through association with the assemblies, this ‘democratic’ baseline is important. It seems clear that the paramount force for regional and international trade was not the will of the political elites, but the agency of merchants and craftworkers. This was linked, in turn, to a clear perception of supply in response to demand, intertwined with the variables of taste and fashion. In this respect the kings were more like entrepreneurs, investing in a likely venture, and perhaps in a better position than others to seize an opportunity. In the power structures of the Scandinavian polities at the eve of the Viking Age, there was a web of relationships governing the production, distribution, and consumption of goods, not only by and for the elites but extending to all levels of society.

  Another related question concerns who actually lived in Ribe, Birka, and the rest. Local exchange was a very different matter to large-scale international trade conducted with a foreign ship, and each form of transaction required a different infrastructure. This was reflected in the settlements that grew up around these sites as they developed, with populations that, broadly speaking, were more closely integrated into the mercantile activity that came to dominate all other aspects of the place. These emporia also saw the creation of what would effectively become a genuine professional class—artisans specialising in craft manufacture, and shopkeepers dedicated to its sale.

  These fledgling towns were not only aspirational centres of early trickle-down economies. All such places have their darker sides—their diversions, subversions, and illegalities. Drinking was a sufficiently popular activity to require dedicated taverns, even if they are hard to detect in the archaeology; the same probably applied to sex work. It is also likely that criminal activities took new and different forms in the markets. No doubt raiders home from the sea could find other sources of income in the bustling streets (“nice workshop you got here, be a shame if something happened to it”). Any surge in trade involving physical valuables also requires security, bodyguards, insurance of a sort—a different kind of townies. The Viking Age definitely had its underworlds, and its shadows.

  These new roles, prompted by the new markets, sometimes took very parochial forms. On Gotland, for example, jewellers expressed their local allegiances with distinctive kinds of dress accessories found only on the island, but incorporating designs and symbols from other traditions and cultures. The result was an insular identity, signalled on the person, but acknowledging the wider context in which the islanders happily operated. The same can be said of Ribe, Hedeby, Birka, and other such sites. At the same time, in all these market centres, it is clear that the population had regular and early access to non-local products, with implications for their contacts to a wider hinterland connecting the rural and ‘urban’ populations. Meat and produce were brought in from the country. Fish could be caught locally, but at some sites, such as Birka, there was also an extensive exploitation of bird resources such as eider—hunting them in the spring out into the archipelago of islands.

  There is also a marked mobility in these people, and isotopic studies of the early Birka burial grounds have shown a particular trend for individuals to move around the age of thirteen or fourteen—perhaps the threshold of adulthood. The geographic range seems to span up to one hundred kilometres in any direction.

  The early markets acted, then, as conduits for commerce and gateways for foreign contacts. In the seventh century and the first decades of the eighth, these contacts were almost entirely coming to Scandinavia; trade did not take the form of Northern merchants venturing outwards. This changed in the mid-eighth century, and the people of the North started to move towards the trade and to exercise direct control over it. This was one of the key contributing factors to the singularity of the Viking Age—the economic motor running beside and behind the force of the raids.

  Remembering the first evidence of such activity, the Salme ships and the violent end of the men within them, we will explore this mercantile world first in the east, through the Baltic. After this, we can follow the chronology of the raids—Portland, Lindisfarne, and the rest—and turn to the west.

  The Baltic, the ‘Eastern Sea’ for the Norse (and sti
ll the Swedish name for it, Östersjön), had been a trading ground throughout prehistory, with goods flowing into and out of the North since at least the Bronze Age. The islands of its western rim—Gotland, Öland, and Bornholm—were culturally Scandinavian, albeit with their local quirks and expressions of identity as in every other region.

  The economic revolution of the West, seen in the establishment of organised emporia, also had its eastern counterpart; the same trends appeared in the Baltic at precisely the same time. These Vikings of the West and East were all the same people, acting in much the same way across the range of their travels and contacts, though with behaviour that naturally varied according to local conditions and contingencies.

  There was clearly an active trade with what is now Finland, probably via the Åland archipelago that in the Viking Age was virtually a Scandinavian cultural outpost, albeit a little more distanced than Gotland. Copper alloy was a major import, used for the distinctive bronze ornaments in female jewellery. Finnish circular brooches turn up on Gotland, at Birka, and elsewhere in the Mälar Valley, while Scandinavian oval brooches are found in the Finnish interior.

  On the southern Baltic shore, a Slavic resurgence can be detected between the Oder and Vistula Rivers, beginning around 650 and manifested in the establishment of something resembling the emporia of the North Sea. Larger markets were coming into being—such as Rerik, which played a role in the foundation of Hedeby—but there were also many smaller ones. Archaeologists have found some fifteen trading sites along the North German and Polish coastline—all of which had a Scandinavian presence by the eighth century. These West Slavic sites were characterised by partly subterranean pit-houses, organised along similar lines to the Scandinavian emporia though with a local touch.