The Normans and Their World

by Jack Lindsay

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  The role of the Vikings was to initiate Europe into the problems of deep sea sailing and the solutions of these problems. They integrated the whole Baltic and Atlantic side of the continent, from the Neva to Gibraltar, into a single navigation area. And they did so by their determined and adventurous sea exploits, which regarded raids, piracy and trade as different facets of the urge to acquire property and develop land-holdings at home and abroad. Some language points will bring out the way in which their ideas and methods pervaded European developments in shipping and sailing, and laid the basis for the whole future expansion. On their ships it was the custom for a small group of men to lay in a common stock of provisions. The custom, motuneyti, recognized in sea law, and the related term for mess-mates, motunautar, provided the word for seaman in several languages: matroos in Dutch, matelot in French. Indeed all French sea terminology is Norse, not only the words that define the constitutive elements of ship and sails, but also the words concerned with manoeuvring. Even the word for wave, vague, is Norse, And at Rouen was to be established the Royal Arsenal of the Marine called the Clos des Galées. Other debts to Norse sailors appear in our keel, German Kiel, French quille, all derived from kjolr; heel, in the nautical sense, with the verb to heel, comes from háell, the after-end of the keel.[81]

  The Saga of Olaf Tryggvasson, under the year 1000, gives us a picture of his ships which were built in the later period:

  The winter after King Olaf came from Halgoland, he had a great vessel built at Ladehammer [near Trondhjem], larger than any ship in the country, the beam-knees of which are still to be seen. The keel resting on the grass was seventy-four ells long. Thorberg Skafhogg was the name of the ship’s masterbuilder; but there were many others as well, some to fell wood, some to shape it, some to make nails, some to carry timber; and all that was used was of the best. The ship was broad and long and highsided and strong-timbered. While they were planking the ship, Thorberg happened to have to go home to his farm on some urgent matter; and as he stayed there a long time, the ship was planked up on both sides at his return. In the evening the king went out, and Thorberg with him, to see how the ship looked, and everyone said they’d never seen so big and so beautiful a ship of war. Then the king went back to the town.

  Early next morning the king comes again to the ship, and Thorberg with him. The carpenters were there before them, but all were standing idle with folded arms. The king asked, ‘What’s the matter?’ They said the ship was destroyed. Somebody had gone from stem to stern and cut one deep notch after another down one side of the planking. When the king came nearer, he saw it was so, and he said with an oath, ‘The man shall die who thus destroyed the ship out of envy, if he can be found out, and I’ll bestow a great reward on whoever discovers him.’

  ‘I can tell you that, king,’ says Thorberg, ‘who has done this piece of work.’

  ‘I don’t think,’ replies the king, ‘anyone is so likely to find it out as you are.’

  Thorberg says,tell you, king, who did it. I myself did it.’ The king says, ‘You must restore it all to the same condition as before, or your life shall pay for it.’

  Then Thorberg went and chipped the planks till the deep notches were all smoothed and evened with the rest, and the king and all present declared the ship was much handsomer on the side of the hull he had chipped, and bade him shape the other side the same way, and gave him great thanks for the improvement. Afterwards Thorberg was the ship’s master-builder till she was quite finished. The ship was a dragon, built after the one captured by the king in Halgoland, but far larger and more carefully put together in all her parts. The king called it the Long Serpent and the other the Short Serpent. The Long Serpent had 34 benches for rowers. The head and the arched tail were both gilt, and the bulwarks were as high as in a sea-going ship.[82]

  The planks overlapped and were as wide as possible, to reduce the number of seams; each part was made of a single piece of wood. They were cut by wedge and adze, with which the carpenters could make up to thirty-two planks from one oak trunk. The saw came into use in the eleventh century. But the earlier planks were far stronger, and sawn planks had to be made thicker. Thus a tendency to greater weight and rigidity came about. The size of ships of the Gokstad type was to some extent limited by the length of timber available for the keel. Every ship had its captain, often the owner, though on warships he was appointed by the king. At certain times the crew gathered round him to get orders or information, or to discuss things. A few words of command are known: more to starboard, more to port, let the ship drift (that is, stop rowing), turn the ship, hold this course. The crew took turns at all the jobs: working sail, tending helm. rowing, baling, keeping watch. Much baling was needed; in low-sided ships it was done with buckets, in high-sided ones by tubs raised on a spar. One man in the well saw to filling the tub, another on deck to the emptying. On land the water could be got out by removing a plug in the bottom. Watch had to be kept for hidden rocks or enemies; for the latter a man with a quick tongue was posted in the prow. Ohthere told Alfred that when he altered course he had to wait for the wind to change. The square sail was useful before the wind; otherwise oars had to be brought out. The ships could not tack or beat up into the wind.[83] (There may, however, have been attempts to tackle this problem. A Norse carving shows a number of ropes attached to the foot of a square-sail, which may thus have been compressed like a curtain drawn to one side. Such practices may have been leading on to the lateen sail.) Near the end of the epoch cooks were carried, but there was no fireplace on board; cooking was done ashore. Mostly the food was gruel; gruel vessels have been found in ships at Tune, Oseberg and Gokstad. Otherwise the men ate meal and butter, dried fish, at times bread. Water was drawn from big casks, but whey or beer might take its place. When a ship was short of food, the slaughter of strange cattle, strandhogg, was permitted. When Olaf Tryggvasson was in Ireland, ‘as they needed to make a foray for provisions on the coast, some of his men landed and drove down a large herd of cattle to the beach. Now a peasant came up and begged Olaf to give him back the cows that belonged to him. Olaf told him to take his cows if he could distinguish them — but don’t delay our march.’ The man sent in his dog which quickly sorted out his cattle from the many hundred beasts. Olaf, impressed, offered to buy the dog, but the peasant said, ‘I’d rather give him to you.’ So Olaf at once ‘presented him with a gold ring in return and promised him his friendship in future’.[84]

  The men slept under deck. In harbour they also had a canvas cover spread over all or part of the ship and held up by a pole running the whole length of the ship, with the ends resting on two upright stanchions. Where pole and stanchions met, the pole supported two boards from the side, fitted together on it and crossing one another; the boards’ lower ends were set in a socket on the gunwhale. On the Gokstad boat an oaken bed was found, constructed so that it could be taken apart; the length was seven feet five inches. This would have belonged to the skipper. The Old Norse vœngi corresponds to modern Norwegian veng, sometimes used as a cabin at the back of the ship that can be set up or taken down; and the Lapps also have the word. There are less clear signs of a structure for the captain. Later warships had a vida behind the mast, used both as a bridge and castle (tower-of-vantage); vida must be a shortened form of viduhus, borrowed by the Irish as idus, castle. We hear of an husasnotra on merchant ships, a term that in modern Icelandic means an ornament-on-a-house-gable; and such a decoration suggests the existence of a viduhus.

  In bad weather the mast was taken down or cut shorter, for fear that its movements would make the ship leak and force the timbers apart. On heavy merchant ships, boards were set up above the bulwarks, called viggyrdill or vigi — terms related to the Dutch weger and the French vaigre. On warships the terms denoted a strong breastwork, and the protective boards are called hlyda (O.E. hliew, protection). At times stays were also used, ropes thrown across the ship’s middle, drawn under the keel, then tightened by means of spars of wood.
r />   In coastal sailings the ship was steered by means of landmarks; there were also harbour beacons. The man of the crew who best knew the locality acted as pilot. For sailing in the open sea, the horizon was cut into eight equal portions. Four of the points between the divisions were the directions of north, south, east and west; the points midway between these were named from the relation to the mainland. Positions of sun and stars were observed; the steersman steered by the Pole Star. In the summer he had only the sun; and if that was obscured he had to trust his luck and often strayed. There is some evidence of bearing-dials and azimuth tables as well as of some notion of latitude, though none of longitude. The men probably used a method of reckoning by which they sailed to the latitude of the place they aimed at, then followed this parallel till they reached land. On familiar routes they sailed direct.[85] The rowing-spell, apparently about 7½ miles, was the standard measure of distance; longer distances were measured in terms of a halfday’s sail (twelve hours). Spring and autumn, when stars were visible, were best for long voyages; but storms, darkened skies and long nights prevented sailing in winter.

  In autumn, as Gudleif was returning from the east, he met a contrary wind and lay for a long time at the island Oland. There came Thorgaut Skarde, who in autumn had heard of Gudleif’s course, in a longship against him and gave him battle...

  He sailed out to sea northwards in harvest, but encountered a tremendous storm, and they were in danger of being lost; but as they had a chosen crew and the king’s luck with them, all went well...[86]

  For wintering the ships were pulled up by ropes and rollers over a slipway and put under a shed, to be repaired and re-tarred. The laws dealt with the limited right of such laying-up of ships and with the obligatory help to be given by neighbouring farmers under certain conditions.[87]

  The exultation of venturing into dark unknown seas, of sudden irruptions on strange lands, of sending people into helpless flight, of gathering all sorts of splendid plunder, of breaking through everyday bounds with a sense of stark power — all this is reflected in the saga names for the ships: Reindeer of the Sea-kings, Horse of the Gull’s Track, White-winged Horse, Crane, Raven of the Wind. ‘The blood ran down the Reindeer’s flank of each Sea-king.’ William of Malmesbury conjures up one of the ships in its full glory, in a note on Harthacnut:

  Looking wrathfully upon Godwin, he obliged him to clear himself by oath. But Godwin, to regain his favour entirely, added to his plighted oath a gift of the most rich and beautiful kind. It was a ship beaked with gold, having 80 soldiers aboard, each of them with two bracelets on either arm weighing 16 ounces of gold. On their heads were gilt helmets; on the left shoulder each man bore a Danish axe, with an iron spear in the right hand; and, to avoid enumerating everything, they were equipped with such arms that splendour vied with terror and hid the steel beneath the gold.[88]

  There is one more aspect of Norse energy and discipline that we should glance at: their earthworks. In England such constructions are hard to find, though we know the Danes built fortifications in various places. When moving about, they preferred to camp on islands where they could beach their ships and were not open to attack.[89] But we learn that Harald Bluetooth built a sea castle on the isle of Wollin, which, in its inner port, could take three hundred longships; and Eirik, king of Upsal, built similar castles in Karelia, Estonia and Finland. In Normandy the Hague-Dicke was constructed, cutting off the north-west peninsula of the Cotentin. In Denmark the Danewirke cut off the peninsula in the south, running from the Schlei (Sli) on the east to the marshes of Treene in the valley of the Rehide in the west; where a marsh interrupted, a wooden bridge was built on the embankment.[90]

  Also there are in Denmark the remains of four large earthworks, which reveal a remarkable organizing capacity. Together the four could take in some 6,000 warriors; they may have been built as winter barracks or as training camps for armies preparing to attack England. However, it may be relevant that the Saga of the Jomsvikings of the thirteenth century, which deals with a Norwegian war, tells of a community of warriors living under strict conditions in a fortress.[91] Archaeological material suggests the date 970-1120. The camps may have been in operation for housing mercenaries, at the time of Aethelred or of Cnut. The biggest camp, Aggersborg, is in the north of Jutland; Fyrkat lies a little further south; Bonnebakken is on the island Fyn; Trelleborg on the island Sjaelland close to the Great Belt dividing it from Fyn. All the camps have circular ramparts, with four openings at regular intervals through which two roadways passed. The ramparts, probably about nine feet high, were made of timber filled in with earth or turves. In each quadrant a number of large houses were arranged in groups of four, all of the same design. The central area of each house was partitioned off from smaller rooms at the end. Building methods varied. Fyrkat houses were timber-framed with wattle and daub for the long curving sides and planks set horizontally at the gable-ends; Trelleborg houses had walls of vertical planks. Shingle roofs were held up by the walls, by an outer row of posts, and by large posts inside the buildings.

  At Trelleborg a rectilinear extension of the outer ditch had a graveyard with Igo poorly furnished bodies; the sex of only forty could be made out — of these, nine were women. Fyrkat graveyard had some richer furnishings and the camp was linked with the graveyard by a wooden road. All the camps were laid out with great precision, using the Roman foot (11½ inches) as the unit of measurement. We get some idea of the organizing energy involved when we note that at Trelleborg alone some 10,000 oaks seem to have been used; each barrack could accommodate some seventy-five men sleeping in bunks along the sides of the hall. It is thus tempting to see each building as allotted to a ship’s crew.[92]

  It is hard to make out the origins of the camp-schemes. The quartering suggests Roman camps. We know the Vikings had many contacts with the Byzantine world, and Cnut visited Rome. But the form of the fortifications no doubt came from mounds, earthworks and stone circles of earlier times. A round camp (apparently of late Roman times or the early migration period) existed at Ismantorp, Öland; it was about 125 feet in diameter. There were nine gates in the heavy earthen walls that still stand to some thirteen feet. And there is a yet larger circular camp in the same area, at Gråborg. Both camps were used over a long period and were set in the barren limestone region of the island, far from sea or arable land. Gråborg, about 200 feet in diameter, was used on and off for over a thousand years, with its final re-fortification in the late Middle Ages. The camps were no doubt refuges for farmers during raids.[93]

  But whatever traditions lay behind the four barrack-camps, the significance of the works is unchanged. We see what is for the period an unparalleled capacity for training and organization. In them, as in the sea-castles, we see evidence of the same sort of defensive and organizing energies as we see later in the Norman castles in England.

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  We have now looked at Norse society in its relative isolation, with its hard living conditions determined partly by climate and terrain; and we have seen how these conditions bred a particular quality of initiative and aggressiveness, which could at need be combined with strong self-discipline. Excluded from the Christian comity which had been growing up in western Europe, the Norse pagans, driven into expansion by mingled climatic and social forces, felt no compunction in raiding the other areas; but their raids were combined with trading activities which had no parallel anywhere else in Europe. They drove into Russia and into the Black Sea, made contact with Moslems and Byzantines, and bypassed the Moslem controls of the Mediterranean which had been in operation since Charlemagne’s day. They sailed down the Atlantic coast into the western Mediterranean, and out across the ocean to Iceland, Greenland and Nova Scotia. They created deepsea shipping techniques for Europe; and though they caused considerable confusion, a much more farflung and closely cohesive system would emerge as a result of their impact and expansion.

  Chapter Three – Norman Dukes and English Kings

  Legends painted Rollo’s r
eign in Normandy as an age of pristine prosperity, in which a golden armlet, hung on a tree, was left untouched for years, and the old Norse customs of helping neighbours and respecting another man’s crops or tools were brought to the new country. A farmer’s wife at Lonpaon, it was said, hid the plough so as to claim compensation; Rollo found out the truth and hanged her for fraud, her husband for not controlling her better. North France indeed was quiet from 911 to 920; then conspirators, whom Rollo did not join, tried unsuccessfully to overthrow Charles the Simple. The Irish Viking Regnald from Waterford, who had made himself king of Northumbria but was defeated by Edward the Elder, came across the sea to join the Vikings on the Loire; he managed to dominate Brittany, Nantes and the Marshlands. When rebellion broke out again, Rollo backed Charles and drew Regnald in on the same side. But Charles was beaten at Soissons and Raoul of Burgundy gained the throne. He bought Rollo off with an offer of the Bessin and a large indemnity. However, Regnald was killed and Raoul did not pay up. Rollo went on fighting, took Amiens, ravaged the Artois, and invaded Flanders; then suffered a check at the fall of Eu. News came that Hungarians had crossed the Rhine and Raoul ratified the Normandy treaty. But about this time Rollo died or retired. At the request of his councillors — we see a suggestion of the procedure of the Thing — he nominated his son by Popa as successor. One story says he lived another five years; but in 927 it was William Longsword who did homage for Normandy. Rollo was buried in the sacristy of Notre Dame at Rouen, though Adhémar of Aquitaine later said that on his deathbed he ordered the sacrifice of several Christian slaves to Odin and Thor.