The Farfarers: Before the Norse

by Farley Mowat

  Those were perilous times in the north too. Although the Picts were no longer making concerted attacks against the rump of Alba, individual Pictish (and Irish) chieftains raided the Alban islands, if only for fun and glory and to keep their battle skills honed.

  Irish annals proudly record that King Niall of the Nine Hostages ravaged the Hebrides between 420 and 430; and he was not likely to have been the first Irishman to have gone harrying in that quarter. Niall and his contemporaries were famous marauders. After a splendidly sanguinary career, he himself is supposed to have perished while raiding i Alpi. Scholars have translated this as “in the Alps”—which would be a very long way from home, even for an Irish rover. The phrase almost certainly means “in Alba.”

  Picts and Irish were not the only marauders. A cryptic entry in Nennius’s ninth-century History of the Britons notes that around 443 the Orcadies were “wasted by Hengist.” It is also known that around this time a Jute chieftain of this name was hired by the British king Vortigern to defend his territory against raiders, some of whom seem to have been Picts. Hengist may have struck a pre-emptive blow in the north. It would have made no odds to him whether his victims were Picts or Albans, even if he had known the difference. On this occasion Orkney seems to have run red with Alban, rather than Saxon, blood.

  Traumatic events were becoming commonplace on both the Northern Islands and the adjacent mainland. Although Alba apparently lost no territory, people would have found it devilishly hard to carry on crofting, herding, and fishing while forever having to scan the horizon for the first glimpse of an alien hull bearing black fate their way. Once again the brochs seem to have become the people’s shield.

  Valuta gatherers and traders must have had their difficulties too. Although most Pictish and Gaelic pirates were perhaps reluctant to essay the long voyage to Tilli, they would have been ever ready and eager to assault Orkneymen carrying valuta south or fetching back southern goods.

  I believe that, as vessel losses mounted, some of the trading skippers abandoned the waters between Ireland and Britain, choosing instead to cross from Shetland to Norway there to exchange valuta for goods brought north along trade routes running through France and Germany to Denmark and beyond.

  This would have been a rough business. At best Northmen were unreliable trading partners, all too apt to simply seize what they wanted, whether it be goods, human beings, or ships. Trading with Norway would have been a species of Hobson’s choice.

  Further more, the Northmen were quick studies. I am convinced that exposure to, and experience with, ocean-going Alban ships and seafarers was probably an important, perhaps even critical determining factor in the Norse transition from coastal to deep-water sailors; a transition which began around the end of the sixth century and ultimately resulted in their becoming the most destructive maritime marauders of all time.

  The North Atlantic climate seems to have been undergoing dramatic improvement during this period. Decade by decade the weather became drier, warmer, and sunnier. This brought new heart to crofters on their sodden fields, and to fishermen looking for fewer stormbound days.

  In Tilli the Arctic pack retreated so far to the northward that it could no longer be seen from the island. With it went most of the white bears, which had been used to drifting south on the ice and coming ashore to give birth to their cubs.

  Other sea mammals were also affected. Narwhals, whose spiralled ivory tusks were amongst the most sought-after products of the north, withdrew from Tilli’s warming waters. And the enormous herds of ice seals—harps and hoods—that had once darkened the pack off northwestern Tilli were no longer to be found.

  To make matters worse, Tilli’s walrus—originally so plentiful—were suffering the effects of centuries of slaughter. Their numbers had dwindled from generation to generation until far-sighted men could foresee the day when they would all be gone from Tilli’s beaches.

  Life in and around that island was in a state of flux. Birch forests were reaching for the pale skies while a tide of grasses and flowering plants submerged the lower slopes of the lava hills. Each spring saw ever vaster flocks of ducks, geese, and swans sweeping up from the southeast to take possession of breeding grounds newly unlocked from the glacial ice fields of the interior.

  Not all the migrant birds remained in Tilli. Many flocks rested only briefly there before continuing west.

  Their departures would have been closely observed. Although Tilli was becoming ever more attractive to crofters, it was fast losing its appeal to valuta seekers, who now looked westward after the high-flying flocks. A possible new hunting ground beckoned in that direction even as the river of Arctic pack ice which had long interposed an almost impenetrable barrier between Tilli and Crona dissolved.

  Nature was in flux; and so were human affairs. Throughout the latter part of the fifth century, the old pax Romana in the British Isles collapsed into a morass of general wars, uprisings, and miscellaneous bloodletting. Not even zealots of the Christian religion, which was then spreading into the north, could find peace, except by retreating to almost inaccessible rock pinnacles around Britain’s coasts, where they could mortify the flesh in their own fashion. Elsewhere the flesh of farmers, villagers, fishermen, sailors, artisans, and all sorts of folk was being mortified by bands of marauders introducing the rule of chaos.

  In the aftermath of Rome’s collapse even Pictland, which had so fiercely and for so long kept Rome at bay, was hard beset. By the middle of the fifth century the Picts were being assailed on all sides. Dalriad Scotti from Ireland seized the peninsula of Kintyre, together with the islands of Islay, Jura, and Arran, and threatened further inroads. Things were no better in the south. There, in 429, shortly after leading the terrible “barbarian” raids into England, the Picts sustained a crushing defeat from a Romano-British (which is to say, Celtic) confederacy. This disaster resulted in two British kingdoms, Strathclyde and Manau Gododdin, being carved out of Pictland’s border country. Worse was to follow when Manau Gododdin was itself swallowed by the Angles, new and exceedingly warlike invaders from across the Channel. Nor was Alba idle. Taking advantage of the general harassment of an old enemy, Albans seem to have reoccupied the Pictish salients north of Glen Albyn.

  By the end of the sixth century, Pictland had been squeezed into that portion of Scotland between the Clyde–Forth isthmus and Glen Albyn, minus a wedge of western mainland and islands held by the Scotti.

  The Irish were not content with warring against the Picts. They also attacked Alba. Irish annals record that, in 568, Corall of Dalriada joined forces with another Irish king in a concerted attack on the Western Isles, probably including most of the Hebrides. Then, in 578 or 580, the Dalriad king, Aedan mac Gabrain, “led an expedition to Orkney.” For every such recorded incident a number of others undoubtedly took place. Once again Alban islanders sought the protection of their old defenders. During the sixth century many a broch was repaired and ringed with makeshift shanties and cattle yards, the whole being surrounded by ditches and earthen ramparts.

  Irish belligerence may have been the catalyst for the extraordinary and mysterious rapprochement that took place between Albans and Picts at about this time. We know little of how it came about. The only written reference to the event comes from a life of Saint Columba, the Vita Sancti Columbae, written by the priest Adomnan late in the seventh century.

  In 565 Columba, then abbot of a powerful Irish clerical community on the island of Iona, visited Brudei, king of the “Northern Picts,” at his capital near the northeastern end of Glen Albyn.1 Columba’s motive in risking this long journey into the heart of a country that ought to have been decidedly hostile to any Celt is not clearly stated, but he was probably impelled by zeal to disseminate the Irish version of Christianity before a British version, then seeping northward, could contaminate Brudei’s people.

  Brudei professed an interest in Columba’s brand of Christianity, though his father-in-law was all in favour of throwing the Celtic rascal out. While
at Brudei’s court, Columba met a “subordinate” king from Orkney with whom he arranged safe passage for some of his missionaries to go amongst the Northern Islands.

  Unable to understand the alien language of Brudei’s people, the Celts conversed with them through interpreters. These reported that Brudei mac Maelchon (as the visitors styled him in Gaelic) was monarch of both the northern and the southern portions of what foreigners had formerly called Pictland but which had now reverted to its ancient name—Alba. The wheel had come full circle.

  Although we cannot know just how this remarkable accommodation between Albans and Picts, who had been antagonists for six centuries, came about, we can make an informed guess.

  The Picts were being assailed in the south and west by three powerful forces, and were also at enmity with Alba in the north. They were in desperate need of an alliance with at least one of their antagonists. And Albans and Picts were of similar racial, linguistic, and cultural stock, while Celts and Angles were foreigners in every sense. For their part, the Albans must have fully appreciated that Celts were again the common enemy and, in addition, they may already have seen the foreshadow of a new menace to themselves emerging in the distant northeast.

  I conclude that the situation in Scotland had become so alarming as to persuade Albans and Picts—the Northern and the Southern Picts of foreign writers of the period—to bury their ancient differences and make common cause. This is certainly what they did. Under the aegis of an Alban king.

  Sometime around the middle of the sixth century all of what is now called Scotland lying north of the Clyde–Forth isthmus (with the exception of that portion held by the Scotti) again became one country. The peoples of this kingdom called it Alba and themselves Albans, and were so called by Irish, Britons, and Northumbrians on their borders. They would continue to be called Albans even after the kingdom was finally engrossed by the Scotti more than two and a half centuries later.

  And Alba in Scotland is not forgotten even yet.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SONS OF DEATH

  Fair Isle lies half a day’s sail south of Shetland and an equal distance north of Orkney. A small and isolated island rough in its northern part, it is more hospitable in the south. At the beginning of the seventh century, it was home to forty or fifty people whose scatter of crofts centred on South Harbour. Although much of their sustenance came from the sea, they raised sheep and kine and took birds and eggs from the cliffs. They were superb mariners who had no difficulty finding berths on farfaring vessels, whether bound northwest for Tilli or south to Scilly.

  One fine summer day two middle-aged Islanders were fishing from their skin boat a mile or two offshore when they saw a vessel bearing down from the north. They took it to be an Islander at first, though something seemed odd about the cut of its big, brown sail. When it drew closer, they saw by its shape and the fact it was wooden-planked that it must be one of the Northmen ships that had recently begun appearing in western waters with billets of crude iron and baulks of timber to trade.

  Traders were to be welcomed. As the ship drew abeam, the fishermen hailed her in friendly fashion, bringing many big, fair-haired men crowding to her rail, shouting in a strange tongue. Neither side could understand the other, but the Islanders indicated by gestures they would be glad to pilot the vessel into their harbour. Grinning acceptance, the strangers beckoned the fishermen aboard.

  Three days later a Fair Isle lad was found on a Fetlar beach, half-drowned, with an oozing wound in his back. He had a grim tale to tell.

  “The Northmen anchored their vessel in South Harbour,” he said, “then some rowed to land in the ship’s boat and we greeted them on the beach. They seemed friendly enough and gave presents of iron nails to our men and handfuls of meal to the women. We took them to our homes, fed them, and made them welcome, but they would not sleep ashore. They were strapping big men and some of our older folk did not like their looks, thinking it as well they did not choose to sleep under our roofs.

  “Before they rowed off to their ship, they asked to see what we had to trade. It was not much. Most of the goods our farfarers had brought back from Tilli had already been shipped off aboard a southfaring vessel. The Northmen seemed little interested in our bags of wool and seabird feathers and bales of dried fish, but let us understand they would nevertheless come ashore in the morning to trade.

  “By the time the sun was well risen, most of the folk were gathered at the beach, for this was a visit the like of which had never happened before. The Northmen rowed their six-oared boat back and forth until they had landed their whole crew. These numbered twenty-three in all. Most wore two-handed swords at their sides. Some carried spears, and others axes. This made us uneasy for we had no such weapons. But they brought ashore some sacks of grain and other goods, so we forgot our fears and began to trade.

  “Suddenly one of them blew on a ram’s horn. It was such a blast we all turned and stared. At that moment trading ended and slaughter began. Before we knew what evil was upon us they had butchered most of our able-bodied men, sending the hot blood frothing across the cobbles into the sea. The shrieks of the dying were frightful, yet not as frightful as the yells of these men as they thrust and hacked and howled amongst us like merciless beasts.

  “I was speared in the back when I tried to flee. Most of those still living were rounded up without resistance for they could hardly understand what was happening. Laughing and singing now, the Northmen drove us into a circle using the flats of their dripping swords and the butts of their bloody spears. Then, one by one, they pulled the older folk out of the circle. They slit the bellies of some so their guts fell out on the sand. Some they clove from shoulder to belt with mighty swings of their swords. They tore children away from women and tossed some of the babies to one another, from spear point to spear point.

  “Then they began raping. My sister, of fifteen summers, bit one of them and he flung her from him onto her back, thrust his spear between her legs and leaned on it, cursing, until her screaming ended.

  “Afterwards they sacked our houses then set the thatch alight, and fires roared like winter gales until all was consumed. They slaughtered as many cows and sheep as they could catch. It did not seem to matter to them what they killed, be it beasts or men.

  “They tied the hands of us survivors, women, youths, and maids, and herded us into the boat and took us to their ship. Some were chained by the neck but there was not enough chain for all, so the rest were fastened with hide rope. We lay under the sun all that day without water, while the Northmen hunted the island, chasing those who had escaped the killings. That night they feasted on our cattle beasts roasted on great fires fuelled with our boats and anything else that would burn.

  “Next day the ship set sail heading north and east. In the evening, off Funzie Head the helmsman altered course to the eastward and I knew we were bound for a foreign land. Darkness fell and there was much confusion as the Northmen fought with one another over our women. I wet the bonds on my wrists in bilge water and they slackened until I was able to slip them off and free my neck from its yoke. I crawled to the side and dropped overboard without being noticed. I did not think to see the dawn again, but it seemed better to drown than to stay in the hands of those sons of death.”

  MUCH EFFORT HAS BEEN EXPENDED ATTEMPTING TO cleanse the reputation of the Northmen, or Vikings as they are more usually known. The currently correct image is of rough-hewn, stout-hearted fishermen-farmers, who came west to the British Isles as homesteaders. It is admitted that there were piratical types among them whose deeds do not bear close scrutiny, but we are enjoined not to condemn the whole because of the few. Rather, we are encouraged to admire the Vikings for their pioneering spirit, their derring-do, their feats of seamanship, and their democratic ways.

  This is not how they were viewed by those they came amongst.

  A contemporary account of a Viking visit to the island of Lindisfarne off the Northumberland coast in 793 catches the feeling of the t
imes.

  The pagans from northern regions came with a force of ships to Britain like stinging hornets and spread on all sides like fearful wolves, robbed, tore, and slaughtered not only beasts of burden, sheep, and oxen, but even priests and deacons, and companies of monks and nuns.

  And they came to the church at Lindisfarne, laid everything waste with grievous plundering, trampled the holy places with polluted steps, dug up the altars and seized all the treasures of the holy church. They killed some of the brothers, took some away with them in fetters, many they drove out, naked and loaded with insults, some they drowned in the sea.

  Being himself a man of holy orders, the author of this account may have been somewhat prejudiced; but the terror and horror instilled by the Vikings was almost universal. A prayer offered in virtually every Christian church of the times included this plea: “From the Northmen and sudden death, Lord God deliver us.”

  “Sons of Death” was one of the epithets bestowed upon the Vikings. “Odin’s Wolves” was another, although this does an injustice to wolves. Countless Northmen eventually did settle in Britain, but they devastated the land with fire and sword before setting their hands to the plough.

  The British historian F.T. Wainwright has described them thus:

  The Vikings were primarily warriors and pirates, adventuring boldly on the open seas, looting, killing, feuding and harrying, blood-stained and blood-thirsty, wild heathen men from wild heathen lands. There were also settlers seeking new homes, and traders seeking to exchange fish and furs for wheat, wine and honey, but even those who travelled with peaceable intentions were never averse to gaining their ends by violence.1