Sweyn Invades

It may well have been news of the wholesale slaughter of Danes in 1002 that was ordered by King Æthelred that motivated Sweyn Forkbeard to invade England. The St. Brice's Day Massacre is said to have killed Sweyn's sister Gunhilde and her husband, Pallig.

According to John of Wallingford, a Benedictine monk in the early 13th century, Sweyn was behind invasions between 1002 and 1012, many of which were commanded by Thorkell the Tall. Despite the massacre, an apparent arrangement between Sweyn and Duke Richard II of Normandy to sell Sweyn's plunder in Normandy suggests that the main reason for invasion was, as always, loot. Of course the Danes were often bought off with Danegeld, and Sweyn accumulated a lot of it in those invasion years.

Sweyn is said to have personally led an invasion force in 1013, accompanied by Cnut. According to the Peterborough Chronicle:

before the month of August came king Swein with his fleet to Sandwich. He went very quickly about East Anglia into the Humber's mouth, and so upward along the Trent till he came to Gainsborough. Earl Uchtred and all Northumbria quickly bowed to him, as did all the people of the Kingdom of Lindsey, then the people of the Five Boroughs. He was given hostages from each shire. When he understood that all the people had submitted to him, he bade that his force should be provisioned and horsed; he went south with the main part of the invasion force, while some of the invasion force, as well as the hostages, were with his son Cnut. After he came over Watling Street, they went to Oxford, and the town-dwellers soon bowed to him, and gave hostages. From there they went to Winchester, and the people did the same, then eastward to London.

London resisted, partly because by then they had Danish help from Thorkell the Tall, who had defected, with many men and ships loyal to him, because he objects to the stoning of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Ælfheah. Sweyn then went to Bath and other locations where they all surrendered. London soon followed, fearing how severe his revenge would be if they continued to resist.

With the capitulation of London, Æthelred went to the Isle of Wight, and sent his sons to Normandy. Sweyn started to manage his new kingdom, but he died five weeks later, on 3 February 1014. His body as embalmed and returned to Denmark for burial.

His position in England was taken over by Cnut, of whom much has been said. Who has never been mentioned is Sweyn's daughter, Estrid, who lived a long and not-dull life. Let's talk about her next time.

The St. Brice's Day Massacre

Clashes with Danes in England resulted in establishing the Danelaw, originally just the set of Danish laws agreed upon with Alfred the Great (848 - 899) wherein Danes could rule themselves while living on English soil. It later came to refer to a specific geographical territory (the pink area in the illustration).

This created a time of relative peace, with each group largely staying out of the other's way. In the 980s, however, Danes started making raids into English territory. In 991, after the Battle of Maldon, King Æthelred the Unready paid Danegeld, a tribute to the Danes to stop their attacks.

The attacks did not stop, however, and from 997 to 1001 there were savage raids by Danes across Southern England, burning towns and killing Anglo-Saxons.

Then Æthelred learned of a rumor, that the Danes intended to kill him, all his councilors, and then possess the entire kingdom. To put it in the words of the (translated) Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:

...in the same year the king gave an order to slay all the Danes that were in England. This was accordingly done on the mass-day of St. Brice; because it was told the king, that they would beshrew him of his life, and afterwards all his council, and then have his kingdom without any resistance.

Contemporary and near-contemporary and modern historians disagree on the phrase "all the Danes that were in England." Some say it was only those who were warriors, some (like the A-SC) believe it was every Dane they could find.

The massacre took place on the feast day of St. Brice, a Frankish bishop (c.370 - 444) who succeeded St. Martin as bishop of Tours. It took place in Oxford, and a royal charter issued in 1004 by Æthelred called it "a most just extermination."

Part of it involved an act of cruelty that mirrored the much later Clifford's Tower incident, an act so horrendous that it might have been the deciding factor in Sweyn's invasion. I'll explain more next time.

Thorkell the Tall

The Danish raid on Canterbury in 1011 included a leader named Thorkell the Tall. He was an important enough man that his name was recorded on a few runestones, such as the one pictured here in Sweden, commemorating the taking of Danegeld in England. (I actually mentioned Thorkell, though not by name, 12 years ago; same illustration, it turns out; there aren't many graphics available that can be linked to Thorkell.)

Legend says Thorkell helped raise the young Cnut, taking him on raids and teaching him warfare. The Encomium Emmae Reginae ("Encomium of Queen Emma"), about Emma of Normandy, tells us he was a great leader and warrior.

Landing with an army on the shores of Sandwich in the south-east in 1009, he began a progress through southern England either destroying or getting paid off. Canterbury initially gave them 3000 pounds of silver, which assuaged the Danes and sent them to London for their next attacks.

London's defenses and people were too much, however, and the Danes' siege failed to defeat the city, so they returned to Canterbury. Canterbury was besieged for two weeks. It finally fell due to treachery by Ælfmaer, Abbot of St Augustine's, who (according to William of Malmesbury and others) let the Danes into the city. (Cnut made him Bishop of Sherborne in 1023.) Canterbury Cathedral was burned, and the archbishop of Canterbury, Ælfheah, was captured for ransom. The Danes demanded an additional 3000 pounds of silver to let the captives go.

Ælfheah refused to be ransomed, and over seven months took the opportunity to speak to his captors and persuade many of them to convert to Christianity. On 19 April, during a feast in which the Danes got very drunk, they decided to kill Ælfheah.

Thorkell tried to save the archbishop. He begged the Danes to let Ælfheah live, offering them all that he possessed except his ship. The crowd would not be stopped. Ælfheah was pelted with stones and bones and finally beheaded by one impatient man.

More attacks across southern England produced a total of 48,000 pounds of silver, but Thorkell and men loyal to him split from the other Danes. Thorkell and 45 ships defected and offered themselves to King Æthelred as mercenaries.

This would mean that Thorkell would ultimately wind up on the other side of a battle with his own king and the son of that king, Cnut, whom Thorkell helped raise. I'll tell you how that went tomorrow.

A Noble End

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Alfheah (also called Alphege), was captured during an invasion of Vikings in 1011. Eadric Streona was supposedly sent to negotiate. Unfortunately, Eadric might not have been the ideal negotiator; on the one hand because he seemed to be King Æthelred's "enforcer," and on the other hand if we consider William of Malmesbury's opinion of the man:

...the dregs of mankind and a disgrace to his countrymen, a criminal debauchee and a cunning rascal, whose wealth owed its origin to his rank and had been increased by his skill in speech and his effrontery. A skilful deceiver with a ready invention, he sought out the king's intentions as his faithful servant, and spread them around as a common traitor. Often, when sent on a mission to the enemy to secure peace, he rekindled the war.

It is also possible that Eadric decided not to negotiate very diligently out of cowardice. In fact, when Eadric as Ealdormen of Mercia brought forces to join with Edmund Ironside and Æthelred against Cnut, Eadric abandoned the battle and later pledged his loyalty to Cnut. Cnut recognized that Eadric was untrustworthy and ultimately had him executed.

So Ælfheah was still in the hands of the Vikings. We are told that Ælfheah refused to have a ransom paid for his freedom, but I'm not sure how that information came to be known, and lying and reporting it to the king would be a way for Eadric to shirk the responsibility of effecting Ælfheah's release.

One version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports the death thusly:

... the raiding-army became much stirred up against the bishop, because he did not want to offer them any money, and forbade that anything might be granted in return for him. Also they were very drunk, because there was wine brought from the south. Then they seized the bishop, led him to their "hustings" on the Saturday in the octave of Easter, and then pelted him there with bones and the heads of cattle; and one of them struck him on the head with the butt of an axe, so that with the blow he sank down and his holy blood fell on the earth, and sent forth his holy soul to God's kingdom.

The date was 19 April 1012. Pope Gregory VII canonized Ælfheah in 1078 with a feast day of 19 April. Ælfheah's remains were place around the high altar of Canterbury cathedral along with Dunstan's, Ælfheah's friend. (The illustration is a memorial to him in the Church of St. Alphege in Greenwich.)

There was, however, one Viking leader who did not want to see Ælfheah toned, and tried to save him. I'll tell you about him tomorrow.

Eadric Streona

Eadric, the son of Ethelric, started as a relative unknown. His father was at the court of Æthelred the Unready, but was not distinguished. Something in Eadric caused him to get the attention of Æthelred, and he somehow became the king's enforcer.

This seems to have started in 1006 when he arranged the death of Ælfhelm, the Ealdorman of Northumbria. The Worcester Chronicle, which borrowed from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and supplemented the information, says:

The crafty and treacherous Eadric Streona, plotting to deceive the noble ealdorman Ælfhelm, prepared a great feast for him at Shrewsbury at which, when he came as a guest, Eadric greeted him as if he were an intimate friend. But on the third or fourth day of the feast, when an ambush had been prepared, he took him into the wood to hunt. When all were busy with the hunt, one Godwine Porthund (which means the town dog) a Shrewsbury butcher, whom Eadric had dazzled long before with great gifts and many promises so that he might perpetrate the crime, suddenly leapt out from the ambush, and execrably slew the ealdorman Ælfhelm.

Eadric was rewarded for his service. In 1007 he was made Ealdorman of Mercia. By 1009 he was married to Æthelred's daughter, Eadgyth.

His job was not only eliminating people. Vikings in 1011 had captured Archbishop of Canterbury Ælfheah. Eadric was tasked with negotiating Alfheah's release. (This was unsuccessful.)

The nickname "Streona" is translated as "The Acquisitive" or "The Grasper" because he was known to appropriate church lands and funds for himself, creating fake charters to support his claims to property. Of course many of the histories that write about him (like the page from Hemming's Cartulary, shown here, collected by a monk named Hemmings around the time of the Norman Conquest) came from clerics and monks, so his actions did not prompt them to write about him in a good light.

William of Malmesbury described him thusly:

the dregs of mankind and a disgrace to his countrymen, a criminal debauchee and a cunning rascal, whose wealth owed its origin to his rank and had been increased by his skill in speech and his effrontery. A skilful deceiver with a ready invention, he sought out the king's intentions as his faithful servant, and spread them around as a common traitor. Often, when sent on a mission to the enemy to secure peace, he rekindled the war.

He also arranged the deaths of two friends of Edmund Ironside, and then most egregiously abandoned the fight against King Cnut at the Battle of Assandun. After Cnut's victory, however, Eadric did not last long. Cnut no doubt realized the man was not trustworthy, and was ordered by Cnut on Christmas Day 1017 to be executed. We are told he was beheaded, his body thrown outside the city to rot, and the head displayed on a pole on the highest battlement of the Tower of London.

But what happened to Alfheah, the Archbishop of Canterbury whose release from the Vikings Eadric failed to gain? Let's find out tomorrow.

Saint Edmund

When King Edmund of East Anglia bought off the Vikings of the Great Heathen Army in 865, he might have thought he was safe from that point on. They returned to East Anglia in 868, however. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:

...here the army rode across Mercia into East Anglia, and took winter-quarters at Thetford; and that winter King Edmund fought against them, and the Danish took the victory, and killed the king and conquered all that land.

Originally buried at a chapel near the site of his death, years later it was removed and taken to a place then called Beodricesworth, but is now appropriately called Bury St. Edmunds.

About 890, moneyers who were responsible for minting the coins during Edmund's reign started minting new commemorative coins for Edmund. The coins (see illustration) are proof that a cult was cropping up around veneration of Edmund's burial place and his reputation. They are mostly half-pennies, but also include pennies with the inscription SCE EADMVND REX, "O St. Edmund King."

The coins were minted in numerous locations. The Cuerdale Hoard found in 1840 includes over 1800 commemorative Edmund coins.

The importance of Edmund as a saint did not attach him to liturgical calendars until three centuries after his reign. Abbo of Fleury (c. 945 – 13 November 1004), while running the school at Ramsey Abbey,  wrote the Passio Sancti Eadmundi ("Passion of Saint Edmund") that is no doubt highly fictitious, but nevertheless brought Edmund into prominence. Abbo depicts the Vikings as emissaries of the devil, there to make Edmund fall into despair. Edmund resists and is put to death (not dying in battle).

Whatever the strength of the Edmund cult was, the minting of coins declined by 910. In 1010, Edmund's remains were considered important enough (probably thanks to Abbo's account, which survives in several manuscripts) to translate them to London to keep them out of the hands of invading Vikings. They were kept there for three years before being returned to Bury St. Edmunds.

Edmund remained a symbol worthy of veneration, however, and was promoted by kings to come along, one of which was Canute. I'll explain what Canute did for the saint next time.

Whale Laws & Lore

In the sixth season of the TV show Vikings, a whale has washed up on shore. One character, Kjetill, claims it for his own. Others insist that the bounty be shared—it was an enormous source of food and materials—but Kjetill refuses, and even kills those who want to share it. Unlikely?

Not really. Both Icelandic tales Grettissaga (the Saga of Grettir) and Fóstbræðrasaga (the Saga of the Sworn Brothers) relate the incident of a long-lasting feud between two families when the rights to a beached whale turns to a lasting feud between groups.

The situation would be easily resolved if the ownership of the beach itself were not in dispute. Iceland at the time was a newly inhabited country and land rights were not always firmly established. Without having community agreement as to the rightful owner of the land on which a resource was found, conflict could easily arise.

I also promised in yesterday's post to discuss the "downside" of whale lore. I was referring to the other part that whales played in the past: as frightening supernatural creatures. In Friðþjófssaga (the Saga of Friðþjóf), Friðþjóf and his crew are at sea and trying to reach land. They are hindered by a whale, but not just any whale. This whale has two witches riding its back, sent to harass Friðþjóf by an evil king who is his enemy.

The witches should not surprise us. Every European culture (and others) have supernatural creatures and magic practitioners in their lore. Tomorrow let's look at some of the supernatural lore peculiar to Iceland.

The Spillings Hoard

And now for the absolute largest Viking hoard of silver treasure ever found (I should add: "so far"). In 1999, a Swedish television crew was filming a story on the looting of archaeological sites. They chose the location of Spillings farm, where 150 silver coins and bronze objects had been found not long before. They filmed a segment speaking to two men who happened to be working there with metal detectors: an archaeologist and a coin expert. They finished filming, the TV crew left, and the two experts continued exploring the site.

Twenty minutes after the TV crew left, the metal detector let out a very strong signal that there was metal underground. The men uncovered a small cache of silver. Two hours later and 10 feet away, the detector let out such a strong signal that it shut down. They cordoned off the area and notified the Gotland Museum; guards were posted and a request was made with authorities to begin an archaeological excavation. Over the next year, those two spots and a third found within a few feet from the original yielded the Spillings Hoard.

Excavation determined that the caches were buried under the floorboards of a building, probably in the 800s. The final yield was 14,295 silver coins, almost entirely Islamic dirhams. In all, 192 pounds of treasure was recovered, including 44 pounds of bronze scrap (intended for smelting later). There were also almost 500 bangles, mostly of Swedish design, but some with British and Western Scandinavian designs.

The area yielded evidence of habitation over several centuries, and digging turned up pieces of glass, tile, chains, needles, glass beads, iron nails, clothes pins, and polished semi-precious stones.

Bits of wood and iron embedded in the mass of coins suggest that they were originally contained in a wooden chest. Carbon-dating the wood led to a date of about 650CE, making it much older than the treasure it contained.

One startling piece is called the "Moses coin," a handful of which have been found. This is from the Khazar kingdom. The Khazars, mentioned here, were believed to follow Judaism, but evidence for this was lacking. This coin is inscribed with "Moses is the messenger of God" instead of the usual Muslim text "Muhammad is the messenger of God."

The presence of Islamic coins in several Viking hoards is explained when you remember that many Mediterranean people employed Vikings as mercenaries and guards. The Islamic dirham was widely used then in the Eastern and Southern coasts of the Mediterranean, and the name "dirham" for a coin is still in use today. I'd like to go into a little more detail about it tomorrow, and take a closer look at that Moses coin.

Until then, Happy New Year.

The Cuerdale Hoard

The Vale of York Hoard was the largest hoard since the Cuerdale Hoard. So what was special about Cuerdale? Well, the York Hoard had over 600 items; the Staffordshire Hoard about 4600; Cuerdale, found in 1840, contained more than 8600, the largest Viking hoard ever in the United Kingdom, and surpassed by only one other in the world.

Cuerdale is a parish in the Duchy of Lancaster with very few buildings nowadays. Some workmen repairing an embankment of the nearby River Ribble found a lead box protruding from a bend. It was claimed by the local bailiffs who kept it intact and gave it to Queen Victoria, owner of the Duchy, who in turn gave it to the British Museum. After examining the contents, they were distributed to museums and others, with the greater part kept by the British Museum in the Coins and Medals Department.

The majority of the hoard was silver coins (over 7000) from different areas: the Viking kingdoms of eastern England, Alfred the Great's Wessex, and coins from overseas (one Byzantine coin, early Scandinavian coins, Islamic dirhams, Papal and North Italian coins, and 1,000 Frankish Carolingian coins). Many of the coins probably came from raids on other kingdoms. Besides coins the hoard contained jewelry and hacksilver.

The dates on the coins suggest that it was buried by 910CE but not much before 905. The Ribble flows into the Irish Sea and was a frequent landing spot for those coming from Ireland. The Vikings had been expelled from Dublin in 902, and this hoard might have been buried by Vikings on their way from Ireland for temporary safekeeping because transporting such a large collection made the traveler a target. It may have been intended to finance a re-conquest of Ireland. Why they never returned we will never know.

There is a curious legend in the area, that "Anyone who stood on the south bank of the River Ribble at Walton le Dale, and looked up river towards Ribchester, would be within sight of the richest treasure in England." When and how this legend began no one could say, but it suggests vague knowledge of the treasure, as if it were a more recent stashing in memory. One theory is that, during the reign of Richard II, a Sir Thomas de Molyneux who lived nearby and intended to use it to support Richard, possessed it and hid it there. It is possible that comments made in the late 14th century led to the legend.

After three posts on "largest" hoards, we now will turn to the absolute, unconditionally largest Viking hoard ever uncovered. For this we turn from England to Sweden, and the Spillings Hoard...next time.

The Medieval Slave Trade, Part 3

(Parts one and two)

There are plenty of historical records of Vikings raiding for plunder and slaves, from the northern coasts of the British Isles down to the Iberian peninsula. Slaves were sought to help populate Iceland, and slaves from British monasteries were often young and educated men that would fetch higher prices in Venice of Byzantium.

Slaves, or thralls to use the Viking term, had worse prospects than losing their freedom. An Arab explorer, ibn Fadlān, while traveling with Eastern Vikings in the 920s, records a gruesome viking ritual in which a slave girl is brutally killed by both strangulation and stabbing after being laid down beside her deceased master. [link] Graves that are assumed to be of slaves show:

The thralls did not end their lives in a peaceful way. Most of them had been abused, injured and decapitated before being laid to rest together with their masters.

In some of the graves the skulls were missing altogether but no one knows why.[ibid]

These graves are also distinguished from typical Viking burials in that they do not contain any possessions or treasures of the deceased. 

The Icelandic Laxdaela Saga in the 10th century tells us that kings met every three years and negotiated and traded slaves.

The Vikings traveled far, trading slaves from northern climes to people as far away as Central Asia and to Middle Eastern merchants. The slave trade went in several directions. Mongols in the 13th century captured slaves and sold them throughout Eurasia.

As mentioned in Part Two, there is a modern notion that the growth of Christianity correlated with the demise of owning slaves in Medieval Europe. This was not true, as we shall see tomorrow.

The Holy Island

When King Oswald of Northumbria invited St. Aidan to come from Iona in 634-5 CE and start a monastery, Aidan chose an island off the northeast coast of England. As a tidal island—meaning it was only accessible during low tide by a narrow causeway—Aidan considered it safer for the monks.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for the year 793 refers to the island as Lindisfarena, although around the same time Nennius' Historia Brittonum ("History of the Britons") calls it by a Welsh name, Medcaut, thought by later scholars to derive from Latin Medicata (Healing), due to medicinal herbs that grew there.

It became known as the Holy Island (Latin Insula sacra) in the 11th century because of Saints Aidan and Cuthbert. It was instrumental in the Christianization of Northumbria, and also sent a mission down to Mercia. Cuthbert was enormously popular and influential. An anonymous life of Cuthbert written between 685 and 704 is the oldest piece of English historical writing in existence.

The entry for the year 793 mentioned above is about the Viking raid on Lindisfarne. The entry reads:

In this year fierce, foreboding omens came over the land of the Northumbrians, and the wretched people shook; there were excessive whirlwinds, lightning, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the sky. These signs were followed by great famine, and a little after those, that same year on 6th ides of January, the ravaging of wretched heathen men destroyed God's church at Lindisfarne.

(January was not an ideal time for sea-born Viking raids; it is assumed that there was a "typo" and that 8 June was the date of the devastation.)

Alcuin later describes the destruction:

Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race ... The heathens poured out the blood of saints around the altar, and trampled on the bodies of saints in the temple of God, like dung in the streets.

Cuthbert's body and other relics were removed by the monks to save them from destruction.

With the arrival of the Normans after 1066, a Benedictine monastery was established by the first Norman bishop of Durham, William of St. Calais.

Back to the early years, however: something that came out of Lindisfarne in its pre-Viking heyday was the Lindisfarne Gospels, which I want to talk about next.

Borromean Rings

You've seen them. Lots of times. Three circles interlinked. You find them in jewelry, and in the label of Ballantine beer. They may be used as a symbol of the Trinity, or the logo of the 25th International Congress of Mathematicians.

The name of the design comes from its use in the coat of arms of the Borromeo family. The family owns three islands in Lake Maggiore, and might have designed the rings to represent those. In any case, the design is used frequently in the Baroque palazzo and gardens built by Vitaliano Borromeo (1620-1690).

But the design goes back hundreds of years before Borromeo. We find its equivalent also in three triangles called "Odin's Triangle" or the valknut (Old Norse valr = "slain warriors" + knut = "knot"). The valknut was carved in stone pillars as far back as the 7th century.

One curious fact about the Rings is that, although we call them "interlinked" or "interwoven," they sort of aren't. In the above illustration, place your hand over the red as much as you can, and you'll see that the blue and green aren't linked. It's the same with any other two colors: no two are linked except by a third that runs through them. In this way, it is similar to a three-strand braid. Braid three ribbons together, and when you pull one out, the other two completely disengage.

And for a treat: how about some Borromean Onion Rings?

Charles the (Not) Simple

Charles the Simple

Charles III, called "the Simple" (from Latin Carolus Simplex) was a King of Francia (what we think of today as France) and Lotharingia (what we think of today as the Rhineland, western Switzerland, and the Low Countries).

He was born 17 September 879, the third son of Louis the Stammerer (son of Charles the Bald) and Adelaide of Paris. His father died before Charles was born, and Charles might have succeeded him as king, but his cousin Charles the Fat was put on the throne by the nobility. When Charles the Fat was deposed in 887—he was increasingly seen as spineless after paying off the Vikings and showing little inclination to military solutions—the nobility again skipped over Charles in favor of Odo of Paris. Eventually, however, a faction within Francia decided that Charles the Simple should be made the rightful ruler; he was crowned king in 893, but only assumed the throne once Odo died in 898.

Charles negotiated with the Vikings whom Charles the Fat had paid off. In exchange for peace, he granted them lands on the continent. Their leader, Rollo, was baptized and married Charles' daughter, Gisela. Their heirs became the Dukes of Normandy, leading eventually to William the Conqueror.

Charles himself married (for the second time) to Eadgifu, a daughter of the English King Edward the Elder. Their son was the future King Louis IV of France.

The initial opposition to Charles was not due to the nickname. Although we translate Carolus Simplex as "Charles the Simple," the adjective has become...umm..."simplified" over time. When attached to Charles, it did not mean he was unintelligent; rather, that he was straightforward and direct, acting without subterfuge or guile.

But this quality did not endear him to everyone. Not everyone appreciated giving territory to the Vikings, or some of his other decisions. Odo's brother Robert became the fiscal point for revolt in 922, and Charles had to flee. Returning with a Norman army, he was defeated on 15 June 923, captured and imprisoned, where he died on 7 October 929. Eadgifu fled to England when the revolt took place, but her son Louis would return to become king of France in 936.

The Legendary Olaf

Statue of Olaf in Trondheim

King Olaf Tryggvason is the subject of far more stories than we have facts to support them. (He was implicated in the destruction of London Bridge and therefore the subsequent nursery rhyme.) He was King of Norway for only 5 years (995 - 1000), but there are no contemporary records of his actions. The earliest record we have is an English chronicle about 70 years after Olaf's death, and in that he is only mentioned briefly. We have to wait about 200 years after his death to get stories written down about him, and the veracity of those cannot be trusted.

There is agreement that he was either born in the Orkney Islands (which were part of Norway at the time, despite their proximity to Great Britain), or carried there at three years of age by his mother, in order to escape the killers of his father. He wound up (after being captured by pirates and sold into slavery, then discovered years later by a countryman and bought) in Kievan Rus.

As an adult, he was shipwrecked in Wendland, an area of Germany inhabited by Slavs. It was ruled at the time by Queen Geira, whom Olaf courted and wed. When she died, he was distraught and left Wendland, plundering on the seas. On the Scilly Isles off the southwestern tip of Great Britain, he met a seer, who told him he would become a great king and convert many people to Christianity. She predicted that when he returned to his ship he would face a mutiny, and be wounded in battle, but recover after seven days and then he would be baptized a Christian. After he left the seer, her prediction came true, so he let himself by baptized upon his recovery by St. Elphege of Canterbury (later made a bishop under Pope John XVIII).

As King of Norway,* he promoted Christianity heavily. He baptized Leif Erikson, known for discovering America. Not everyone wanted to be baptized, and anecdotes of forced conversion abound:

• Raud the Strong refused conversion after Olaf defeated him in a sea battle, even though Olaf promised that he could keep his lands if he converted. Olaf had Raud tied to a beam, face up, forced a drinking horn into his mouth, and goaded a snake by means of a hot poker to go through the horn into Raud.
• Eyvind Kinnrifi was punished with hot coals on his stomach.
• Queen Sigrid of Sweden was courted by Olaf, but she refused to convert; supposedly, he slapped her with his glove. This motivated her to gather his enemies. He was attacked on the sea by an alliance of Danish, Swedish, and Wendish forces. The naval Battle of Svolder took place on 9 September 1000 (or perhaps 999). Seeing that he was losing, Olaf jumped overboard. The body was never found.

This led to Elvis-like sightings in later years. He was reportedly seen in Rome, Jerusalem, and around Europe and the Mediterranean. There was a sighting as late as 1046, and Æthelred the Unready supposedly received gifts from a visiting Olaf years after 1000.

*How he got back there is a convoluted tale that we will leave for another day.

Vikings in Constantinople

An 11th-century depiction of Varangian Guards.

In recent posts on the 4th Crusade and the Siege of Constantinople, I mentioned the Varangian Guard beating back the Crusaders temporarily. The Varangian Guard were, essentially, Vikings who made their way to the Mediterranean and became mercenaries. Their name comes from the Old Norse Væringjar, from the word var which meant "pledge"; thus, they were "pledged men"; the Greeks turned this name into Βάραγγοι or Varangoi.

It was Emperor Basil II (958 - 1025), sometimes called "Basil the Young" or "Porphyrogenitus," who first hired them in 988, after their Kievan Rus homeland was Christianized. Basil received 6000 Varangians from Vladimir I of Kiev, which he preferred over local men whose loyalties might attach them to other aristocrats and would-be emperors if circumstances favored such a switch.

Viking runes in the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.

Service in the Byzantine Empire was so attractive that men from all the Scandinavian countries considered it a good career move. Sweden even made a law that declared no Varangian serving in Byzantium could inherit without returning back home.

Varangians became very popular as mercenaries in Kievan Rus and even in England—but only for a short time, from 1018-1066: they did not help to turn the tide when William of Normandy came to claim the throne.

In Byzantium, they operated at least through the middle of the 14th century. Still, they left their mark on Constantinople in more ways than one. Some runic inscriptions have survived, placed their by Varangians. One was even carved in the Hagia Sophia.

Vikings in Ireland

A sign of Viking presence in Ireland:
a Viking ship built in Dublin c. 1042

As alluded to in the post on King Edmund I, Ireland was the target of raids from Scandinavian countries almost as much as England. Based on hints in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, some believe the earliest raids took place in 795 at the island of Lambay off the coast north of Dublin. (In fact, "Lambay" is from Old Norse for "lamb island.")

There were, in fact, two separate periods of Viking incursion, separated by less than a single generation. The first was from 795 until 902, when (according to the Annals of Ulster, mentioned here) "The heathens were driven from Ireland." Those heathens (descendants and followers of Ivar the Boneless) seemed to hang about the Irish Sea, hassling Northumbria and Strathclyde. They returned to the mainland in 914, taking over Dublin.

Ireland was a good place from which to stage incursions into northern England. It was this clan of Ivar's that produced King Olaf III Guthfrithsson, who succeeded his father to become King of York and was driven out by King Edmund in 942.

Although typical Viking raids tended to plunder monasteries and towns and then depart, Ireland was good land for settlements. Viking and Irish intermarried, and produced a group now called "Norse-Gaels." Between the 12th and 14th centuries, the English referred to the Norse-Gaelic people living in Ireland as Ostmen, "East men," because of their origin in Scandinavia. They were considered ethnically and legally distinct from Irish, and lived in their own communities. The modern Oxmantown, now a suburb of Dublin, derives its name from Ostmentown, where Norse-Gaels lived outside of Dublin. According to a 2006 paper, Norse DNA is still found in the Irish population, especially in the areas of Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Wexford.

Vikings - Art Imitates Life

A new TV show started in 2013 and has proven popular enough that it has been renewed for a couple more seasons. It is called "The Vikings." Its historicity would not be very satisfying to scholars, but it is very popular with audiences.

It centers on the character of Ragnar Lodbrok (in Old Norse that would look like Ragnarr Loðbrók). The saga of Ragnar is attached to the Norse Völsunga Saga ["Saga of the Volsungs," a clan that included Sigurd and therefore inspired the Nibelungenlied, the "Song of the Nibelungs"]. It tells us of Ragnar's quest for a wife, then for another wife, and of the deeds of their sons.

Ragnar actually had three marriages (in legend, that is: the exact truthfulness of the details of his existence cannot be proven). His first was to Lagertha, a Danish shield maiden. In the history written by Saxo Grammaticus, Lagertha got Ragnar's attention when she dressed as a man to fight against the Swedes who had killed King Siward of Norway. They married and had a son and two daughters.

Ragnar divorced her, however, so that he could marry Thora Borgarhjortr, the daughter of King Herraudr of Sweden. Despite that betrayal, Lagertha came to his aid when he dealt with a civil war in Denmark.*

Even later, Ragnar supposedly married Aslaug, who was the daughter of Sigurd (who killed Fafnir the Dragon in the Nibelungenlied) and Brunhild the Valkyrie. (It gets a little more mythical than usual here.)

Ragnar became a scourge of England and France. The invasion and pillaging of Paris on 28 March 845 is attributed to him.

King Aelle of Northumbria (who died on 21 March 867) was one of the English that Ragnar annoyed.  Aelle captured Ragnar and threw him in a pit of snakes. This would have happened prior to 865: the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 865 states that the Great Heathen Army that invaded England was led by Ragnar's sons to avenge their father.

*On the TV show, the marriage between Ragnar and Lagertha didn't survive the first season; the writers had him take up directly with the seductive Aslaug, skipping over the more likely marriage to Thora.

Lutefisk!

Today is an important day in Sweden: Anna's Day, celebrating all people named Anna. It is also the traditional day to start preparation of lutefisk in Sweden and Finland, so that it is ready for the traditional meal on Christmas Eve.

It is made from cod, soaked in cold water, changed daily, for five or six days, then left in cold water with lye for two days. The fish swells and takes on a gelatinous consistency. This stage also raises its pH value to 11-12, making it very caustic and downright dangerous to eat. In order to make it edible, it must be soaked in cold water for another week, changing the water daily to flush out the lye.

Why do this? The origin of the process is uncertain (see below), but the lye would make the fish unappetizing to wild animals; perhaps it was done to allow large amounts of fish to be left hanging on drying racks out in the cold air. It certainly helps preserve the fish. Treating food to make it more alkaline is also used in the preservation/preparation of corn into hominy.

Lutefisk has a history that stretches back centuries. Scholarly research claims it is first mentioned in the late 18th century; a cookbook from 1845 describes the preparation of the lye used to make lutefisk by combining limestone and birch ash in water. Historians, however, have found a reference to lutefisk by a Swedish archbishop in 1555, and that a letter from King Gustav I (1496 - 1560) mentions it in 1540.

Folklorists suggest an even earlier reference: when Vikings raided Ireland, St. Patrick had his followers make them an offering of fish—spoiled fish. The Vikings seemed not to mind, so Patrick had his people pour lye on the fish, hoping to poison the Vikings. The Vikings, against all expectation, found the fish tasty and demanded the recipe.

But let honesty prevail: the major Viking raids in Ireland happened a few hundred years after Patrick.  Still, lutefisk was probably around prior to King Gustav. The "Vikings enjoy something we think is vile" was probably an old joke at the expense of Vikings. I suppose the tale could be partially true, but Patrick was not likely to be the instigator.

So go buy some whitefish (cod or ling), start soaking it in cold water, and get some birch ash ready!

The Second Pope

Clement being thrown into the sea,
by Bernardino Fungal of Siena (1460-1516)

If Clement truly was the second pope, following Peter (there are conflicting lists from the Classical Era), then he is too early for a Medieval blog, but he is connected to the previous post.

Clement was pope about 92-99 CE, during which time he penned one of the earliest known Christian documents outside of the New Testament, a letter to the Corinthians called the First Epistle of Clement, in which he advises them, among other things, that the recent removal from office of some presbyters was inappropriate, since they had not committed any moral offenses. He also suggests they consider the letter of Paul to the Corinthians. Paul mentions a companion named Clement in his letter to the Philippians (4:3); this may be the same Clement.

Clement was banished by Emperor Trajan to the Crimea. He continued to minister, organizing prayer and services among the inhabitants, establishing dozens of churches, and generally bringing Christianity to the country. A miracle is attributed to him at this time: slaking the thirst of 2000 men. Hearing this, Trajan had him thrown into the sea with an iron anchor tied to him.

One would expect that to be the final word on Clement and his martyrdom, but once each year the tide recedes so far that a chapel is revealed with the martyr's bones inside. This story, however, is not heard of until a few hundred years after Clement's death. (The story is known to Gregory of Tours.)

For this, he was named patron saint of sailors. Vikings embraced the story of someone who watched over sailors, which led to establishing churches and parishes of St. Clement as part of Viking settlements in England.

Viking Urban Renewal

When we think of the Viking invasions of England, we usually think of the destruction of villages and people's lives. This is understandable, since the Vikings were coming for land and plunder, not to make friends. Ironically, however, the Vikings were responsible for a significant expansion of urban centers in England at the end of the 9th century and beginning of the 10th.

Archaeological excavations of prominent towns in England show that many of them experienced a  surge in growth during the above-mentioned half-century span. York, Cambridge, Stamford, Lincoln and Norwich are just a few of the cities that show the features that characterize this expansion:

They came to form separate urban nuclei of a distinctive but hitherto unrecognized topographical type, which show common characteristics: they usually developed as linear settlements on low-lying ground along existing routeways leading to earlier centres, many of them at bridging points of major rivers. All of them occupied areas with easy access to river and estuarine navigation. [Jeremy Haslam, Early Medieval Towns in Britain, 2010, Shire Publications]

The assumed catalyst for this change from the British settlements to the more robust Viking towns is the opportunities for trade opened up by the new Viking inhabitants. The Vikings had more advanced ships, capable of longer trips, and they traded not only with Europe and the Scandinavian markets, but also with Asian markets.

There is an additional curious feature shared by many of these settlements. Many of them include churches dedicated to St. Clement. This is no coincidence, but that's a story for another day.