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The Vikings were a proud, honourable, law-abiding people who valued warfare and personal reputation (they called it 'word fame') above almost anything else. In the latter years of the Viking Age, they became involved in their own myth, starting such organisations as the Jomsvikings.

They brought the seafaring ship to Europe and, by their constant depredations, spread its use far and wide. In only 250 years, they set their mark on the law and language of many countries and made many European communities see themselves in the light of a nation state for the first time. In terms of human history, if you blinked, you would have missed them! But the image the Vikings promoted of the brave, hardy individualist, unafraid of the world in all its forms, remains with us all as an example of how a man should conduct himself in adversity.

'Wealth dies, kinsmen die. Cattle die and the wheat, too.
But this thing never dies: word-fame!
Word-fame never dies for he that achieves it well.'

Vikings raiding in Ireland Artist Angus McBride

The Slaves

Slaves had no legal rights except as property of the owner. They could be bought and sold and the slave-owner could treat them as he or she pleased. If a slave-owner killed one of his own slaves it was not regarded as murder. If a free-man killed a slave belonging to someone else he had to pay the price of a slave as a compensation. The price would be about the same as for a farm animal.

When a woman slave had a child it became the property of her owner. If she was sold while pregnant, the child would become the property of her new owner.

Interestingly, when a female slave partnered a Viking man their children would be free Vikings. But the children of male slaves remained slaves.

We know where the slaves came from, but where did they go to? Where were the markets where people were bought and sold 'like brute beasts'?

A Nice Little Earner

Slaves were an important part of early medieval society and appear in large numbers in charters and Doomsday Book, but the evidence for them is mostly fragmentary and widely scattered.

Origins

Slavery was an institution of the Roman Empire, and picked by the Germanic tribes who dealt with it, as victims or suppliers. When those Germanic tribes reached Britain in the 5th century, they brought the practice with them, and the complete disappearance of Celtic culture from the east and south-east of Britain is strong evidence for their success. The chronicler Gildas was probably correct when he claimed that slavery was a common fate for many of his contemporaries, as the story of St. Patrick demonstrates. He was captured by pirates in the south-west of England, and spent six years in Ireland before escaping.

Slave Raiding

Almost all the slaves traded in the early middle ages were captured in raids or warfare. It seems to have been the practice to kill the leaders of a losing army and enslave the humbler peasants and local villagers. The Vikings are the archetypal slavers in European history, enslaving victims in eastern Europe and the Mediterranean area, and selling them in markets far away. For example, a number of Moors taken during a raid in Spain in the 9th century ended up in Ireland, but Ireland itself was a source of slaves for the Vikings, as was Scotland.

The Vikings, however, were not the only slavers. It can be shown that the English conquest of Cornwall in the 9th and 10th centuries led to the enslavement of many of the indigenous Celts. In the same period, Edward the Elder led a combined West Saxon and Meridian army against the Danes and brought back both slaves and livestock.

In the reign of Æthelred the Unready, slave raiding and trading once more became popular, with many of the slaves ending up in Denmark. The chronicler William of Malmesbury goes far as to blame Cnut's sister of being behind the trade. (Fortunately for William, she was long-dead before he wrote that!)

So far, it seems as though people were only enslaved by foreign raiders, but this was not always the case. Earl Godwine enslaved some of the companions of the Ætheling Alfred in 1036; Earl Harold took slaves when he landed in the West Country from Ireland in 1052; and supporters of Earl Morcar captured 'many hundreds of people' in Northamptonshire as late as 1065.

Slave Trading

In England, one major 'export centre' was Bristol, little more than a village until the late 10th century. William of Malmesbury says that Bristol was a long-standing market: slaves were brought from all over England for eventual sale to Ireland. 'You might well groan to see then long rows of young men and maidens whose beauty and youth might move the pity of the savage, bound together with cords, and brought to market to be sold,' he wrote. Corbridge, in the north, was another market referred to in some documents.

Apart from Ireland, many slaves were taken to Europe for sale. Rouen, in Normandy, was a major trading centre for goods seized by the Vikings - the Normans were known to have used domestic slaves- and it was a convenient location for pirates to off-load captives taken in raids along the English coastline. It seems that all the big markets were slave trading centres including, perhaps, Jorvik and London.

After the Norman conquest, the slave trade came under pressure, even the king received fourpence for every slave sold (Vassal Added Tax?). The social disruption and misery that organised slaving caused became more and more difficult to accept. At the Westminster Council of 1102, it was ruled that 'no one is henceforth to presume to carry on that shameful trading whereby heretofore men used in England to be sold like brute beasts.'

Pity, really, it was a nice little earner.

References Pelteret, D, 'Slave raiding and slave trading in early England', Anglo-Saxon England 9 (1981), pp99-114

Silver

Some Vikings became very wealthy men as a result of their trading, raiding and pillaging. That wealth often included jewels, gemstones, jewelry, gold and silver coins and precious religious artifacts. Since there were no banks in medieval times, these treasures were often buried in shallow pits dug beneath the floorboards of a Viking home or outside near a tree or outhouse. These stashes were called hoards.

The Vikings often displayed their prosperity. Both men and women wore jewelry- finger, arm rings, brooches and pendants. They also wore bangles and bracelets and a brangle-like neck ring called a torc. Some Vikings displayed both their wealth and generosity by giving away some of their treasures. This was a means of creating a group of loyal followers especially when protection from enemies was needed. The hoards often served as a source for these handouts.

Many of the hoards discovered contain hack-silver; small pieces of silver hacked (cut) from coins and jewelry. Hack silver was used as payment for merchandise. The Vikings often weighed the silver for payment so when a little more silver was needed to complete the deal, it was simply hacked from something else made of silver- a coin or a piece of jewelry. This suggests the silver was more valuable than the value of the coin or jewelry itself.

Some hoards also contained silver ingots- large bars of silver formed by melting looted silver coins and jewelry. These bars could be used to create new coins, weighed as payment for some goods or fashioned into Viking jewelry.

References: Jim Cornish, Grade Five Teacher, Gander, Newfoundland, Canada.

The first raids on the British Isles and their aftermath.

‘…and the heathen came’. The Vikings were not the first foreigners nor, for that matter, the first heathens to attack the British Isles. They were much like the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons before them—heathen, exploitive, persistent—but unlike their invading predecessors the Vikings eventually became assimilated. Moreover, their horizons were different: they reached Ireland and other parts of the British Isles (and places beyond) untouched by these earlier invaders. Unlike the Roman and Anglo-Saxon invaders, the Vikings also had the misfortune, as they would have seen it, of having their deeds reported by a uniformly hostile ‘press’. These unlettered Vikings left no contemporary written accounts of these events: nothing left to challenge the native annalists and chroniclers, who naturally viewed these invasions with fear and horror. Bearing this in mind, let us follow the course of the Vikings and their ships through the waters west of Scandinavia.

It is useful to make the assumption that the Norwegian raiders attacked England first and, only afterwards, Scotland and its Northern and Western Isles, and Ireland, in that order. There is a neatness to this scenario that recommends it, a geographical logic that is satisfied by seeing the Vikings working their way from the east coast of England, round the top of Scotland, and into the Irish Sea. The evident logic of the situation might tempt us to infer that a master strategy was at work here, that there were co-ordinated raiding missions, that the raiders were in close communication with one another, and that season by season, in a planned, systematic fashion, they exploited the coasts of the British Isles. We suffer in these considerations from a scarcity of sources for these early years. What unrecorded contacts there might have been before the event described in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 789, no one knows. And no one knows if in fact the pattern which has been assumed was the actual pattern. It might be profitable to assemble here the earliest known dates for these initial raids on the British Isles: between 786 and 793 Portland in Dorset, in 793 Lindisfarne, in 794 Jarrow, in 795 Iona and Lambay (an island near Dublin). Other attacks, no doubt, went unrecorded. The Western Isles probably served as the base for the attack on Lambay; and we may never know to what extent the Welsh coast was harassed or when the Vikings first raided the Irish mainland and the Isle of Man. The picture that does emerge is that in the last decade of the eighth century a number of Viking attacks with perhaps little co-ordination were made against the islands off the northwest coast of Europe.

England

Three recorded incidents constitute the sum of the known raids by the Vikings on England at the beginning of the Viking period. A reading of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle must strike even the most casual reader with the extent and frequency of the violence wrought by the Anglo- Saxons against one another. With this as a backdrop the three early Viking raids might not seem unusual except for the fact that the attackers were foreigners and heathens. Yet, they were profoundly significant incidents, for they heralded the beginning of what can only be called the Scandinavian period in English history. Even the chronicler recognized this, however dimly, when he said that the attack in Dorset was the first time that the Vikings’ ships had come to England. It was not the last. After these initial raids a period of forty years free from Viking raids on England—but scarcely free from internal violence—followed; then came the Danes. The first Vikings to come were, we are told, Norwegians, but even this bears some further consideration.

For all of these early incidents the major, although not the only, source is the Anglo- Saxon Chronicle. Something of a misnomer, the chronicle is, in fact, a number of chronicles drawn together in Wessex during King Alfred’s reign, sometime after 892, into one major chronicle written in Old English; it exists now in seven versions. Although the chronicle was taken from earlier annals, it is not possible to identify these and, therefore, it is not possible to establish their reliability. The Alfredian compiler (or compilers) knew of the early Viking raids only through these unknown sources and, of course, wrote a hundred years after the events. With this caveat in mind let us turn to each of these incidents in order.

From the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles:

"In this year 789 King Brihtric married Offa’s daughter Eadburh. And in his days there came for the first time three ships of Northmen. The reeve rode out to meet them and tried to force them to go to the king’s residence, for he did not know what they were; and they slew him. Those were the first ships of Danish men which came to the land of the English."

Three other versions of the Chronicle seem to indicate that the northmen were from Hörthaland, which is in western Norway. The Annals of St Neots identifies the place where they landed as Portland (Dorset). Ethelweard says that the slain reeve was called Beaduheard and that he rode to Portland from Dorchester with a few men under the mistaken impression that the strangers were merchants. Several questions arise from these accounts. The first has to do with the dating of this event. The chronicler puts this entry under the year 787, but one should read 789, for the chronicle at this point is two years out of synchronization. He simply says that it happened during the reign of Brihtric, a West Saxon king who reigned from 786 to 802. The events at Lindisfarne in 793 are the next Viking raids described in the Chronicle. These must have followed the incident on the south coast, since the Dorset attack was called the ‘first’. It seems safe, then, to conclude that the southern attack took place sometime between 786 and 793.

It is almost universally agreed that the attackers at Dorset were Norwegians, but the question of their identity should not, on that account, be passed over in silence. What do the texts say? All versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle identify them as ‘northmen’ and ‘Danish men’; three add that they were ‘of Hæredalande’. Ethelweard calls them ‘Danes’. What evidence is there for considering them Norwegians? Simply that three versions of the chronicle indicate that they came from Hæredalande. These three versions (D, E, and F) are closely related and should not be considered in this context as three separate accounts, but merely one. The usual translation and interpretation is that Hæredalande is Hörthaland in western Norway. Even if this is true—and it is not at all clear that it must be—one’s mind boggles in trying to determine how this information could have been acquired. Were formal introductions exchanged on a Dorset beach? Who acted as interpreter? And were not the reeve and his men slain by the strangers? There is also the puzzling matter of this having been an attack on the south coast. This location does not fit in with what we know of other Norwegian attacks: the northeast of England, Scotland, the Isles, Ireland, etc. It seems more probable that raiders along the English south coast would have been Danes. The subsequent Danish attacks were in these parts and in these waters: Frisia in Holland, the east coast of England, and, through the English channel, the south coast of England and the west coast of Francia.

No one can dispute that the other two early raids on England were by Norwegians.

Again from Anglo-Saxon Chronicles:

"In this year 793 dire portents appeared over Northumbria and sorely frightened the people. They consisted of immense whirlwinds and flashes of lightning, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air. A great famine immediately followed these signs, and a little later in the same year, on 8 June, the ravages of heathen men miserably destroyed God’s church on Lindisfarne with plunder and slaughter".

This incident more than the previous incident in the south (given, perhaps, undue emphasis by a Wessex compiler) marked the true beginning of the Viking assaults on Britain. The earlier account of the event at Dorset made no mention of plunder and uncontrolled slaughter: the strangers killed the reeve and his men. The attack on Lindisfarne was an attack on both the body and soul of Christian England. Simeon of Durham, writing in the early twelfth century but apparently using as a source an earlier northern version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle no longer extant, likened the Vikings in their attack on Lindisfarne to ‘stinging hornets’ and ‘ravenous wolves’; they slaughtered priests and nuns and destroyed everything in sight, including the holy relics, and took with them the treasures of the church and even some monks as slaves. Knowledge of this unexpected attack came to the court of Charlemagne, where Alcuin of York, the most distinguished Englishman of his time, was the educational adviser to the Frankish king. Alcuin responded not once but seven times in different letters to the news of this attack: three times to Ethelred, King of the Northumbrians, once to Ethelhard, Archbishop of Canterbury, to the monks of Wearmouth- Jarrow, to the Bishop of Lindisfarne, and to a priest at Lindisfarne. ‘It has been nearly three hundred and fifty years’, he wrote in one of these letters, ‘that we and our fathers have lived in this most beautiful land and never before has such a terror appeared in Britain and never was such a landing from the sea thought possible.’ The cause, Alcuin moralized, was the failure of the monks to live up to their monastic ideal; God was punishing them for their unfaithfulness to Him. Allowing for the rhetoric of the moralist, the possible distortion of events in the transmission, and the piety of a native Northumbrian, it still remains abundantly clear that this event struck deep to the heart of Alcuin, not merely for what it was but also for what it portended.

The third incident occurred at Jarrow where in 681 Benedict Biscop had founded a sister monastery to Wearmouth.

Again from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles:

"And in 794 the heathens ravaged in Northumbria and plundered Ecgfrith’s monastery at Donemuthan. One of their leaders was killed there, and also some of their ships were broken to bits by stormy weather, and many of the men were drowned there. Some reached the shore alive and were immediately killed at the mouth of the river".

Simeon of Durham identified the monastery as Jarrow on the River Don, a tributary of the Tyne. He confirmed the failure of the heathen Vikings and attributed it to the intercession of St Cuthbert. They were not invincible, then, nor were the Christians merciful and sparing.

In the broad panorama of the Viking age these three English incidents must appear as very minor indeed. They were important because they drew the lines between Christian and pagan, between attacked and attackers, and pointed to two centuries in which England must be seen in the broader, north European context.

Credit:

The Vikings in History

Book by F. Donald Logan; Routledge, 1992. 224 pgs.

Viking Timeline.

An overview made by Pierre Barthélemy (Les Vikings, Paris, 1988 ) of attacks made by the Vikings in the period 795 - 1098 is as follows:

Ireland: 43 attacks
The British Islands: 51
The Germanic area: 11
The Netherlands: 10
Belgium: 12
Luxembourg: 1
France: 214
Spain: 9
Portugal: 1
Morocco: 1
Italy: 3
Turkey (Istanbul): 1
Total: 347 attacks

The Viking Age timeline A.D. 789-1085

789 - The first Viking attack on England.
793 - Vikings attacks the monastery at Lindisfarne.
794 - Vikings attacks the monastery at Yarrow, but fails.
795 - Vikings approaches the Irish sea and attacks on Ireland starts.
797 - Vikings attacks Lambay, Ireland.
798 - Vikings attacks Isle of Man (according to Ulster annals, but perhaps not correct).
798 - Vikings attacks on France (before 800) begins.
800 - Skiringsal and Birka trade centers are founded (approximately).
802 - Vikings attacks the monastery at the holly Columbas on the isle Iona of the Hebrides.
805 - Vikings attacks the monastery at the holly Columbas for the second time.
813 - The magnificent Oseberg ship is built (dated by dendrochronology).
820 - Vikings conquers the Isle of Man and establishes permanently.
820 - Vikings attacks Flanders and approches the moth of river Seine.
834 - The Oseberg ship is mounded (dated by dendrochronology).
834 - Vikings approaches the river Thames, England.
839 - Turgeis (Torgisl) and a big Viking fleet conquers Ireland and settles permanently.
841 - Vikings under the leadership of Turgeis founds Dublin, Ireland.
841 - Vikings burns Lillebonne, Caudebec and Rouen and destroys the abbeys of Jumieges and St Wandrille.
843 - Vikings of Vestfold establishes a power base at the isle Noirmountier (Loire) and raids Nates.

844 - A Viking raid on Seville is repulsed.
844 - Turgeis is killed by the Irish, drowned in Loch Nair.
845 - Viking chieftain Ragnar Lodbrok attacks Paris along a big fleet.
853 - Olaf the White conquers Ireland along a big Viking fleet.
857 - Vikings raids Paris again.
858 - Vikings captures the abbot of St Denis and claims ransome.
859 - Vikings raids in the Mediterranean for the first time.
860 - Rus (Sweds) Vikings attacks Constantinople (Istanbul).
861- The third big attack on Paris by Vikings.
862 - Novgorod in Russia is founded by the Rus Viking, Ulrich.
863 - Xanten demolished by Vikings.
866 - Danish Vikings establishes the kingdom of York, England.
870 - Harold Luva (Fairhair) starts his effort to gain full control in Norway.
871 - Alfred the Great becomes king of Wessex; the Danish advance is halted in England.
871 - Olaf the White returns to Norway, his brother Ivarr becoms ruler of Ireland.
874 - Ivarr the Boneless dies, his sons continues attacks on north-eastern England.
879 - Rurik establishes Kiev as power center of the Kievan Rus' domains.
885 - A huge fleet of Viking ships attacks Paris, but fails in conquering the city.
885 - Harald (Luva) Fairhair finally unites Norway as one kingdom, first in Scandinavia.
886 - Alfred and the Danes splits England under the Danelaw pact.
890 - The Gokstad ship is built (dated by dendrochronology).
891 - The Vikings at Noirmountier (France) are finally beaten.
894 - Turf-Einar, son of Rognwald and half brother of Rollo, becomes earl of Orkney.

900 - Vikings raids in the Mediterranean again.
902 - The Irish regains Dublin from the Vikings, and rules for fifteen years.
911 - The Viking chieftain Rollo is granted land by the Frankish king and founds the Duchy of Normandy.
917 - Vikings defeats Dublin by military power and regains the throne.
928 - Kings Æthelstan and Harald Fairhair joins in a treaty to gain control of the Norse Vikings.
930 - The first democracy (Alltinget) of the world is founded at Thingvellir, Iceland, by Vikings.
940 - Harald Fairhair dies and his son Eirik Blood-axe struggle to gain full control of Norway, but fails.
941 - Rus Vikings attacks Constantinople (Istanbul).
947 - Eirik Blood-axe, son of Fairhair, gains control of York.
949 - Olaf Crovan defeats Eirik Blood-axe, who flees.
950 - Eirik Blood-axe regains control of York.
954 - Eirik Blood-axe killed at the Battle of Stainmore in York, Vikings defeated by King Edmund.
974 - Emperor Otto II of Germany attacks Denmark, but fails because of Norwegian help.
976 - Maccus Haraldsson, first known king of Man, dies, his brother Gudrød approaches throne.
976 - Angelsey (coast of Wales) is included to the Norse kingdom of Man.
980 - Vikings starts regular attacks to gain control of England.
984 - Viking leader Erik the Red discovers Greenland and starts settling.
985 - The Jomsvikings attacks Norway, lead by Earl Sigvalde, but is firmly defeated at Hjørungavåg.
986 - Viking ships sails in Newfoundland waters.

991 - Viking chieftain Olaf Tryggvasson, along 93 ships, defeats Byrhtnoth at Maldon (August).
991 - Æthelred II pays, the first Danegeld ransom, off £10,000 in silver to stop Viking attack on London.
994 - Æthelred II pays off £16,000 in silver to stop Viking attcks on London.
995 - Olaf Tryggvasson conquers Norway and proclaims a Christian kingdom.
999 - Christianity reaches Greenland and Iceland by powers of Olaf Tryggvasson.
1000 - Leif Eriksson, son of Erik the Red, explores the coast of North America.
1000 - Olaf Tryggvasson dies in the Battle of Svolder (coast of Vendland); Norway ruled by Danes.
1002 - Brian Boru defeats the Norse Vikings and becomes king of all Ireland.
1009 - Viking chieftain Olaf Haraldsson (St. Olav) attacks London by river and destroys London Bridge.
1010 - Viking explorer Thorfinn Karlsefni attempts to found a settlement in North America.
1013 - Danes, helped by Olaf Haraldson, conquers England; Æthelred flees to Normandy.
1014 - The Vikings of Ireland are finally defeated in the Battle of Clontarf, but Brian Boru is killed.
1015 - Vikings abandons the Vinland settlements at the coast of North America.
1016 - Olaf Haraldsson regains Norway from the Danes; Christianity approaches Norway.
1016 - Danes, under Canute the Great, gains full control over England.
1018 - The coronation of Canute the Great, as King of England.

1026 - Kings Anund Jakob (Sweden) and Olaf Haraldsson (Norway) attacks Denmark, but fails.
1028 - Knut (Canute), king of England and Denmark, conquers Norway and Olaf flees.
1030 - Olaf Haraldsson returns to regain Norway, but is killed at Stiklestad.
1031 - Olaf Haraldsson becomes officially proclaimed a Saint, by Bishop Grimkel (August 3rd).
1035 - Canute the Great dies, Magnus, son of St Olaf, expels the Danes from Norway and regains the kingdom.
1042 - Edward the Confessor rules England, supported by Danes.
1042 - Magnus, king of Norway, becomes king of Denmark.
1045 - Magnus grants Harald Hardraada half of Norway, as a co-king.
1047 - Magnus, king of Norway & Denmark, dies; Hardraada sovereign king of Norway; Claims Denmark as well.
1047 - Svend Estridsson gains control of the Danish throne, but Hardraada won't give up his claim.
1049 - Hardraada founds Oslo, Norway.
1050 - Hardraade raids Haithabu.
1062 - Hardraada defeats Svend Estridsson at the Battle of Nissen, but fails to gain control of Denmark.
1064 - Hardraada gives up Denmark and recognizes Svend Estridsson as legal heir to the throne.
1066 - Harold Godwinson defeats Harald Hardraada, who dies in the Battle of Stamford Bridge (Sep 25th).
1066 - William, Duke of Normandy, defeats Saxon king Harold in the Battle of Hastings (Oct 14th).
1072 - Vikings conquers Palermo.
1085 - Danish Vikings makes a final attempt to conquer England but fails.

Credit: Arild Hauge’s Runes summary in English.