Viking activity in the British Isles occurred during theEarly Middle Ages, the 8th to the 11th centuries CE, whenScandinavians travelled to theBritish Isles to raid, conquer, settle and trade. They are generally referred to asVikings,[1][2] but some scholars debate whether the term Viking[a] represented all Scandinavian settlers or just those who used violence.[4][b]
At the start of the early medieval period, Scandinavian kingdoms had developed trade links reaching as far as southern Europe and the Mediterranean, giving them access to foreign imports, such as silver, gold, bronze, and spices. These trade links also extended westwards into Ireland and Britain.[5][6]
In the last decade of the eighth century, Viking raiders sacked several Christian monasteries in northern Britain, and over the next three centuries they launched increasingly large scale invasions and settled in many areas, especially in eastern Britain and Ireland, the islands north and west of Scotland and theIsle of Man.
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During the early medieval period, the islands of Ireland and Britain were each culturally, linguistically, and religiously divided among various peoples.
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The languages of theCeltic Britons and of theGaels descended from theCeltic languages spoken byIron Age inhabitants of Europe. InIreland and parts of westernScotland, as well as in theIsle of Man, people spoke an early form of CelticGaelic known asOld Irish. InCornwall,Cumbria,Wales, and south-west Scotland, the CelticBrythonic languages were spoken (their modern descendants includeWelsh andCornish).
The Picts, who spoke thePictish language, lived in the area north of the Forth and Clyde rivers, which now constitutes a large portion of modern-day Scotland. Due to the scarcity of writing in Pictish, which survives only inOgham, views differ as to whether Pictish was a Celtic language like those spoken further south, or perhaps even a non-Indo-European language likeBasque. However, most inscriptions and place-names hint towards the Picts being Celtic in language and culture.
Much of southern Britain had become the various kingdoms ofAnglo-Saxon England, whereAnglo-Saxon migrants from continental Europe had settled during the fifth century, bringing with them their ownGermanic language (known asOld English), polytheistic religion and cultural practices.
Many peoples of Britain and Ireland had already converted toChristianity from their older, pre-Christianpolytheistic religions, including the distinct polytheistic religion (Anglo-Saxon paganism) practiced by the Anglo-Saxons.
In northern Britain, in the area roughly corresponding to modern-day Scotland, lived three distinct ethnic groups in their own respective kingdoms: thePicts,Scots, andBritons.[7] The Pictish cultural group dominated the majority of Scotland, with major populations concentrated between theFirth of Forth and theRiver Dee, as well as inSutherland,Caithness, andOrkney.[8] TheScots, according to written sources, constituted a tribal group which had crossed to Britain fromDalriada in the north of Ireland during the late-fifth century.[9] The northern Britons lived in theOld North, in parts of what have become southern Scotland and northern England, and, by the seventh or eighth centuries, these had apparently come under the political control of Anglo-Saxons.[10]
By the mid-ninth century, Anglo-Saxon England comprised four separate and independent kingdoms:East Anglia,Wessex,Northumbria, andMercia, the last of which was the strongest military power.[11]
Between half a million and a million people lived in England at this time, with society being rigidly hierarchical. The class system had a king and hisealdormen at the top, under whom ranked thethegns (or landholders), and then the various categories of agricultural workers below them. Beneath all of these was a class ofslaves, who may have made up as much as a quarter of the population.[11]
The majority of the populace lived in the countryside, although a few large towns had developed, notablyLondon andYork, which became centres of royal and ecclesiastical administration. There were also a number of trading ports, such asHamwic andIpswich, which engaged inforeign trade.[11]
Viking raids began in England in the late 8th century, primarily on monasteries.[12] These monasteries had often been positioned on small islands and in other remote coastal areas so that the monks could live in seclusion, devoting themselves to worship without the interference of other elements of society. At the same time, it made them isolated and unprotected targets for attack by sea.[13]
Thefirst recorded raid was on the south coast, atPortland,Dorset in 789; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle described the Vikings asheathen men.[14] Thefirst monastery to be raided was atLindisfarne in 793, off the northeast coast of England.Monasteries andminster churches were popular targets as they were wealthy and had valuable objects that were portable.[15] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 840 says thatÆthelwulf of Wessex was defeated atCarhampton,Somerset, after 35 Viking ships had landed in the area.[16]
Thefirst known account of a Viking raid of theViking Era comes from 789, when three ships fromHordaland (in modern Norway) landed in theIsle of Portland on the southern coast ofWessex. When approached byBeaduheard, the royalreeve fromDorchester, whose job it was to identify all foreign merchants entering the kingdom, they killed him.[17] There were almost certainly unrecorded earlier raids. In a document dating to 792, KingOffa of Mercia set out privileges granted to monasteries and churches in Kent, but he excluded military service "against seaborne pirates with migrating fleets", showing that Viking raids were already an established problem. In a letter of 790–92 to KingÆthelred I of Northumbria,Alcuin berated English people for copying the fashions of pagans who menaced them with terror. This shows that there were already close contacts between the two peoples, and the Vikings would have been well informed about their targets.[18]
The next recorded attack against the Anglo-Saxons came the following year, in 793, when the monastery atLindisfarne, an island just off the northeast coast of England, wassacked by a Viking raiding party on 8 June.[17]
Lo, it is nearly 350 years that we and our fathers have inhabited this most lovely land, and never before has such a terror appeared as we have now suffered from a pagan race, nor was it thought that such an inroad from the sea could be made. Behold the church of St Cuthbert spattered with the blood of the priests of God, despoiled of all its ornaments.
The following year, they sacked the nearbyMonkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey.[19][20] The Vikings met with stronger resistance than they had expected: their leaders were killed. The raiders escaped, only to have their ships beached atTynemouth and the crews killed by locals.[21][22] This represented one of the last raids on England for about 40 years. The Vikings focused instead on Ireland and Scotland.
In 795, they once again attacked, this time raidingIona Abbey off Scotland's west coast.[19] This monastery was attacked again in 802 and 806, when 68 people living there were killed. After this devastation, the monastic community at Iona abandoned the site and fled toKells in Ireland.[23] In the first decade of the ninth century, Viking raiders began to attack coastal districts of Ireland.[24] In 835, the first major Viking raid in southern England took place and was directed against theIsle of Sheppey[25][26][27] and in abattle in 839, Vikings inflicted heavy defeats against thePicts, killingUuen, the King of the Picts, his brother Bran andAed son of Boanta, King ofDál Riata.[28]
According to Norse Sagas, in 865 the legendary Viking chiefRagnar Lodbrok fell into the hands of KingÆlla of Northumbria. Ælla allegedly had Ragnar thrown into a snake pit. It is said that Ragnar's enraged sons, taking advantage of political instability in England, recruited theGreat Heathen Army, which landed in the Kingdom of East Anglia that year. There is no proof that this legend has any basis in history; however, it is known that several of the Viking leaders grouped their bands together to form one great army that landed in the kingdom of East Anglia to start their attempted conquest of England in 866.[29][30]
In 867 the great army went north and capturedYork, but Ælla, together with support from the other English kingdoms, attempted to retake the city. He was unsuccessful; the annals for the year says that Ælla was killed during the battle, but according to legend he was captured by the Vikings, who executed or'blood eagled' him as punishment for Ragnar's murder.[31]
TheEngland runestones (Swedish:Englandsstenarna) is a group of about 30runestones in Sweden which refer toViking Age voyages to England.[32] They constitute one of the largest groups of runestones that mention voyages to other countries, and they are comparable in number only to the approximately 30Greece runestones and the 26Ingvar runestones,[33] of which the latter refer to a Viking expedition to theMiddle East. They were engraved inOld Norse with theYounger Futhark.
The Anglo-Saxon rulers paid large sums,Danegelds, to Vikings, who mostly came from Denmark and Sweden, arriving to the English shores during the 990s and the first decades of the 11th century.[34][35][36] Some runestones relate of these Danegelds, such as the Yttergärde runestone,U 344, which tells ofUlf of Borresta who received the danegeld three times, and the last one he received fromCanute the Great. Canute sent home most of the Vikings who had helped him conquer England, but he kept a strong bodyguard, theÞingalið, and its members are also mentioned on several runestones.[37]
The vast majority of the runestones, 27, were raised Sweden and 17 of those located around lakeMälaren on the east coast. Denmark in its present-day borders has no such runestones, but there is a runestone inScania which mentionsLondon. There are also single cases of such runestones, located in Norway and inSchleswig (Germany).
Some Vikings, such as Guðvér, did not only attack England, but alsoSaxony, as reported by the Grinda RunestoneSö 166 in Södermanland:[32]
Varioushoards of treasure were buried in England at this time. Some of these may have been deposited by Anglo-Saxons attempting to hide their wealth from Viking raiders, and others by the Viking raiders as a way of protecting their looted treasure.[17]
One of these hoards, discovered inCroydon (historically part ofSurrey, now inGreater London) in 1862, contained 250 coins, three silver ingots, and part of a fourth as well as four pieces of hack silver in a linen bag. Archaeologists interpret this as loot collected by a member of the Viking army. By dating the artefacts, archaeologists estimated that this hoard had been buried in 872, when the army wintered in London.[17] The coins themselves came from a wide range of different kingdoms, with Wessex, Mercian, and East Anglian examples found alongside foreign imports fromCarolingian-dynastyFrancia and from the Arab world.[17] Not all such Viking hoards in England contain coins, however: for example, atBowes Moor,Durham, 19 silver ingots were discovered, whilst at Orton Scar,Cumbria, a silver neck-ring andpenannular brooch were uncovered.[39]
The historian Peter Hunter Blair believed that the success of the Viking raids and the "complete unpreparedness of Britain to meet such attacks" became major factors in the subsequent Viking invasions and colonisation of large parts of the British Isles.[13]
From 865, the Viking attitude towards the British Isles changed, as they began to see it as a place for potential colonisation rather than simply a place to raid. As a result of this, larger armies began arriving on Britain's shores, with the intention of conquering land and constructing settlements there.[40] The early Viking settlers would have appeared visibly different from the Anglo-Saxon populace, wearing Scandinavian styles of jewellery, and probably also wearing their own peculiar styles of clothing. Viking and Anglo-Saxon men also had different hairstyles: Viking men's hair was shaved at the back and left shaggy on the front, whilst the Anglo-Saxons typically wore their hair long.[41]
In 865, a group of hitherto uncoordinated bands of predominantly Danish Vikings joined to form a large army and landed in East Anglia.[42] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle described this force as themycel hæþen here (Great Heathen Army) and went on to say that it was led byIvar the Boneless andHalfdan Ragnarsson.[43][44][45][46] The army crossed the Midlands into Northumbria and captured York (Jorvik),[42] the major city in theKingdom of Northumbria, in 866.[47] Counterattacks concluded in a decisive defeat for Anglo-Saxon forces atYork on 21 March 867, and the deaths of Northumbrian leadersÆlla andOsberht. In 871, the Great Heathen Army was reinforced by another Danish force known as the Great Summer Army led byGuthrum. In 875, the Great Heathen Army split into two bands, with Guthrum leading one back to Wessex, and Halfdan taking his followers north.[48][49] Then in 876, Halfdan shared out Northumbrian land south of the Tees amongst his men, who "ploughed the land and supported themselves", founding the territory later known as theDanelaw.[c][49]
Other Anglo-Saxon kings began to capitulate to the Viking demands and surrendered land to Viking settlers.[52] In addition, many areas in eastern and northern England—including all but thenorthernmost parts of Northumbria—came under the direct rule of Viking leaders or their puppet kings.
KingÆthelred of Wessex, who had been leading the conflict against the Vikings, died in 871 and was succeeded on the throne of Wessex by his younger brother,Alfred.[40] The Viking king of Northumbria,Halfdan Ragnarrson (Old English:Healfdene)—one of the leaders of the Viking Great Army (known to the Anglo-Saxons as theGreat Heathen Army)—surrendered his lands to a second wave of Viking invaders in 876. In the next four years, Vikings gained further land in the kingdoms of Mercia and East Anglia as well.[40] King Alfred continued his conflict with the invading forces but was driven back intoSomerset in the south-west of his kingdom in 878, where he was forced to take refuge in the marshes ofAthelney.[40]
Alfred regrouped his military forces and defeated the armies of the Viking monarch of East Anglia,Guthrum, at theBattle of Edington (May 878). Sometime after the Battle of Edington, a treaty was agreed that set out the lasting peace terms between the two kings that included the boundaries of each of their kingdoms. It is known as theTreaty of Alfred and Guthrum. The treaty is one of the few existing documents[d] of Alfred's reign and survives inOld English inCorpus Christi College, Cambridge, Manuscript 383, and in a Latin compilation, known asQuadripartitus.[54][55] The areas to the north and east became known as theDanelaw because it was under Viking political influence, whilst those areas to the south and west remained under Anglo-Saxon dominance.[40] Alfred's government set about constructing a series of defended towns orburhs, began the construction of a navy, and organised a militia system (thefyrd), whereby half of his peasant army remained on active service at any one time.[40] To maintain the burhs, and the standing army, he set up a taxation and conscription system known as theBurghal Hidage.[56]
In 892 a new Viking army, with 250 ships, established itself inAppledore, Kent and another army of 80 ships soon afterwards inMilton Regis.[57] The army then launched a continuous series of attacks on Wessex. However, due in part to the efforts of Alfred and his army, the kingdom's new defences proved to be a success, and the Viking invaders were met with a determined resistance and made less of an impact than they had hoped. By 896, the invaders dispersed—instead settling in East Anglia and Northumbria, with some instead sailing toNormandy.[40][57]
By the late 9th century, the Vikings had overrun most of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms that constituted England at the time. However,Alfred the Great, king of Wessex, defeated the Vikings at theBattle of Edington in 878. The resultant treaty gave the Danes control of northern and eastern England, with Alfred and his successors controlling Wessex.[58] But the whole of England was unified withNorway andDenmark in the eleventh century, during the reign of the Danish kingCnut the Great.[59][60]
Alfred's policy of opposing the Viking settlers continued under his daughterÆthelflæd, who marriedÆthelred, Ealdorman of Mercia, and also under her brother, KingEdward the Elder (reigned 899–924). When Edward died in July 924, his son Æthelstan became king. In 927, he conquered the last remaining Viking kingdom, York, making him the first Anglo-Saxon ruler of the whole of England. In 934, he invaded Scotland and forced Constantine II to submit to him, but Æthelstan's rule was resented by the Scots and Vikings, and, in 937, they invaded England. Æthelstan defeated them at theBattle of Brunanburh, a victory which gave him great prestige both in the British Isles and on the Continent and led to the collapse of Viking power in northern Britain. After his death in 939, the Vikings seized back control of York, and it was not finally reconquered until 954.[61]
Edward's sonEdmund became king of the English in 939. However, when Edmund was killed in a brawl, his younger brother,Eadred of Wessex took over as king. Then in 947 the Northumbrians rejected Eadred and made the NorwegianEric Bloodaxe (Eirik Haraldsson) their king. Eadred responded by invading and ravaging Northumbria. When the Saxons headed back south, Eric Bloodaxe's army caught up with some of them atCastleford and made 'great slaughter[e]'. Eadred threatened to destroy Northumbria in revenge, so the Northumbrians turned their back on Eric and acknowledged Eadred as their king. The Northumbrians then had another change of heart and acceptedOlaf Sihtricsson as their ruler, only to have Eric Bloodaxe remove him and becomeking of the Northumbrians again. Then, in 954, Eric Bloodaxe was expelled[f] for the second and final time by Eadred. Bloodaxe was the last Norse king of Northumbria.[63]
Under the reign of Wessex KingEdgar the Peaceful, England came to be further politically unified, with Edgar coming to be recognised as the king of all England by both Anglo-Saxon and Viking populations living in the country.[64] However, in the reigns of his sonEdward the Martyr, who was murdered in 978, and thenÆthelred the Unready, the political strength of the English monarchy waned, and, in 980, raiders from Scandinavia resumed attacks against England.[64] The English government decided that the only way of dealing with these attackers was to pay themprotection money, and so, in 991, they gave them £10,000. This fee did not prove to be enough, and, over the next decade, the English kingdom was forced to pay the Viking attackers increasingly large sums of money.[64] Many English began to demand that a more hostile approach be taken against the Vikings, and so, onSt Brice's Day in 1002, King Æthelred proclaimed that all Danes living in England would be executed. It would come to be known as theSt. Brice's Day massacre.[64]
The news of the massacre reached KingSweyn Forkbeard in Denmark. It is believed that Sweyn's sisterGunhilde could have been among the victims, which prompted Sweyn to raid England the following year, when Exeter was burned down. Hampshire, Wiltshire, Wilton, and Salisbury also fell victim to the Viking revenge attack.[65][66] Sweyn continued his raid in England and in 1004 his Viking army looted East Anglia, plundered Thetford and sacked Norwich, before he once again returned to Denmark.[67]
Further raids took place in 1006–1007 then Sweyn was paid over 10 000 pounds of silver to leave, and, in 1009–1012,Thorkell the Tall led a Viking invasion into England.[citation needed]
In 1013,Sweyn Forkbeard launched a full-scale invasion of England, after a few months of claiming submission over England and a successful attack on London, Æthelred fled to Normandy, leading Sweyn to take the English throne. Sweyn died five weeks later and Æthelred returned, driving out Sweyn’s sonCnut. but, in 1015, Cnut returned with a fleet of 200 ships, launching ahard-fought campaign that would last for over a year. After his victory over English forces at theBattle of Assandun, Cnut andEdmund Ironside agreed to divide England between them, Cnut the north and Edmund the south; whoever outlived the other becomes king of all England. Cnut became king of England upon Edmund’s death on the 30th of November, and was crowned later in 1017, subsequently ruling over both the Danish and English kingdoms.[68] Following Cnut's death in 1035, the two kingdoms were once more declared independent and remained so, apart from a short period from 1040 to 1042 when Cnut's sonHarthacnut ascended the English throne.[68]
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Harald Hardrada, King of Norway, led an invasion of England in 1066 with 300 longships and 10,000 soldiers, attempting to seize the English throne during the succession dispute following the death ofEdward the Confessor. He met initial success, defeating the outnumbered forces mustered by the earldoms of Northumbria and Mercia at theBattle of Fulford. Whilst basking in his victory and occupying Northumbria in preparation for the advance south, Harald's army was surprised by a similarly sized force led by KingHarold Godwinson, which had managed to force march all the way there from London in a week. The invasion was repulsed at theBattle of Stamford Bridge, and Hardrada was killed along with most of his men. Whilst the Viking attempt was unsuccessful, the near simultaneousNorman invasion was successful in the south at theBattle of Hastings. Hardrada's invasion and defeat has been described as the end of theViking Age in Britain.[69]
Archaeologists James Graham-Campbell and Colleen E. Batey noted that there was a lack of historical sources discussing the earliest Viking encounters with the British Isles, which would have most probably been amongst the northern island groups, those closest to Scandinavia.[70]
TheIrish Annals provide us with accounts of much Viking activity during the 9th and 10th centuries.[71]
TheEngland Runestones, concentrated in Sweden, give accounts of the voyages from the Viking perspective.
The Viking raids that affected Anglo-Saxon England were primarily documented in theAnglo-Saxon Chronicle, a collection of annals initially written in the late ninth century, most probably in the Kingdom of Wessex during the reign ofAlfred the Great. TheChronicle is, however, a biased source, acting as a piece of "wartime propaganda" written on behalf of the Anglo-Saxon forces against their Viking opponents, and, in many cases, greatly exaggerates the size of the Viking fleets and armies, thereby making any Anglo-Saxon victories against them seem more heroic.[72]
The Viking settlers in the British Isles left remains of theirmaterial culture behind, whicharchaeologists have been able toexcavate and interpret during the 20th and 21st centuries. Such Viking evidence in Britain consists primarily of Viking burials undertaken in Shetland, Orkney, the Western Isles, the Isle of Man, Ireland, and the north-west of England.[71] ArchaeologistsJames Graham-Campbell and Colleen E. Batey remarked that it was on the Isle of Man where Norse archaeology was "remarkably rich in quality and quantity".[4]
However, as archaeologistJulian D. Richards commented, Scandinavians in Anglo-Saxon England "can be elusive to the archaeologist" because many of their houses and graves are indistinguishable from those of the other populations living in the country.[2] For this reason, historian Peter Hunter Blair noted that, in Britain, the archaeological evidence for Viking invasion and settlement was "very slight compared with the corresponding evidence for the Anglo-Saxon invasions" of the fifth century.[71]
A variety of evidence, among which some of the objects from Sutton Hoo hold a prominent place, indicates that England lay well within the range of Scandinavia's foreign contacts before the Viking attacks began.
[...] the heathen armies spread devastation among the Northumbrians, and plundered the monastery of King Everth at the mouth of the Wear. There, however, some of their leaders were slain; and some of their ships also were shattered to pieces by the violence of the weather; many of the crew were drowned; and some, who escaped alive to the shore, were soon dispatched at the mouth of the river.
Several Viking leaders joined forces in the hope of winning status and independence by conquering England, which then consisted of four kingdoms. In 865 a fleet landed in East Anglia and was later joined by others to form what a contemporary chronicler described, with good reason, as a 'great army'.
The leaders appear to have included Ivar the Boneless and his brother Halfdan, sons of the legendary Ragnar Lothbrok, as well as another 'king' calledBagsecg, and several 'earls'; and if it is assumed that Ivar is the Imar who had been active in Ireland in the late 850s and early 860s, it would appear that he had been able to meet up with his brother and assume joint leadership of the army some time after its arrival in England.
