Forging Ninth and Tenth Century Western Europe: a Comparative
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Miklós Somogyvári Forging Ninth and Tenth Century Western Europe: A Comparative Study of the Viking and Hungarian Activities MA Thesis in Medieval Studies CEU eTD Collection Central European University Budapest May 2009 Forging Ninth and Tenth Century Western Europe: A Comparative Study of the Viking and Hungarian Activities by Miklós Somogyvári (Hungary) Thesis submitted to the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Medieval Studies Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU ____________________________________________ Chair, Examination Committee ____________________________________________ Thesis Supervisor ____________________________________________ Examiner ____________________________________________ Examiner CEU eTD Collection Budapest May 2009 ii Forging Ninth and Tenth Century Western Europe: A Comparative Study of the Viking and Hungarian Activities by Miklós Somogyvári (Hungary) Thesis submitted to the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Medieval Studies Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU ____________________________________________ External Examiner CEU eTD Collection Budapest May 2009 iii Forging Ninth and Tenth Century Western Europe: A Comparative Study of the Viking and Hungarian Activities by Miklós Somogyvári (Hungary) Thesis submitted to the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Medieval Studies Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU ________________________ Supervisor ____________________________________________ External Supervisor CEU eTD Collection Budapest May 2009 iv I, the undersigned, Miklós Somogyvári, candidate for the MA degree in Medieval Studies declare herewith that the present thesis is exclusively my own work, based on my research and only such external information as properly credited in notes and bibliography. I declare that no unidentified and illegitimate use was made of the work of others, and no part of the thesis infringes on any person’s or institution’s copyright. I also declare that no part of the thesis has been submitted in this form to any other institution of higher education for an academic degree. Budapest, 25 May 2009 __________________________ Signature CEU eTD Collection v Table of Contents Abbreviations............................................................................................................................ iii Introduction ...............................................................................................................................iv Foreword................................................................................................................................iv Structure of the thesis..............................................................................................................v Sources and methodology.......................................................................................................vi Setting the scene.....................................................................................................................ix Chapter I.....................................................................................................................................1 Weaponry, tactics, army structure and military intelligence.........................................................1 Introduction.............................................................................................................................1 Frankish army structure in the ninth century............................................................................1 Frankish weaponry in the ninth century...................................................................................3 Frankish Tactics ......................................................................................................................6 Viking army structure in the ninth century...............................................................................8 Viking weaponry in the ninth century....................................................................................10 Viking Ships .........................................................................................................................12 Vikings Tactics .....................................................................................................................16 Hungarian army structure in the ninth and tenth centuries......................................................18 Hungarian weaponry in the ninth and tenth centuries.............................................................19 Horses and harness................................................................................................................22 Hungarian Tactics .................................................................................................................24 Pagan military intelligence ....................................................................................................26 Chapter Conclusions .............................................................................................................29 Chapter II..................................................................................................................................31 The Social Background of Viking and Hungarian Raids............................................................31 Introduction...........................................................................................................................31 The three-layered pattern of the Old Norse society and the Scandinavian state structure........32 The three-layered pattern of Hungarian society and the Hungarian state structure..................35 Virtues and the world interpretation in Scandinavia...............................................................37 Virtues and the world interpretation of the Hungarians..........................................................44 Chapter Conclusions .............................................................................................................47 Chapter III ................................................................................................................................49 Historical Analysis of Pagan Attacks; What Devastation Contributed?......................................49 Introduction...........................................................................................................................49 Viking attacks on the Frankish Empire ..................................................................................49 General attributes of the Viking attacks, defensive attempts and chapter conclusions.............58 Hungarian attacks in the Frankish Empire .............................................................................59 General attributes of the Hungarian attacks, defensive attempts and conclusions ...................66 CEU eTD Collection Conclusions ..............................................................................................................................68 Bibliography.............................................................................................................................71 Appendix ..................................................................................................................................77 ii Abbreviations MGH SS: Monumenta Germaniae Historia Scriptores in folio MGH SS rer. Germ: Monumenta Germaniae Historia Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separate editi MGH SS rer. Germ. N. S.: Monumenta Germaniae Historia Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, Nova Series DAI: De Administrando Imperio CEU eTD Collection iii Introduction Foreword I have devoted my thesis to a comparative study of the Viking and Hungarian activities in the Frankish Empire and Northern Italy in the ninth and tenth centuries. My goal is to show that their success throughout Europe can be explained by examining the most important factors of their activities. I will examine these factors as a complex system. I also want to show that even though they caused destruction in Europe they still contributed Europe’s development in a long term. A further aim of the study is to raise new conceptions for reaching a better understanding of the question how these pagan cultures were able to threaten Europe and the Frankish Empire for at least a century. To accomplish this goal I have chosen to write a comparative study of these two cultures distant from each other1 using the Franks, a Western European Christian civilisation, as a test case. The Franks serve as a kind of control group or operational base to help identifying similarities and differences in the activity patterns of the peripheral Scandinavian and Hungarian societies. Numerous studies have dealt with the question of the temporary ascendancy of these groups, treating every possible and interesting field within Old Norse or Hungarian studies, but without a single effort to compare them to each other, probably because of the distance between them. This distance is mainly geographical and cultural. Temporal differences also exist but it is not too significant in the first phase of the Viking and Hungarian attacks. My research is justified CEU eTD Collection by the