Introduction
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xvllt Acbnoledgennts Wolfe. My obligations in respect of illustrations are in gencral ex- pressed where the plates, text figures, and maps are listed. I am much indebted to the following for the use of copyrighr material: Columbia University Press for F. J. Tschan's translatir:n of The History oJ the Archbkhops of Hamburg-Bremen, I9J9; the Medieval Academy of America for the Cross and Sherbowitz-\Tetzor trans- lation of The Russian Primary Chronicle, I9J3; the late Professor G. N. - Garmonsway for his translation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; anci the late ProfeSsor A. H. Smith for his place-name map. Introduction Also, no one can write a general history of the Vikings without levying a viking-style tribute on other men's riches. I am conscious ,T of my many exactions, and trust that every bibliographical refercnce IHE SUBIECT OF THIS BOOK IS THE VIKING REAL}IS, will be held indicative of eratitude and esteem. Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, their emergence and develop- ment, civilization and culture, and their many-sided achievement University College GWYN JONES at home and abroad. It is an extensive field to survey. For even Cardiff when we set aside the almost trackless millennia of my opening pages, there remain a thousand years ofhistory to be charted in an For timely assistance during the revision of my Hktor"y I stand, as e vcr, area of Norse activity extending frorn the North Cape and White in debt to many. Of institutions I would mention the American- Sea to the Pillars of Hercules, from Newfoundland and Baffin Island Scandinavian Foundation, the Archaeological Institute ofAmerica, the to the Volga Bend and Byzandum. However, mv concern is prim- Archaeological Association of Canada, the York Archaeological arily with ihe'Viking AgL' proper, equated as this g"n.r^liy is with Trust, the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, Cornell the three-hundred-year period c. 78e-ro7o-the period, that is, of University, the University of Iou.'a, and the British Council; and of the.so-called'Viking Mivement' overseas. The Viking Volr..n..rt and colleagues Hilmar Foss, Loyn, Else friends Henry Olaf Olsen, is that maniGstatio*n of the Viking Age which mosipo.nerfully, Roesdahi; Eleanor Guralnick, Robert McGhee, Patricia Sutherland, because_ most painfully, imp.essei it#lf upon non-Siand.inavian Birgitta Wallace; R. T. Farrell, Howard Laster, Kathleen Campbell, chroniclers abroad. Ay'iheir emphasis on thi destructive effects of Richard Lloyd-Jones, Dick Ringler, Thomas H. McGovern, and the the Movement in western Eurtpe, and their neglect of its con- lateJohn Parry. To my wife Mair I owe my thanks of ali. H. warmest tributions to. trade, discovery, c6lonization, and ihe political and cultural G.j institutions of the countries affected, these chroniclers produced for the contemporery rvorld and posterity alike a picture lr.on... incomplete, lurid^, and distorted. Th.y *.d" little inquiry :::::\.lands, peoples, beliefs, and civilizationi fro- which (asihey :1Y^,tr) priest-murderers and robbers of churches emirged- alack ol^these dispassionate comment made more serious by the sho"rt"ge oI records ^contemporary in Scandinavia itself, with its attendait Rljt:f of an abundance of late, unreliable',v.iiten sources, rnainly L::,^lh. hands of rwelfth- ani thirteenth-century Icehnii. [H:t^Ad historians. Consequently, to see the Viking Age"nti- in Viq1g. Movemeni, and-this last through th"e elies of ;::':'"::_:n.EUroPe?n "'or Christian annalists and chroniclers, Is to see'it, in 2 Introduction Introduction every,sense of the word, partially. It turns a many-faceted and and fragrant Pasture of the west Greenland fiords. It was an durably important contribution to our European heritage r*d win land and wealth to reward into a ffiU;rion to distinguish,themselves, sensational tale ofraid, rapine, and conquest, and an interplay of ild"nt*g.lh'toI'i:d,-91"*15::li1llryl99-q'T*l:1:: complementary aspects ofthe European genius into a brutil sagq. freratioi of northern.kings, jarls, and sea-captains to assault the Not least, it gives the Age a sudden, inexplicable beginninfa a;4 iloitoti.r of their southern and south-western neighbours. It was a offers inadequate reasons for its end, whereas on examination it rvill desire for profit and material goods which encouraged the vikings be found to evolve out of the cenruries preceding it and merge with to trade and ctrry in the Baltic and North Seas, the Black Sea and the years which followed. Caspian, across the Atlantic Ocean and along the great Russian Who were the vikings (rikinga), whose name is used descript- riveis. They'il/ere particularly well placed to mect the inexhaustible ively for this significant period of European history? They wire European and Muslim demand for furs and slaves, but turned their men of the North, the inhabitants of Scandinavia, and it is import- h"nd to any saleable commodiry: grain, fish, timber, hides, salt, ant to see them in fair perspective. The Norirnenn or Nordn)anni, .-hdne, glass, glue, horses and cattle, white bears and falcons, walrus despire southern witness and the image-making of their own ,' floryirory andano seal oil, oone|rhoney, wax,\r'4x, malt,rnal[, silkssuKs andano woollens'woollens, amberamDer andancl authors and artists, were, one almost apologizes for saying, first and , b:f,jl nuts, soapstone dishes and basalt millstones, wrought weapons, foremost men. Second, they were the men of Rogaland, Vestfold, : qrnaments, and silver. For this alone the viking peoples vould be Traland, Skine, Sddermanland, or whatever other region or patria ::-: rworthloffame,iworthyoffame, for to this end thevthey built ships and eitablishedestablished marketmarke t gave them liG and nurture. As time went on and the northern sownsfreveloped trade rout., ,nd maintained spheres of influence, kingdoms took vague, prophetic shape, no doubt a proportion of grdfortified mercantile practice with piracy and conquest abroad. them felt themselves to be subjects of the king of the Danes, it To,So viking was a trade_ or profession, a means r-o the good IiG, Swedes, or Norwegians. But though they had manly ties, including fu at least to a living. Its threC main elements, trade, piiacy, and those oflanguage and religion, to remind them ofa shared northern- ford-taking, often cloiely blended, had been no.ih.rn long ness, they had but little sense of a separate Danish, Swedish, or e the Vrking Age, and would long outlast it. One".Uuiti.r moves back Norwegian nationalify. For the rest, they were neither super- no sense of dislocation from the commencement of the Vikinq human nor sub-human; but precisely and generically human-in oent shortly before 8oo to the purposeful mastery of seal their greed, treachery, cruelty, and violence, as in their energy, techniques by the Scandinavian^peoples and the eastward generosity, loyalty, and familial kindness, and recognizably one and lon ot the Swedes into the Baltic lands soon after the year the same species as their neighbours, whether Franks and Germans, these lay the movements of the Angles, Giats, nru[$ii"d Jutes, Petchenegs and English, Wends and Bulgars, Bretons and Irish, associated with the fourth, fifth, and siith clnturies, and Eskimos and Amefican Indians, Muslims and Greeks, whenever and farther.back ttt. pott w"nderings ,i Migirri"rs of ,o nlany vrhercver encountered. It was the pressures of history, geography, I r. or peoples. Historiani haverraYL loigrvrtE debatedu! whether snouldl:::l,,1ibo and economics, and their religion and seafaring arts, which rnade see more thin superficial resemblancJs between the late them distinctive in their day, not original sin or primal virtue' j]lY,T"niestadons ofnorthern unresr, and that there rvere ruantul intermissions-is Being men, they lived under a compulsion to make life bearable and evident, but though we shall be rvise to if possible good. In an agrarian wbrld they needed land for their ;e^,t!1wora'viking' Ib, it"Gi...d r"r,:;;; ;;;;ext, there are rea:o,ns for children and grass for their stock; in an era ofopening trade-routes T.:It-g seeing nortfr'ern history, ho*..ve. iiv"rsified, a and the they craved silver and the chattels silver could provide; in *ruty' northern"excursus as a continuing--o rather than a hieiarchical, warlike, and still part-tribal society'their leaders or coincidental pro.rrr. ftlsllJenetidveiniin sought fame, power, wealth, and sustenance through acdon. Thus 1!ree rori..r'oii"formation about the viking and it was chiefly land-hunser which led them to the windy sheep-runs are archaeology, numismatics, 19-^1,:tllraea[y and *iitt.n of the Faroes, the buttir-laden grass ofhabitable lceland, and the they should compftment and illuminate each other. 4 lntoduction Introduction so that hardly a corner ofdoubt or ignorance remains to us; in fact- - wrth his distinctive Pgrlonal ornaments and ship-burials. all three are imperGct **a instruments to knowledge and understanJ] ,,ff"T;o;hf h*::.ry:'::,"'-1*:,t::1."*-"::'"lt:*-:l't':: ing. For,a start, there is no contrast here between the exactitude of :l* *t*p of construitional principles at the great strongholds of science (archaeology and numismatics) and the subjectivity of the laigahd-Flrrkat, as well as at centres of trade like Birka and writteir word. Tnit Archaeologists, like other men, are not always free g"J.Uy. i carbo:r-r4 dating 9f " IoT- for some of the artefacts from nationalism, mysticism, or overconfidence, as is shown'by the Ar.""Jr.a at L'Anse-aux-Meadows in Newfoundland is crucial for long debate over the extent and significance ofscandinavian maierial Ih" Norcr discovery of North America; the examination and in Russian graves, the sad story of viking finds in America, the J"rinn ofburied treasure in Scandinavia is one key to the warlike continuing argument over the origin and chronology ofviking art pr pei'ceful nature of particular decades back home.