FACING THE OCEAN

Scandinavian Settlement in Scotland and the Islands

In spring the prevailing east winds would take a ship comfortably, within
the space of two sailing days, the 180 nautical miles from the Norwegian
coast, in the vicinity of Bergen, to the Shetland Isles. When the firstjour-

ney was made is unknown, but we can be tolerably certain that Norse set-
tlement of Shetland and Orkney was well under way by the end of the
eighth century, and thereafter the control of the west coast of Scotland
and the Western Isles followed rapidly (II.IO, I I . I I ) . For Norwegians,
restricted to the narrow littoral zone of their homeland, the new territo-
ries in the west provided much-needed space for expansion in a congenial
and familiar environment. The fertility of Orkney soon made the archi-
pelago the political centre of the Norse settlement. The earldom of Ork-
ney was established towards the end of the ninth century and by the late
tenth century its authority extended over Shetland, the coastal mainland
of Scotland, the Western Isles, and the Isle of Man.

The settlement in this broad Atlantic zone was based on the isolated,

self-contained farmstead and would have involved the influx of pioneer-
ing family groups, but there must also have been a degree of intermar-
riage with the local population. The survival of Norse place-names
throughout the region leaves little doubt that immigrant groups were
numerous, and that once established the new culture became dominant.

Unlike Ireland, where the principal activity of the newcomers seems to

have been the setting up of trading entrepots, no centralized trading port

II.13 Reconstruction of

the first Viking farmhouse

atjarlshof, Shetland.

II.14 (facing) T h e original

farmhouse at Jarlshof with

later additions.

FACING THE OCEAN

has been identified. What exchanges there were (and there is ample evi-
dence that timber was imported from Norway) would have been orga-
nized on a small-scale local basis, presumably with the merchants visiting
individual coastal settlements. What stands out from the increasingly
rich archaeological evidence is that the socio-economic level of the Norse
settlement was much like that of the early-first-millennium settlements

it replaced. In some cases, like Jarlshof (II.12,II.13,
II.14) on Shetland and Udal on North Uist, the
same settlement sites simply continued in use. On
the island of Rousay Viking burials were found in
a cemetery which had been established centuries
earlier, the Viking graves carefully avoiding the
earlier burials that had been marked by boulders.

The Northern and Western Isles and the adja-

cent mainland littoral zone can be regarded as the
western homeland of the Norwegian Vikings,
and it was from here that raids on Ireland and fur-
ther afield were mounted in the slack periods dur-
ing the agricultural year. For these activities the
Isle of Man provided a perfect springboard, its
location in the centre of the Irish Sea making it
equally suitable for raiding to west, east, and
south (II.15). Such cemetery evidence as there is
suggests that the Scandinavian element was
mainly male, the females being provided by the
indigenous population. This would be consistent
with the island functioning essentially as a base for
maritime raids. It is surprising that the Galloway
peninsula appears not to have been settled by
Vikings (II.10). The place-name evidence and the
distribution of distinctive hog-back tombstones
show that there was a sizeable Scandinavian pop-
ulation in northern Cumberland and along the
north side of the Solway Firth, but this is best seen
as an extension of the settlement of northern
England and not as part of the Norse Atlantic
area. Thus the indigenous population of Gal-
loway, maintaining its independence against the

Scots and Angles, seems also to have formed a
buffer between Norse settlement of the north-
west and the Danish settlement spreading from
the south-east.

ii.i5 Odd's cross slab from

Kirk Braddan, Isle of Man

carved in Jellinge style

popular in N o r w a y at this

time.

THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN

Though remote and sometimes harsh, the west coast of Greenland, with
its deeply incised fjords, was not at all unlike the homeland of Norway
and there was habitable land in plenty. For the more adventurous spirits
with a lust to explore, unlimited possibilities faced them a mere three or
four days' sailing away. That some rose to the challenge and landed in the
Americas archaeology is now beginning to show.

The Vikings in Ireland

For four decades, following the first devastating raids of 795, the coasts of
Ireland were subjected to an increasing number of hit-and-run attacks by
highly mobile maritime war parties sailing from their homelands on the
Northern and Western Isles of Scotland. From the outset the raiders did
not have it all their own way: in 811 one of the war-bands was slaughtered

by the Ulaid, and in the following year two other raiding parties were
defeated in the south. The invaders had taken on a country already in a
state of military preparedness, whose warriors had become inured to
fighting in interminable local dynastic feuds. As some measure of the
reality of the times it is worth recalling that the Irish annals for the period
795-820 record twenty-six Viking attacks compared with eighty-seven
outbreaks of violence among the Irish themselves, and in the 180 years
before the first Viking attack there were thirty recorded burnings of
monasteries, many of them, no doubt, instigated by Irish warlords. The
situation in Ireland was very different to that in England and Scotland.
Social instability was rife: the appearance of the Northmen simply added
to it.

The intensification of the Viking raids after 830 was accompanied by

the establishment of longphorts—defended enclosures for men and
ships—-which allowed the attacking forces to overwinter (II.17). The first
were set up in 841 at Annagassan, in Louth, and at Dublin, and it was at
about this time that collaboration between Viking raiders and Irish war-
lords is first recorded. Both factors were to become important themes in
subsequent Hiberno-Norse relations.

As the number of longphorts increased, so more sedentary communi-

ties of Vikings became established around them, and what had started
out as military installations began to take on the functions of trading and
manufacturing enclaves. These new centres soon assumed many of the
centralizing functions that had previously focused around the larger
monasteries, but because they were sited at good anchorages, often on
navigable rivers, and were in the control of highly mobile maritime com-
munities, they quickly developed as active centres in a network of over-
seas trading which bound the dispersed Scandinavian settlements

505

together. As a result the Irish Sea became a significant commercial focus.
Nor were the attractions of the Viking trading stations overlooked by the
Irish kings. Such places were convenient concentrations of wealth to be
raided or controlled whenever opportunity allowed. These fixed and vul-
nerable Viking settlements provided easy prey for the mobile Irish war-
bands. Throughout the 840s the Irish kings were active and usually
successful in their attacks against the Viking enclaves, a phase culminat-
ing in the ravaging of Dublin by Mael Sechnaill in 849.

The complex relationships between the Norse settlers and the Irish

were further confused when new bands of Scandinavians, including

506

THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN

Danes from England, arriving in the period 849-53, caused internal dis-
sent by attacking Norse settlers already in occupation.

For the rest of the century two major trends can be discerned behind

the plethora of actions and counter-actions—the gradual elimination of
the smaller Viking enclaves around the coast by Irish "war leaders, and the
growth in the political and economic importance of Dublin, which was
now functioning much as an Irish kingdom with interests in expanding its
dominance (n.18,11.19). In 866 the rulers of Dublin began to be active in
the affairs of Scotland, capturing the important centre of Dumbarton on
the Clyde in 870, but thereafter internal dissension greatly weakened
them, and in 902 a combined attack by the Irish kings of Brega and Lein-
ster brought the Viking control of the now-flourishing town of Dublin to
an end. Many of the Vikings, displaced in the constant attacks of the Irish
throughout the second half of the ninth century, sought new lands over-

seas in Cumbria and in Iceland.

The Viking presence in Ireland in the ninth century was played out

against a background of almost constant warfare among the competing

M

II.18 Viking houses in

Dublin.

FACING THE OCEAN

11.19 Carved w o o d e n

crook, possibly a w h i p

handle, from excavations

in Viking Dublin.

Irish dynasts, whose loyalties were divided between a multiplicity of
small kingdoms and the authority of over-kings. In these internecine

conflicts the Vikings played their part, both physically as participants

and as a catalyst to the creation of larger confederacies. Out of the

chaos of conflict of the early ninth century the over-king of the

southern Ui Neill, Mael Sechnaill, emerged triumphant and

on his death in 862 was referred to as king of Ireland by the

contemporary annalists.

The beginning of the tenth century saw the Viking

threat intensify once more, with large-scale raids begin-

ning again in 914. In the turmoil that followed, the new

invaders, the many existing Norse enclaves, and the Irish
kings joined in the melee. In 944 a united Irish force fell

on Dublin and sacked the city: 'its houses, house-enclo-

sures, its ships and other structures were burned; its

women, boys and common folk enslaved, its warriors

were killed; it was altogether destroyed, from four per-

sons to one, by killing and drowning, burning and capture,

apart from a small number that fled in a few ships and

reached Dalkey.' The city was to survive into the politically

confused times of the late tenth and eleventh centuries, its

control passing from one king to another as fortunes waxed

and waned. It was now the principal commercial centre of Ire-

land, and as such was an essential appurtenance of Irish kingship.

The Norse enclaves in Ireland, most notably Dublin, Wexford,

Waterford, Cork, and Limerick, remained throughout this long

period of internal conflict as the prime economic centres of the

island, whether they were independent or under the rule of Irish

kings, and were to emerge into the later Middle Ages as significant ports

conducting international trade. From the middle of the tenth century

long-distance exchanges began to flourish as never before. Some sense of
this is given by the account of the wealth of Limerick, seized by the Irish
in the attack of 968; 'They carried away their jewels and their best prop-
erty, their saddles beautiful and foreign, their gold and their silver; their
beautifully woven cloths of all colours and of all kinds; their satins and
their silken clothes, pleasing and variegated, both scarlet and green and

all sorts of cloth in like manner.' The list, if it can be accepted as actual
rather than poetic, implies an extensive trading network, quite possibly
extending along the Atlantic seaways to Iberia. One of the products gen-
erated by endemic warfare—a plentiful supply of slaves—would have

been a valuable export commodity. Slave-raiding features large in moti-
vation behind the Viking attacks of the late ninth century, and there is no

THE COMING OF THE NORTHMEN

reason to suppose that the markets diminished throughout the next hun-
dred years. Many of the slaves were taken to Scandinavia and Iceland, but
others may well have found their way to the slave markets of Andalucia

where Mediterranean luxuries were to be had in return.

The Norse contribution to shipping and seafaring cannot be overesti-

mated. Although the Irish tradition of boat-building was well established
and was efficient enough, as we have seen, to transport monks to Iceland,
the Viking vessels introduced a new level of sophistication. That many of
the words associated with shipping and with fishing found in the Irish lan-
guage derive from Old Norse is sufficient to stress the impact of Scandi-
navian seafaring on the indigenous culture. Perhaps the greatest effect
which the Viking episode had on Ireland came by way of the sea, for Ire-
land was now brought firmly into the broader world of western Europe.
The Irish elite watched as English kingship developed apace. The suc-
cesses of Athelstan against the Vikings in the north of England will not
have gone unnoticed by the Ui Neill and their successors as they fought
for control of the Viking trading enclaves. Of no less significance was the
wealth which overseas trading ventures now brought within the reach of
the Irish kings. The concentration of these riches in the hands of the
powerful dynasts had a major impact on the hierarchization of power
and the move towards a kingship of Ireland which gained momentum in
the eleventh century.

The Welsh, the Cornish, and the Vikings

The Viking attacks on Wales in the ninth and tenth centuries mirrored
those of the Irish four centuries earlier, reflecting the fact that the richest
land lay in the Lleyn peninsula and Anglesey in the north and Dyfed in the
south. Lleyn and Anglesey were perilously close to the Viking strong-
holds of Dublin and the Isle of Man, and inevitably became a prime tar-
get for raids in the later ninth and at intervals throughout the tenth
centuries. Apart from Scandinavian names acquired by a few significant
coastal landmarks and a small cluster of Scandinavian place-names

around the Dee estuary, there is no evidence of any significant settle-
ment.

In Dyfed the situation was different. Place-names suggest settlement at

intervals all along the coast, from Fishguard to Newport, with a dense
distribution in the extreme south-west around Pembroke. The Vikings
are recorded to have wintered in Dyfed in 878, and it may well be that set-
tlement began at this time. There were further attacks a century later
from the Western Isles, Dublin, and from Limerick. The principal target
was the cathedral of St David's, which was sacked four times in the space

509

of seven years. Some of the raiders offered their services to aspiring
local Welsh dynasts, but with little significant effect. Overall, the evidence
from Dyfed suggests limited colonial settlement based around a port-of-
trade at Pembroke, much like the trading enclaves around the south coast
of Ireland.

The south-west peninsula of Dumnonia (Cornwall and Devon) was

vulnerable to Viking incursions, both from the south along the Channel
and from the north via the Severn estuary. The earliest Viking threat
coincided with a major thrust westwards by the armies of Wessex, insti-
gated in 814 by Ecgbert. As the result of this initiative Devon and part of
Cornwall were brought to heel. A Cornish rebellion in 825 failed, but
resistance flared up again in 838, encouraged by the appearance of a large
Viking force who joined the rebels to oppose the West Saxons. Ecgbert
moved rapidly to Cornwall and defeated the alliance, effectively bringing
to an end the independence of Dumnonia. Thereafter the local kings of
the south-west acknowledged the authority of Wessex. Forty years later,
when Alfred was facing the Great Army, seaborne attacks by Viking
bands on the coasts of Devon failed to kindle any spark of local resis-
tance. Another spate of attacks towards the end of the tenth century was
roundly resisted by local thegns and, except for one incident in 1001 when
a local leader, Pallig, allied his forces with a Danish raiding party, the
south-west remained steadfastly on the side of Wessex. Unlike Brittany,
where the spirit of resistance to the Franks was still strong when the
Vikings appeared on the scene, in Dumnonia the desire for independence
was all but spent.

The Breton Fight for Independence

The sack of Vannes by the Frankish king Pippin III in 753 marked the

beginning of a concerted attempt by the Franks to subdue Brittany, and
by the end of the century the whole region had been overrun. Yet resis-
tance remained, and on several occasions in the first thirty years of the
ninth century expeditions had to be mounted from Rennes and Vannes to
put down rebellions in the west. It was against this background of insta-
bility that the first Viking attacks impinged, introducing an entirely new
factor into the conflict (n.21). Until about 840 the raids had focused on the
coast of the Vendee and the island of Noirmoutier (11.20), but in that year
the death of Louis the Pious created political instability, encouraging the
Vikings to greater efforts. Attacks on the Loire intensified, and in 843
Nantes was attacked. The same interregnum saw the Breton overlord
Nominoe taking the offensive against the Franks and campaigning far
inland to Le Mans. The discomfort caused to the Frankish kingdom by

II.20 (facing) T h e m o u t h

of the River Loire. To the

south is the island of

N o i r m o u t i e r joined to

the mainland by a sand

spit. It was first raided hv

the Vikings in 799. Vikings

settled extensively around

the Loire estuary.