the viking on the continent in myth and history

186

THE VIKINGS ON THE CONTINENT

© 2003 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

The Vikings on the Continent in
Myth and History

SIMON COUPLAND

Worthing

Abstract
The Vikings have a bad reputation, and it was no different on the Continent in the middle
ages where they were regularly portrayed as brutally cruel, devilishly cunning and of super-
human stature. This article examines the evidence for the Vikings’ supposed cruelty, cun-
ning and remarkable height and investigates how true the stereotypes were. What emerges
is that all three contained a grain of truth, but led to exaggeration and distortion in later
medieval texts and even some ninth-century sources. There were, for example, tall indi-
viduals among the invaders, but little difference overall between the height of the aver-
age Frank and the average Dane. There were likewise instances of Scandinavian brutality,
but not on a large scale, and they were no worse than acts carried out by the Franks in
the same period. Nor, surprisingly, is there clear evidence of Viking rape: certainly they
were not known for ‘rape and pillage’ in the ninth century. Finally, though the invaders
were capable of duplicity, Carolingian parallels are once again not hard to find. In sum,
tales of tall, treacherous and brutal Northmen can be shown to have grown in the tell-
ing, and there is an evident gap between the Vikings of myth and the Vikings of history.

wo of the most widespread popular myths about the Vikings are
that they preceded the Romans and that they wore horns on their
helmets. Scholars may shake their heads over such ignorance, but

misconceptions about the Vikings are not confined to the general public;
some are widespread in scholarly circles, too. Somehow an idea enters
popular consciousness and becomes virtually unassailable by dint of fre-
quent repetition. One example from the ninth-century raids on the Con-
tinent is the notion that a network of fortified bridges was constructed
by Charles the Bald to keep out the Vikings, despite the fact that only
one or two existing bridges were actually fortified.

Another instance is the

oft-quoted presence of a Viking base camp on the island of Noirmoutier
in Aquitaine.

In fact, the one contemporary reference to such an island

Simon Coupland, ‘The Fortified Bridges of Charles the Bald’, Journal of Medieval History, xvii

(1991), 1–12.

For example, see Peter Sawyer, Kings and Vikings (1982), p. 86; Donald Logan, The Vikings in

History (1983), p. 117; Else Roesdahl, The Vikings (1991), p. 198; H. B. Clarke, ‘The Vikings’, in
Medieval Warfare: A History, ed. Maurice Keen (Oxford, 1999), p. 50.

SIMON COUPLAND

187

camp, in the Annals of St Bertin for 843,

locates the base in more

southerly Aquitaine (‘inferioris partes Aquitaniae’) and simply calls it ‘a
certain island’ (‘insulam quandam’). The eleventh-century Chronicle of
Nantes does contain a report that the Vikings landed on Noirmoutier
after their raid on Nantes in 843, but goes on to record their departure
from the island following an argument over the distribution of booty.

This evidently happened before the end of September 843, since it is
inconceivable that Nantes cathedral would have been reconsecrated in that
month if the Viking fleet which had sacked the town had still been
encamped on nearby Noirmoutier.

Another purported myth has provoked a lively debate in the scholarly

community, namely the levels of violence used by the Vikings, particu-
larly against the Church. In 1962 Peter Sawyer wrote: ‘Once the preju-
dices and exaggerations of the primary sources are recognised, the raids
can be seen not as an unprecedented and inexplicable cataclysm, but as
an extension of normal Dark Age activity.’

This revisionist approach has

found particular resonance amongst archaeologists, whose excavations
regularly discover evidence of settlement and trade, but more rarely signs
of destruction and slaughter. This comment from a Swedish archaeolo-
gist about the market at Birka serves as a fine example: ‘The foremost
task of the fleets of armed traders was not to raid and to plunder. It was
the very opposite. Their task was to establish and maintain the peaceful
exchange of trade. It was the era of the peaceful Viking. That they came
to bloody blows now and again is scarcely to be wondered at. Such things
still happen today.’

This attempt to improve the Scandinavians’ image

has not been without its critics, especially among historians, one of whom
memorably commented that the Vikings seem to be portrayed as ‘little
more than groups of long-haired tourists who occasionally roughed up
the natives’.

A series of more recent studies suggests that the truth lies

somewhere between these two extremes.

On the one hand, the Viking

Annales Bertiniani, 843: Annales de Saint-Bertin, ed. F. Grat, J. Vielliard and S. Clémencet (Paris,

1964) [hereafter Grat, Annales de Saint-Bertin], p. 44; The Annals of St-Bertin, trans. and ed. Janet
Nelson (Manchester, 1991) [hereafter Nelson, Annals of St-Bertin], p. 56.

La Chronique de Nantes, ed. R. Merlet (Paris, 1896) [hereafter Merlet, Chronique de Nantes],

pp. 18–19 (c. 7).

Angers, Bibliothèque publique, MS 817 (733): F. Lot and L. Halphen, Le Règne de Charles le

Chauve, Bibliothèque de l’école des hautes études, sciences historiques et philologiques, clxxv (Paris,
1909) [hereafter Lot and Halphen, Règne de Charles le Chauve], pp. 79–80 (note).

Peter Sawyer, The Age of the Vikings (2nd edn., 1971), pp. 202–3.

W. Holmqvist, Swedish Vikings on Helgö and Birka (Stockholm, 1979), p. 70 (author’s emphasis).

J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Vikings in Francia (Reading, 1975) [hereafter Wallace-Hadrill, Vikings

in Francia], p. 5. See also the comments of David Dumville in his Whithorn lecture: The Churches
of North Britain in the First Viking-Age (Whithorn, 1997) [hereafter Dumville, Churches of North
Britain], pp. 8–14. I am grateful to Sarah Foot for drawing my attention to this lecture, and for her
other helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Simon Coupland, ‘The Rod of God’s Wrath or the People of God’s Wrath? The Carolingians’

Theology of the Viking Invasions’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, xlii (1991) [hereafter Coupland,
‘Rod of God’s Wrath’], 535–54; Sarah Foot, ‘Violence against Christians? The Vikings and the Church
in Ninth-Century England’, Medieval History, 1.iii (1991), 3–16; Guy Halsall, ‘Playing by whose
Rules? A Further Look at Viking Atrocity in the Ninth Century’, Medieval History, 2.ii (1992), 2–12.

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THE VIKINGS ON THE CONTINENT

incursions were definitely not perceived as ‘normal Dark Age activity’
by contemporaries, primarily because of the Scandinavians’ barbarian
‘otherness’, and in particular their paganism. On the other hand, there is
no evidence to support the idea that they were engaged upon any kind of
pagan crusade; rather, the frequent references to the Vikings as heathens
came from the Franks’ and Anglo-Saxons’ own religious consciousness
as Christians.

This article has not been written to revisit that debate, however. Rather,

it is concerned with the stereotypical depiction of the Vikings in a number
of medieval continental sources, including some ninth-century texts, and
the way in which that depiction influenced accounts of the Scandinavian
attacks. In particular, it will focus on the images of the invaders as men
of superhuman stature, bestial brutality and calculated cunning. A care-
ful examination of the contemporary evidence will reveal to what extent
these stereotypes reflected historical reality and to what extent they were
shaped by medieval myth. Even by the end of the ninth century there
are signs of exaggeration and distortion creeping into Frankish accounts
of the Viking raids because of these stereotypical images, and in the cen-
turies which followed their influence can be seen to have been even greater.
Finally, as well as examining the influence these images exerted, this
article will also offer an explanation as to how they might originally have
come about.

In 1326 a gang of workmen engaged in some building work in Liège
came across a group of skeletons. The bodies were said to be of an ex-
traordinary size and still clad in iron armour, leading the locals to the
conclusion that these were the bones of Viking warriors who had attacked
Liège in 882.

At this distance in time it is impossible to say whether or

not they were right, but it is certainly extremely unlikely, since neither
contemporary written sources nor Scandinavian grave goods of the
period offer any evidence of Vikings wearing body armour in the ninth
century. None the less, the implication is unmistakable: the fourteenth-
century inhabitants of Liège believed that the Viking invaders five cen-
turies earlier had been giants.

There is, moreover, a ninth-century Carolingian text which supports

the notion that the raiders were remarkably tall. After a Frankish victory
in Saxony in 884 the Annals of Fulda reported that: ‘In that battle

Ray Page has discussed the depiction of the Vikings in English sources in ‘A Most Vile People’:

Early English Historians on the Vikings, Dorothea Coke Memorial Lecture in Northern Studies 1986
(1987). He, too, found that Vikings were ‘notorious for treachery’: see ibid., pp. 9–11, 24.

A. Paillard de Saint-Aglan, ‘Mémoire sur les changements que l’établissement des abbayes et des

autres institutions religieuses au VIIe siècle, ainsi que l’invasion des Northmans au IXe, ont introduits
dans l’état social de la Belgique’, Mémoires couronnés et mémoires des savants étrangers, publiés par
l’Académie royale des Sciences et Belles-lettres de Bruxelles, xvi (1843), 103.

SIMON COUPLAND

189

such men are said to have been killed among the Northmen as had never
been seen before among the Frankish people, namely in their beauty and
the size of their bodies.’

Was this true of Scandinavians in general

at this time? Excavations in Denmark indicate that the average height of
Danish men in the Viking age was 172.6 cm (5

′7

″) and of Danish

women 158.1 cm (5

′2

″). This is little different from nineteenth-century

figures. There were some unusually tall individuals in the Viking Age,

such as a man of about twenty-five buried on the Danish island of
Langeland, but this particular case sounds an important cautionary
note. When the burial was first published, the man’s height was judged
to have been 193 cm (6

′4″),

but in the interval it has been recognized

that this was an overestimate, and the figure revised downwards to 184.8
cm (6

′

″).

The crucial question is how tall the Franks were in comparison.

Remains which can definitely be dated to the ninth century are far less
plentiful than in Scandinavia, but skeletons in Frankish cemeteries
from the sixth to eighth centuries indicate an average height of 171 cm
(5

′7

″) for males and 162 cm (5′3

″) for females.

This suggests that,

although the invading Northmen were taller than their Frankish coun-
terparts, the difference was not significant, just a centimetre and a half,
or half an inch. Here, then, is anthropological evidence for a medieval
myth about the Vikings: they were not the giants of popular imagina-
tion. It does not of course reveal whether the Scandinavian casualties in
Saxony in 884 included particularly tall individuals; that is a question
which archaeology is unlikely ever to answer.

Later medieval chroniclers and poets portrayed the Vikings as cruel
beyond measure. The Legend of Hernekin (the supposed brother of Count
Baldwin II of Flanders) tells how the invaders tore babies from their
mothers’ arms, cut them into pieces and roasted them over open fires

‘Quales numquam antea in gente Francorum visi fuissent, in pulchritudine videlicet ac proceritate

corporum’: Annales Fuldenses, 884, ed. F. Kurze, MGH, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum
scholarum (Hanover, 1891) [hereafter Kurze, Annals Fuldenses], p. 101; The Annals of Fulda, trans.
and ed. Timothy Reuter (Manchester, 1992) [hereafter Reuter, Annals of Fulda], p. 95. All the trans-
lations in the article are my own.

As seems to have been the case at Repton: see N. Biddle and B. Kolbye-Biddle, ‘Repton and the

Great Heathen Army 873– 4’, in Vikings and the Danelaw: Select Papers from the Proceedings of the
Thirteenth Viking Congress, ed. J. G. Graham Campbell, R. Hall, J. Jesch and D. Parsons (2001),
pp. 45–96. Table 4 on p. 75 gives the range of heights for males as 166.9 to 193.6 cm with a mean
height of 176.1 cm. I am grateful to the anonymous reader of this article for drawing this reference
to my attention.

J. Skaarup, Stengade II (Rudkøbing, 1976), p. 56.

Compare Else Roesdahl, Viking Age Denmark (1982), pp. 18–19, with her later work Vikingernes

Verden (3rd edn., Copenhagen, 1989), p. 38; translated as The Vikings (1987), p. 31.

J. Pauli in Die Franken, Wegbereiter Europas (2 vols., Mainz, 1996), ii. 994.

190

THE VIKINGS ON THE CONTINENT

on spear points before their fathers’ horrified gaze.

Another late medi-

eval source, the Chronicles of Liège, reported that the heads of Frankish
monks were nailed to the walls of their monastery.

Even so, contin-

ental writers never dreamed up anything as bloodthirsty as the ‘blood
eagle’ sacrifice, in which the victim’s lungs were supposedly pulled out
and exposed, whose historical implausibility has been demonstrated by
Roberta Frank.

Ninth-century Frankish sources bear eloquent witness to the wave

of fear and revulsion that swept across the Carolingian empire at the
time of the raids. Thus, the bishop of Meaux, Hildegarius, described an
attack on the Seine in 845 in the following apocalyptic terms: ‘They were
as harsh and cruel, as greedy and insatiable as the Fates and Furies, and
from the river mouth onwards they devoured with their impatient swords
all the beauty of that paradisiacal region which is watered throughout
by the river Seine, and gave up everything to a devouring flame.’

Yet it

is surprising to note that, despite such general comments in contem-
porary Frankish sources, there are very few specific accounts of Viking
cruelty. This same raid of 845 was the occasion of probably the worst
incident, when a fleet encamped at Charlevanne, near Bougival on the
Seine, hanged 111 prisoners.

The unusual number suggests that this may

have been a ritual sacrifice, intended to bring good fortune in battle.

must also have had a sobering impact on the watching Frankish troops,
and it is surely no coincidence that when the Scandinavians disembarked
and attacked part of the Frankish army, the latter broke and ran, forc-
ing the king, Charles the Bald, to withdraw.

By contrast, other references in Carolingian texts relate to brutal treat-

ment inflicted only on individuals. For example, The Miracles of St Martin
mention a hunter named Arnulf who lost both his hands to the ‘barba-
rous Northmen’,

and Pope Stephen V wrote concerning a priest named

Flavinus who had lost one of the fingers of his left hand while a prisoner
of the Vikings.

In another instance, when the invaders captured

Frederick, a magnate whose depredations were regarded by the monks
of St Maur-sur-Loire as even worse than those of the Vikings, his eyes
were put out and his hands cut off before he was eventually put to death.

Cited by A. Paillard, ‘Histoire des invasions des Northmans dans la Morinie’, Mémoires de la

Société des antiquaires de la Morinie, x (1858) [hereafter Paillard, ‘Histoire des invasions’], 39 and
41, n. 1.

Gesta episcoporum Leodiensium, c. 37: MGH, Scriptores, xxv. 49.

R. Frank, ‘Viking Atrocity and Skaldic Verse: The Rite of the Blood-Eagle’, English Historical

Review, ic (1984), 332–43.

Vita Faronis episcopi Meldensis, c. 123: MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, v. 200.

Translatio sancti Germani Parisiensis, c. 12: Analecta Bollandiana, ii (1883), p. 79.

On the Vikings’ use of ritual hanging, see H. R. Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern

Europe (Harmondsworth, 1964), pp. 51–2.

Miracula sancti Martini, c. 3: MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, iii. 570.

Fragmenta registri Stephani papae, no. 29: MGH, Epistolae, vii. 350.

Miracula sancti Mauri, c. 12: MGH, Scriptores, xv.1. 470–1.

SIMON COUPLAND

191

Horrifying as such cases are, it is important to bear in mind that such
behaviour was by no means unusual by the standards of the day, among
Franks as well as among their neighbours. Thus, Louis the German
responded to a rebellion in Saxony in 842 by beheading 140 prisoners,
hanging fourteen, and amputating the limbs of countless others.

Four

years later similar punishment was meted out on followers of Archbishop
Liutbert following an uprising at Mainz: some were hanged, others
had their fingers and toes cut off or were blinded.

Conflict in the

ninth century was brutal, and victors often showed little mercy to their
victims.

Alongside these clearly documented but isolated instances of Scandin-

avian brutality, there are other, better-known cases where the tale has
evidently grown in the telling. Two such episodes will be examined, one
where the exaggeration can be traced back to the medieval period, the
other where it has occurred among modern commentators.

The first is the infamous sack of Nantes in 843, which made a deep

impression on contemporaries, as is evident from the many different
sources which refer to the raid. These include the Annals of St Bertin,
Annals of Angoulême, Chronicle of St Wandrille, Miracles of St Benedict
and Miracles of St Philibert,

but by far the most valuable information

is provided by a detailed account of the raid which originated in the Loire
region during the reign of Charles the Bald.

This has been preserved

both as the sixth chapter of the Chronicle of Nantes, which was compiled
in its present form no earlier than the mid-eleventh century,

and also

in a tenth-century manuscript from Angers. The latter also includes an-
other, shorter description of the raid which likewise appears to have been
written by a contemporary.

The Viking raid on the city on the feast day

of St John the Baptist, 24 June 843, can consequently be reconstructed
in considerable detail with some degree of confidence.

Annales Bertiniani, 842: Grat, Annales de Saint-Bertin, pp. 42–3; Nelson, Annals of St-Bertin,

p. 54.

Annales Fuldenses, 866: Kurze, Annales Fuldenses, p. 65, Reuter, Annals of Fulda, p. 56. Similar

instances can also be found in Annales Fuldenses (Bavarian continuation), 884: Kurze, Annales
Fuldenses, p. 111, Reuter, Annals of Fulda, p. 110, or the Chronicle of Regino of Prüm, 897, ed.
F. Kurze, MGH, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum (Hanover, 1890) [hereafter Kurze,
‘Chronicle of Regino’], p. 145.

Annales Bertiniani, 843: Grat, Annales de Saint-Bertin, p. 44, Nelson, Annals of St-Bertin, p. 55;

Annales Engolismenses, 843, MGH, Scriptores, xvi. 486; Annales Fontanellenses, 843, ed. J. Laporte,
‘Les premières annales de Fontanelle’, Mélanges de la Société de l’histoire de Normandie, XVe série
(Rouen and Paris, 1951) [hereafter Laporte, Annales de Fontanelle], p. 79; Adrevaldi Floriacensis
Miracula sancti Benedicti, c. 33: MGH, Scriptores, xv.1. 493–4; Ermentarius, De translationibus
et miraculis sancti Filiberti, second preface: Monuments de l’histoire des abbayes de Saint-Philibert,
ed. R. Poupardin (Paris, 1905), pp. 59–60.

As is evident from a reference in the text to Charles the Bald as the reigning monarch.

Merlet, Chronique de Nantes, p. xxxix.

Angers, Bibliothèque publique, MS 817 (733): Lot and Halphen, Règne de Charles le Chauve,

pp. 79–80 n. The manuscript does not contain c. 7 of the Nantes Chronicle, as has sometimes been
stated, but only the greater part of c. 6: Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques
de France, Départements (Paris, 1885–), xxxi. 459–60.

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THE VIKINGS ON THE CONTINENT

At the time, Nantes was under the control of Count Lambert, an ally

of the Bretons, who had killed Charles the Bald’s count, Rainald, at the
battle of Messac the previous month. The significance of this fact will
become clearer later. The townspeople were given warning of the ap-
proach of the Viking fleet by the monks of Indre, an island monastery a
short distance downriver from Nantes, who fled to the town with their
treasure. The gate was barricaded, and the people of Nantes no doubt
trusted in their stout Gallo-Roman ramparts. Any such confidence was
misplaced, however, for the Vikings soon scaled the walls and broke down
the gates. Then, seeing the enemy within the city, the terrified populace,
including the bishop, raced for the cathedral, perhaps because they hoped
to be spared within the sanctuary of its precincts, but more likely because
it represented the strongest building in the city, whose doors could be
barred against the assailants. Yet even this refuge offered little defence:
the Vikings smashed open the doors and broke in the windows, and
bursting into the sanctuary, put many of the occupants to the sword. They
did not kill everybody, however, for there was economic advantage to be
gained by taking prisoners, who could either be ransomed or sold as
slaves. The survivors were consequently carted off in chains to the wait-
ing ships, both men and women, young and old. They were ransomed
five days later, when the Vikings made their way back downstream,
though it is unfortunately not reported who paid what was presumably
a significant sum.

The raiders also carried off whatever loot they could

find in the city.

All this is well supported by local ninth-century sources, but it is

fascinating to observe how the attack grew more dramatic and more
dastardly in eleventh- and twelfth-century texts, in some cases in evident
contradiction of the original contemporary accounts.

One addition to

the story was the claim, made by the eleventh-century compiler of the
Nantes Chronicle and repeated by some modern historians, that Lambert
proposed the raid on Nantes to the Vikings and led them to their tar-
get.

The fact that the city was already under Lambert’s control reveals

the inaccuracy of this accusation, and there is no suggestion in ninth-
century texts that the count was allied with the Northmen. They levelled
a quite different charge against Lambert, namely that he allowed the
city to be captured ‘without delay or defence’.

It is true that his forces

By way of comparison, in 841 the abbey of St Denis paid a Viking army twenty-six pounds of

silver to redeem captives who had been taken prisoner on abbatial estates near the mouth of the
Seine: Annales Fontanellenses, 841: Laporte, Annales de Fontanelle, p. 75.

Miracula sancti Martini Vertavensis, c. 8: MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, iii. 573;

Chronique des églises d’Anjou, ed. P. Marchegay and E. Mabille (Paris, 1869), p. 218; Chronique de
Saint-Maixent 751–1140, ed. J. Verdon (Paris, 1979), pp. 60–2; Merlet, Chronique de Nantes, c. 4,
p. 13.

Merlet, Chronique de Nantes, c. 5, pp. 12–13; see also Annales Vindocinenses, 843: Recueil d’annales

angevines et vendômoises, ed. L. Halphen (Paris, 1903), p. 53. Repeated by Gwyn Jones, A History
of the Vikings (1968), p. 211.

‘Sine mora, nullo propugnatore’ (Merlet, Chronique de Nantes, c. 6, p. 15).

SIMON COUPLAND

193

had suffered heavy losses at Messac the previous month, but whatever
the reason for his passivity, it did not endear him to the inhabitants of
the region, who drove him out soon afterwards.

A second feature which appears only in later medieval versions of the

story is that the Vikings are said to have entered the town under the guise
of merchants,

an example of a motif which shall be examined in the

third section of this article, portraying the Vikings as masters of trickery
and cunning. As already noted, the ninth-century texts record that in fact
the raiders had to storm the walls and batter down the gates to gain
entrance to the city.

The third and most dramatic development of the story concerned the

death of Bishop Gunhard: by the eleventh century it was being reported
that he was cut down during the festal mass, just as he was saying
the Sursum corda.

It is a graphic detail which enhances the bishop’s

martyrdom and demonstrates the pagan savagery of the attackers, but
once again the details of the contemporary account reveal it to be an em-
bellishment, since the bishop is said to have run to the cathedral along
with the rest of the populace when the Vikings burst into the city.

The

bishop was undoubtedly killed, and what was still more horrific to the
Carolingian mind, killed within the precincts of his own cathedral, yet
the less sensational truth is that he was cut down while seeking refuge
from the attackers, not at the climax of the celebration of the mass.

If these elaborations had been added to the story by the eleventh cen-

tury, it is interesting to note that a different version, less developed but
equally inaccurate, had reached the ears of Regino, abbot of Prüm in the
Eifel region, by the end of the ninth century. In his chronicle, Regino
recorded that in 853 the Northmen killed the bishop of Nantes on Easter
Eve, ‘as he was celebrating baptism’.

It is true that there was a second

Viking raid on the town in 853, but it was in June, not at Easter,

and

contemporary local accounts make no mention of the bishop being killed
on this occasion. This is evidently a ninth-century instance of Chinese
whispers: Gunhard’s murder in the cathedral on the feast of John the

‘Speciem praeferens multitudinis negotium exercentis’ (Miracula sancti Martini Vertavensis, c. 8:

MGH, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, iii. 573).

Merlet, Chronique de Nantes, c. 5, p. 13; Miracula sancti Martini Vertavensis, c. 8: MGH, Scriptores

rerum Merovingicarum, iii. 573.

‘Porro civitatis episcopus . . . et clerus . . . cumque reliqua vulgi multitudine . . . cuncti ad templum

. . . concurrunt’ (Merlet, Chronique de Nantes, c. 6, pp. 15–16).

There is an interesting parallel in the case of Chartres, where an eleventh-century source described

the bishop as slaughtered within the walls of the cathedral in which he had taken refuge, whereas
more reliable ninth-century sources place his death by the river Eure: F. Lot, ‘La prise de Chartres
par les Normands en 858’, in Recueil des travaux historiques (3 vols., Geneva and Paris, 1968–73),
ii. 771–80.

Chronicle, 853: Kurze, ‘Chronicle of Regino’, p. 76.

Annales Engolismenses, 853, MGH, Scriptores, xvi. 486. The reasons for accepting this date are

set out in my unpublished PhD dissertation, ‘Charles the Bald and the Defence of the West Frank-
ish Kingdom against the Viking Invasions, 840–877’ (Cambridge University, 1987) [hereafter
Coupland, ‘Charles the Bald’], p. 39.

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THE VIKINGS ON THE CONTINENT

Baptist has become his martyrdom during a baptismal service on Easter
Eve. Regino’s version does not actually make the Vikings out to be
crueller than they were, but it does make the event more dramatic.

These different accounts of the sack of Nantes consequently provide

invaluable evidence of the development of the Viking myth in the middle
ages, even as early as the ninth century. Villains – the Scandinavians
themselves of course, but here also Count Lambert – become more villain-
ous; heroes – in this instance Bishop Gunhard – more heroic. At the same
time separate but similar events become merged into one, and already
dramatic events are sensationalized still further. It is an excellent example
of the way in which stories grow in the telling.

A second notorious example of a Viking atrocity on the Continent is

the maltreatment of four monks of St Bertin during a raid on the abbey
on 8 June 860. The events in question provide another fascinating insight
into the growth of the Vikings’ reputation for brutality, even when, as in
this case, there is only one text under discussion, the Miracles of St Bertin,
and it is a matter of historical interpretation rather than factual informa-
tion.

The medieval commentator, John of Ypres, writing in the four-

teenth century, had the highest body count, assuming that the Vikings
killed all four brothers.

Five centuries later, Paillard thought that two

monks were slain, while two survived,

as did the generally reliable Vogel.

To confuse the picture further, Lot and Wallace-Hadrill both concluded
that only one monk survived the experience,

while d’Haenens argued

that although all four men suffered ill-treatment, including the homo-
sexual rape of one, only one of them died!

The incident clearly deserves

closer scrutiny.

All four monks are said to have been willing to die: ‘Four consecrated

themselves, if it pleased God, to the wish rather to end their lives in
martyrdom there than to survive the abandonment of their house.’

Worard, the eldest, was badly beaten and left naked in the cold for three
days, from which he ended up almost on the point of death (‘fere loeto
tenus’).

However, this unambiguous comment makes it clear that

Worard survived. The cold in June should not have been extreme; pre-
sumably three days represented the period that elapsed before the rest of

All the quotations are from the Miracula sancti Bertini, c. 1: MGH, Scriptores, xv.1. 509–10.

Chronicon Sythiense sancti Bertini, c. 14: Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, ed. E. Martène and

U. Durand (5 vols., Paris, 1717), iii. 518.

Paillard, ‘Histoire des invasions’, p. 28; W. Vogel, Die Normannen und das fränkische Reich bis

zur Gründung der Normandie (799–911) (Heidelberg, 1906), pp. 180–1.

F. Lot, ‘La grande invasion normande de 856–862’, Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes, lxix (1908),

42; Wallace-Hadrill, Vikings in Francia, p. 10.

A. d’Haenens, Les Invasions normandes en Belgique au IXe siècle (Louvain, 1967) [hereafter

d’Haenens, Invasions normandes], pp. 84–5.

‘Quatuor qui devoverunt se, si Deo placuisset, ibi martirio potius velle vitam finire quam

desolationi sui loci supervivere.’

‘Diris colaphorum tunsionibus ictus nuditateque triduana et algu fere loeto tenus profligatus

extitit.’

SIMON COUPLAND

195

the community returned. Winedbald was also beaten (‘acribus verberibus
maceratus’), but then suffered a far worse form of Viking ‘sport’. He was
extremely thin as a result of his devout fasting, and the Northmen decided
to remedy this by pouring liquid, presumably water, into his stomach,

leaving him, too, half-dead (‘semivivus est relictus’). Winedbald was thus
another who survived, as was Gerwald, who ‘was also granted his life,
even though he was not restored to his former health’.

Gerwald’s mal-

treatment is not recounted in detail, but the torment and mockery he
endured were said to have been far worse than those already described,
because he seemed stronger and livelier than his companions.

As for the fourth monk, Regenhard, there is no doubt that he was

killed. This is evident not only from the description of his murder (‘pierced
by many spear thrusts, he offered a sacrifice to Christ, breathing out his
soul as his blood ebbed away’),

but also from the writer’s clear distinc-

tion between the first three brothers, who underwent a martyr’s sufferings
but survived,

and Regenhard, who suffered a martyr’s death. Here, then,

is clear evidence of the ‘sadistic games’ which Vikings played with the
ecclesiastical population,

but also support for d’Haenens’s conclusion

that only one monk was killed. However, d’Haenens makes the further
claim that Regenhard was also raped by the Viking band.

For such a claim to be proven there must be incontrovertible evidence,

given the apparent unacceptability of homosexual behaviour in early
medieval Scandinavian society.

D’Haenens presumably based his con-

clusion on the fact that the monk is said to have preferred to die rather
than ‘to be stained by the utterly disgusting foulness of their ludibria’.

But could this really refer to rape? Clearly the exact meaning of the term
ludibria must be established, which in classical Latin usually signified
mockery. This task is rendered even more important by the fact that
ludibria is also the term used in the only ninth-century Frankish text
which could be taken to indicate that the Vikings raped women. In a

‘Atque etiam per nares infusione viscera distentus.’ Ganshof suggested that ‘nares’ (nostrils) was

a prudish scribal emendation for ‘nates’ (buttocks), since on anatomical grounds an infusion through
the rectum is obviously more feasible than one through the nostrils (F.-L. Ganshof, ‘Notes de lec-
ture sur quelques textes carolingiens’, Bulletin du Cange: Archivum latinitatis medii aevi, ii (1925),
88–93). Nevertheless, all surviving versions of the text (the earliest dating from the early tenth cen-
tury) read ‘nares’, while ‘nates’ means ‘buttocks’ rather than ‘anus’. It is also questionable whether
ninth-century scribes were as prudish as Ganshof believed.

‘Etsi non pristinae sanitati, est saltem vitae concessus.’

‘Diversis multoque gravioribus vexatus esset ludibriorum suorum irrisionibus.’ The precise meaning

of the word ludibria will be discussed below.

‘Crebris lancearum punctionibus perfossus, una cum sanguinis effusione animam efflans Christo

libavit.’

Martyrium can simply mean suffering: A. Blaise, Lexicon latinitatis medii aevi, Corpus chris-

tianorum, continuatio medievalis (Turnhout, 1975), p. 570.

The phrase is found in Dumville, Churches of North Britain, p. 17.

D’Haenens, Invasions normandes, pp. 84–5.

P. M. Sørensen, The Unmanly Man: Concepts of Sexual Defamation in Early Northern Society

(Odense, 1983).

‘Ludibriorum suorum exsecrabilissimis spurcitiis pollui.’

196

THE VIKINGS ON THE CONTINENT

catalogue of the invaders’ crimes, Adrevald of Fleury wrote of ‘the
enslavement of matrons, the ludibria of maidens, and all the monstrous
kinds of torment which victors can inflict upon the vanquished.’

Once

again, the most likely interpretation in the circumstances would seem to
be rape. Even so, it is striking that this passage is unique: although other
contemporary sources are not slow to list Viking excesses in the form of
killing, burning, looting and enslaving, they do not include rape. Nor is
this omission the result of scribal prudery, since the Lotharingians are
accused of rape in unambiguous terms in the civil war and in 864,

while

the Hungarians are said to have carried off young women ‘to satisfy their
lust’ (‘pro libidine exercenda’).

Although no other Carolingian text contains an explicit account of

Viking rape, there are other references to ludibria. For example, the
Miracula sancti Genulfi list the enemy’s deeds as ‘sparing no human
being, making no distinction between the divine and the human in their
ludibria, destroying holy places, utterly filling everything with burnings
and killings’.

In the Miracula sanctae Opportunae, Bishop Adelhelm of

Sées recalls how he was captured by the Vikings and sold overseas as a
slave, only escaping ‘after many ludibria of the Northmen and the very
harsh beatings which they inflicted upon me’.

Another ninth-century

text relates that the Vikings destroyed monasteries, reduced everything
to a wilderness, and ‘carried on their wicked ludibrium of the Christian
population’.

Yet none of these passages carries any obvious sexual con-

notation, and in each case the ludibria which the Vikings inflicted on their
victims appear most probably to have been the mockery which the term
usually signified. The origin of the use of the term ludibria in such con-
texts can also be suggested: the Vulgate text of Hebrews 11:36, which lists
the sufferings of the faithful, states that ‘others suffered mockery (ludibria)
and beatings, as well as fetters and imprisonments.’

It is therefore apparent that neither Gerwald nor Regenhard was raped,

and that Adrevald’s reference to ‘ludibria virginum’ should best be under-
stood as the abuse of young women, with all the ambiguity inherent
in that term. This means that there is, perhaps surprisingly, no explicit

‘Captivitates matronarum, virginum ludibria ac cuncta quae victis victores inferre valent infanda

tormentorum genera’ (Miracula sancti Benedicti, c. 33: MGH, Scriptores, xv.1. 495).

Annales Bertiniani, 841 (‘stupris’), 864 (‘constuprationibus’): Grat, Annales de Saint-Bertin,

pp. 40, 111, Nelson, Annals of St-Bertin, pp. 52, 116; see also Nithard iv.1: Nithard: Histoire des fils
de Louis le Pieux, ed. P. Lauer (Paris, 1926), p. 118.

Annales Fuldenses (Bavarian continuation), 894: Kurze, Annales Fuldenses, p. 125, Reuter, Annals

of Fulda, p. 129.

‘Nulli mortalium parcere, divina et humana suis ludibriis promiscua habere, sancta loca demoliri,

caedibus, incendiis prorsus cuncta replere’ (Miracula sancti Genulfi c. 18, MGH, Scriptores, xv.2.
1210).

‘Post multa itaque Nortmannorum ludibria et quae mihi intulerunt creberrima verbera’ (Miracula

sanctae Opportunae, prologue, Acta sanctorum, Aprilis III, p. 68).

‘De Christiano populo nefarum exercebant ludibrium’ (Scriptura de corpore sancti Leodegarii, Acta

sanctorum, Octobris I, p. 446).

‘Alii vero ludibria et verbera experti insuper et vincula et carceres.’

SIMON COUPLAND

197

evidence of rape by the Vikings in any ninth-century Frankish source.
This is not of course to say that they did not do so; indeed, the likelihood
is that like victorious armies throughout history they did indulge in rape
when the opportunity presented itself. What it does show, however, is that
ninth-century writers did not think of the Vikings’ principal activities
as ‘rape and pillage’ in the way that many people do today. They were
more likely to speak of ‘pillage and destruction’, perhaps because of the
hit-and-run tactics favoured by the Vikings, particularly in their early
campaigns, and their primary interest in loot rather than conquest.

In sum, the Vikings were not merely ‘long-haired tourists who occa-

sionally roughed up the natives’. To fall into their hands must have been
a terrifying experience. Yet the contemporary evidence indicates that they
were no worse than the Franks in their brutality, and although they
almost certainly did commit rape as well as murder and torture, they were
not thought of as notorious rapists. What is more, they would often spare
their prisoners’ lives if there was the chance of a ransom, as occurred at
both Nantes and St Bertin: ‘By the merits of the monastery’s patrons
those who had been taken prisoner soon returned, all happy and rejoic-
ing.’

Here, then, is clear evidence both of Viking cruelty and also of

the stereotype of bestial brutality distorting both medieval and modern
perceptions of the Scandinavian invaders.

III

One eleventh-century story of devious behaviour by the Vikings has
already been recounted: the account in the Nantes Chronicle that the band
which sacked the city gained access by pretending to be merchants. The
same ruse is found in perhaps the most celebrated example of Viking
cunning in medieval continental literature, namely the story of Hasting’s
capture of Luna by Dudo of St Quentin.

There is no doubt that a

Viking fleet sailed into the Mediterranean in the late 850s, probably in
858,

and that they subsequently sailed to Italy, looting and destroying

Pisa and ‘certain other towns’.

Yet it is highly unlikely that the fleet was

led by Hasting, who was a notorious leader at the end of the ninth cen-
tury but not attested on the Continent by a contemporary source before
882. Moreover, although Luna may have been one of the ‘other towns’
attacked, there is no ninth-century evidence for this. Dudo’s eleventh-
century account of Luna’s capture is a marvellous story, but it is utterly
unreliable as history.

‘Meritis quoque patronorum loci dignum adnumerari, quod eodem tempore captivati in brevi

reversi sunt gaudentes universi et laeti.’

Dudo of St Quentin: History of the Normans, i. 5–7, trans. E. Christiansen (Woodbridge, 1998),

pp. 18–20.

Justification for this date can be found in Coupland, ‘Charles the Bald’, p. 49.

‘Pisas civitatetem aliasque’: Annales Bertiniani, 860: Grat, Annales de Saint-Bertin, p. 83, Nelson,

Annals of St-Bertin, p. 93; see also Ermentarius, De translationibus et miraculis sancti Filiberti,
second preface, ed. Poupardin, p. 62.

198

THE VIKINGS ON THE CONTINENT

Seeing that the town was too well defended to be captured by force,

Hasting dispatched a message that the Scandinavians came in peace and
wanted to replenish their supplies. Furthermore, he himself was very
ill and wished to be baptized so that he could die a Christian; if this
should happen during their stay, he asked to be buried in the town. This
was swiftly agreed, although, Dudo underlined, it was all a ploy. The
Vikings bought what they needed, Hasting was baptized and the visitors
returned to their ships. Hasting then carried out the second part of his
plan. The Vikings brought word that their leader had died during the
night, and his corpse was brought on a bier to the monastery where a
grave had been prepared. As the body was about to be lowered into the
ground, Hasting sat up, grabbed the sword that was lying beside him and
cut down the unsuspecting bishop. Following his cue, the other Vikings
pulled out their weapons and either killed or captured the remaining
townsfolk before plundering the now defenceless town. There is one final
twist to the tale: Hasting had attacked Luna in the mistaken belief that
it was Rome. When he belatedly discovered his error, he is said to have
launched a furious campaign of retribution against the surrounding
district.

What is particularly interesting about this episode is the ambiguity of

Dudo’s presentation of the Vikings’ cunning. Hasting’s stratagem is based
on deception and treachery, as Dudo brings out again and again. In one
sense, too, Hasting gets his comeuppance, in that his victory turns out
to have been a hollow one. Yet at the same time Hasting is unquestion-
ably the hero of the story, whose craftiness and cunning win the day and
earn the Vikings boatloads of booty. This is doubtless partly because
Dudo is writing from a Norman perspective, but it also reflects a more
widespread ambiguity about this trait, which can either be presented as
artful cunning or as treacherous deceit.

Two late ninth-century examples illustrate the point well. The first is

related in one version of the Annals of Fulda, sub anno 882, when a
Scandinavian army was besieged by the Franks in a fortified camp
at Asselt on the Rhine.

The Frankish emperor, Charles the Fat, struck

a deal with the Danish leader, Godfrid, and

so that there would be no doubt that the peace was agreed on their side,
they hung up a shield, according to their custom, and opened the gates
of the fort. And our men, lacking their cunning, entered the fortress, some
in order to trade, others to look how strong the position was. And the
Northmen, reverting to their usual cunning,

took down the shield of

That ‘Ascloha’ should be identified as Asselt rather than Elsloo was persuasively argued on archae-

ological grounds by J. Vannérus, ‘Asselt, et non Elsloo, camp retranché des Normands à la Meuse
(881–882)’, Bulletin de la classe des lettres de l’Académie royale de Belgique, 5th ser., xviii (1932),
223–32. See also d’Haenens, Invasions normandes, pp. 312–15.

‘Ad consuetam calliditatem conversi’. ‘Calliditas’, which is also the term used earlier in the passage,

carries the notion of craftiness and cunning rather than treachery and deceit.

SIMON COUPLAND

199

peace, shut the gates, and either killed or held to ransom all of our men
whom they found inside, binding them with iron fetters.

This contemporary writer evidently regarded treachery as typical behav-
iour among Vikings. However, the historicity of this incident is highly
questionable. It is present in a version of the Fulda Annals which is deeply
hostile to Charles the Fat, and even more so to the emperor’s coun-
sellors, who apparently brokered the deal with Godfrid, Liutward of
Vercelli (‘a self-styled bishop’) and the ‘utterly deceitful’ Count Wigbert.

The whole episode is therefore portrayed in the worst possible light, with
Godfrid described as ‘the kingdom’s greatest enemy and betrayer’ and
Charles compared with Ahab, the Old Testament king who made an
agreement with Israel’s enemies, in direct disobedience of God.

The

other version of the Annals of Fulda, which is less inimical towards
Charles the Fat, gives a quite different version of events: the two parties
discussed terms, the Franks gave hostages, as was customary in such
circumstances, and the Danish king (erroneously called Sigfrid, another
of the Viking chiefs present at the siege) went to Charles to be baptized.
After two days of celebrations, ‘our hostages were sent back from the
stronghold’ while the Danish leader returned laden with baptismal gifts.

There is no hint here that the hostages had been taken against their will
or that any of them had been harmed. The Annals of St Bertin, which
are generally unsympathetic to Charles the Fat, likewise make no men-
tion of Scandinavian treachery in their account of events, although it
is admittedly a briefer report.

A rather more admiring report of Viking cunning and ingenuity is

found in another contemporary text, the Chronicle of Regino of Prüm.
Regino claims that in 888,

the Northmen who were besieging Paris did something amazing and
unheard of, not only in our own age but also in any previous one. For when
they realised that the city was impregnable, they began to work with all
their strength and skill to see how they could leave the city behind and
convey their fleet with all their troops up the Seine, and so enter the Yonne
and penetrate Burgundy without any hindrance. And when the towns-
people spiritedly prevented them from travelling upriver, they dragged
the ships more than two miles overland, and having thereby avoided any
danger, then put them back in the waters of the Seine. A little later they
left the Seine and sailed up the Yonne as they had planned, and with all
speed made their way to Sens.

Annales Fuldenses, 882: Kurze, Annales Fuldenses, pp. 98–9, Reuter, Annals of Fulda, pp. 92–3.

See Reuter’s comments, Annals of Fulda, pp. 8–9.

1 Kings 20:26–43.

Annales Fuldenses (Bavarian continuation), 882: Kurze, Annales Fuldenses, p. 108, Reuter, Annals

of Fulda, p. 105.

Annales Bertiniani, 882: Grat, Annales de Saint-Bertin, pp. 247–8, Nelson, Annals of St-Bertin,

pp. 224–5.

Chronicle, 888: Kurze, ‘Chronicle of Regino’, pp. 130–1.

200

THE VIKINGS ON THE CONTINENT

At first glance this report seems entirely plausible, since it is known that,

on their long journeys through Russia, Scandinavian crews frequently
dragged their boats overland between one river and another. What is
more, Regino was a contemporary of these events, even if not yet
abbot of Prüm. Yet the much fuller contemporary accounts in, for in-
stance, the Annals of St Vaast or Abbo’s epic poem about the siege make
no mention either of the Franks barring the river to the Viking fleet or
of an overland portage by the latter; on the contrary, Abbo emphasizes
the surprising unity between the two parties and explicitly states that the
Scandinavians transported their ships by river.

What is more, Regino’s

version of events is inconsistent with his own report under the previous
year, in which he, like other contemporary annalists, said that Charles
the Fat had granted the Northmen permission to plunder the lands and
regions beyond the Seine, i.e. in Burgundy.

Here, then, is another in-

stance of the stereotype of Viking cunning resulting in the creation of
myth rather than history.

Nevertheless, none of this means that Vikings were not capable of

cunning or guilty of treachery. To cite just one example of the former,
several reliable contemporary sources record that Scandinavian war bands
carried out attacks by night, thereby increasing the element of surprise
and fear, a tactic rarely employed by Frankish armies. Thus, in 848 Bor-
deaux was captured by night, Noyon was attacked by night in 859, and
in 862 Meaux was occupied ‘in the first part of the night’.

The most

interesting report of this tactic is, however, in an early tenth-century
miracle text from Stavelot in the Ardennes, where the monastic writer saw
these Scandinavian night attacks as a reflection of the Vikings’ underly-
ing character: ‘It was on a certain new moon—for it is by night that their
deadly violence rages the worst, according to the word of the Lord, for
“one doing evil hates the light” and “this is your hour,” he says, “and
the power of darkness”.’

By using the words of Jesus to those who

arrested him to refer to the Scandinavian invaders, this Carolingian cleric
again reveals a tendency to accord the Vikings quasi-mythical status, even
if his account of the Viking advance on Stavelot by night is almost
certainly historically reliable.

‘Barcas per flumina trahunt’: Abbo, book 2, l. 423, Abbon: Le siège de Paris par les Normands,

ed. H. Waquet (Paris, 1964), p. 96.

‘Concessis terris et regionibus, quae ultra Sequanam erant, Nortmannis ad depredandum’: Chron-

icle, 887: Kurze, ‘Chronicle of Regino’, p. 127.

Annales Fontanellenses, 848: Laporte, Annales de Fontanelle, p. 81; Annales Bertiniani, 859:

Grat, Annales de Saint-Bertin, p. 81, Nelson, Annals of St-Bertin, p. 91; Vita Faronis, c. 128, MGH,
Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, v. 202. This list does not include Chartres in 858, as stated by
Wallace-Hadrill, Vikings in Francia, p. 6: the article by Lot which he cites demonstrates the
unreliability of the one source which records that the attack was by night.

‘Quodam vero lunari accessione – noctu enim maxime feralis ille impetus saeviebat iuxta

dominicalem vocem, quia “odit lucem” prava gerens, et “haec” inquit “vestra est hora et potestas
tenebrarum” ’ (Miracula sancti Remacli Stabulensis, ii.1, MGH, Scriptores, xv.1. 439). The references
are to John 3:20 and Luke 22:53.

SIMON COUPLAND

201

Such language is naturally absent when contemporary sources describe

Frankish deception of the Vikings, such as in 864 when Pippin II of
Aquitaine, who had allied himself with a Viking army, was captured
‘by treacherous deceit’.

Abbo describes with admiration an even more

dastardly trick in his description of the siege of Paris, when six Frankish
horsemen disguised as Danes infiltrated the enemy camp and killed six
sleeping Vikings before fleeing back to their own ranks.

In such con-

texts cunning and deceit, even ‘treacherous deceit’, were not evidence of
the ‘inbred wickedness’ (‘ingenitam maliciam’) which Frankish writers
ascribed to the Vikings,

but praiseworthy, because used in defence of

the Frankish realm and the service of God. And here, surely, lies the
principal explanation for the way in which the Vikings acquired their
exaggerated reputation for cunning and indeed cruelty: they were not just
‘Nortmanni’, men from the north, they were also ‘pagani’, from beyond
the limits of Christian civilization; worse, they were ‘enemies of the faith’,
‘enemies of God’, even ‘persecutors of the Christian faith and demon-
worshippers’.

As such, the Northmen were expected to be as cruel and

as cunning as the devil himself, the ‘father of lies’ who can disguise
himself as an angel of light.

Finally, a quite different portrayal of the Vikings’ propensity to deceive

was provided by another late ninth-century author, Notker of St Gall,
who displayed neither admiration nor hostility, but ridicule. In his col-
lection of tales about the emperor Charlemagne, Notker related that many
Northmen came to be baptized by Louis the Pious, each having a Frank-
ish magnate as sponsor and receiving generous baptismal gifts of cloth-
ing and weapons. On one occasion so many Scandinavians arrived that
the supply of white robes ran out, and the baptismal candidates were
given makeshift robes sewn together from shirts instead. At this, one of
the Danes complained that on none of the other twenty times that he
had been baptized had he been fobbed off with an old sack like this!

Although Notker brought out a spiritual application, commenting,
‘Would that this kind of thing were found only among the heathen (gen-
tiles), and not also often among those who are thought to be Christians!’,

‘Perfide deceptus’ (Ex libro monasterii sancti Wandregisili: Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de

la France, ed. M. Bouquet, rev. L. Delisle (24 vols., Paris, 1840–1904), vii. 44; see also Annales
Bertiniani, 864: Grat, Annales de Saint-Bertin, p. 113, Nelson, Annals of St-Bertin, p. 119).

‘Ipse equites ex more Danum vestire coegit . . .’: Abbo, book 2, l. 168, ed. Waquet, p. 78.

Chronicle, 886: Kurze, ‘Chronicle of Regino’, p. 125.

‘Enemies of the faith’: Annales Fuldenses, 853: Kurze, Annales Fuldenses, p. 44, Reuter, Annals of

Fulda, p. 35; ‘enemies of God’: Recueil des actes de Charles II le Chauve roi de France, ed. G. Tessier
(3 vols., Paris, 1943–55), ii. 135; ‘persecutors of the Christian faith and demon worshippers’: Annales
Bertiniani, 841: Grat, Annales de Saint-Bertin, p. 39, Nelson, Annals of St-Bertin, p. 51. On this theme
see Coupland, ‘Rod of God’s Wrath’, 540–7.

John 8:44, 2 Corinthians 11:14.

Notker, Gesta Karoli Magni, ii. 19, ed. H. F. Haefele, MGH, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, n.s.,

xii (Berlin, 1959, reprinted with revisions 1962) [hereafter Haefele, Gesta Karoli Magni], pp. 89–90,
Einhard and Notker the Stammerer: Two Lives of Charlemagne, trans. Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth,
1969), pp. 168–9.

202

THE VIKINGS ON THE CONTINENT

he effectively turned the Danes into figures of fun, and the other three
stories in his collection which mention the Northmen all do the same, to
a greater or lesser extent.

This presumably reflects the fact that Notker

was writing from the peace and security of St Gallen rather than one of
the areas suffering Viking incursions at the time, but it does highlight yet
another reason why tales about the Vikings grew in the telling, namely
that good storytellers often use caricature and exaggeration, and stories
about the Scandinavian invasions were no exception.

In the same lecture in which he quipped about ‘long-haired tourists’,
Michael Wallace-Hadrill very reasonably commented: ‘I believe that the
literary sources exaggerate when I catch them out, but otherwise I give
them the benefit of the doubt.’

This article has caught out a number

of later medieval sources, and even one or two from the ninth century
itself. It is true that contemporary or even eyewitness accounts record
instances of Viking cruelty and cunning, and there is no doubt that the
invaders were capable of appalling brutality as well as both ingenuity and
deceit. At the same time, however, there is ample contemporary evidence
of comparable Frankish cruelty and cunning, even treachery. Seen from
the perspective of the twenty-first century, the Northmen do not appear
to have been notably more brutal or crafty than their Carolingian coun-
terparts. As for the perception that they were unusually tall, although one
contemporary text referred to Vikings of remarkable stature, archaeolo-
gical evidence indicates that the average Frank and the average Dane
would have stood virtually shoulder to shoulder.

As has been noted, the sources guilty of exaggeration are later in date,

and it is scarcely surprising that the later the text, the greater the elabo-
ration. Hasting’s mock funeral, the treacherous Lambert guiding the
Vikings to their goal, Bishop Gunhard struck down as he elevated the
host: these are marvellous stories, but not history. Yet even at the end of
the ninth century, while the raids were still going on, Regino and Notker
were telling tales of Viking cunning that would have amazed not only their
listeners, but also those who had been present at the events they described.

This should give pause to those scholars who seek a kernel of histor-

ical truth about the ninth- and tenth-century raids in the much later
sources from the Scandinavian homelands, in particular the Icelandic
sagas. If tales could grow in the telling over the course of the ninth
century, how much more would they grow over the course of many cen-
turies? Hasting’s attack on Luna, described in the eleventh century, is a
prime example. The name is indeed that of a known Viking leader and

Notker, ii. 13–14, 18: Haefele, Gesta Karoli Magni, pp. 75–8, 88–9, trans. Thorpe, pp. 157–9,

167–8.

Wallace-Hadrill, Vikings in Francia, p. 8.

SIMON COUPLAND

203

the Mediterranean coast was indeed attacked by Vikings, but Hasting is
not known to have been active at the time of the raids, and there is no
evidence that Luna was among the victims. Similar health warnings
should consequently also be attached to stories of characters such as
Ragnar ‘Hairy-Breeches’ and Ivar ‘the Boneless’.

As well as demonstrating how stories about the Viking incursions came

to be exaggerated, the study has also shown why this came about, namely
because of the Frankish stereotype of the Scandinavians as cruel and
cunning. Nor is it hard to deduce why these traits in particular should
have attached themselves to the image of the Northmen. In the eyes of
the clerical Carolingian writers, the Vikings’ pagan beliefs put them in
league with the devil, who was the epitome of brutality and deception.
Thus, even if a particular attack was not characterized by either excess-
ive cruelty or cunning, the Vikings’ reputation as heathens, coupled with
the storyteller’s tendency to exaggeration and caricature, could lead to
later accounts containing either or both of these features. In short, the
Franks’ tales of the invasions grew in the telling, and the myth of the
Viking supermen grew with them.

Wyszukiwarka

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