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broke up, his son and successor holding the English throne only until 1042, whcn the Anglo-Saxon monarchs re-ascended the throne. Kingdoms had now been firmly established all over Europę, with defined frontiers guarded by professional soldiers. Christianity had arrived in Denmark and Norway, and bishops were preaching the message of the ‘White Christ’ in the last pagan strongholds of Sweden. Men could no longer go a-viking with an expectation of reward. Yet one name still shone with the glory of the olden times, attracting men to goa-viking: Harald Hardraada.

Harald had been wounded in a battle for the Norwegian throne at the age of fifteen and had fled to Kiev, where he unsuccessfully courted the daughter of the ruler, Yaroslav the Wise. He sailed on to Miklagard, joined the Varangian Guard and eventually rosę to be its commander. For ten years he campaigned from the Greek islands to Asia Minor, from the Caucasus Mountains to Jeru-salem; then in 1044 he returned to Kiev, im-mensely rich, and won his princess. In 1047 he was crowned king of Norway, and for the next two decades was known as the Thunderbolt of the North, pillaging throughout Scandinavia. In 1066, on the death of the English king, he turned his ambitions to England, on whose throne he held a claim. On 25 September Harald Hardraada, the last great Viking leader, died at the battle of Stamford Bridge: with him died not only the Viking raids on Europę, but also the Viking Age, and his death marked the end of Scandinavian influence over western Europę.

Organization

The culture of the Vikings denies the claim that they were barbarians, but in the first century of the Viking raids at least the raiders certainly lacked organization and resembled nothing so much as nomads. There were no kings as such, merely warlords, though sometimes when a number of bands were united for an expedition one chief might be chosen as the leader, and this could lead to him later becoming a petty king if a settlement was madę. This is perhaps underlined by an exchange between a Frankish messenger and a Viking ship on the River Eure in France in the ioth century. The Frank demanded, ‘What is the name of your master?’ Back came the reply, ‘We have no lord, we are all eąuals’.

However, it would be wrong to underestimate the power of such warlords and petty kings, for although they had 110 machinery for government, still they were the law, and had at thcir backs private bodyguards which madę surę the kings’ commands were obeyed.

Under these kings were the other leaders, who became jarls, or earls. They held lands, owned ships, and had their own body of loyal warriors with which to assert their importance. They were especially prominent in Norway, where the geog-raphy led to the emergence of a number of powerful families which established lordship over the sur-rounding settlements.

At the bottom of the social scalę was the peasant or bondir, the backbone of the people, smallholders and freemen, roughly equivalent to the Saxon ceorl. Like the ceorl they were men of some property in land and stock, and had the right to bear arms. They cultivated their land by the use of thralls or bondmen, ‘unfreemen’ who were little morę than slaves and who could not bear arms.

It was the chiefs and their bands of warriors who went on the raids. Legend has madę these warriors invincible, but the smallness of the war bands and their loose organization, with each man fighting as an individual, meant that they were freąuently defeated when faceci by the regular trained troops of the later Frankish and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and they were always most successful at hit-and-run raids along the coasts.

Similarly, the size of their armies has been greally exaggerated; the fact that they were all professional warriors—not peasants—meant that they were never very numerous at any one place or time. The ‘great hordę’ which invaded Northum-bria in 865 probably did not exceed 500 warriors at the most.

Losses at sea and in battle freąuently meant that as many as two-thirds of those who set out might perish, but this was accepted, for there was morę loot and morę honour for the survivors, and morę chance of achieving higher status at home. (A Viking’s attitude must have been very similar to that of the younger officers in the smali corps of Royal Marines in peacetime, who would pray for a liberty boat fuli of senior officers to sink so that the