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War or peace?

What happened when Viking raiders turned into Viking settlers and took land to farm? There is considerable debate and controversy even today about the nature of the relationship between the colonists and the local population in Britain and Ireland. The historical sources are clear that the relationship was hostile and that negotiation was by the sword. Most modern historians argue that the Norwegians who settled in Scotland and the Danes who settled in England simply took what they wanted by force, killing or enslaving anyone who got in their way.

But there is also the evidence of place names and archaeology, and they can be interpreted in more than one way. Place names are an invaluable source of information on the extent of Scandinavian influence, and their distribution mirrors the geographical spread of colonisation known from historical and archaeological evidence. In England, for instance, Scandinavian names are concentrated within the Danelaw, the area of northern and eastern England that was in Danish hands.

In Scotland, the most densely concentrated area of Scandinavian names is Caithness, Orkney and Shetland, where a Norwegian earldom was established. But we should not assume that density of place names equals numbers of colonists, or that the creation of place names can be dated precisely. Blanket replacement of native names, as in Orkney and Shetland, may have happened gradually rather than suddenly. Above all, we need to remember that the story is likely to have varied across Britain and Ireland, and that we should balance historical, linguistic and archaeological evidence within a local framework.

People and daily life

Exquisite craftsmanship on a Viking strap-end  © History tells of events, places and important people. The spread of Scandinavian place names not only helps to chart the extent of Scandinavian settlement but records the names of lesser people and how they reacted to the landscape around them. For example, in Shetland, Haroldswick in the island of Unst means Harold's bay, while Lerwick or 'mud bay' perpetuates the Vikings' scorn for what was for them a useless harbour. But for the details of everyday life, we depend on archaeological evidence from excavations. Pagan graves are particularly useful because the bodies were fully dressed and accompanied by personal belongings, some of which indicate important activities of the living. Women often had the iron sickles with which they harvested the flax for making linen; the toothed iron heckles or combs with which they straightened the fibres; and the stone discs or whorls that weighted the wooden spindle for spinning the fibres into thread. Very occasionally they had beautifully carved boards of whalebone on which they rubbed a high gloss on to the linen. Men were usually buried with their weapons (sword, shield, spear, arrows, axe) and sometimes with blacksmith's tools such as iron tongs and hammers.

An antler bone whorl used for spinning  © Farmhouses in the 9th and 10th centuries were long rectangular buildings with rounded corners, built of stone and turf or stone and timber with thatched roofs. Most consisted of a single room, 15-20 metres long, with a central long hearth and low benches lining the long walls. Cooking, eating, storytelling and sleeping all took place in this one room, along with weaving and carving bone pins and whatever else was needed. There were separate outhouses for the cattle. Houses in towns tended to be smaller and were usually built of wood and wattle. Wherever people lived, domestic rubbish accumulated and with it invaluable information about diet, hygiene, equipment and everyday activities.

A Viking brooch

Two brooches attach the straps of a Viking woman's pinafore  © One of these everyday objects and something that is found wherever the Vikings settled is the oval brooch. This was a favourite item of jewellery in Scandinavia, and it is so standardised in design that it is instantly recognisable. This makes it very useful to the archaeologist as an indicator of Viking activities. It turns up in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, England, Scotland, Ireland and even as far away as Iceland and Russia. About 10-12 centimetres long, the oval brooch was mass-produced in hundreds in workshops throughout Scandinavia during the 9th and 10th centuries. It was cast in bronze (copper alloy) in a two-piece clay mould, and the decoration was often quite elaborate, with interlaced designs and sometimes settings for projecting bosses of amber or glass.

Female dress was very conservative and the equivalent of a folk-costume was worn for 200 years, not just in the homelands but everywhere that the Vikings settled from Ireland in the west to Russia in the east. It consisted of a pinafore of wool or linen, which was worn over a long and sometimes pleated linen shift. The pinafore had shoulder straps that were fastened by a pair of oval brooches, one below each shoulder. Wealthy women might have a string of brightly coloured beads linking the two brooches across the chest. When pagan female graves are excavated, the textiles have normally rotted away but the two oval brooches will still be in place above the ribcage. We assume such burials to be those of Scandinavian women who came as colonists, but of course such brooches could equally well have been worn by local women married to Viking warriors.

Styles of settlement

A walrus ivory dice excavated in York  © Typical Scandinavian artefacts like oval brooches, whalebone plaques and ornate swords can be found throughout the Viking world - but there were remarkable differences in the way that the newcomers lived. There is a contrast between the essentially rural pattern of Norwegian settlement in Scotland, with its individual farms and family estates, and the urban development of Dublin and later Waterford in Ireland. There the Vikings established trading centres on the coastal fringe of a rural hinterland that was little affected by Scandinavian activities. York was the northernmost of the Viking towns of England, and it seems possible that the Viking takeover of rural estates may have stimulated urban growth in the sense that some of the dispossessed English farmers sought a new life in trade or industry in towns.

Viking York in the 10th century was larger than contemporary Scandinavian towns, a fact that underlines the importance of the Danish settlement of England to the balance of wealth and power around the North Sea. It was enclosed by an earthen bank topped by a stout wooden fence, and in places within the heart of the modern city excavations have revealed deposits of Viking Age material several metres deep. Timber buildings set in plots of equal size suggest a degree of town planning, while the debris from workshops tells of urban industries such as leather-working, bone comb-making, textiles and metalworking. Crucial to urban development is the discovery of coin-making dies, for the Viking economy had previously been based not on currency but on silver bullion and the exchange of goods.

Towns were not a Viking invention, and the growth of towns such as York depended on their existing foundations. This is perhaps why towns did not develop in Scandinavian Scotland before the 12th century because there had been no previous urban development. Kirkwall in Orkney was one of the first, stimulated by the building of St Magnus Cathedral which began in 1137. Until then, despite being the seat of the Norwegian earldom of Orkney, Caithness and Shetland, Orkney was essentially rural. Wonderfully fertile, Orkney was a prime target for settlement in the 9th century. There may even have been Viking winter-camps in Orkney in the late 8th century from which raiding parties set out for Lindisfarne, Iona and the monasteries of Ireland.

Viking Orkney

Ruins on the Brough of Birsay, Orkney  © We have no written records left by the ordinary people who lived in areas that were taken over by the Vikings. There is no way that we can tell for certain what happened, but we can use the evidence of artefacts from excavations as clues. Orkney, perhaps the first place to be colonised, is an ideal place to search. The original people who were living in Orkney at the start of the Viking Age were Celtic-speakers. They were known as Picts, and inhabited part of the Kingdom of the Picts which made up most of mainland Scotland. The question of what happened to them is still hotly debated, especially between historians, linguists and archaeologists.

According to Scandinavian historical sources, the Orkney islands were either deserted at the time of the earliest Norse settlement or their inhabitants were slaughtered. Very few Celtic place names survive, lending weight to this picture of desertion or wholesale genocide. But by the end of the 9th century, the colonisation of Orkney had been so successful that it had become a Norwegian earldom. The very strength of this Norse settlement would ensure that in time the pre-Norse names would disappear, and we simply do not know how quickly that happened. The archaeological evidence shows that Pictish artefacts were still in use in the early Norse settlements. The question is how this evidence should be interpreted. Does it mean that Pictish slaves were servicing new masters? Or that the Norse colonists needed to acquire tools and equipment from the Picts? At the very least it ought to imply that there were still Picts around and that they had not been exterminated by the Vikings.

Christian Vikings

The cross on this coin from Viking York reveals a Christian community  © Critical to this issue are excavations of Pictish sites in use before the Viking Age began. Some farms were abandoned, others were much reduced in size. The evidence seems to suggest that Pictish society was in decline in Orkney in the 8th century, perhaps from epidemics of disease or bouts of civil war, which would have made the Viking takeover of the islands much easier. It is even possible that the Vikings were welcomed as protectors against the Picts and Gaels of mainland Scotland. Whatever the reason, the Picts of Orkney survived alongside their new political masters. They even influenced the Viking way of life, most notably converting them away from their pagan Nordic gods to Christianity. Pagan burials with their useful array of grave goods ceased soon after 950, a couple of generations before the official conversion of Norway in 995.

The influence of the Vikings on our native population continues to raise many questions about the effects of their colonisation of parts of Britain. Perhaps some of these questions will never have satisfactory answers, but new discoveries, campaigns of excavations on targeted sites and new research into scientific sources of information, such as DNA, will add to our knowledge and help to explain our Viking ancestry.

Find out more

Books

Chronicles of the Vikings: records, memorials and myths by R I Page, British Museum Press 1995.

Cultural Atlas of the Viking World by James Graham-Campbell, Colleen Batey, Helen Clarke, R I Page and Neil S Price, Andromeda 1994.

Viking Scotland by Anna Ritchie, Batsford 1993.

Viking Age England by Julian D Richards, Batsford 1991.

The Viking Dig: the excavations at York by Richard Hall, The Bodley Head 1984.

The Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names by E Eckwall, 4th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960. Still the broadest and most useful book on place names.

The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England by Michael Lapidge, John Blair, Simon Keynes, and D G Scragg, eds., Blackwell 1999. A thorough and interesting guide by leading scholars into all aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture, including entries on the Vikings, Old Norse, place-names, and numerous individuals, texts, and places.

The Oxford Illustrated History of the Viking by P Sawyer, ed., Oxford University Press 1997. A colourful and full discussion of the lives and activities of the Vikings.

Places to visit

The most obvious place to visit to learn more about the Vikings is the in York. York itself was the seat of Viking kings, and the Centre recreates the sights, sounds and smells of the 10th century city.

Other cities with excellent museums that include finds from Viking settlements are Leicester (Jewry Wall Museum) and Nottingham (Castle Museum). Most cities also have dedicated museums, including Lincoln, Derby, Peterborough and Norwich. In these, information about the history of the regions and archaeological discoveries bring the Viking and early medieval periods to life.

, Edinburgh. Viking artefacts from across Scotland and a reconstructed grave from the Westness cemetery, Orkney.

Heritage Trails. Most cities now offer heritage trails, available from Tourist Information centres, which allow you to retrace the footsteps of medieval ancestors, and investigate the surviving architecture from earlier centuries.

Or visit the islands themselves Brough of Birsay, Orkney On this spectacular tidal island are the remains of Viking houses and a 12th century church.

Jarlshof, Shetland. A stunning site that spans five and a half millennia, including four centuries of a Viking farmstead.

Libraries and local history. Local libraries will provide a wealth of interesting material for the medieval period and the Viking settlements. Look especially for local history books and pamplets, which will provide a guide to places of interest in your locality. Local history and archaeology groups often have public lectures on aspects of early England. These should be advertised in your local library or look up special interest groups in the telephone directory.

Sign-spotting. Travelling around the old Danelaw counties investigating place names is a fun and rewarding activity. You can also do this with a map from your armchair! Try to find as many places as possible with Old English origins (ending in -tun, -burh, -feld, for example), and with Scandinavian origins (-by, -thorpe, -toft, -thwaite) to work out where the Viking settlers chose to make their homes, how close they were to their English neighbours, and the kinds of activities in which they might have engaged.

Living history. There are numerous re-enactment groups who stage annual events where villages and battles are recreated. These are advertised by English Heritage, local newspapers and Tourist Information centres. , a living history group, puts on a whole range of activities.

To see how the Anglo-Saxons lived and worked, visit in Suffolk. St Edmund himself, martyred by the Vikings in the 9th century, was interred at the abbey of nearby Bury St Edmunds.

, Northumberland is a wonderful site recreating many aspects of early Anglo-Saxon England. The nearby church of Jarrow was where Bede himself lived and worked, and it still retains the original foundation stone for all to see.

In 991, the East Anglian Anglo-Saxons, led by Earl Byrthnorth, were totally defeated by the Vikings at the Battle of Maldon. The site of this battle, commemorated in the famous Old English poem, The Battle of Maldon, can still be visited today, near the River Pante in Essex.

Links

. An interactive tour through the Smithsonian Viking exhibition which explores the Vikings' arrival and settlement in North America.

. The Fitzwilliam Coin Corpus is an amazing database of coin finds in Britain 410-1180. The site includes images, maps, full descriptions of coins and links to many other coin collections worldwide.

. The Anglo-Saxon England Ring contains some interesting material on King Canute.

About the author

Dr Anna Ritchie is an archaeologist and a Viking specialist. She has excavated numerous sites, notably Buckquoy, in Orkney. She is author of Viking Scotland, as well as many other books on Scottish archaeology.