The Viking World - Essay Example

The Viking World: Arguments behind Choice of this The Vikings have a prominent place in the history books as the seafaring raiders who plagued most of Europe from the period around 800 until around 1100. They were feared for their imposing physical presence, often depicted as blond, strong and warlike, with a delight in fighting, drinking and plundering their more peaceful neighbours. Their striking longships with huge dragon’s heads and square sails would strike fear into the hearts of any villager who spotted them arriving along the coastlines or rivers. The fact is, however, that the civilization we now call Viking, was much more complex, more accomplished and altogether more peace-oriented than this stereotype would suggest. This paper aims to explore the environment in which the Vikings operated, including its history and geography, the culture which they developed among themselves, and the many different ways in which they influenced neighbouring cultures. This analysis will then be used to consider how appropriate the title “The Viking World” is for a program of study on the Vikings. The term “Viking” is often used as if it refers to one national group, but in fact this is a mistake caused by the fact that historians from the early middle ages did not know very much about this group of people. History in those days was written down mainly by monks, and Charlemagne’s Frankish empire was the centre of European civilisation, and this means that the perspective on things was very biased against the Vikings.1 They were seen as barbarians, not part of the Christian world, and lumped together as the enemy. It is true that they were, before the eleventh century at least, not converted to Christianity, but it is unfair to say that they were uncivilised or all the same. At least three main groups can be distinguished between them: the Norwegians, the Swedes and the Danes. Each had their own specific Germanic dialect which later developed into fully fledged separate languages. They also came from quite different geographical areas, and this is important in understanding the sub cultures within Viking civilisation. Norway was then, as now, a long mountainous country with many rocky inlets called fjords, and not much in the way of fertile farmland, except in the south. Fishing was therefore an important way of life for most of the population, and this led to greater and greater skill in building boats. When food and resources became scarce, for example in the frozen north where the climate did not favour human civilisation, the Norsemen, as they were called, sailed off to the west towards Iceland, Britain and Ireland, looking for places to settle which could provide them with the essentials of wood for shelter and animals or crops for food. Sweden had the same issues with extreme climate in the north, where there was in any case a very small population, but the people of this region also cultivated large areas in the south and south east, setting up towns and trading centres which encouraged contacts with neighbouring peoples. The group which inhabited the area we know as Denmark had the best arable land of all, and it was the most prosperous area of the three. This economic strength allowed the Danes to achieve supremacy over other “Norsemen” as they all were known, from Sweden and Norway, and they developed an advanced political system, providing structure and unity across most of Southern Scandinavia. In Denmark especially, the term “barbarian” was inappropriate because it was the Danes who brought law and order to England when they colonised large areas of that territory. The Viking civilisation was every bit as sophisticated as that of their immediate Germanic neighbours, the Franks, the Anglo Saxons, and the tribes along the north coast of Europe such as Frisians and Saxons. It was mainly the geography, then, and the scarcity of resources that prompted the early raids on northern Europe. There was a certain amount of conflict and pillaging, as indeed there was in all the migrations of different tribes across the European landscape. The Franks were no less brutal in their campaigns to conquer most of continental Europe for Charlemagne’s growing empire. It is clear also, however, that there was a great deal of trade and settlement going on as well. A study of British place names reveals that many towns and villages have Scandinavian names deriving from earlier Viking settlements. The English language, too, has inherited many Scandinavian words and this reveals that the Vikings not only visited and plundered the British Isles, they also stayed on and made these places their home. The history books concentrate on the colourful warfare episodes of Viking history, but in fact the more boring work of cultivating land for crops, building up villages, and creating political and commercial structures has had far more influence than the acts of aggression. This contrast reflects two main aspects of Viking culture: the heroic and the non-heroic.2 The legacy of the heroic culture is the fabulous tales of adventuring on the high seas in the Old Norse sagas. These stories mix mythical legends of gods and heroes with some true historical elements, and a lot of family history. They illustrate the Viking values of courage and resilience against a harsh and unforgiving natural world, and their love of exploration by sea. The women are often as terrifying as the men in war-time, and as effective in the hard physical work required during peacetime. This contrasts quite a lot with the secondary position that woman take in Christian Europe. The legacy of their non-heroic culture, however, is in the trade networks and political alliances that the Viking nations single-handedly sought out and set up. The importance of trade to the Vikings and to the rest of Europe must not be forgotten. The Swedish branch in particular reached out to the east well into the territory that is now Russia. In the Baltic islands and in the border lands which are now Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, they set up trading posts. Their mode of travel was still mainly by ship, and they used a network of major rivers to create trade links to the east and south of the Scandinavian homelands. Over time their efforts resulted in happy settlement and co-existence with the locals, even to the extent that the city of Kiev was colonised by Swedish Vikings, and ruled by noble Swedes called Oleg and Olga (Russian versions of Helgi and Helga).3 They became Christians and intermarried with the locals, showing that the Viking civilization could easily be merged and assimilated with the cultures of their distant trading partners. There has been a lot of speculation about just how far the Vikings managed to travel by sea. Logan examines the place names of their sagas and concludes that Helluland refers to modern Baffin Island; Markland, which means land of the forests, refers to Labrador; and Vinland, which means the land where grapes grow, could refer any part of the North American East coast from Boston to Florida.4 The particular land formations, and the crops and animals mentioned in the sagas seem to fit this interpretation. If this is true, then it means that the Vikings were the first Europeans to visit North America and that would be a truly amazing achievement for this hardy and courageous group of peoples to make. Historians are divided on this point, and there is no hard archaeological evidence for Viking settlement on the American mainland . The Old Norse sagas could certainly refer to America, but other interpretations are possible too. One of the difficulties is that the climate of the world has changed in the last thousand years, and so we cannot be sure which plants and animals grew in these areas at the time when the Vikings are supposed to have been there. The most we can say is that it is likely that they made it this far, but we cannot be sure. There is hard evidence of Viking presence in Ireland, the Orkneys, the Shetland Islands, Greenland, Iceland, and all over mainland Europe where rivers allow penetration by longship into the interior. We have seen that the Vikings certainly inhabited a world of their own making, which they carved out of an unforgiving terrain both at home in the area we now know as Scandinavia and in other regions which they sought out by ship and tamed by their own hard labour. Their world was populated by gods and demons different from those of the Christians, and they developed their own systems for ruling themselves and at times the peoples they conquered or colonised. This world was far reaching, culturally and in physical distance, to the extent that it helped extend the boundaries of known world for all European civilisations in the period from 800-110. In the light of this overview, therefore, it makes perfect sense to consider all those factors when describing the Vikings, and in so doing we achieve a more rounded and accurate picture of their remarkable civilization. Reference List. Hall, Richard, Exploring the World of the Vikings (London: Thames & Hudson, 2007). Logan, Donald, The Vikings in History, second edition (London/New York: Routledge, 2005, 3rd ed.). Page, R.I., Chronicles of the Vikings (London: British Museum, 1995). Roesdahl, Else, The Vikings, translated by Susan M. Margeson and Kirsten Williams (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998, 2nd ed.). Read More