A Brief History of the Vikings (11 page)

Whoever Turgeis was, he was in for the long haul. He and others like him founded semi-permanent bases from which to continue their plundering. As in other areas subject to Viking assault, they favoured island retreats at river mouths, or fortified positions on lakes. Around 841, one such base was founded in the wedge of ground where the River Poddle met the River Liffey, at a marshy place the locals called ‘the black
pool’ –
Dubh Linn
. The Viking settlement may have begun as a temporary fortress, but soon became more permanent.

Just how permanent became clear in the 1840s, when work on a railway line uncovered Viking cemeteries at Islandbridge and Kilmainham near modern Dublin. The find is less useful than it would have been if discovered today, since Victorian archaeologists were keener on buried treasure than carefully logging the details of what they found. However, it was catalogued by William Wilde (father of the more famous Oscar) and yielded a rich haul of swords, spears and shield-bosses, mainly from Norway, although some display signs of Frankish workmanship. Certain items had been made locally, indicating that the Viking settlement was permanent enough to have a smithy. The graves were also found to contain women, buried with distinctly Norse jewellery, necklaces and household implements such as spindles, needles and smoothers. Some of the brooches seemed to have been fashioned from book-clasps – in other words, the ornate bindings of priceless Bibles and lost chronicles, levered off before the books themselves were cast into a fire or left to rot in the dirt. The women in the Islandbridge graves were Norse, not Irish, and their presence implies that at least some of the Vikings in Ireland were planning on staying.
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Other graves contained blacksmiths, farmers and merchants, buried with their scales and measures. It would appear that by the end of the ninth century, the Vikings of Dublin were still embarking upon raids and wars, but were also established in a relatively peaceful settlement.

Other place names in Ireland reflect Viking origins:
Vikingalo
(Wicklow),
Veisufjordr
(Wexford),
Hlymrekr
(Limerick) and
Vedrafjordr
(Waterford). The Vikings were still referred to as
gaill
(foreigners) by the Irish, but the use of the term took on a tribal context. The locals had begun to regard the newcomers
as part of the scenery – the
gaill
became one more rival tribe to be dealt with, and Turgeis was regarded as their king. After casting out the abbot of Armagh Abbey, the local Irish saw his occupation of the Abbey as a sign of his attempt to set himself up as a religious leader, allowing later writers to interpret his raids as a heathen attempt to spread the religion of Thor. This idea was helped considerably by the blasphemous behaviour of Turgeis’s wife Aud, who danced on the altar of Clonmacnoise, and supposedly performed rites of witchcraft there.
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By 845, Turgeis and his men were holed up in a heavily defended position on Lough Ree in the centre of Ireland. However, he came to a suitably bad end, drowned in Lough Owel in County Westmeath during a fight with a local clan. A more detailed yet still unlikely story claims that the devilish Aud was not enough for Turgeis, and that instead he lusted after the daughter of a local king Mael Sechlainn. In what could be a garbled reference to a dynastic pact that went awry, Mael Sechlainn sent his daughter to Turgeis, with 15 beautiful handmaidens in attendance. Turgeis arrived with 15 of his companions, clearly expecting a night to remember, only to discover that the 15 Irish beauties were youths from Mael Sechlainn’s army. Dressed in women’s clothes and with their beards shaven off, the youths supposedly looked good enough to fool the Vikings until it was too late, revealing their true nature only as the Vikings took them in their arms and felt the cold iron of their concealed daggers.
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Perhaps a confused reference to a thwarted gang rape, perhaps a story wholly invented, the death of Turgeis entered Irish legend, and soon there were others like him.

Around 851, the Norwegian invaders had to fight off an incursion of other Vikings – a group of Danes arrived from England or Scotland, and tried to seize the plunder that the Norwegians had been carefully amassing for themselves. The
Irish were now obliged to distinguish between two groups of foreign invaders – the ‘white’ Norwegians or
Finngaill
, and the ‘black’ Danes or
Dubhgaill
. The new arrivals were, however briefly, welcomed by some of the tribes, who were prepared to exploit Viking rivalry to their own ends. The Danes were enlisted to fight on behalf of the Irish, and fought the Norwegians around Carlingford Lough, near County Down. The Danes were victorious, and, when told that Saint Patrick himself had supported them, they even offered gold and silver to the representatives of the saint. This endeared them even further to the Irish, who mistakenly regarded the Viking newcomers as devout Christians, prepared to regard the local people as spiritual brothers.

Before long, the tables were turned. Olaf the White led his Norwegian men in a fierce counter-campaign, chasing the Danes out of the area and firmly establishing himself as a local king – in fact, the first Viking king of Dublin. His victory was so impressive (or, perhaps, threatening), that the locals were swift to accept him, even paying
manngjöld
, Scandinavian-style, in atonement for the death of Turgeis.
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Olaf was was not above dealing with the local Irish, and married the daughter of the petty kingdom of Osraige. Olaf, his brother Ivar and their supporters fought on the side of Osraige during his kingdom’s brief rebellion against the ‘high king’ of the southern Ui-Neill, although the Irish soon had cause to regret the presence of the foreigners among them. Deprived of the expected plunder, in 863 Olaf and his fellow Vikings instead decided to rob the grave mounds of the River Boyne, breaking their way into the tombs of ancient Irish nobles. Before long, the clans of Osraige and the Ui-Neill had decided they preferred the devil they knew, and concluded a reluctant peace. Without an excuse for fighting, and facing a united front of local Irish, Olaf led his Vikings in search of easier pickings in Scotland.

The Vikings maintained a presence in Dublin, and Olaf was sure to return to raid Armagh to remind them who was boss, but in 866 it was Scotland that took the full brunt of the Viking offensive. After inflicting a crushing defeat on the Britons at the mouth of the River Clyde, Olaf returned to Ireland for just long enough to profit from the sale of many hundreds of prisoners of war into slavery. He then returned to Scotland, leaving the unsure Irish possessions in the hands of his brother Ivar. Olaf was officially the ruler of the Vikings in Ireland until 871, when he was slain in a forgotten battle somewhere in Norway. His brother Ivar then took on the role of ruler, with a title that implied hegemony not only over the Vikings in Ireland, but also in ‘Britannia’, presumably Northumbria.

Northern England had fallen to a ‘Great Heathen Host’ in the late 860s, led by the ‘brothers’ Halfdan the Wide-Grasper, Ivar the Boneless and Ubbi.
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They landed in East Anglia, wintered there, and then headed north. Above the Humber,
Northan Hymbre
, was Northumbria, its capital, the ancient city of York – Roman Eboracum. The Vikings occupied the old Roman centre of the town, utilising the ruined walls and fortifications constructed many centuries earlier by the legions. Roman architecture was built to last, and before long the Vikings had jury-rigged an impressive battlement to protect them from the locals.

On 21 March 867, the rival kings of Yorkshire Osbert and Aella agreed that it was best to get rid of the Viking newcomers before they settled their own quarrel. Although some broke into the refortified Roman compound, the Vikings still won the day, and killed both the kings.

With Northumbria now in Viking hands, Ivar’s host headed south, where he conquered East Anglia, capturing the local ruler Edmund, tying him to a tree, and using him for target practice. When the time came for the king to be killed, the
Vikings favoured the ‘blood-eagle’ sacrifice, wrenching his ribs away from his spine and pulling out his lungs. At least, that is what later writers have claimed – it remains possible that Edmund’s end, while gruesome, may not have been quite so grotesquely ritualized.
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South of Northumbria lay Mercia and Wessex, two kingdoms ripe for the picking. But Ivar and his associates seemed happy with what they had. Northumbria remained in Viking hands, and the Vikings became part of the local population. Ivar’s heathen host had tired of warring, and now had won that most important of treasures, land. Furthermore, if they had headed any further south, they would have run into trouble, not only from the Mercians and West Saxons, but also from
another
heathen host. 871 saw the arrival of Guthrum, a new Viking leader with his own band of men in search of English resources. However, the two southermost kingdoms put up a much better fight.

In April 871, the southern kingdom of Wessex got a new king, Alfred. The youngest son of Aethelwulf (r.839–58), Alfred had enjoyed a far-travelled early life. When he was only a child, he made two journeys to Rome itself, where Pope Leo IV had confirmed him as a godson, and given him the honorary title of a Roman consul. On the second trip, as a six-year-old boy, Alfred had seen European diplomacy in action, as his father concluded an alliance between Wessex and the Franks. One by one, he had seen his elder brothers die during his teens, until, with his nephews too young to rule, Alfred became the king of Wessex.

Alfred’s first year as king was not a good start, known as the Year of Battles. For a decade, southern England had been plagued by a roving army of Vikings, first in Kent, then points north, then Reading, then Cambridge. The size of the ‘Great Army’ is difficult to gauge, although we know from the
excavation of a mass grave in Repton that 200 of them succumbed to disease over the winter of 873–4.
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Some came direct from Denmark, others seem to have arrived via France – the Franks successful in moving them on.

By 876 the ‘Great Summer Army’ led by the Viking Guthrum had relocated to Dorset, wandering the countryside unchecked. Alfred’s warriors followed the army, engaging with it occasionally, but barely controlling its excesses. As the armies headed south, however, there were signs of weariness in both. Alfred and the Vikings made a peace treaty in Wareham on the south coast, and, as a sign of the desperation of the situation, Alfred was even prepared to accept an oath from Guthrum sworn not on the cross, but on an arm-ring sacred to Thor.
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Oaths clearly did not mean the same to Guthrum as they did to Alfred. The treaty was soon broken, and the Vikings were on the move again. Eventually, the large war-band reached Exeter, their backs to the sea, and agreed to a second treaty. Guthrum had been hoping to meet up with a second band of Vikings, arriving by sea, and so effect a cunning escape at the very moment Alfred thought he had them cornered. The elements, however, allied with England, and sunk 120 Viking ships before they could meet up with their colleagues.

It was hardly a victory for Alfred. His part of the bargain involved bribing the Vikings to leave – an early precursor of the
danegeld
of later, less feted rulers. The removal of the Viking threat may have brought temporary respite to Wessex, but simply shifted the problem elsewhere. Guthrum’s army instead plagued the Mercians north of Alfred’s border. Other Vikings, it seems, had given up on fighting – in around 878 many of them began settling in the East Midlands, in a region that became known as the Five Boroughs, the largely Danish
settlements of Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, Stamford and Leicester.

Guthrum still coveted the treasures of Wessex, and seemed to appreciate that the chief barrier to an acquiescent Wessex was the king himself. Accordingly, the Vikings mounted a surprise attack in the middle of winter. A large part of the Saxon army had been disbanded, and the resolutely Christian defenders were coming to the end of their twelve days of Christmas celebrations. Alfred and a small party of his soldiers were wintering in Chippenham in Wiltshire, where they were caught off guard by a Viking assault – pagan Yule celebrations went on for just as long, but seem to have been cancelled in order to allow for hostilities.

With Alfred on the run in the marshes of the West Country, Wessex was effectively overrun. What happened next is mysterious, almost miraculous. Alfred was reduced to hiding in disguise – there is a famous legend that he ended up promising to watch a peasant-woman’s baking for her, and somehow caused the cakes to burn. The story, if it has a grain of truth, may have more to do with his role as the provider of ‘bread’ to the West Saxon people.
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Somehow, Alfred scraped up an army in the west, waiting until the late spring, when the local farmers would have sown their crops and had more free time. He led his army against Guthrum, who had occupied Alfred’s former wintering place at Chippenham. It was a last stand for the Saxons, as final as that once fought in the west by the British against their ancestors.

The West Saxons ‘won’ the Battle of Edington in 878, although how well they won it is open to debate. Some time later that they signed a treaty, whose terms implied that the battle was not all that decisive after all. A borderline was established between the realm of the Saxons and the area that had been settled by Vikings. It was understood by both parties
that the Vikings would not be leaving eastern England, but would instead be settling there permanently. The island was effectively partitioned, along a line that ran up the Thames Estuary, north from the River Lea in what is now east London, and then north-west across what is now the Midlands. The land to the east of it was the
Danelaw
, a place where any remaining Saxons were now obliged to accept that Scandinavians lived among them, and had their own laws and customs. The Scandinavians would never leave.