Northmen: The Viking Saga AD 793-1241 (49 page)

The organically-rich occupation deposits at Birka, known as
Svarta Jorden
(‘Black Earth’), are up to 6 feet thick and have produced abundant information about the buildings and daily life of the town. It was divided into plots of land, delineated by passageways flanked by ditches. Each plot contained one or two houses and several outbuildings used as workshops and stores. The buildings were timber-framed with walls of wattle-and-daub and roofs of thatch, wood and, occasionally, turf. Many of the inhabitants were merchants but there were also craftsmen in metals, jewellery, bone and antler, and furs, and even some warriors, perhaps a small permanent garrison to protect the town and keep order. Considerable quantities of Arab coins confirm that Birka’s most important trade links were with the east, especially after
c.
900, but there was also Rhineland pottery and glass and scraps of Frisian woollen cloth. Birka is surrounded by cemeteries containing over 3,000 graves, of which about 1,100 have been excavated. The graves indicate that Birka had a mixed population of Scandinavians and foreigners. Native graves, the majority, were cremations under small mounds or in stone settings shaped like ships or triangles. The rich grave goods found in these burials are unparalleled for quality and include large quantities of imported glass, weapons, jewellery and pottery. The foreign graves were inhumations in coffins or stone chambers without grave goods. These were on the outer edges of the cemeteries and are thought to have belonged to Christian and Muslim merchants and craftsmen and their families. Adam of Bremen said that Danish, Norwegian, Wendish and ‘Scythian’ (probably Rus) ships sailed to Birka annually for commerce. Some of the inhumations might also belong to native converts to Christianity, of whom there were a few at Birka.

The missionary St Ansgar met Swedish kings at Birka when he visited in 829 – 30 and 851 – 2, but there is no evidence of a royal residence on the island. Birka was probably administered from a royal estate at Hovgården on the neighbouring island of Adelsö, a couple of miles away, rather as Hedeby was administered from the royal estate at Flüsing. One of the five large burial mounds at Hovgården, known collectively as the Kungshögar (‘the kings’ barrows’), was excavated a century ago and was found to contain the remains of a high status male who had been cremated in a boat along with horses, cattle and dogs some time around 900. Birka seems to have been abandoned quite abruptly during the reign of Erik the Victorious. A complete absence of Anglo-Saxon coins suggests that this must have happened before Æthelred II began paying enormous sums in Danegeld to the Vikings in the 990s: thousands of his coins have been found in Scandinavia and some of them, at least, would have found their way to Birka had it still been occupied. There is no evidence that Birka met a violent end so it is likely that trade simply shifted to the new town, founded by Erik
c.
980, of Sigtuna on the northern shore of Lake Mälaren about 15 miles south of Uppsala.

Union of the Swedes and Götar

Sweden comes more fully into the light of recorded history during the reign of Erik’s son Olof Skötkonung (‘treasure king’) (r. 995 – 1022). Olof’s reign is enormously significant both because he was Sweden’s first Christian king and because he was the first king who is known to have ruled both the Swedes and the Götar, so laying the foundations of the medieval Swedish kingdom. However, those foundations were very shaky and it was well into the twelfth century before Sweden was a fully Christianised, unified kingdom. The paucity of sources for Viking Age Sweden makes it impossible to know how Olof actually came to rule over both the Swedes and the Götar. Presumably dynastic connections between the two peoples already existed and there may have been earlier kings who ruled over both areas: there is certainly no reason to assume that Olof’s achievement was unprecedented or that he came to rule the Götar by conquest rather than by election at the regional things held annually in Västergötland and Östergötland. However, Olof’s union of the two people was also not final because many of his successors did not exercise authority over the Götar. Sometimes, the Götar elected different kings to the Swedes, on other occasions they did without a king altogether and were ruled by their own chiefs and lawspeakers. The achievement of stable dynastic rule was made more difficult in Sweden because, unlike in Denmark and Norway, it was not necessary to have royal blood to be chosen as a king. The Viking Age was a distant memory when the Swedes and Götar were at last permanently united in 1173 by Knut Eriksson (r. 1167 – 96).

The fragility of the Swedish kingdom contributed to the slow acceptance of Christianity. In Denmark and Norway forceful action by kings overcame pagan opposition to Christianity, but Swedish kings had to act with greater circumspection. Pagan Swedish kings did not actively oppose missionary activity. The kings who Ansgar met at Birka gave him permission to preach after consulting the local thing, but they showed no interest in converting themselves and, without royal backing, he failed to found lasting Christian communities. The missionary effort was renewed by Unni, like Ansgar an archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, but he died at Birka in 936 with little to show for his efforts. The conversion of the Danes under Harald Bluetooth gave missionary efforts in Sweden a new impetus. During Erik’s reign a Danish missionary, Bishop Odinkar Hvite the Elder, began the conversion of the Götar from his base at Skara in Västergötland. Adam of Bremen believed that Odinkar enjoyed so much success because, as a Dane, ‘he could easily convince the barbarians of everything about our religion’. Erik was himself baptised when he was in Denmark in the 980s or early 990s, but Adam says that he renounced Christianity as soon as he returned to Sweden. The traditional story of Olof Skötkonung’s conversion is that he was baptised by St Sigfrid, an English missionary from Glastonbury, in 1008 at Husaby, not far from Skara. This date is probably too late: Olof used Christian imagery on the coins issued at the new town of Sigtuna right from the beginning of his reign, so he may really have been baptised before he became king. It is possible that the young Olof was baptised at the same time as his father, but was more receptive to the new religion. ‘God’s Sigtuna’, as Olof called the town on his coins, seems to have had a largely Christian population right from its foundation, because few pagan burials have been discovered in its extensive cemeteries. It was probably Olof’s intention that Sigtuna would be a Christian counter-balance to the nearby pagan cult centre at Uppsala and he founded several churches there. Olof began to give Sweden a formal ecclesiastical organisation, founding a bishopric at Skara in 1014, but the strength of pagan sentiment was such that he never risked trying to convert the Swedes by force. Olof’s softly-softly approach to promoting Christianity was still too much for devout pagans and towards the end of his reign he was forced to share power with his son Jacob, who succeeded him after his death in 1022. The pagans detested Jacob’s biblical name and they forced him to adopt the proper Swedish name Önund when he became king.

Changing his name was about the limit of Önund’s compromise with the pagans. He and his immediate successors continued to co-operate with the church, encourage missionary activity, and extend the country’s diocesan structure. By around 1080, paganism was dying out among the Götar, and missionaries were travelling the countryside destroying the last temples and pagan idols. The Swedes, however, stubbornly resisted conversion. Missionary bishops believed that paganism would never collapse unless the temple at Uppsala was destroyed, but Swedish kings refused to sanction the use of force. Önund did not retaliate when an over-enthusiastic English missionary called Wilfrid was hacked to pieces by a pagan mob after he provocatively destroyed an idol of Thor at Uppsala in the 1030s. Thirty years later, king Stenkil (r. 1060 – 66) refused to allow Adalvard, the newly appointed bishop of Sigtuna, to destroy the temple at Uppsala, fearing that this would provoke a pagan uprising. He was right to be wary. Stenkil’s son Inge the Elder, who became king around 1080, was a more militant Christian, but when he tried to outlaw paganism at the thing at Uppsala, he was pelted with stones and had to flee into exile in Västergötland. In Inge’s place, the Swedes chose his brother-in-law Blót-Sven (‘sacrifice-Sven’), who agreed to reinstate paganism and perform the traditional sacrifices. Immediately, a horse was brought and cut into pieces for eating and a sacred tree was smeared with its blood. Sven reigned only for about three years. In exile, Inge raised a small mounted force and invaded Svealand, taking Sven by surprise in the early hours of the morning in his hall. After surrounding the place, Inge’s men set the hall on fire. The few who managed to get out of the burning building were butchered by Inge’s men. Sven’s death broke pagan resistance to Christianity. Restored to the throne, Inge resumed his anti-pagan crusade and soon afterwards the cult centre at Uppsala was destroyed and replaced with a church. By the time Inge died in 1105, Sweden was mainly Christian. The death of the old gods, so long prophesised, had finally come to pass.

CHAPTER 11

P
ALERMO
,
JERUSALEM AND
T
ALLINN

F
ROM
V
IKING TO
C
RUSADER

By the twelfth century, the Scandinavian kingdoms were beginning to look much like the rest of the Catholic west. Castles and Romanesque churches and cathedrals impacted on the landscape like no Viking Age building had ever done. European fashions in the decorative arts and clothing predominated, and Latin became the language of high culture. The military aristocracy trained as knights and began to fight on horseback. Most of the population was now Christian by conviction rather than compulsion and it shared in the excitement and religious fervour of the crusading movement. As relatively new recruits to western Christendom, who had leaned heavily on Christian concepts of kingship to build their authority, Scandinavian kings were among the first to see that crusading was good politics as well as good religion. Yet, although the cause was new, it would often have been hard to tell the difference between a Scandinavian crusade and an old fashioned Viking raid.

Crusading was one of the most important expressions of the Catholic west’s growing self-confidence. After centuries on the defensive, the Catholic west was expanding. Scandinavia, Poland and Hungary had been brought into the Catholic fold and in Spain the Reconquista was in full swing, pushing the Muslim Moors back. Internally, the growth of government was bringing greater political stability, population and trade was growing, and a cultural revival was underway. For the first time in centuries, western Europeans were not preoccupied with mere survival. While the west was on the rise, the Byzantine Empire, for centuries the greatest Christian power, was in steep decline after suffering catastrophic defeats at the hands of the Seljuq Turks. In 1095, the Byzantine emperor Alexius I made a plea to Pope Urban II for military support against the Seljuqs. What Alexius had in mind was that the pope would send him some mercenary knights who would sign up and fight as part of the Byzantine army. What Urban actually called for was a holy war to free Jerusalem from the infidel Muslims who had occupied it for over 450 years and restore it to Christian rule. As an inducement, Urban declared that anyone who went on the expedition would enjoy the remission of all penances due for their sins, which was popularly, if incorrectly, understood to mean a guarantee of immediate entry to Heaven if they died. The crusade was, in effect, to be a great pilgrimage in arms.

Tens of thousands responded to Urban’s call, from great nobles like Duke Robert of Normandy down to humble peasants with no military experience at all. The appeal for the military aristocracy was particularly strong. For years the church had railed at them for their violent way of life and now there was a way for them to follow their profession and do God’s work at the same time. Most participants in the First Crusade came from France and the Holy Roman Empire, but there were certainly some Scandinavians – a Danish noble called Svein came with his French wife Florina and a large retinue of warriors. Though countless thousands of crusaders died of hunger, thirst, disease, exhaustion and battle along the way – Svein and his wife among them – the expedition was an astonishing success and in 1099 Jerusalem was taken after a short siege. However, the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem that was founded in the aftermath of victory needed constant support if it was to survive. Over the next 200 years, eight major crusades and dozens of minor ones were launched, though, ultimately, they failed to prevent the Muslims reoccupying the Holy Land. The First Crusade was so successful that the concept of crusading was soon extended to expeditions against those perceived to be God’s enemies, whoever they were and wherever they were found. Crusading vows could be fulfilled by fighting Moors in Spain, pagan Slavs and Balts in the Baltic, schismatic Orthodox Christians in Russia and Byzantium, and Cathar heretics in the south of France. Although there had been no kings on the First Crusade, they soon realised that crusading was a potent way to enhance their prestige as defenders of the Christian people.