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125-507: The southern (lower) part of Lindholm Høje dates to 1000 – 1050 AD, the Viking Age , while the northern (higher) part is significantly earlier, dating back to the 5th century AD in the Nordic Iron Age . An unknown number of rocks have been removed from the site over the centuries, many, for example, being broken up in the 19th century for use in road constructions. The Viking Age part of

250-507: A Lund jeweler's workshop in the early 12th century. The majority of the burials discovered were cremations , although a number of inhumations were also discovered, and it appeared that the tendency towards cremation or burial depended upon the period, cremation supplanting inhumation in the Viking Age. The pre-Viking Age burials were under mounds . Of the later graves, some women's graves appear to be distinguished by placement of rocks in

375-660: A battle in 839 , Vikings inflicted heavy defeats against the Picts , killing Uuen , the King of the Picts, his brother Bran and Aed son of Boanta , King of Dál Riata . The England runestones ( Swedish : Englandsstenarna ) is a group of about 30 runestones in Sweden which refer to Viking Age voyages to England. They constitute one of the largest groups of runestones that mention voyages to other countries, and they are comparable in number only to

500-460: A circle or oval, but most of the graves are marked with rocks either in a triangle or in the traditional shape of a boat ( stone ship ), indicating the importance that the Vikings placed upon water. The ship settings constitute the largest assemblage of well-preserved examples extant. The shape and size of the grave outline apparently indicate the status of the person – all of which is reminiscent of

625-518: A continuous series of attacks on Wessex. However, due in part to the efforts of Alfred and his army, the kingdom's new defences proved to be a success, and the Viking invaders were met with a determined resistance and made less of an impact than they had hoped. By 896, the invaders dispersed—instead settling in East Anglia and Northumbria, with some instead sailing to Normandy . Alfred's policy of opposing

750-518: A document dating to 792, King Offa of Mercia set out privileges granted to monasteries and churches in Kent, but he excluded military service "against seaborne pirates with migrating fleets", showing that Viking raids were already an established problem. In a letter of 790–92 to King Æthelred I of Northumbria, Alcuin berated English people for copying the fashions of pagans who menaced them with terror. This shows that there were already close contacts between

875-450: A great market for the slaves captured by the vikings in Europe. Islamic law banned Muslims from enslaving other Muslims, and there was a big market for non-Muslim slaves on Islamic territory, where European slaves were referred to as saqaliba ; these slaves were likely both Pagan Slavic, Finnic and Baltic Eastern Europeans as well as Christian Western Europeans. People taken captive during

1000-590: A major regional political player for another 150 years. The land that now comprises most of the Scottish Lowlands had previously been the northernmost part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria , which fell apart with its Viking conquest; these lands were never regained by the Anglo-Saxons, or England. The upheaval and pressure of Viking raiding, occupation, conquest and settlement resulted in alliances among

1125-547: A month by another Viking descendant, William , Duke of Normandy . Scotland took its present form when it regained territory from the Norse between the 13th and the 15th centuries; the Western Isles and the Isle of Man remained under Scandinavian authority until 1266. Orkney and Shetland belonged to the king of Norway as late as 1469. Consequently, a "long Viking Age" may stretch into

1250-515: A more "rational" and "pragmatic" approach to historical scholarship. By the latter half of the 18th century, while the Icelandic sagas were still used as important historical sources, the Viking Age had again come to be regarded as a barbaric and uncivilised period in the history of the Nordic countries. Scholars outside Scandinavia did not begin to extensively reassess the achievements of the Vikings until

1375-457: A number of trading ports, such as Hamwic and Ipswich , which engaged in foreign trade . In the final decade of the eighth century, Viking raiders attacked a series of Christian monasteries in the British Isles. Here, these monasteries had often been positioned on small islands and in other remote coastal areas so that the monks could live in seclusion, devoting themselves to worship without

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1500-494: A place for potential colonisation rather than simply a place to raid. As a result of this, larger armies began arriving on Britain's shores, with the intention of conquering land and constructing settlements there. The early Viking settlers would have appeared visibly different from the Anglo-Saxon populace, wearing Scandinavian styles of jewellery, and probably also wearing their own peculiar styles of clothing. Viking and Anglo-Saxon men also had different hairstyles: Viking men's hair

1625-474: A result, Viking raiders found it easy to sack and then retreat from these areas which were thus frequently raided. The second case is the internal "push" factor, which coincides with a period just before the Viking Age in which Scandinavia was undergoing a mass centralisation of power in the modern-day countries of Denmark, Sweden, and especially Norway. This centralisation of power forced hundreds of chieftains from their lands, which were slowly being appropriated by

1750-708: A scribal error the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle dates this event to 787 rather than 789), but that incursion may have been a trading expedition that went wrong rather than a piratical raid. Lindisfarne was different. The Viking devastation of Northumbria 's Holy Island was reported by the Northumbrian scholar Alcuin of York , who wrote: "Never before in Britain has such a terror appeared". Vikings were portrayed as wholly violent and bloodthirsty by their enemies. Robert of Gloucester 's Chronicle, c. 1300, mentions Viking attacks on

1875-655: A series of defended towns or burhs , began the construction of a navy, and organised a militia system (the fyrd ), whereby half of his peasant army remained on active service at any one time. To maintain the burhs, and the standing army, he set up a taxation and conscription system known as the Burghal Hidage . In 892 a new Viking army, with 250 ships, established itself in Appledore, Kent and another army of 80 ships soon afterwards in Milton Regis . The army then launched

2000-569: A serious attack was made on Lindisfarne's mother-house of Iona , which was followed in 795 by raids upon the northern coast of Ireland. From bases there, the Norsemen attacked Iona again in 802, causing great slaughter amongst the Céli Dé Brethren, and burning the abbey to the ground. The Vikings primarily targeted Ireland until 830, as England and the Carolingian Empire were able to fight

2125-532: A short period from 1040 to 1042 when Cnut's son Harthacnut ascended the English throne. Harald Hardrada , King of Norway, led an invasion of England in 1066 with 300 longships and 10,000 soldiers, attempting to seize the English throne during the succession dispute following the death of Edward the Confessor . He met initial success, defeating the outnumbered forces mustered by the earldoms of Northumbria and Mercia at

2250-411: A silver neck-ring and penannular brooch were uncovered. The historian Peter Hunter Blair believed that the success of the Viking raids and the "complete unpreparedness of Britain to meet such attacks" became major factors in the subsequent Viking invasions and colonisation of large parts of the British Isles. From 865, the Viking attitude towards the British Isles changed, as they began to see it as

2375-705: A version of the economic model that points to new economic incentives stemming from a "bulge" in the population of young Scandinavian men, impelling them to engage in maritime activity due to limited economic alternatives. This era coincided with the Medieval Warm Period (800–1300) and stopped with the start of the Little Ice Age (about 1250–1850). The start of the Viking Age, with the sack of Lindisfarne, also coincided with Charlemagne 's Saxon Wars , or Christian wars with pagans in Saxony . Bruno Dumézil theorises that

2500-580: A year, however, and so Æthelred returned, but, in 1016, another Viking army invaded, this time under the control of the Danish King Cnut , Sweyn's son. After defeating Anglo-Saxon forces at the Battle of Assandun , Cnut became king of England, subsequently ruling over both the Danish and English kingdoms. Following Cnut's death in 1035, the two kingdoms were once more declared independent and remained so, apart from

2625-488: Is an accepted version of this page Chronological history The Viking Age (about 800–1050  CE ) was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonising, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. The Viking Age applies not only to their homeland of Scandinavia but also to any place significantly settled by Scandinavians during

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2750-551: Is because of this, rather than the Norman conquest, that 1066 is often taken as the end of the Viking Age. Nineteen days later, a large army containing and led by senior Normans, themselves mostly male-line descendants of Norsemen, invaded England and defeated the weakened English army at the Battle of Hastings . The army invited others from across Norman gentry and ecclesiastical society to join them. There were several unsuccessful attempts by Scandinavian kings to regain control of England,

2875-503: Is not easy to pin down a single date that applies to all the Viking world. The Viking Age was not a "monolithic chronological period" across three or four hundred years, but was characterised by various distinct phases of Viking activity. It is unlikely that the Viking Age could be so neatly assigned a terminal event. The end of the Viking era in Norway is marked by the Battle of Stiklestad in 1030, in which Óláfr Haraldsson (later known as Olav

3000-600: Is one of the few existing documents of Alfred's reign and survives in Old English in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge , Manuscript 383, and in a Latin compilation, known as Quadripartitus . The areas to the north and east became known as the Danelaw because it was under Viking political influence, whilst those areas to the south and west remained under Anglo-Saxon dominance. Alfred's government set about constructing

3125-524: Is ongoing as to why the Scandinavians began to expand from the eighth through 11th centuries. Various factors have been highlighted: demographic, economic, ideological, political, technological, and environmental models. Barrett considers that prior scholarship having examined causes of the Viking Age in terms of demographic determinism, the resulting explanations have generated a "wide variety of possible models". While admitting that Scandinavia did share in

3250-519: Is regarded as the beginning of the Viking Age. Judith Jesch has argued that the start of the Viking Age can be pushed back to 700–750, as it was unlikely that the Lindisfarne attack was the first attack, and given archeological evidence that suggests contacts between Scandinavia and the British isles earlier in the century. The earliest raids were most likely small in scale, but expanded in scale during

3375-417: The Battle of Fulford . Whilst basking in his victory and occupying Northumbria in preparation for the advance south, Harald's army was surprised by a similarly sized force led by King Harold Godwinson, which had managed to force march all the way there from London in a week. The invasion was repulsed at the Battle of Stamford Bridge , and Hardrada was killed along with most of his men. Whilst the Viking attempt

3500-657: The Black Sea and then on to Constantinople . The eastern connections of these " Varangians " brought Byzantine silk , a cowrie shell from the Red Sea, and even coins from Samarkand , to Viking York . In 884, an army of Danish Vikings was defeated at the Battle of Norditi (also called the Battle of Hilgenried Bay) on the Germanic North Sea coast by a Frisian army under Archbishop Rimbert of Bremen-Hamburg, which precipitated

3625-664: The Celtic Britons and of the Gaels descended from the Celtic languages spoken by Iron Age inhabitants of Europe. In Ireland and parts of western Scotland , as well as in the Isle of Man , people spoke an early form of Celtic Gaelic known as Old Irish . In Cornwall , Cumbria , Wales , and south-west Scotland, the Celtic Brythonic languages were spoken (their modern descendants include Welsh and Cornish ). The Picts, who spoke

3750-460: The Danelaw ( Danalǫg ), Dublin ( Dyflin ), Normandy , and Kievan Rus' ( Garðaríki ). The Norse homelands were also unified into larger kingdoms during the Viking Age, and the short-lived North Sea Empire included large swathes of Scandinavia and Britain. In 1021, the Vikings achieved the feat of reaching North America—the date of which was not determined until a millennium later. Several things drove this expansion. The Vikings were drawn by

3875-707: The Dnieper and Volga trade routes in eastern Europe, where they were also known as Varangians . They also briefly settled in Newfoundland , becoming the first Europeans to reach North America. The Norse-Gaels , Normans , Rus' people , Faroese , and Icelanders emerged from these Norse colonies. The Vikings founded several kingdoms and earldoms in Europe: the Kingdom of the Isles ( Suðreyjar ), Orkney ( Norðreyjar ), York ( Jórvík ) and

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4000-615: The Pictish language , lived in the area north of the Forth and Clyde rivers, which now constitutes a large portion of modern-day Scotland. Due to the scarcity of writing in Pictish, which survives only in Ogham , views differ as to whether Pictish was a Celtic language like those spoken further south, or perhaps even a non-Indo-European language like Basque . However, most inscriptions and place-names hint towards

4125-587: The River Dee , as well as in Sutherland , Caithness , and Orkney . The Scots , according to written sources, constituted a tribal group which had crossed to Britain from Dalriada in the north of Ireland during the late-fifth century. The northern Britons lived in the Old North , in parts of what have become southern Scotland and northern England, and, by the seventh or eighth centuries, these had apparently come under

4250-621: The Seine with near impunity. Near the end of Charlemagne's reign (and throughout the reigns of his sons and grandsons), a string of Norse raids began, culminating in a gradual Scandinavian conquest and settlement of the region now known as Normandy in 911. Frankish King Charles the Simple granted the Duchy of Normandy to Viking warleader Rollo (a chieftain of disputed Norwegian or Danish origins) in order to stave off attacks by other Vikings. Charles gave Rollo

4375-723: The St. Brice's Day massacre . The news of the massacre reached King Sweyn Forkbeard in Denmark. It is believed that Sweyn's sister Gunhilde could have been among the victims, which prompted Sweyn to raid England the following year, when Exeter was burned down. Hampshire, Wiltshire, Wilton, and Salisbury also fell victim to the Viking revenge attack. Sweyn continued his raid in England and in 1004 his Viking army looted East Anglia, plundered Thetford and sacked Norwich, before he once again returned to Denmark. Further raids took place in 1006–1007 then Sweyn

4500-599: The ship burials of the Anglo-Saxons , Norwegian and Swedish Vikings and other ancient Germanic societies. A museum adjacent to the site donated by Aalborg Portland A/S cement company to commemorate their centennial was opened in 1992. In 2008 the museum was enlarged, and a new exhibition of pre-history in the area of the Limfjord opened. 57°04′38″N 9°54′45″E  /  57.07722°N 9.91250°E  / 57.07722; 9.91250 Viking Age This

4625-498: The 15th century. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles , Viking raiders struck England in 793 and raided Lindisfarne, the monastery that held Saint Cuthbert 's relics, killing the monks and capturing the valuables. The raid marked the beginning of the "Viking Age of Invasion". Great but sporadic violence continued on England's northern and eastern shores, with raids continuing on a small scale across coastal England. While

4750-587: The 1890s, recognising their artistry, technological skills, and seamanship. The Vikings who invaded western and eastern Europe were mainly pagans from the same area as present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. They also settled in the Faroe Islands , Ireland, Iceland, peripheral Scotland ( Caithness , the Hebrides and the Northern Isles ), Greenland, and Canada. Their North Germanic language , Old Norse , became

4875-510: The 9th century. In the Lindisfarne attack, monks were killed in the abbey, thrown into the sea to drown, or carried away as slaves along with the church treasures, giving rise to the traditional (but unattested) prayer— A furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine , "Free us from the fury of the Northmen, Lord." Three Viking ships had beached in Weymouth Bay four years earlier (although due to

5000-577: The British Isles left remains of their material culture behind, which archaeologists have been able to excavate and interpret during the 20th and 21st centuries. Such Viking evidence in Britain consists primarily of Viking burials undertaken in Shetland, Orkney, the Western Isles, the Isle of Man, Ireland, and the north-west of England. Archaeologists James Graham-Campbell and Colleen E. Batey remarked that it

5125-514: The Clyde", the Brythonic name for Dumbarton Rock , which had become the metonym for their kingdom) was besieged by the Viking kings Amlaíb and Ímar . After four months, its water supply failed, and the fortress fell. The Vikings are recorded to have transported a vast prey of British, Pictish, and English captives back to Ireland. These prisoners may have included the ruling family of Alt Clut including

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5250-646: The English in 939. However, when Edmund was killed in a brawl, his younger brother, Eadred of Wessex took over as king. Then in 947 the Northumbrians rejected Eadred and made the Norwegian Eric Bloodaxe (Eirik Haraldsson) their king. Eadred responded by invading and ravaging Northumbria. When the Saxons headed back south, Eric Bloodaxe's army caught up with some them at Castleford and made 'great slaughter '. Eadred threatened to destroy Northumbria in revenge, so

5375-699: The English kingdoms, being in turmoil, could not stand against the Vikings. In 867, Northumbria became the northern kingdom of the coalescing Danelaw , after its conquest by the Ragnarsson brothers, who installed an Englishman, Ecgberht , as a puppet king. By 870, the "Great Summer Army" arrived in England, led by a Viking leader called Bagsecg and his five earls . Aided by the Great Heathen Army (which had already overrun much of England from its base in Jorvik), Bagsecg's forces, and Halfdan's forces (through an alliance),

5500-544: The Great , won the throne of England in 1016 through conquest. When Cnut the Great died in 1035 he was a king of Denmark, England, Norway, and parts of Sweden. Harold Harefoot became king of England after Cnut's death, and Viking rule of England ceased. The Viking presence declined until 1066, when they lost their final battle with the English at Stamford Bridge . The death in the battle of King Harald Hardrada of Norway ended any hope of reviving Cnut's North Sea Empire , and it

5625-738: The Hebrides and Man. These areas were ruled over by local Jarls , originally captains of ships or hersirs . The Jarl of Orkney and Shetland, however, claimed supremacy. Viking activity in the British Isles Viking activity in the British Isles occurred during the Early Middle Ages , the 8th to the 11th centuries CE, when Scandinavians travelled to the British Isles to raid, conquer, settle and trade. They are generally referred to as Vikings , but some scholars debate whether

5750-514: The Holy ), a fervent Christianiser who dealt harshly with those suspected of clinging to pagan cult, was killed. Although Óláfr's army lost the battle, Christianity continued to spread, and after his death he became one of the subjects of the three miracle stories given in the Manx Chronicle . In Sweden, the reign of king Olof Skötkonung ( c.  995–1020 ) is considered to be the transition from

5875-551: The Islamic world grew, so did its trade routes, and the wealth which moved along them was pushed further and further north. In Western Europe, proto-urban centres such as those with names ending in wich , the so-called -wich towns of Anglo-Saxon England , began to boom during the prosperous era known as the "Long Eighth Century". The Scandinavians, like many other Europeans, were drawn to these wealthier "urban" centres, which soon became frequent targets of Viking raids. The connection of

6000-503: The Khazar Kaghanate , but from the early 10th century onward it went via Volga Bulgaria and from there by caravan to Khwarazm , to the Samanid slave market in Central Asia and finally via Iran to the Abbasid Caliphate . This was one of the major routes of the viking slave trade, alongside the Black Sea slave trade . The slave trade between the Vikings and the Muslims in Central Asia is known to have functioned from at least between 786 and 1009, as large quantities of silver coins from

6125-406: The Northumbrians turned their back on Eric and acknowledged Eadred as their king. The Northumbrians then had another change of heart and accepted Olaf Sihtricsson as their ruler, only to have Eric Bloodaxe remove him and become king of the Northumbrians again. Then, in 954, Eric Bloodaxe was expelled for the second and final time by Eadred. Bloodaxe was the last Norse king of Northumbria. Under

6250-405: The Norwegian king Harald III ( Haraldr Harðráði ), who was defeated by Saxon King Harold Godwinson in 1066 at the Battle of Stamford Bridge ; in Ireland, the capture of Dublin by Strongbow and his Hiberno-Norman forces in 1171; and 1263 in Scotland by the defeat of King Hákon Hákonarson at the Battle of Largs by troops loyal to Alexander III . Godwinson was subsequently defeated within

6375-399: The Oïl languages along with French, Picard and Walloon), and their Norman culture, into England in 1066. With the Norman Conquest , they became the ruling aristocracy of Anglo–Saxon England . The clinker -built longships used by the Scandinavians were uniquely suited to both deep and shallow waters. They extended the reach of Norse raiders, traders, and settlers along coastlines and along

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6500-471: The Pictish aristocracy in battle. The sophisticated kingdom that had been built fell apart, as did the Pictish leadership, which had been stable for more than 100 years since the time of Óengus mac Fergusa (The accession of Cináed mac Ailpín as king of both Picts and Scots can be attributed to the aftermath of this event). In 870, the Britons of the Old North around the Firth of Clyde came under Viking attack as well. The fortress atop Alt Clut ("Rock of

6625-494: The Picts being Celtic in language and culture. Much of southern Britain had become the various kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England , where Anglo-Saxon migrants from continental Europe had settled during the fifth century CE, bringing with them their own Germanic language (known as Old English ), polytheistic religion and cultural practices. Many peoples of Britain and Ireland had already converted to Christianity from their older, pre-Christian polytheistic religions, including

6750-577: The Samanid Empire have been found in Scandinavia from these years. People taken captive by the Vikings during their raids in Western Europe were likely sold in Islamic Central Asia, a slave trade which was so lucrative that it may have contributed to the Viking raids in Western Europe, which was used by the vikings as a slave supply source for their slave trade with the Muslim world. Various hoards of treasure were buried in England at this time. Some of these may have been deposited by Anglo-Saxons attempting to hide their wealth from Viking raiders, and others by

6875-468: The Scandinavians to larger and richer trade networks lured the Vikings into Western Europe, and soon the rest of Europe and parts of the Middle East. In England, hoards of Viking silver, such as the Cuerdale Hoard and the Vale of York Hoard , offer insight into this phenomenon. Barrett rejects this model, arguing that the earliest recorded Viking raids were in Western Norway and northern Britain, which were not highly economically integrated areas. He proposes

7000-434: The Scottish seas and islands were completely relinquished after another 200 years. By the mid-9th century, the Norsemen had settled in Shetland, Orkney (the Nordreys- Norðreyjar ), the Hebrides and Isle of Man, (the Sudreys- Suðreyjar —this survives in the Diocese of Sodor and Man ) and parts of mainland Scotland. The Norse settlers were to some extent integrating with the local Gaelic population (see Norse-Gaels ) in

7125-416: The Thames estuary. In 864, they reverted to Thanet for their winter encampment. The following year, the Great Heathen Army , led by brothers Ivar the Boneless , Halfdan and Ubba , and also by another Viking Guthrum , arrived in East Anglia. They proceeded to cross England into Northumbria and captured York, establishing a Viking community in Jorvik , where some settled as farmers and craftsmen. Most of

7250-407: The Viking Age to the Middle Ages, because he was the first Christian king of the Swedes, and he is associated with a growing influence of the church in what is today southwestern and central Sweden. Norse beliefs persisted until the 12th century; Olof was the last king in Scandinavia to adopt Christianity. The end of the Viking Age is traditionally marked in England by the failed invasion attempted by

7375-403: The Viking Age, it was only possible to make the crossing at this point or much further west along the fjord at Aggersund , because of the swamps which then edged the fjord on either side. The settlement was abandoned in approximately 1200 AD, probably due to sand drifting from the western coast, which was a consequence of extensive deforestation and the exposed sand then being blown inland by

7500-554: The Viking attacks may have been in response to the spread of Christianity among pagan peoples. Because of the penetration of Christianity in Scandinavia , serious conflict divided Norway for almost a century. The first of two main components to the political model is the external "pull" factor, which suggests that the weak political bodies of Britain and Western Europe made for an attractive target for Viking raiders. The reasons for these weaknesses vary, but generally can be simplified into decentralised polities, or religious sites. As

7625-502: The Viking demands and surrendered land to Viking settlers. In addition, many areas in eastern and northern England—including all but the northernmost parts of Northumbria —came under the direct rule of Viking leaders or their puppet kings. King Æthelred of Wessex , who had been leading the conflict against the Vikings, died in 871 and was succeeded on the throne of Wessex by his younger brother, Alfred . The Viking king of Northumbria, Halfdan Ragnarrson (Old English: Healfdene )—one of

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7750-551: The Viking frontier and take York. A new wave of Vikings appeared in England in 947, when Eric Bloodaxe captured York. In 1003, the Danish King Sweyn Forkbeard started a series of raids against England to avenge the St. Brice's Day massacre of England's Danish inhabitants, culminating in a full-scale invasion that led to Sweyn being crowned king of England in 1013. Sweyn was also king of Denmark and parts of Norway at this time. The throne of England passed to Edmund Ironside of Wessex after Sweyn's death in 1014. Sweyn's son, Cnut

7875-470: The Viking raiders as a way of protecting their looted treasure. One of these hoards, discovered in Croydon (historically part of Surrey , now in Greater London ) in 1862, contained 250 coins, three silver ingots, and part of a fourth as well as four pieces of hack silver in a linen bag. Archaeologists interpret this as loot collected by a member of the Viking army. By dating the artefacts, archaeologists estimated that this hoard had been buried in 872, when

8000-457: The Viking settlers continued under his daughter Æthelflæd , who married Æthelred, Ealdorman of Mercia , and also under her brother, King Edward the Elder (reigned 899–924). When Edward died in July 924, his son Æthelstan became king. In 927, he conquered the last remaining Viking kingdom, York, making him the first Anglo-Saxon ruler of the whole of England. In 934, he invaded Scotland and forced Constantine II to submit to him, but Æthelstan's rule

8125-407: The Vikings off. However, after 830  CE , the Vikings had considerable success against England, the Carolingian Empire, and other parts of Western Europe. After 830, the Vikings exploited disunity within the Carolingian Empire, as well as pitting the English kingdoms against each other. The Kingdom of the Franks under Charlemagne was particularly devastated by these raiders, who could sail up

8250-444: The Vikings to sail farther and longer to begin with. Information about the Viking Age is drawn largely from primary sources written by those the Vikings encountered, as well as archaeology, supplemented with secondary sources such as the Icelandic Sagas . In England, the Viking attack of 8 June 793 that destroyed the abbey on Lindisfarne , a centre of learning on an island off the northeast coast of England in Northumberland ,

8375-426: The Yttergärde runestone, U 344 , which tells of Ulf of Borresta who received the danegeld three times, and the last one he received from Canute the Great . Canute sent home most of the Vikings who had helped him conquer England, but he kept a strong bodyguard, the Þingalið , and its members are also mentioned on several runestones. The vast majority of the runestones, 27, were raised in modern-day Sweden and 17 in

8500-401: The air, and whirlwinds, and fiery dragons flying across the firmament. These tremendous tokens were soon followed by a great famine: and not long after, on the sixth day before the ides of January in the same year, the harrowing inroads of heathen men made lamentable havoc in the church of God in Holy-island (Lindisfarne) , by rapine and slaughter. In 794, according to the Annals of Ulster ,

8625-456: The approximately 30 Greece runestones and the 26 Ingvar runestones , of which the latter refer to a Viking expedition to the Middle East. They were engraved in Old Norse with the Younger Futhark . The Anglo-Saxon rulers paid large sums, Danegelds , to Vikings, who mostly came from Denmark and Sweden who arrived to the English shores during the 990s and the first decades of the 11th century. Some runestones relate of these Danegelds, such as

8750-408: The army wintered in London. The coins themselves came from a wide range of different kingdoms, with Wessex, Mercian, and East Anglian examples found alongside foreign imports from Carolingian-dynasty Francia and from the Arab world. Not all such Viking hoards in England contain coins, however: for example, at Bowes Moor , Durham , 19 silver ingots were discovered, whilst at Orton Scar, Cumbria ,

8875-461: The battles of Glenmama (999  CE ) and Clontarf (1014  CE ). After the battle of Clontarf, the Dublin Vikings could no longer "single-handedly threaten the power of the most powerful kings of Ireland". Brian's rise to power and conflict with the Vikings is chronicled in Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib ("The War of the Irish with the Foreigners"). While few records are known, the Vikings are thought to have led their first raids in Scotland on

9000-563: The beginning of this age was the result of some combination of the aforementioned hypotheses. The Viking colonisation of islands in the North Atlantic has in part been attributed to a period of favourable climate (the Medieval Climactic Optimum), as the weather was relatively stable and predictable, with calm seas. Sea ice was rare, harvests were typically strong, and fishing conditions were good. The earliest date given for

9125-547: The blood of the priests of God, despoiled of all its ornaments. The first known account of a Viking raid in Anglo-Saxon England comes from 789, when three ships from Hordaland (in modern Norway) landed in the Isle of Portland on the southern coast of Wessex. When approached by Beaduheard , the royal reeve from Dorchester , whose job it was to identify all foreign merchants entering the kingdom, they killed him. There were almost certainly unrecorded earlier raids. In

9250-514: The burial ground has suffered more from this than the older parts. The first major archaeological excavation, which ultimately included 589 of the approximately 700 graves, began in 1952, although excavations had been conducted as early as 1889. Remains of villages has been found. The settlement is at an important crossing over the Limfjord , a stretch of water which divides the Jutland peninsula. During

9375-509: The cause of the Viking invasions; the will to explore likely played a major role. At the time, England, Wales, and Ireland were vulnerable to attack, being divided into many different warring kingdoms in a state of internal disarray, while the Franks were well defended. Overpopulation, especially near the Scandes , was a possible reason, although some disagree with this theory. Technological advances like

9500-450: The coast and overwintering in Ireland. The first were at Dublin and Linn Duachaill . Their attacks became bigger and reached further inland, striking larger monastic settlements such as Armagh , Clonmacnoise , Glendalough , Kells , and Kildare , and also plundering the ancient tombs of Brú na Bóinne . Viking chief Thorgest is said to have raided the whole midlands of Ireland until he

9625-422: The combined Viking forces raided much of England until 871, when they planned an invasion of Wessex. On 8 January 871, Bagsecg was killed at the Battle of Ashdown along with his earls. As a result, many of the Vikings returned to northern England, where Jorvic had become the centre of the Viking kingdom, but Alfred of Wessex managed to keep them out of his country. Alfred and his successors continued to drive back

9750-487: The coming of Vikings to England is 789 during the reign of King Beorhtric of Wessex . According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle three Norwegian boats from Hordaland (Old Norse: Hǫrðalandi ) landed at the Isle of Portland off the coast of Dorset. They apparently were mistaken for merchants by a royal official, Beaduhard, a king's reeve who attempted to force them to come to the king's manor, whereupon they killed

9875-414: The complete and permanent withdrawal of the Vikings from East Frisia . In the 10th and 11th centuries, Saxons and Slavs began to use trained mobile cavalry successfully against Viking foot soldiers, making it hard for Viking invaders to fight inland. In Scandinavia, the Viking Age is considered by some scholars to have ended with the establishment of royal authority and the establishment of Christianity as

10000-457: The distinct polytheistic religion ( Anglo-Saxon paganism ) practiced by the Anglo-Saxons. In northern Britain, in the area roughly corresponding to modern-day Scotland, lived three distinct ethnic groups in their own respective kingdoms: the Picts , Scots , and Britons . The Pictish cultural group dominated the majority of Scotland, with major populations concentrated between the Firth of Forth and

10125-530: The dominant religion. Scholars have proposed different end dates for the Viking Age, but many argue it ended in the 11th century. The year 1000 is sometimes used, as that was the year in which Iceland converted to Christianity, marking the conversion of all of Scandinavia to Christianity. The death of Harthacnut, the Danish King of England, in 1042 has also been used as an end date. History does not often allow such clear-cut separation between arbitrary "ages", and it

10250-539: The eighth century, Viking raiders sacked several Christian monasteries in northern Britain, and over the next three centuries they launched increasingly large scale invasions and settled in many areas, especially in eastern Britain and Ireland, the islands north and west of Scotland and the Isle of Man . During the Early Medieval period, the islands of Ireland and Britain were each culturally, linguistically, and religiously divided among various peoples. The languages of

10375-487: The formerly enemy peoples that comprised what would become present-day Scotland. Over the subsequent 300 years, this Viking upheaval and pressure led to the unification of the previously contending Gaelic, Pictish, British, and English kingdoms, first into the Kingdom of Alba , and finally into the greater Kingdom of Scotland . The Viking Age in Scotland came to an end after another 100 years. The last vestiges of Norse power in

10500-429: The general European population and settlement expansion at the end of the first millennium, he dismisses 'population pressure' as a realistic cause of the Viking Age. Bagge alludes to the evidence of demographic growth at the time, manifested in an increase of new settlements, but he declares that a warlike people do not require population pressure to resort to plundering abroad. He grants that although population increase

10625-473: The growth of wealthy towns and monasteries overseas and weak kingdoms. They may also have been pushed to leave their homeland by overpopulation, lack of good farmland, and political strife arising from the unification of Norway . The aggressive expansion of the Carolingian Empire and forced conversion of the neighbouring Saxons to Christianity may also have been a factor. Sailing innovations had allowed

10750-554: The holy island of Iona in 794, the year following the raid on the other holy island of Lindisfarne , Northumbria. In 839, a large Norse fleet invaded via the River Tay and River Earn , both of which were highly navigable, and reached into the heart of the Pictish kingdom of Fortriu . They defeated Eogán mac Óengusa , king of the Picts, his brother Bran, and the king of the Scots of Dál Riata , Áed mac Boanta , along with many members of

10875-401: The initial raiding groups were small, a great amount of planning is believed to have been involved. The Vikings raided during the winter of 840–841, rather than the usual summer, having waited on an island off Ireland. In 850, the Vikings overwintered for the first time in England, on the island of Thanet , Kent . In 854, a raiding party overwintered a second time, at the Isle of Sheppey in

11000-423: The interference of other elements of society. At the same time, it made them isolated and unprotected targets for attack by sea. Lo, it is nearly 350 years that we and our fathers have inhabited this most lovely land, and never before has such a terror appeared as we have now suffered from a pagan race, nor was it thought that such an inroad from the sea could be made. Behold the church of St Cuthbert spattered with

11125-481: The king Arthgal ap Dyfnwal , who was slain the following year under uncertain circumstances. The fall of Alt Clut marked a watershed in the history of the realm. Afterwards, the capital of the restructured kingdom was relocated about 12   miles (20   km) up the River Clyde to the vicinity of Govan and Partick (within present-day Glasgow ), and became known as the Kingdom of Strathclyde , which persisted as

11250-426: The kings and dynasties that began to emerge. As a result, many of these chiefs sought refuge elsewhere, and began harrying the coasts of the British Isles and Western Europe. Anders Winroth argues that purposeful choices by warlords "propelled the Viking Age movement of people from Scandinavia." These models constitute much of what is known about the motivations for and the causes of the Viking Age. In all likelihood,

11375-488: The last of which took place in 1086. In 1152, Eystein II of Norway led a plundering raid down the east coast of Britain. In 795, small bands of Vikings began plundering monastic settlements along the coast of Gaelic Ireland . The Annals of Ulster state that in 821 the Vikings plundered Howth and "carried off a great number of women into captivity". From 840 the Vikings began building fortified encampments, longphorts , on

11500-496: The late ninth century, most probably in the Kingdom of Wessex during the reign of Alfred the Great . The Chronicle is, however, a biased source, acting as a piece of "wartime propaganda" written on behalf of the Anglo-Saxon forces against their Viking opponents, and, in many cases, greatly exaggerates the size of the Viking fleets and armies, thereby making any Anglo-Saxon victories against them seem more heroic. The Viking settlers in

11625-528: The leaders of the Viking Great Army (known to the Anglo-Saxons as the Great Heathen Army )—surrendered his lands to a second wave of Viking invaders in 876. In the next four years, Vikings gained further land in the kingdoms of Mercia and East Anglia as well. King Alfred continued his conflict with the invading forces but was driven back into Somerset in the south-west of his kingdom in 878, where he

11750-602: The major river valleys of north-western Europe. Rurik also expanded to the east, and in 859 became ruler either by conquest or invitation by local people of the city of Novgorod (which means "new city") on the Volkhov River . His successors moved further, founding the early East Slavic state of Kievan Rus' with the capital in Kiev . This persisted until 1240, when the Mongols invaded Kievan Rus' . Other Norse people continued south to

11875-568: The north, and they never managed to establish permanent settlements in that region. The Vikings were driven from Dublin in 902. They returned in 914, now led by the Uí Ímair (House of Ivar). During the next eight years the Vikings won decisive battles against the Irish, regained control of Dublin, and founded settlements at Waterford , Wexford , Cork , and Limerick , which became Ireland's first large towns. They were important trading hubs, and Viking Dublin

12000-433: The northern island groups, those closest to Scandinavia. The Irish Annals provide us with accounts of much Viking activity during the 9th and 10th centuries. The England Runestones , concentrated in Sweden, give accounts of the voyages from the Viking perspective. The Viking raids that affected Anglo-Saxon England were primarily documented in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , a collection of annals initially written in

12125-693: The oldest Swedish provinces around lake Mälaren . Modern-day Denmark has no such runestones, but there is a runestone in Scania which mentions London . There is also a runestone in Norway and a Swedish one in Schleswig , Germany. Some Vikings, such as Guðvér, did not only attack England, but also Saxony , as reported by the Grinda Runestone Sö 166 in Södermanland: Slavery in the Muslim world provided

12250-509: The only way of dealing with these attackers was to pay them protection money , and so, in 991, they gave them £10,000. This fee did not prove to be enough, and, over the next decade, the English kingdom was forced to pay the Viking attackers increasingly large sums of money. Many English began to demand that a more hostile approach be taken against the Vikings, and so, on St Brice's Day in 1002, King Æthelred proclaimed that all Danes living in England would be executed. It would come to be known as

12375-511: The people of East Anglia wherein they are described as "wolves among sheep". The first challenges to the many negative depictions of Vikings in Britain emerged in the 17th century. Pioneering scholarly works on the Viking Age reached only a small readership there, while linguists traced the Viking Age origins of rural idioms and proverbs. New dictionaries and grammars of the Old Icelandic language appeared, enabling more Victorian scholars to read

12500-554: The period. The Scandinavians of the Viking Age are often referred to as Vikings as well as Norsemen , although few of them were Vikings in the sense of being engaged in piracy. Voyaging by sea from their homelands in Denmark , Norway , and Sweden , the Norse people settled in the British Isles , Ireland , the Faroe Islands , Iceland , Greenland , Normandy , and the Baltic coast and along

12625-450: The pirates looked further and further beyond the borders of the Baltic , and eventually into all of Europe. Historian Anders Winroth has also challenged the "overpopulation" thesis, arguing that scholars are "simply repeating an ancient cliché that has no basis in fact." The economic model states that the Viking Age was the result of growing urbanism and trade throughout mainland Europe. As

12750-413: The political control of Anglo-Saxons. By the mid-ninth century, Anglo-Saxon England comprised four separate and independent kingdoms: East Anglia , Wessex , Northumbria , and Mercia , the last of which was the strongest military power. Between half a million and a million people lived in England at this time, with society being rigidly hierarchical. The class system had a king and his ealdormen at

12875-503: The precursor to present-day Scandinavian languages. By 801, a strong central authority appears to have been established in Jutland , and the Danes were beginning to look beyond their own territory for land, trade, and plunder. In Norway, mountainous terrain and fjords formed strong natural boundaries. Communities remained independent of each other, unlike the situation in lowland Denmark. By 800, some 30 small kingdoms existed in Norway. The sea

13000-639: The primary texts of the Icelandic Sagas. In Scandinavia, the 17th-century Danish scholars Thomas Bartholin and Ole Worm and Swedish scholar Olaus Rudbeck were the first to use runic inscriptions and Icelandic Sagas as primary historical sources. During the Enlightenment and Nordic Renaissance, historians such as the Icelandic-Norwegian Thormodus Torfæus , Danish-Norwegian Ludvig Holberg , and Swedish Olof von Dalin developed

13125-520: The reeve and his men. The beginning of the Viking Age in the British Isles is often set at 793. It was recorded in the Anglo–Saxon Chronicle that the Northmen raided the important island monastery of Lindisfarne (the generally accepted date is actually 8 June, not January ): A.D. 793. This year came dreadful fore-warnings over the land of the Northumbrians, terrifying the people most woefully: these were immense sheets of light rushing through

13250-655: The reign of Wessex King Edgar the Peaceful , England came to be further politically unified, with Edgar coming to be recognised as the king of all England by both Anglo-Saxon and Viking populations living in the country. However, in the reigns of his son Edward the Martyr , who was murdered in 978, and then Æthelred the Unready , the political strength of the English monarchy waned, and, in 980, Viking raiders from Scandinavia resumed attacks against England. The English government decided that

13375-444: The rough westerly winds. The sand which covered the site served to protect it in large part over the intervening centuries. Because of its location and transportation links, the settlement was obviously a significant centre for trade at the time, and this is borne out by glassware, gems and Arab coins found at the site. An 11th-century silver Urnes style brooch found in one grave is the model for bronze copies that were being cast in

13500-471: The term Viking represented all Scandinavian settlers or just those who used violence. At the start of the early medieval period, Scandinavian kingdoms had developed trade links reaching as far as southern Europe and the Mediterranean, giving them access to foreign imports, such as silver, gold, bronze, and spices. These trade links also extended westwards into Ireland and Britain. In the last decade of

13625-475: The title of duke. In return, Rollo swore fealty to Charles, converted to Christianity, and undertook to defend the northern region of France against the incursions of other Viking groups. Several generations later, the Norman descendants of these Viking settlers not only identified themselves as Norman, but also carried the Norman language (either a French dialect or a Romance language which can be classified as one of

13750-442: The top, under whom ranked the thegns (or landholders), and then the various categories of agricultural workers below them. Beneath all of these was a class of slaves , who may have made up as much as a quarter of the population. The majority of the populace lived in the countryside, although a few large towns had developed, notably London and York , which became centres of royal and ecclesiastical administration. There were also

13875-476: The two peoples, and the Vikings would have been well informed about their targets. The next recorded attack against the Anglo-Saxons came the following year, in 793, when the monastery at Lindisfarne , an island off England's eastern coast, was sacked by a Viking raiding party on 8 June. The following year, they sacked the nearby Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey . In 795, they once again attacked, this time raiding Iona Abbey off Scotland's west coast. This monastery

14000-491: The use of iron and a shortage of women due to selective female infanticide also likely had an impact. Tensions caused by Frankish expansion to the south of Scandinavia, and their subsequent attacks upon the Viking peoples, may have also played a role in Viking pillaging. Harald I of Norway ("Harald Fairhair") had united Norway around this time and displaced many peoples. As a result, these people sought for new bases to launch counter-raids against Harald. Debate among scholars

14125-691: The viking raids in Western Europe could be sold to Moorish Spain via the Dublin slave trade or transported to Hedeby or Brännö and from there via the Volga trade route to Russia, where slaves and furs were sold to Muslim merchants in exchange for Arab silver dirham and silk , which have been found in Birka , Wollin and Dublin . Initially this trade route between Europe and the Abbasid Caliphate passed via

14250-562: Was "a patron of the arts, a benefactor of the church, and an economic innovator" who established Ireland's first mint , in Dublin. In 980  CE , Máel Sechnaill Mór defeated the Dublin Vikings and forced them into submission. Over the following thirty years, Brian Boru subdued the Viking territories and made himself High King of Ireland . The Dublin Vikings, together with Leinster , twice rebelled against him, but they were defeated in

14375-528: Was a factor in this expansion, it was not the incentive for such expeditions. According to Ferguson, the proliferation of the use of iron in Scandinavia at the time increased agricultural yields, allowing for demographic growth that strained the limited capacity of the land. As a result, many Scandinavians found themselves with no property and no status. To remedy this, these landless men took to piracy to obtain material wealth. The population continued to grow, and

14500-411: Was attacked again in 802 and 806, when 68 people living there were killed. After this devastation, the monastic community at Iona abandoned the site and fled to Kells in Ireland. In the first decade of the ninth century, Viking raiders began to attack coastal districts of Ireland. In 835, the first major Viking raid in southern England took place and was directed against the Isle of Sheppey and in

14625-491: Was forced to take refuge in the marshes of Athelney . Alfred regrouped his military forces and defeated the armies of the Viking monarch of East Anglia, Guthrum , at the Battle of Edington (May 878). Sometime after the Battle of Edington, a treaty was agreed that set out the lasting peace terms between the two kings that included the boundaries of each of their kingdoms. It is known as the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum . The treaty

14750-617: Was killed by Máel Sechnaill I in 845. In 853, Viking leader Amlaíb (Olaf) became the first king of Dublin . He ruled along with his brothers Ímar (possibly Ivar the Boneless ) and Auisle . Over the following decades, there was regular warfare between the Vikings and the Irish, and between two groups of Vikings: the Dubgaill and Finngaill (dark and fair foreigners). The Vikings also briefly allied with various Irish kings against their rivals. In 866, Áed Findliath burnt all Viking longphorts in

14875-421: Was on the Isle of Man where Norse archaeology was "remarkably rich in quality and quantity". However, as archaeologist Julian D. Richards commented, Scandinavians in Anglo-Saxon England "can be elusive to the archaeologist" because many of their houses and graves are indistinguishable from those of the other populations living in the country. For this reason, historian Peter Hunter Blair noted that, in Britain,

15000-477: Was paid over 10 000 pounds of silver to leave, and, in 1009–1012, Thorkell the Tall led a Viking invasion into England. In 1013, Sweyn Forkbeard returned to invade England with a large army, estimated to be 10000+ strong with over 300 longships, after a few months of claiming submission over England and a successful attack on London, Æthelred fled to Normandy, leading Sweyn to take the English throne. Sweyn died within

15125-479: Was resented by the Scots and Vikings, and, in 937, they invaded England. Æthelstan defeated them at the Battle of Brunanburh , a victory which gave him great prestige both in the British Isles and on the Continent and led to the collapse of Viking power in northern Britain. After his death in 939, the Vikings seized back control of York, and it was not finally reconquered until 954. Edward's son Edmund became king of

15250-403: Was shaved at the back and left shaggy on the front, whilst the Anglo-Saxons typically wore their hair long. Viking armies captured York, the major city in the Kingdom of Northumbria , in 866. Counterattacks concluded in a decisive defeat for Anglo-Saxon forces at York on 21 March 867 , and the deaths of Northumbrian leaders Ælla and Osberht . Other Anglo-Saxon kings began to capitulate to

15375-464: Was the biggest slave port in western Europe. These Viking territories became part of the patchwork of kingdoms in Ireland. Vikings intermarried with the Irish and adopted elements of Irish culture, becoming the Norse-Gaels . Some Viking kings of Dublin also ruled the kingdom of the Isles and York ; such as Sitric Cáech , Gofraid ua Ímair , Olaf Guthfrithson , and Olaf Cuaran . Sigtrygg Silkbeard

15500-482: Was the easiest way of communication between the Norwegian kingdoms and the outside world. In the eighth century, Scandinavians began to build ships of war and send them on raiding expeditions which started the Viking Age. The North Sea rovers were traders, colonisers, explorers, and plunderers who were notorious in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and other places in Europe for being brutal. Many theories are posited for

15625-428: Was unsuccessful, the near simultaneous Norman invasion was successful in the south at the Battle of Hastings . Hardrada's invasion and defeat has been described as the end of the Viking Age in Britain. Archaeologists James Graham-Campbell and Colleen E. Batey noted that there was a lack of historical sources discussing the earliest Viking encounters with the British Isles, which would have most probably been amongst

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