Viking Age

“ Before the end of this period, not only Gothaland and Svealand, but also the coast of Norrland, as far north as the province of Medelpad, were inhabited. As a whole, the first part of the Later Iron Age forms a transition between the Earlier Iron Age and the Viking Age, the archæological finds of which we must leave aside to take up the threads of the earliest history. The Viking Age is exceedingly rich in stones with inscriptions in the later runes, some of these inscriptions being quite lengthy, and containing strophes of alliterative verse in Old Swedish. ”

“ It will be convenient now to consider briefly the court-poetry of the Viking Age. The history of heroic poetry in the North unfortunately cannot be traced in its entire course. We have seen that there is a long gap, extending over some two centuries and a half, in Danish tradition, and also that the poems which have come down to us are probably all of Norse (Norwegian-Icelandic) origin. ”

“ Toward the close of the eighth century, there appeared in the waters of Western Europe the strange dragon fleets of the Northmen, the "heathen," or the vikings, as they called themselves, and for more than two hundred years the shores of the West and the Southwest lived in constant dread of pillage and piracy. The viking invasions have always been of interest to the student of the Middle Ages; but only recently have historians begun to fathom the full significance of the movement. The British Isles were pre-eminently the field of viking activities. ”

“ In consequence of the close intercourse which subsisted between the areas of the two distinctive schools of art during the Viking time, the influence of the one upon the other is traceable in such transitional styles as that of the Manx crosses and the decorations of the Skaill brooches to be hereafter described. And the Celtic manner, with a Scandinavian spirit, is distinctly discernible in the decoration of a sword-hilt (Fig. 40) found in a grave-mound of the Viking time at Ultuna, in Sweden. [36]
Fig. ”

“ It is impossible to say exactly to what age they severally belong. The Vikings, or sea-rovers, began their visits to the Western Isles and Ireland as early as the first century, and [117] continued these visits for more than a thousand years. The name Viking has no connection with King being derived from vic, a bay—vicing, baysman—as Mr Robertson has clearly shown. The erroneous translation sea-kings has been used by several writers. It is the same word as the Gaelic Uig, the name of places on the west sides of Skye and Lewis. In English it assumes the form of Wick—Innerwick. ”

“ For this reason the geographical distribution of these brooches marks the range of the Scandinavian conquests of the ninth and tenth centuries. In Iceland, in Russian Livonia, in Normandy, in England, in Ireland, and on our own shores in Shetland, Orkney, Caithness, and Sutherland, and in the Hebrides, including even the remote St. Kilda, their presence attests the historical fact of the Viking settlements from Norway. But the area in which they are specially abundant, of course, is in Scandinavia itself. ”

“ It is not the intention to enter upon a full discussion of Old Northern faith and morals: in the conversion of a people that had reached the particular stage of culture that the Norsemen occupied in the eleventh century, neither is of prime importance. It is doubtful whether the vikings were much interested in the intricacies of dogma, be it heathen or Christian. It also seems unlikely that Christian morals as practised at the time could have proved very attractive. ”

“ We made angry battle;
Fire played about the seats of men.
We let the bloody corpses
Fall asleep in the town-gates. “Then they drank together, and were very merry that evening, and the next day too. Then the Vikings went to their ships, and they separated from the jarl in friendship and exchanged gifts” (Egil’s Saga, c. 48) .
Sometimes high-born maidens entertained their guests alone.
Hjalti, Gizur, and Óttar, the skalds of St. Olaf, went to Sweden in order to reconcile the king to St. Olaf.
“They went one day to the house of the king’s daughter Ingigerd; she sat and drank with many men. ”

“ The jarl Viking said to his son Thorstein:
“The only thing that gladdens me is that no man will stand over thy scalp (have thy head at his feet) , although thou wilt have a narrow escape. Here is a sword, kinsman Thorstein, which I want to give thee; its name is Angrvadil, and victory has always followed it; my father took it from the slain Björn Blue-tooth; I have no other remarkable weapons, excepting an old spear which I took from Harek Jarnhaus, and I know it is not manageable by any man” (Thorstein Vikingsson’s Saga, ch. 10) . ”

“ When he came to Hördaland a mass of warriors met to fight him.... Both sides had many men. This was one of the greatest battles in Norway; most Sagas mention it, for there came men from the whole country, and many from other countries, with a great number of Vikings. Önund laid his ship at the side of that of Thorir Chinlong, which was nearly in the middle of the fleet. King Harald with his ship attacked that of Thorir Chinlong, who was known as the greatest berserk and very valiant. There ensued the severest fights on both sides. The king urged his berserks to attack ”

“ Harald Halfdanson!"
"Ah! the bite of the sword is sweeter than the kiss of your mother," he said to Olaf one day. "When shall I stand in the prow of a dragon and feast on the fight? I am hungry to see the world. Ivar the Far-goer tells me of the strange countries he has seen. Ah! we vikings are great folk. There is no water that has not licked our boats' sides. This cape of mine came in a viking boat from France. ”

“ Is it for nothing that the splendid Scandinavian race, who have converted their rugged and rock-strewn peninsula into a group of prosperous and stable States, which are an example to Europe, and have infused the great Anglo-Saxon stock with something of their sane but noble idealism, have the blood of Vikings in their veins? Is there no place for the free play of all the best qualities of the Viking and the soldier in a world still sadly in need of men with courage enough, for instance, to face the truth, however difficult it may seem, however unkind to our pet prejudices? ”

“ She had seen the mound many a time, but now the words on the runic ring had invested the spot with a new and mysterious charm.
"Orm's warriors were men with a taste for the picturesque," she said. "They could not have chosen a prettier place for the grave of their hero."
"Ay, close to the sea, that he doubtless loved well, as became a Norse Viking. And here for ages he has remained in solitary glory, with the surge forever murmuring his requiem."
"This is certainly a tremendous mass of earth to pile over one poor mortal," said Beatrice, contemplating the mound. ”

“ Again he was a Norseman; and more, he was king of the Norsemen. He was the strong, subduing viking, and no sentiment must conquer him. He lifted the bronze horn and drained the ale to the last drop, though it burned his choking throat. ”

“ As a consequence of the Danish-Norwegian immigrations, the art of ship-building must also have necessarily developed itself in a similar manner in England, on whose eastern and north-western coasts the descendants of the Vikings had everywhere spread themselves, both by the sea and on the rivers. Christianity certainly put an end to the life of the Viking. ”

“ Harald—a name common in Scandinavian history—we may suppose to be a Norwegian Viking. The Vikings of old Norway were the most terrible men that ever lived, but they were also among the grandest and noblest. Their trade was war, their religion was war, their idea of happiness after death was still war—eternal war in heaven, ghostly fighting on the side of the gods. Such an idea of life requires many great qualities as well as natural fearlessness and great physical strength. ”

“ The Scandinavian ‘Valhalla’ was no such ‘paradise’ as the faithful Moslems conceived, where, in sunlit gardens gay with fruit and flowers, he should rest from his labours, attended by ‘houris’, or maidens of celestial beauty. The Viking asked for no rest, only for unfailing strength and a foe to kill. In the halls of his paradise reigned perpetual battle all the day long, and, in the evening, feasts where the warrior, miraculously cured of his wounds, could boast of his prowess and rise again on the morrow to fresh deeds of heroic slaughter. ”

“ The grand old warriors of the viking period, who overran in quick succession the British Isles, ravaged the coast of France, swept through the Mediterranean and even penetrated to Constantinople, and wherever they went subdued and triumphed,—these are the men who, once the lords and petty kings of ancient Norway, scorning to bend the knee to Harald, chose unknown dangers in a strange and distant land, and going there sat down amidst the frosts and volcanoes of Iceland to relate the story of their deeds. ”

“ Our knowledge of the Viking movement was, until the last half-century, drawn almost entirely from the works of medieval Latin chroniclers, writing in monasteries and other kindred schools of learning which had only too often felt the devastating hand of Viking raiders. They naturally regarded them as little better than pirates and they never tired of expatiating upon their cruelty and their violence. It is only during the last fifty years or so that we have been able to revise our ideas of Viking civilisation and to form a juster conception of the part which it played in the history of Europe. ”

“ As the forays of these 'warrior-kings' were mainly directed against the people living in and about the British Isles, and hence to the westward of Norway, the expression, 'at herja í vestrvíking,' 'to engage in a westerly foray,' came to be a general term for a viking descent upon some part of the coast of Great Britain, Ireland, or the adjacent islands. ”

“ The Northmen, though they lived far from the great centers of culture, were always in close touch with the rest of the world. In the earlier centuries the viking sailed his dreaded craft wherever there was wealth and plunder and civilized life. After him and often as his companion came the merchant who brought away new ideas along with other desirable wares. After a time Christianity was introduced from the southlands, and the pilgrim and the crusader took the place of the heathen pirate. And all these classes helped to reshape the life of courtesy in the Northern countries. ”

“ To beguile the time of waiting, Viking set out in a well-manned dragon ship; and, cruising about the northern and southern seas, he met with countless adventures. During this time he was particularly persecuted by the slain giant's kin, who were adepts in magic, and caused him to encounter innumerable perils by land and by sea.
Aided and abetted by his bosom friend, Halfdan, Viking escaped every danger, slew many of his foes, and, after recovering his promised bride, Hunvor, whom the enemy had carried off to India, he settled down in Sweden. ”

“ The period of Scandinavian history to which the term Viking is applied extends roughly from the middle of the 8th to the end of the 10th or the first half of the 11th century. Its commencement was marked by the raids of Scandinavian freebooters upon the coasts of England, Western Scotland and Ireland and upon Frankish territory. Its climax was reached when in the course of the 9th and 10th centuries Scandinavian rule was established in Ireland, Man and the Western Islands, the northern and midland districts of England, Normandy, and a great part of Russia. ”

“ Fortune favored the boy viking. Heavy rains had flooded the lands that slope down to the Maelar Lake; in the dead of night the Swedish captives and stout Norse oarsmen were set to work, and before daybreak an open cut had been made in the lowlands beneath Agnefit, or the "Rock of King Agne," where, by the town of Södertelje, the vikings' canal is still shown to travellers; the waters of the lake came rushing through the cut, and an open sea-strait waited young Olaf's fleet. ”

“ They will come in such force that they will reave half the land from the English, and then a Viking will rule the realm. Ay, and Englishmen will come to honour and love him. Then the Viking settlers will disappear, absorbed into the mass of the nation, and endowing the national character with a new strain of courage, daring, and adventure. But before that happy day dawns the land will run red with blood, many homes will be ruined, many patriotic hearts will break, and the star of England will seem to have set for ever. ”

“ With large fleets, counting from one to five hundred ships, they storm and sack cities, assume the government of the conquered territories, treat, as regular belligerents, with kings and emperors, and establish themselves permanently in the conquered land. Of the two first classes of vikings we have only scattered and unreliable accounts. To go on viking cruises is a recognized occupation in the Norse sagas, and it was regarded as a kind of liberal education for a young man of good birth to spend some years of his youth on such expeditions. ”

“ The Viking expeditions brought a large part of the population into direct contact with war and battle, while the former petty kings disappeared, or lost most of their importance, before strong rulers like Gorm in Denmark or Harald in Norway. ”

“ The Scandinavian race survives in its descendants round the coasts of the British Isles, and the soul of the old Viking still burns in the seamen of the British fleet, in the Deal boatmen, in the fishermen of the Orkneys, and in that adventurous, bold, direct, skilful, mercantile class, that has encircled the world by its peaceful conquests. ”