Cross and Scepter (4 page)

Earlier scholarship imagined early-medieval society as stateless and dominated by large clans headed by elders, and regarded kinship solidarity as the main source of security. Some passages in the laws, as well as evidence from the sagas seem to point in this direction. However, there is little support for the idea of a “society of kindred” in recent research. A closer examination of the Scandinavian kinship system has shown that it was bilateral, as was the case in most of Western Europe. Nor is there any evidence that this system replaced an earlier one of large clans, as is to be found in many other parts of the world. When descent is reckoned in the cognatic as well as the agnatic line, families overlap and there will be a tendency for relatives either to mediate conflicts or to take a stand based on considerations other than kinship. It has also been claimed that the often-elaborate kinship system we meet in some of the laws is actually a late inventions, influenced by the Church (below, pp. 98–101). Nevertheless, the “anti-kinship trend” can easily be taken too far. Even if there were no large clans, kinship was clearly important in the early Middle Ages. Norwegian provincial laws, which are the oldest in Scandinavia, suggest the existence of a relatively strong kindred group, based on male descendants from a common agnatic grandfather. In addition, marriage created strong links and, more generally, links between people, tended to be personal rather than institutional, either between people of equal status or between patrons and clients of higher and lower status, respectively. Relatives
were important, though the ties between them were not automatic but depended on choice.

In his
Heimskringla,
Snorri Sturluson tells the story of the local chieftain Asbjørn in northern Norway, who at the age of eighteen inherited his father Sigurd's farm and position in local society. Sigurd had been a highly respected man, known for his generosity and for the lavish parties he gave in honor of the gods in the pagan period and then of Christ after the conversion to Christianity. Asbjørn followed in his father's footsteps. Eventually, however, the harvests deteriorated and it became more difficult to continue the hospitality. His mother suggested that he reduce it, but Asbjørn refused and scoured the surrounding countryside to buy the foods he needed for entertaining his neighbors. After another bad year, however, even this was not possible, and Asbjørn decided to go south to buy grain from his maternal uncle, Erling Skjalgsson, at Sola, south of present-day Stavanger. Erling had plenty of grain, but there was a problem. King Olav Haraldsson had forbidden exports from southern Norway to ensure that there would be sufficient provisions for his own visit to the area the following summer. Erling had just made peace with the king and did not want to provoke him. On the other hand, it would be a great shame for him to let down his nephew, so he allowed Asbjørn to buy grain from his slaves, hoping that this would not be considered a direct breach of the king's command.

However, Asbjørn was caught by the king's local representative, had his cargo confiscated, and had to return empty handed. He could afford no Christmas party, found it humiliating to accept the invitation of his paternal uncle, Tore Hund (Dog), and suffered ridicule from Tore and from his neighbors. Next spring, he went south to take revenge. He cut off the head of the royal representative in the king's presence, so that it landed in the king's
lap. Asbjørn was detained and immediately condemned to death, but he was saved at the last moment by Erling, who arrived with a large army and forced the king to accept a settlement. When Asbjørn later broke the settlement, he was killed by one of the king's men. This brought Tore Hund into the conflict. On a visit to Asbjørn's mother, Tore received the spear that had pierced Asbjørn as a parting gift with the words:

Here is the spear that pierced my son Asbjørn, and there is still blood on it…. Now you would perform a brave deed if you thrust it out of your hands in such a way that it stood in the breast of King Olav. And now I say … that you will be considered a coward by every man if you do not avenge Asbjørn. (Heimskringla,
The Saga of St. Olav,
ch. 123)

The story is only known from thirteenth-century sources and its trustworthiness is doubtful. Nevertheless, its picture of norms and behavior is confirmed by a number of other sources and has a realistic ring. There is extensive archaeological evidence of great sacrificial parties from the pre-Christian period, including large halls that were evidently used for such purposes, such as the one in Lejre in Denmark (Zealand). Around thirty to forty such halls dating from the first millennium AD have been excavated in various places in Scandinavia, from Lofoten in the north to southern Jutland in the south. In a runic inscription from Blekinge in Denmark (now in Sweden), dated to 550–700, a man called Haduwolf boasts that he has sacrificed nine stallions and nine bucks for a good year. The sacrifice as well as the inscription show the same aim as motivated Asbjørn, a chieftain wanting to defend or extend his leadership through lavish hospitality. Nor did the opportunity to do this disappear with the conversion to Christianity; for, like the story of Asbjørn, Norwegian provincial laws emphasize continuity, decreeing that three great drinking parties should be held each year in honor of Christ and the Virgin.

The story of Asbjørn provides evidence of a highly competitive society, where generosity in the form of hospitality or gifts is a means to winning adherents. Asbjørn acts as the typical “big man” described by social anthropologists. He cannot command his subordinates, but has to attract them by largesse. Without grain to brew beer and give parties, Asbjørn is nothing. Admittedly, people like Asbjørn probably had slaves and tenants whom they could command, but to become leaders of larger areas, they had to win adherents by generosity and by offering protection. The sagas, those of the Norwegian kings as well as the Icelandic family sagas, are full of examples of this. Snorri has to admit that St. Olav became unpopular among the chieftains, but exonerates him from the accusation that he was stingy. Another king in
Heimskringla,
Øystein Haraldsson who was killed in 1157 during a battle with his brother, apparently was guilty of this vice. When mobilizing his men to fight for him during the conflict, he received the following answer from one of them: “Let your gold chests fight for you and defend your kingdom.” Then they all left him.

Asbjørn's story gives a somewhat ambiguous picture of kindred solidarity. Asbjørn and Tore lived close to each other, and there was some rivalry between them. According to Snorri, Tore was the more esteemed of the two because he was the king's retainer. Asbjørn's frantic effort at hospitality would seem to be a means to challenge Tore's standing. Tore's sarcasm after Asbjørn's disastrous journey to Sola may suggest that he was not too unhappy to see his relative humiliated. Tore is also unwilling to lose the king's friendship by avenging Asbjørn, but the gift of the spear in public forces his hand; it would be too great a humiliation not to accept the challenge. Although not Asbjørn's rival, Erling has a similar problem, but he stands by his nephew and goes to extreme lengths to save his life. In the bilateral system, the obligations of maternal and paternal relatives are equivalent, at least when the kinship is as close as between uncle and nephew. It is
also interesting to see that Asbjørn's mother turns to her brother-in-law rather than her brother to get revenge for her son. The obvious reason for this is that Tore was closer by, but it also says something about the links created by marriage, not only between the spouses themselves but also between their relatives. Here it may be objected that many scholars have regarded the woman urging her male relatives to take revenge as a literary rather than a historical figure, but such a practice is well attested in many societies where revenge is practiced, and there is also contemporary Icelandic evidence of it.

Although the king plays a central part in the drama, there is no clear idea of royal authority. The king's local representative is a thoroughly unpleasant character and a man of low rank, descended from slaves. Characteristically, when Asbjørn has killed him and the king gets furious, Erling Skjalgsson's son and Asbjørn's cousin, who has become a royal retainer, comments: “It is unfortunate, sire, that the deed seems hateful to you, for otherwise a good piece of work has been done.” The reason for the king's fury is not that Asbjørn killed a royal official, but that the killing took place at Easter and in the king's presence and “that he used my feet as the chopping block.”

The picture in this story is confirmed by other sources. Divisions between factions during the internal struggles in Denmark and Norway in the twelfth century were based on personal loyalty that derived from friendship, kinship, and marriage or other links based on the exchange of women. There is no evidence that the factions formed in the 1150s were regularly based on preexisting divisions between magnate families. They are more likely to have rested on individual magnates' personal relationships to individual kings. Once a choice had been made, however, it typically became permanent and was passed on to the magnate's descendants. Admittedly, there are many exceptions to this, but not so many as to form an argument against the importance of family ties. Friendship
should be added to kinship as a basis for faction formation, although the two categories tended to overlap. Despite the fact that there was no automatic solidarity with kindred, friends were often chosen from among relatives. Additionally, personal relationships were deliberately used to link prominent adherents more closely to their leaders. As in earlier times, the kings gave daughters and other female relatives in marriage to their most trusted adherents. The kings themselves normally married foreign princesses, if they married at all, but they had mistresses from prominent Norwegian families who served to form alliances, in addition to fulfilling the sexual and emotional needs of such relationships.

The previous examples point to some continuity in the nature of Scandinavian society before and after the rise of the kingdoms and the introduction of Christianity. There were, however, significant changes, and these will be dealt with in the following discussion. A first step in this direction was the greater involvement in Christian Europe through the Viking expeditions.

Scandinavian Expansion: The Viking Expeditions

Under the year 793, the Canterbury manuscript of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
contains the following entry:

Here terrible portents came about over the land of Northumbria … these were immense flashes of lightning, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air, and there immediately followed a great famine, and after that in the same year the raiding of the heathen miserably devastated God's church in Lindisfarne island by looting and slaughter. (
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
trans. M. Swanton [London: Dent, 1996], 54–56)

This is the first recorded example of a Viking raid, but it was followed by several others, in England as well as in other countries.
Many narrative sources give dramatic accounts of bands of robbers rising out of the high seas, killing, raping, burning, and carrying off gold, silver, sacred objects, and men and women to be used or sold as slaves. Monasteries and ecclesiastical institutions were particularly exposed, as they were wealthy and often unprotected, but there were also attacks on towns. England and the Carolingian Empire largely managed to fend off the Vikings until around 830, so Ireland, where a number of kings were fighting one another, became the main target during this period. From the 830s onwards, a series of large-scale attacks were directed against many parts of Western Europe. The Vikings exploited internal conflicts in the Carolingian Empire between Louis the Pious and his sons, as well as the later conflicts between the latter, and directed a series of attacks, particularly against France, including two sieges of Paris (855 and 885) and attacks on various other towns. At the same time, they interfered in conflicts between the various English kingdoms to plunder as well as to gain a foothold in this country, which they achieved with the conquest of Northumbria. In 844, a fleet of fifty-two Viking ships attacked Galicia and later Lisbon and Seville. Gradually there was a change from plundering to regular conquest. Viking kingdoms were founded in Ireland and northern England, and in 911 King Charles III granted the Duchy of Normandy to Scandinavian Vikings in order to protect the area against other Vikings. This seems to have worked; there is little evidence of Viking attacks on France in the tenth century. Around the same time the Vikings were also defeated in England, first by King Alfred (870–899) and then by his successors who in 952 or 954 conquered the Viking realm of Northumbria.

One reason for these setbacks may be that the East offered better opportunities for the Vikings during this period. There is evidence of settlements of Scandinavians, called “Rus,” around the Ladoga Sea from the late eighth century. The term
Rus
is
derived from the Finnish name for
Svear
(Swedes). Archaeological evidence suggests a marked increase in these settlements in the tenth century, which is clearly connected to an increase in trade along Russian rivers with Byzantium and the Arab world. The Scandinavians were well placed to act as intermediaries on the trade routes between Russia and Byzantium and Western Europe, a trade that apparently yielded a substantial surplus, as is evident from the large hoards of silvers found in the Scandinavian settlements. Their merchandise was attractive in the East as well as in the West: the furs of northern Norway and the Kola Peninsula, for example, as well as captives from various raids to be sold as slaves. The Swedish historian Sture Bolin claimed that the trade route via Russia and the Baltic replaced the Mediterranean as the main link connecting Western Europe and the Arab and Byzantine worlds. Although this is an exaggeration, the northern trade route must still be regarded as important. Trade was thus relatively more important than plundering in the East, and the Scandinavian settlements often seem to have been the result of peaceful cooperation with the local population rather than of conquest. Nevertheless, the Scandinavians were able to found a dynasty with a center in Kiev, which, however, gradually became Slavicized. Igor (=Ingvar) married Olga (=Helga) and was succeeded by his son Svjatoslav, who in turn was succeeded by Vladimir who converted to Christianity in 988.