Northmen: The Viking Saga AD 793-1241 (13 page)

With the end of Roman rule in Britain in 410, York ceased to be a major population centre but the fortress, at least, was not completely abandoned. The fortress walls remained intact and the legionary headquarters building continued to be used, probably as a palace for the rulers of the small British kingdom of Deira. York began to recover after it became the capital of the Anglian king Ælle, who conquered Deira around 581. Around 604, Ælle’s successor, Æthelfrith united Deira with the neighbouring Anglian kingdom of Bernicia to create the kingdom of Northumbria, which stretched from the Humber north to the Firth of Forth. The Anglian kings continued to maintain the walls and use the legionary headquarters until it was destroyed by fire around the time of the Viking conquest. As trade between Britain and the Continent began to revive in the seventh and eight centuries, trading ports, known as
wics
, began to develop on navigable rivers. At York, known to the Anglo-Saxons as
Eoforwic
, a
wic
developed to the south of the fortress along the banks of the Foss.

With the conversion of the Angles to Christianity in the early seventh century, York became an ecclesiastical as well as a royal centre. The Northumbrian king Edwin was baptised there in a newly built wooden church in 627: this was replaced by a stone church
c.
670. The establishment of an archbishopric at York in 735 made it the second most important ecclesiastical centre in Britain after Canterbury. A school associated with the cathedral developed in the eighth century into a major centre of scholarship with a vast library and an international reputation. In 781 Alcuin, the principal master at the school, met the Frankish king Charlemagne at Parma in the course of a mission to Rome. Recognising his talents, Charlemagne recruited Alcuin to found a school at his palace at Aachen. The fate of York’s cathedral school and library under Danish rule is not known for certain but they are unlikely to have survived, if, indeed, they were still functioning at the time of the conquest. The disruption caused by Viking raiding to the church – the main provider of education in the early Middle Ages – had already led to a dramatic decline in the standards of learning in England by the 830s.

Under Danish rule York, or
Jórvik
, as it was called by the Danes, was the capital of the most powerful of the kingdoms of the Danelaw, controlling an area roughly equivalent to modern Yorkshire and parts of Lancashire and Cumbria. Despite their paganism, the Danish kings tolerated the church and it is more than likely that they made use of its literate personnel in administering their kingdom. It would have been in the archbishops’ interests to collaborate as this would offer some protection to church property and personnel as well as the opportunity to spread its teachings among the Danes. York’s second Danish king, Guthred, may have been an early convert as he is known to have been buried in the cathedral after his death in 895. The Danish kings also adopted the city’s mint, issuing coins bearing both Christian and pagan symbols, which were obviously intended to appeal to both settlers and natives. York’s trade links under its Anglian rulers had been mainly with Frisia and the Rhineland. To these established links, the Danes brought new connections with Scandinavia, Ireland and further afield: coins from Samarkand, Byzantine silk and Baltic amber have been found in excavations. The Danish rulers actively promoted trade, which they could tax for their own benefit. Their success in stimulating commercial activity is demonstrated by the fact the silver content of the city’s coinage increased and by rapid growth of the city’s population, including re-occupation of the old Roman vicus west of the Ouse. The Roman walls were refurbished and in places extended to protect newly settled areas. Effective urban planning is suggested by the laying of regular tenement blocks and streets in parts of the city in the early tenth century. Archaeological excavations have revealed evidence for a wide range of craft and industrial activities, including glass-making, metallurgy, weaving and manufacturing items of bone, antler, wood, leather and jet.

By the late tenth century, York’s population had reached around 10,000, making York a large city by contemporary standards and, in the British Isles, second in size only to London. Despite this, any merchants visiting from the more urbanised Mediterranean or Arab worlds would not have been impressed by its appearance. Only the city’s churches were built of stone and these were mostly modest structures, without towers (the appearance of the cathedral at this time is not known but it was probably the largest building in the city). Most buildings in the city were built of perishable materials: timber, wattles, clay and thatch. Life in the crowded waterfront areas was damp, muddy and unhygienic – latrines were often dug within feet of wells used for drinking water. These waterlogged conditions are ideal for the preservation of organic materials such as leather, cloth and wood, because of the lack of oxygen. Thanks to this, excavations in these parts of the city, notably in the Coppergate area in the 1980s, have revealed a vivid picture of everyday life in the Viking city.

Vikings in north-west England

Danish control of York first came under threat not from Wessex but from the Norwegians. In 902, the Irish expelled Norwegian Vikings from their fortified settlement at Dublin and many of the refugees fled east across the Irish Sea to north-west England. Some of these refugees, led by Ingamund, tried to seize the island of Anglesey, but were expelled by the Welsh. Ingamund then invaded Mercia, but was defeated by ealdorman Æthelred after his Irish followers defected to the English. Ingamund appealed to Æthelred’s wife Æthelflæd for lands, and she allowed him to settle on the Wirral peninsula near Chester. A few years later, Ingamund attempted to seize Chester, but he was driven off by the inhabitants who quite literally threw everything they had at the Vikings, including their beehives. Little is known about the Norwegian settlement in the rest of the north-west. An anonymous
History
of
St
Cuthbert
written at Durham records the flight across the Pennines of an abbot and of a nobleman called Alfred son of Brihtwulf, who were escaping the Vikings, so the settlement probably involved the expulsion of the Anglo-Saxon landowning class. Place-names of Norwegian origin are common in Wirral, the Fylde in west Lancashire, the Lake District, and just across the modern Anglo-Scottish border in Dumfriesshire. Fell (
fjall
= ‘mountain’), beck (
bekr
= ‘stream’), thwaite (
tveit
= ‘clearing’), and side (
saetr
= ‘shieling’, i.e. a summer settlement) are common place-name elements of Norwegian origin in these areas. The settlers also left a long-lasting genetic legacy. After excluding recent immigrants, a recent DNA study found that around 50 per cent of the population of Wirral share distinctive genetic markers with the people of Norway.

Another legacy of this migration may be the Cuerdale hoard, with over 8,600 objects and weighing 176 pounds (80 kg), the largest Viking treasure hoard found anywhere outside Russia. The hoard was discovered in 1840 by workmen digging on the bank of the River Ribble at Cuerdale, near Preston in Lancashire. The hoard was buried in a lead-lined chest and contained 7,500 silver coins from all over the Viking world. Around 40 per cent of the coins were silver pennies issued at York by its Danish kings Sigfrid and Cnut, but others came from as far away as Spain and Afghanistan. The latest coins in the hoard are fifty-five pennies of Edward the Elder, a papal coin of Benedict IV dating to 901 – 3, and coins of king Louis of Provence dating to 901 – 5. These suggest that the hoard was buried not long after 905. As well as the coins, the hoard contained over 1,000 pieces of jewellery and hacksilver. Vikings put no great store by the artistic merit of the precious objects they looted and usually hacked them up into smaller pieces to make the loot easier to share out. Most of the hacksilver and jewellery came from Ireland and Cuerdale is only a few miles inland from the Irish Sea. It is likely, then, that the hoard was buried by Viking refugees from Ireland, who must have come to a bad end not to have recovered such a valuable stash.

The Norwegian settlers in the north-west probably followed a similar trajectory of assimilation and conversion to Christianity to that of the Danes further east. The remarkable sculptured stone cross at Gosforth in west Cumbria gives some insights into the process of Christianisation. Tall (15 ft/4.5 m) and very slender, the cross is decorated in the distinctive Viking Borre art style, which dates it to the first half of the tenth century. The likely Irish origin of the local Norse settlers is betrayed by the head of the cross, which has a ring around it, which is usual in Irish sculptured crosses but not English ones. Although the cross carries a depiction of Christ’s crucifixion, it is dominated by scenes from Norse pagan mythology showing Ragnarok, the battle at the end of time when the gods will be overthrown and a new cycle of the universe will begin. The mixture of pagan and Christian imagery represents an early stage of conversion, where Christ was worshipped alongside the old gods. Missionaries accepted this as an essential first step: convincing converts that only Christ to be worshipped could come later. The choice of Ragnarok as a subject for the cross is therefore not really the concession to the old religion that it at first seems to be. It is a graphic reminder to pagans that their gods are mortal and are ultimately doomed to be overthrown. Eternity belongs to Christ.

The unification of England

In 910 the Danes of York invaded Mercia. They were retaliating against a raid into the kingdom of York by Edward the Elder’s army the year before. The Danes got as far as Tettenhall in Staffordshire before they were met by the combined levies of Wessex and Mercia. In the battle that followed, the Danes suffered a crushing defeat. The deaths of their three kings, Halfdan, Eowils and Ivar, in the battle left the kingdom of York without a ruler. This created the opportunity for Ragnald, the son of Ivar I, a king of Dublin, to seize control by a coup in 911. Ragnald had just enough time to issue some coins in his own name before the Danes drove him out, but he returned in 919 and ruled York until his death in 921. The Irish-Norse dynasty was never able to establish itself securely at York, however. Following the death of King Sihtric Cáech (‘squinty’) in 927, king Æthelstan of Wessex (r. 924 – 39), Edward’s son, seized York, thereby bringing, for the first time, all of England under a single ruler. An attempt by Sihtric’s nephew Olaf Guthfrithsson to recapture York in alliance with Constantine II of Scotland and Owen of Strathclyde was defeated by Æthelstan at the hard-fought battle of Brunanburh in 937. So great was the victory that the
Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle
abandoned its usual matter-of-fact style and burst into heroic verse. Unfortunately, while strong on blood-thirsty images of slaughter, it does not give any details of the conduct of the battle itself. When the Vikings and their allies finally fled they left the bodies of five minor Norse kings, seven jarls, and Cellach, the son of King Constantine of the Scots, as well as countless warriors. King Owen was probably also among the dead. ‘Never yet in this island,’ the
Chronicle
exulted, ‘was there a greater slaughter of people felled by the sword’s edges... since Angles and Saxons came here from the east and seized the country from the Welsh’. Brunanburh’s location has never been located but a credible candidate is Bromborough on the Wirral peninsula. Lying on the Mersey estuary, its accessibility from the Irish Sea would have made it a convenient mustering place for Olaf and his allies, who could also have expected a friendly reception from the local Norse settlers.

Æthelstan’s achievement was threatened after his death in 939, when Olaf returned with Scottish support and not only recaptured York but conquered Northumbria and the important Five Boroughs of the Danelaw. Olaf did not live long to enjoy his victory: he died on campaign in 941 and his successor, his cousin Olaf Sihtricsson, was unable to hold on to his conquests. Æthelstan’s successor Edmund (r. 939 – 46) recaptured the Five Boroughs in 942 and York was back in English hands by 944. York was returned to Scandinavian rule for the last time by the exiled Norwegian king Erik Bloodaxe in 948. For the next six years he struggled for control with Olaf Sihtricsson, who had become king of Dublin in 945, and King Eadred (r. 946 – 55) of England. However, it was the people of York itself, perhaps wearying of his violent ways, who finally drove him out for good in 954. Erik fled west across the Pennine hills but was ambushed and killed by the otherwise unknown Maccus on the bleak Stainmore Pass: a ruined medieval cross, the Rere Cross, was traditionally regarded as having marked the site of Erik’s death, that is, before it was moved to its present location in a litter-strewn layby to make way for a road improvement scheme. Eadred, apparently unopposed, took back control of York. Osulf of Bamburgh, who had orchestrated the coup against Erik, was rewarded by being made ealdorman of Northumbria. England’s unity was never again seriously threatened. The Wessex dynasty’s unification of England was achieved not only in the face of opposition from the Vikings and their British and Scots allies but also that of many of the Anglo-Saxons who lived in the Danelaw. Local traditions of independence died hard and East Angles, Mercians and Northumbrians sometimes fought with the Danes against the West Saxon conquerors. For them, a local Viking ruler was preferable to a distant West Saxon one. One of the most consistent supporters of Scandinavian rule at York was its archbishop, Wulfstan I (d. 956). Wulfstan may have feared that the status of his seat would be diminished in a united England and he was implicated in several conspiracies against the West Saxon kings. After Erik’s overthrow, Eadred allowed Wulfstan to keep his office but had to exercise it from a monastery in the south of England, where he would have no opportunities to plot to restore northern independence under Viking rule.