The Beginning of the Viking Age in the West

Journal of Maritime Archaeology https://doi.org/10.1007/s11457-018-9221-3 ORIGINAL PAPER The Beginning of the Viking Age in the West Irene Baug1 · Dagfinn Skre2 · Tom Heldal3 · Øystein J. Jansen4 © The Author(s) 2018 Abstract During the Viking Age, Arctic Scandinavia was a source of exquisite furs, down, walrus ivory, and other commodities that met with high demand in England and on the Continent. Hitherto, the earliest firm evidence of this trade has been Ohthere’s account c. 890, but in light of this paper’s findings, its history may be pushed further back in time. Geological analyses of whetstones retrieved in eighth- to early ninth-century Ribe, south-western Jylland, in present-day western Denmark, demonstrate that the majority were quarried near the aristocratic manor Lade (‘loading/storing place’) in Trøndelag, present-day central Norway, some 1100 km by sea to the north. Because of their high numbers and durability, whetstones retrieved in Ribe and other urban sites may be regarded as a proxy for long-distance seaborne trade from the Arctic. The peak in this trade on the threshold of the Viking Age invites a reconsideration of the coinciding and conflicting interests of Scandinavian long-distance traders, kings, and Vikings. It is argued that coalitions and conflicts that arose from these interests, and new constraints and opportunities that emerged for these three types of agents, provide keys to understanding why and where Vikings raided overseas up to the mid-ninth century. Keywords Vikings · Rock provenancing · Seafaring · Arctic commodities · Maritime economy · Early medieval trade Introduction Around AD 800, Scandinavians began setting off on Viking raids across the North Sea, an activity that continued over more than two centuries. Historians and archaeologists have done admirable work in identifying the economic, political, and cultural aspects of Scandinavian societies that were necessary longue-durée conditions for the Viking incursions * Dagfinn Skre 1 Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies, and Religion, University of Bergen, P.O. Box 7805, 5020 Bergen, Norway 2 Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 6762, St. Olavs Plass, 0130 Oslo, Norway 3 Geological Survey of Norway, P.O. Box 6315, Torgarden, 7491 Trondheim, Norway 4 The University Museum, University of Bergen, P.O. Box 7800, 5007 Bergen, Norway 13 Vol.:(0123456789) Journal of Maritime Archaeology overseas.1 However, the immediate causes as to why the Viking raids began there and then remain undiscovered; thus their outbreak and early phase must be considered unexplained (Ashby 2015:100). Recent scholarship has narrowed the scope of inquiry to cast possible causes in sharper relief against a general backdrop. For instance, several studies have focused on the practice of the bride wealth, whereby a man who wished to marry a woman had to pay a sum to her family. Barrett (2010) and Raffield et al. (2017) have suggested that young men’s search for treasure to pay bride wealth led them to pillage overseas. Barrett proposes that an assumed dearth of potential marriage partners in Scandinavia was a result of selective female infanticide, while Raffield and his co-authors propose that the supposed paucity of females was the combined effect of polygyny, concubinage, and social inequality. Sindbæk (2011, 2017) considers the influx of Islamic silver as the main driver behind the Viking incursions, and he regards bride wealth as an example of what he holds to be the more general significance in Scandinavia of silver: it was used to establish and maintain social networks over time. Ashby (2015) favours a more general condition: pillaging was motivated by the social capital acquired through fame and glory. A more purely cultural condition is emphasised by Price (2002): the connection between Norse religion and a fatalistic warrior mentality. It seems likely that more or less all of these cultural and social factors played some role in motivating the Viking raids. Still, these factors are hardly unique to ninth-century Scandinavia. For instance, young men’s urge to violently acquire wealth and glory has modest explanatory value since it may be regarded as a given, a generic feature of Germanic pre-state societies throughout the first millennium AD.2 The grounds for explaining the timing and location of the early Viking raids must be more precisely historically situated in order to frame the decision of Scandinavian ship commanders to direct young men’s violent potential into overseas raiding. The paucity of evidence regarding the acute constraints and opportunities of Viking-ship commanders of the 780s–850s is probably the main reason why, compared to general conditions, the search for immediate causes, or ‘trigger factors’, has been less intense and successful—Barrett (2010:297) finds the enterprise ‘unrealistic’. However, the current surge in provenancing of archaeological materials opens possibilities to produce new evidence on two issues of great relevance: the eighth- to ninth-century production and long-distance trade of commodities from Scandinavia, and the interaction between Scandinavians and Continental and British traders and consumers in the southern North Sea zone and along the English Channel (Fig. 1).3 Recently, provenancing of reindeer antler has indicated that trade from the Scandinavian Peninsula, present-day Norway and Sweden, to the southern North Sea zone was already underway in the 780s–90s (Ashby et al. 2015). In the following, we present results from the provenancing of whetstones, demonstrating that this trade was ongoing since the early eighth century and that traded commodities originated in Arctic Scandinavia. Importantly, the high quantities of whetstones allow us 1 For comprehensive surveys of earlier research, see Ashby 2015, Barrett 2010, Simek 2004, and McLeod 2014. 2 Parallels to Viking raiding include Gothic incursions into the Roman Empire in the third to fourth centuries, culminating in the sack of Rome in 410, and fifth to seventh century Saxon piracy in the southern North Sea/English Channel zone (Haywood 1999:75–90; Wood 1983:5). 3 Bjørn Myhre (1993:184) held this issue and area to be pivotal for understanding the beginning of the Viking Age in the west, but lacked evidence that would have allowed for closer investigation. 13 Journal of Maritime Archaeology Borg Lade Avaldsnes Lindisfarne Monkwearmouth Birka Kaupang Åhus Ribe Truso Hedeby Reric Gipeswic Lundenwic Hamwic Kent Portland Medemblik Dorestad Domburg Quentovic Aquitaine Site Urban site 0 500 km Fig. 1  Scandinavia, the west, and the Baltic. Sites referred to in the text are indicated. Illustration: Ingvild T. Bøckman 13 Journal of Maritime Archaeology to assess the shifting volume of this long-distance trade through the eighth to mid-ninth centuries. This evidence, set in the context of the contemporary surge in production and trade around (...truncated)