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,Keynes 1999. p. 460.Richards 1991. p. 9. but some scholars debate whether the term Viking represented all Scandinavian settlers or just those who used violence.Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998. p. 3.
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.Blair 2003. pp. 56–57.
In the last decade of 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.
Background of local ethnic groups
During the early medieval period, the islands of Ireland and Britain were each culturally, linguistically, and religiously divided among various peoples.
Language and religion The languages of 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 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 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, 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 the distinct polytheistic religion (Anglo-Saxon paganism) practiced by the Anglo-Saxons.
Distribution of ethnic groups 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.Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998. p. 5. The Pictish cultural group dominated the majority of Scotland, with major populations concentrated between the Firth of Forth and the River Dee, as well as in Sutherland, Caithness, and Orkney.Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998. pp. 5–7. 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.Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998. pp. 14–16. 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 the political control of Anglo-Saxons.Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998. p. 18.
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.Richards 1991. p. 13.
Class system 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 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 a number of trading ports, such as Hamwic and Ipswich, which engaged in foreign trade.
Viking raids: 780s–850 Viking raids began in England in the late 8th century, primarily on monasteries.Sawyer. The Oxford Illustrated History of Vikings. pp. 2–3 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 the interference of other elements of society. At the same time, it made them isolated and unprotected targets for attack by sea.Blair 2003. p. 63.
The first recorded raid was on the south coast, at Portland, Dorset in 789; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle described the Vikings as heathen men.ASC 793 – English translation at project Gutenberg . Retrieved 20 May 2013 The first monastery to be raided was at Lindisfarne in 793, off the northeast coast of England. Monasteries and minster churches were popular targets as they were wealthy and had valuable objects that were portable.Starkey. The Monarchy of England. Vol. 1. p. 51 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 840 says that Æthelwulf of Wessex was defeated at Carhampton, Somerset, after 35 Viking ships had landed in the area.ASC 840 – English translation at project Gutenberg . Retrieved 20 May 2013
The first known account of a Viking raid of the Viking Era 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 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 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 just off the northeast coast of England, was sacked by a Viking raiding party on 8 June. The following year, they sacked the nearby Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey.Blair 2003. p. 55. The Vikings met with stronger resistance than they had expected: their leaders were killed. The raiders escaped, only to have their ships beached at Tynemouth and the crews killed by locals. This represented one of the last raids on England for about 40 years. The Vikings focused instead on Ireland and Scotland.
In 795, they once again attacked, this time raiding Iona Abbey off Scotland's west coast. This monastery 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.Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998. p. 24. In the first decade of the ninth century, Viking raiders began to attack coastal districts of Ireland.Blair 2003. p. 66. In 835, the first major Viking raid in southern England took place and was directed against the Isle of SheppeyBlair 2003. p. 68.The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and in 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.Annals of Ulster, 839.9
According to Norse Sagas, in 865 the legendary Viking chief Ragnar Lodbrok fell into the hands of King Ælla of Northumbria. Ælla allegedly had Ragnar thrown into a snake pit. It is said that Ragnar's enraged sons, taking advantage of political instability in England, recruited the Great Heathen Army, which landed in the Kingdom of East Anglia that year. There is no proof that this legend has any basis in history; however, it is known that several of the Viking leaders grouped their bands together to form one great army that landed in the kingdom of East Anglia to start their attempted conquest of England in 866.Munch. Norse Mythology: Ragnar Lodbrok and His Sons. pp. 245–51Jones. A History of the Vikings. pp. 218–19
In 867 the great army went north and captured York, but Ælla, together with support from the other English kingdoms, attempted to retake the city. He was unsuccessful; the annals for the year says that Ælla was killed during the battle, but according to legend he was captured by the Vikings, who executed or 'blood eagled' him as punishment for Ragnar's murder.ASC 867 – English translation at project Gutenberg . Retrieved 20 May 2013
England runestones
The England runestones () 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 the approximately 30 Greece runestones and the 26 Ingvar runestones,Jansson 1980:34. 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, arriving to the English shores during the 990s and the first decades of the 11th century. Some runestones relate of these Danegelds, such as 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.Harrison & Svensson 2007:198.
The vast majority of the runestones, 27, were raised Sweden and 17 of those located around lake Mälaren on the east coast. Denmark in its present-day borders has no such runestones, but there is a runestone in Scania which mentions London. There are also single cases of such runestones, located in Norway and 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: Grjótgarðr (and) Einriði, the sons made (the stone) in memory of (their) able father. Guðvér was in the west; divided (up) payment in England; manfully attacked townships in Saxony.Harrison & Svensson 2007:199
Treasure hoards 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 the Viking raiders as a way of protecting their looted treasure.