The Beginning of the Viking Age in the West

Journal of MariOme Archaeology https://dotorg/10.1007/s11 457-018-9221-3 <I> ORIG INAL PAPER CrossMork The Beginning of t he Viking Age in the West lrene Baug 1 • Dagfinn Skre211 -Tom Heldal 3 - 0ysteln J. Jansen• o The Autllorts) 2018 Abstract During the Viking Age, Arctic Scandinavia was a source of exquisite furs, down, walrus ivory, and other commodities that met with h.igh 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 Trl!lndelag, present-day central Norway, some I 100 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 coincid.ing 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 Introdu cti on Around AD 800 , Scandinavians began setting oft' 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 econom.ic, political, and cultural aspects of Scandinavian societies that were necessary longue-duree conditions for the Viking incursions 121 Dagfinn Skre dagfinn.skre@khm.uio.no Deparlment of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies, and Religion, University ofBe~n, . Norway Box 7805, 5020 Be~n 1 P.O. Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, :P.O. Box (JJ62, St. Olavs Plass, 0 130 Oslo, Norway Geological Survey of Norway, P.O. Box 63 15, Torgarden, 7491 Trondheim, Norway • The University Museum, University of Be~n. Published on line: 07 December 2018 P.O. Box 7800, 5007 Bergen, Norway €l Springer 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 studie.s 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. Sindbrek (2011 , 20 17) 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 (20 15) 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 millen nium 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 780r850s 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 780r90s (Ashby et al. 20 15). 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 e arlier research, see Ashby 2015, Barren 2010, Simek 2004, and Mcleod 2014. 2 Parallels to Viki ng raiding include Gothic incursions into the Roman Empire in the third to fourth centuries, culminating in the sack o f Rome in 4 10, and fifth to seventh century Sa,on piracy in the southern North Sea!English Channel zone (Haywood 1999:75-'90; Wood 1983:5). 3 Bj~m Myhre ( 1993: 184) held lhis issue and area to be pivotal for understanding lhe beginning of the Viking A'£}! in the west, but lacked evidence that would have allowed for closer investigation. f:l Springer Journal of MariOme Archaeology Atant1c 0. ,,. ... _, e Bay 1:: o Site o Utbansite 0 500Jun Fig. 1 Scandinavia, the west, and the Baltic. Sites referred to in the text are indicated. Illustration: l ngvild T. Bf!Ckman f:l Springer Journal of Maritime Archaeology to assess the shi fting volume of this long-distance trade through the eighth to mid-ninth centuries. This ev idence, set in the context of the .contemporary surge in production and trade around the southern North Sea and English Channel, the early urbanisation in southern Scandinavia and the Baltic (Sindbrek 2011 ), and the political integration in southern and western Scandinav ia, allows us to suggest immediate reasons for why Viki ng ship commanders turned their activ ities overseas in the late 700s. T he evidence also sheds light on why, after the initial 's-couting phase', raiding in three decades since c. 806 took place predominantly in Ireland and Scotland, and why Vikings in the mid-830s began overwintering overseas and took up raiding in England and the Frankish Empire. The close connection between raiding and trade that is argued here is based on the fact that the former parasitizes on wealth accumulated through the latter. Trade ventures, particularly over long distances, expose the traders' commodities and proceeds to the danger of piracy. More importantly, the mere threat of piracy in waters, harbours, and production sites tends to subdue production, trade, and consumption, resulting in reduced profits for traders. Thus, conflicting interests between raiders and traders go beyond the direct threat of attacks on traders' ships. In this paper, assessment of the relative strength of the two parties to this confl ict, traders and Vikings, and that of the ir allies, prov ides a background for discussing changes in volumes and routes of trading and raiding. Such conflicts lend themse lves to the agent-oriented approach plLrsued here. The main characteristic of that approach-to explain decisions through anaJysis of the agents' constraints and opportunities at the time rather than through the ir consequences (Gardner 207 :~8)-asume particular relevance when analysing situations with uncertain outcomes involving e ntreprenelUial agency: taking up raiding in new lands, exploring new trade routes, scaling such activities up or down, e ntering into alliances. or deciding whether to shift from trading to raiding or vice versa. Scandinavia and the Southern North Sea Zone (Fifth-N inth Centuries) Because of its early date (c. 705-850) and the well-preserved deposits that allow precise dating of artefacts and features (Feveile and J ensen 2000), Ribe (Fig. I) in the very southwest of Scandinavia is a key site in discussions of the beginning of the Viking Age in the west. Apparently modelled on Frisian sites, it is the north-easternmost of the seventh- to mid-ninth--century seasonal market sites and urban settle ments in the southern North Sea/ English Channe l zone. While displaying clear Frisian characteristics in the earliest phase, the first few decades show evidence of an increasingly Scandinavian character of metalwork and other artefacts produced at the site. However, most non-regional commodities and raw materials for artisans (glass and copper alloy) appear to have been imported from the west and south (Feveile 2006:30-31). Positioned near the northern end of the area settled by Frisians in the late seventh century (Ellmers 1985:22 and Abb. 2; Ussennagger 2013:88), the site seems intended to faci litate trade between Frisians and people in southern and western Scandinavia. When the town Kaupang was established c. 800 (Fig. 1), Ribe would have been the most significant harbour among Kaupang's well-testified connections to the southern North Sea zone (Pil0 2011 ; Skre 20Jib; Wa rners 2011 ). Until rece ntly, the earliest commodities produced in the Scandinavian Peninsula found in Ribe were early ninth-century f:l Springer This is an Open Access article. The full file may be downloaded here: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11457-018-9221-3