The Vikings

Like the continental Barbarians, the Vikings developed a reputation that they did not altogether deserve.  Although they were fierce warriors and a maritime force to be reckoned with, they did not wantonly loot, rape, and pillage everywhere they went.  Of the Vikings, the following facts were known: 

• They were fierce sea-raiders, who fared much better at sea-battles than on land 
• Their interests lie more in establishing trade routes rather than looting and pillaging cities, although they did raid several sea ports (ex.: the Viking Ragnar's raid of Paris, France on Easter Sunday, 789 C.E.) 
• They were well-traveled and interacted with many of the indigenous cultures of Europe and of Northern Africa 
• They were strongly family-oriented, believing that their strength came from their heritage and the blood of their ancestors 
• They had an intricate and surprisingly sophisticated civilization for their time 
• They were heathens (non-Christians) in a period of time in which the rest of Europe was largely Christianized.  This was to change over time; some by peaceful adoption of the new religion, others by torture.
• Over 90% of their economy was dependent upon the sea.  With the warm waters of the Gulf Stream flowing past Scandinavia, most of their ports remained unfrozen even in winter; while much of the frozen rocky and mountainous inland areas were uninhabitable. 
• They discovered North America nearly 500 years before Columbus, calling the land of their discovery "Vinland", now believed to be present-day Newfoundland in Canada.
• They used an alphabet (called a "futhark") consisting of only 16 letters (a reduction of their ancestors' earlier alphabet of 24 letters.)

The sacking of Lindesfarne Abbey in the 8th century C.E. was the first documented raid by Vikings upon the lands of Christian Europe, although rumors of smaller raids had already been circulating.  The lands of Normandy (Norse-Man) and Brittany in France still are largely populated by their descendents.  Those called the "Rus", which we now know as Russians, migrated east from Scandinavia, settling in the Murmansk peninsula and southward into the Volga and Don river valleys. 

It is now believed that the vikings, making up less than 0.8 of a percent of the European population, would not have been as successful had the feudal society of Europe during that age been more united.  As it existed, Europe was not much more than a collection of small vassal states that warred regularly amongst themselves.  Under such circumstances, it was easy for the northern invaders to take advantage of the chaotic climate and establish themselves as both fierce raiders and traders.  Their maritime prowess, indicated by their superior boat-building skills (they had the fastest boats on the waters in that age), along with their warrior abilities, made them fearsome foes both on land and sea.  They were able to navigate with the use of a mineral known to them as a "sun stone", which, found native to their shores, had the ability to polarize sunlight, making it possible for them to use the sun to navigate even during the heaviest cloud-cover.

Evenutally, viking society become organized to have a parliament, called the "Thing", or the Althing.  The first of these was held in 982 in what is now present-day Iceland.  It was at this Thing that the norsemen decided to embrace Christianity in a peaceable way, intermingling it, interestingly enough, with the belefs of their old culture.  To this date, the Icelanders still practice this unique blend of both Christian and Norse beliefs.  On the mainland, the people still clung to tradition until the rampage of the madman Olaf Tryggvason (St. Olaf), who forced by torture the conversion of the remaining practitioners of the "old faith" to Christianity.

Olaf Tryggvason, originally a heathen viking, was credited for sacking London in 994 C.E. and burning London Bridge (hence the children's rhyme of "London Bridge is falling down...").  His later conversion to Christianity did nothing to stop his means of terrorism, but converted them to a new form.  Some of his crimes against his fellowmen were:

• forcing one to swallow an adder for refusing to convert to Christianity.  Olaf later seized the dead man's land for the Church, casting his family out to die
• placed a bowl of red-hot embers on another man's stomach, again for the crime of not recanting the old religion and converting to Christianity.  The man's bowels are reported to have burst asunder from the heat.
• Slaughtered hundreds of Norsemen and women for venerating the festival of Ostara (later to become the Christian festival of Easter).
• Cut out the tongue of the former king Guthroth, for speaking out against Olaf's tyranny.

Olaf's reign of tyranny came to an end at the hands of Queen Sigrith of Sweden, who had rejected him in marriage years before.  Sigrith, the widow of King Erik the Victorious of Sweden, had been offered marriage by Olaf Tryggvason...on the condition that she become a Christian. She refused, saying "I do not mean to abandon the faith I have had, and my kinsmen before me." Olaf swore at her and struck her with a glove, an act she repaid years later when she incited the battle in which Olaf died.

For these crimes perpetrated against his fellow norsemen, Olaf was rewarded with canonization by the Catholic church.  To my mind, these were not the acts of a true Christian, but that of a madman and a terrorist.  Unlike Leif Eriksson, who had converted to Christianity at the same time as Olaf and practiced it in the true spirit of the faith, Olaf chose to make his life one of infamy in the name of the God he had embraced.  His actions should not be viewed with any sense of valor nor piety, but one of a person who delighted in torture, maiming, and destroying others.  He is as representative of his faith as Osama Bin Laden and other terrorists of our modern age are representative of theirs.

More famous (thankfully) than Olaf was Leif Eriksson, another Christian viking who is credited with the discovery of the New World in 1000 C.E.  Sailing westward from Iceland, his party discovered first the tip of Greenland, then westward into what they called "Vinland", now known as Newfoundland in Canada.  They found other people already residing in these lands, which they called the "skrälingar" (and whom Columbus 492 years later would dub the "Indians"; the Native American people).  The "skrälingar" weren't overly pleased by the new settlers and did what they could to run them out, rather successfully.  Most viking settlements in Vinland lasted only one year or less.  Archeological finds there now indicate that illness and Native American raids upon the settlements wiped out the population of those norsemen who chose to remain in Vinland.  The rest retreated back to Greenland and Iceland.

It is rumored, however, that rogue parties of vikings did make it further south.  Viking runestones dating to the 11th century have been found in Kensington, Minnesota and as far south as Heavener, Oklahoma (now a state commemorative park, with the stone preserved for posterity and future research.)  It is possible that the vikings were able to sail around the tip of Florida, enter what is now present-day Louisiana through the Mississippi river, and navigate the Mississippi northward to the Arkansas river, and further northward to what is now present-day Minneapolis and St. Paul along the Mississippi.

Meanwhile, the Danish vikings were making more and more successful raids against the Saxons of England, the Frisians of the Netherlands, and the Franks of Normandy.  The Danes managed to gain a toehold in England in Northumberland and in East Anglia.  Eventually, England was conquered by Knut the Great in the 11th century, as was Frisia, Normandy, and other parts of Europe.  The Danish empire, known as the "Danelaw", stretched from Scandinavia to France all along the North Sea. The last of the Saxons was defeated at the Battle of Hastings by yet another Danish/Norman viking, Wilhelm (later known as William the Conqueror) in 1066, which cemented the norsemen as the rulers of Britain. King Richard the Lionheart, one of England's greatest kings, was a direct descendent of William.  During the era of the Crusades, the Norman vikings had landholdings as far away as in Syria and Lebanon, and as far south as the Canary Islands.  There is even evidence that they traveled as far south as Brazil and established cultures there.

The vikings never truly lost "power", but rather assimilated themselves into the local cultures of the lands they had conquered.  To this day, their influences can be felt in the language, arts, and literature of each of these cultures, even into modern-day American culture.