VIKING INVASION

[THE FUGITIVE]

Viking raids

Raids by seaborne Scandinavian pirates on sites in Britain, especially largely undefended monastic sites, began at the end of the eighth century AD.

By the end of the ninth century there were large-scale settlements of Scandinavians in various parts of Britain, and they had achieved political domination over a significant territory.

Early in the 11th century the king of Denmark became king of England as well. And in 1066 there were separate invasions by the king of Norway, Harald Hardrada, and duke of Normandy, William, the latter the descendant of Scandinavian settlers in northern France.

Many monasteries in the north were destroyed, and with them any records of the raids.

Yet the most significant development of the period was an indirect result of Scandinavian involvement in the affairs of Britain - the emergence of two kingdoms of newly unified territories, England and Scotland.

In 793 AD, an anguished Alcuin of York wrote to the Higbald, the bishop of Lindisfarne and to Ethelred, King of Northumbria, bemoaning the unexpected attack on the monastery of Lindisfarne by Viking raiders, probably Norwegians sailing directly across the North Sea to Northumbria.

It is clear from the letter that Lindisfarne was not destroyed. Alcuin suggested that further attack might be averted by moral reform in the monastery.

Over the next few decades, many monasteries in the north were destroyed, and with them any records they might have kept of the raids. We know no historical details of the raids in Scotland, although they must have been extensive.

Iona was burnt in 802 AD, and 68 monks were killed in another raid in 806 AD. The remaining monks fled to Kells (County Meath, Ireland) with a gospel-book probably produced in Iona, but now known as the 'Book of Kells'.

Other monasteries in Scotland and northern England simply disappear from the record. Lindisfarne was abandoned, and the monks trailed around northern England with their greatest possession, the relics of St Cuthbert, until they found a home in Durham in 995 AD.

England and Scotland

We cannot be sure of the impact the Vikings had on Scotland due to a real scarcity of written material from the area. But the surviving place names show us that the Orkneys and Shetlands, and the mainland of Caithness and Sutherland, were heavily settled by Norwegians.

Those Norwegians were probably involved in the greatest political upset in the north - the disappearance of the kingdom of the Picts.

The Vikings began to assemble larger armies with the clear intent of conquest.

In the eighth century, the Picts had one of the most important kingdoms in Britain. By the end of the ninth century they had vanished. In their place was a kingdom of Scotland, controlled by the Scots, who were the descendents of immigrants from Ireland in the fifth and sixth centuries.

The Scots took advantage of the presence of the Vikings, and, above all under King Cináed mac Alpín (Kenneth MacAlpine), they did so with considerable aggression and intelligence. They promoted themselves as the kings of all those in northern Britain, or 'Alba'.

They wove a new national history, which emphasised (or invented) many links between the Scottish and Pictish dynasties. They also promoted the idea that St Columba, the founder of the monastery of Iona, was the apostle of all those in the north.

The Viking raids in England were sporadic until the 840s AD, but in the 850s Viking armies began to winter in England, and in the 860s they began to assemble larger armies with the clear intent of conquest.

In 865 AD they forced the East Angles to help supply an army, which in 866 AD captured York and in 867 AD took over the southern part of the kingdom of Northumbria.

Later traditions saw Ragnar Hairy-Breeks and his son Ívarr the Boneless as the two main Viking leaders, responsible not only for killing Ælla, King of Northumbria in 867 AD but also Edmund, King of the East Angles in 869 AD, and for destroying Dumbarton, the fortress of the British kings of Strathclyde.

The normally reliable 'Annals of Ulster' recorded Ívarr's death in Ireland in 873 AD and described him as 'king of the Northmen in the whole of Ireland and Britain'.

The man we then see more clearly in the sources as the Viking leader, Hálfdan, was later believed to be Ívarr's brother. He led the Viking army to a conquest of Mercia in 874 AD, organised a parcelling out of land among the Vikings in Northumbria in 876 AD, and in 878 AD moved south and forced most of the population of Wessex to submit.

The Vikings had conquered almost the whole of England.