to whom a saga is dedicated: who possessed rather peculiar institutions evidently the relic of what is now called the Viking Age, that preceded the Saga Age by a century. Another instance of such more generic use occurs in the following typical passage from the Landnámabók (Sturlabók), where it is recorded how Harald Fairhair harried the vikings of the Scottish isles—that famous harrying which led to most of the settlement of Iceland and the birth of Icelandic literature:—
“Haraldr en harfari herjaði vestr am haf . . . Hann lagði undir sig allar Sudreyjar. . . . En er hann fór vestann slogust i eyjernar vikingar ok Skotar ok Irar ok herjuðu ok ræntu viða” (Landn., ed. Jónsson, 1906, p. 135).
It is in this more generic sense that the word “viking” is now generally employed. Historians of the north have distinguished as the “Viking Age” (Vikingertiden) the time when the Scandinavian folk first by their widespread piracies brought themselves forcibly into the notice of all the Christian peoples of western Europe. We cannot to-day determine the exact homes or provenance of these freebooters, who were a terror alike to the Frankish empire, to England and to Ireland and west Scotland, who only came into view when their ships anchored in some Christian harbour, and who were called now Normanni, now Dacii, now Danes, now Lochlannoch; which last, the Irish name for them, though etymologically “men of the lakes or bays,” might as well be translated “Norsemen,” seeing that Lochlann was the Irish for Norway. The exact etymology of víkingr itself is not certain: for we do not know whether vík is used in a general sense (bay, harbour) in this connexion, or in a particular sense as the Vík, the Skagerrack and Christiania Fjord. The reason for using “viking” in a more generic sense than is warranted by the actual employment of the word in Old Norse literature rests on the fact that we have no other word by which to designate the early Scandinavian pirates of the 9th and the beginning of the 10th century. We cannot tell for the most part whether they came from Denmark or Norway, so that we cannot give them a national name.
“Normanner” is used by some Scandinavian writers (as by Steenstrup in his classical work Normannerne). But “Normans” has for us quite different associations. And even those who have preferred not generally to use the word “vikings” to designate the pirates and invaders, have adhered to the term “Viking Age” for the period in which they were most active (cf. Munch, Det Norske Folks Historie, Deel I. Bd. i. p. 356; Steenstrup and others, Danmarks Riges Historie, bk. ii. &c.). At the same time, the significance which the word “viking” has had in our language is due in part to a false etymology, connecting the word with “king”; the effect of which still remains in the customary pronunciation vi-king instead of vik-ing, now so much embedded in the language that it is a pedantry to try and change it.
We may fairly reckon the “Viking Age” to lie between the date of the first recorded appearance of a northern pirate fleet (A.D. 789) and the settlement of the Normans in Normandy by the treaty of St Clair-sur-Epte, A.D. 911 or 912.[1] For a few years previous to that date our chief authority for the history of the piracies and raids in the Frankish empire fails us:[2] we know that the Norsemen had a few years before that date been driven in great numbers out of Ireland; and England had been in a sense pacified through the concession of a great part of the island to the invaders by the peace of Wedmore, A.D. 878. Although, outside the information we get from Christian chroniclers, this age is for the people of the north one of complete obscurity, it is evident that the Viking Age corresponds with some universal disturbance or unrest among the Scandinavian nations, strictly analogous to the unrest among more southern Teutonic nations which many centuries before had heralded the break-up of the Roman empire, an epoch known as that of the Folk-wanderings (Völkerwanderungen). We judge this because we can dimly see that the impulse which was driving part of the Norse and Danish peoples to piracies in the west was also driving the Swedes and perhaps a portion of the Danes to eastward invasion, which resulted in the establishment of a Scandinavian kingdom (Garðaríki) in what is now Russia, with its capital first at Novgorod, afterwards at Kiev.[3] This was, in fact, the germ of the Russian empire. If we could know the Viking Age from the other, the Scandinavian side, it would doubtless present far more interest than in the form in which the Christian chroniclers present it. But from knowledge of this sort we are almost wholly cut off. We have to content ourselves with what is for the greater part of this age a mere catalogue of embarkations and plundering along all the coasts of western Europe without distinctive characteristics.
The Viking Raids.—The detail of these raids is quite beyond the compass of the present article, and a summary or synopsis must suffice. For all record which we have, the Viking Age was inaugurated in A.D. 789 by the appearance in England on our Dorset coast of three pirate ships “from Haerethaland” (Hardeland or Hardyssel in Denmark or Hördeland in Norway), which are said in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to be “the first ships of the Danish men” who sought the land of England. They killed the port-reeve, took some booty and sailed away. Other pirates appeared in 793 on a different coast, Northumbria, attacked a monastery on Lindisfarne (Holy Island), slaying and capturing the monks; the following year they attacked and burnt Jarrow; after that they were caught in a storm, and all perished by shipwreck or at the hands of the countrymen. In 795 a fleet appeared off Glamorganshire. They attacked Man in 798 and Iona in 802. But after this date for the lifetime of a generation the chief scene of viking exploits was Ireland, and probably the western coasts and islands of Scotland.
The usual course of procedure among the northern adventurers remains the same to whatever land they may direct their attacks, or during whatever years of the 9th century these attacks may fall. They begin by more or less desultory raids, in the course of which they seize upon some island, which they generally use as an arsenal or point d'appui for attacks on the mainland. At first the raids are made in the summer: the first wintering in any new scene of plunder forms an epoch so far as that country or region is concerned. Almost always for a period all power of resistance on the part of the inhabitants seems after a while and for a limited time to break down, and the plunderers to have free course wherever they go. Then they show an ambition to settle in the country, and some sort of division of territory takes place. After that the northerners assimilate themselves more or less to the other inhabitants of the country, and their history merges to a less or greater extent in that of the country at large. This course is followed in the history of the viking attacks on Ireland, the earliest of their continuous series of attacks. Thus they begin by seizing the island of Rechru (now Lambay) in Dublin Bay (A.D. 795); in the course of about twenty years we have notice of them on the northern, western and southern coasts; by A.D. 825 they have already ventured raids to a considerable distance inland. And in A.D. 832 comes a large fleet (“a great royal fleet,” say the Irish annals) of which the admiral's name is given, Turgesius (Thorgeis or Thorgisl?). The new invader, though with a somewhat chequered course, extended his conquests till in A.D. 842 one-half of Ireland (called Lethcuinn, or Con's Half) seems to have submitted to him; and we have the curious picture of Turgesius establishing his wife Ota as a sort of völva, or priestess, in what had been one of Ireland's most famous and most literary monasteries, Clonmacnoise. Turgesius was, however, killed very soon after this (in 845); and though in A.D. 853 Olaf the White was over-king of Ireland, the vikings' power on the whole diminished. In the end, territory was—if by no formal treaty—ceded to their influence; and the (Irish) kingdoms of Dublin and Waterford were established on the island.
