Viking Warfare, I.P.Stephenson (review)

Parergon, 2014

Glasgow Archaeological Journal, 1984

1980

Canterbury•~ There it Nas• used• by the F scr:i:"be• for• hfs. bilingual text, although he also dre>•r upon A. At some point the E prototype • reached Peterborough•• rrhere the surviving: E: text• vras •Copied. in the. 48 early hrelfth centUr'J. The• actual interrelationships betHeen the C, D, and E texts have been studied in detail by Wnitelock 49 •and KBrner•. 50 Although the nature of the Chronicle resulted in a factual recorcling; of ev.erits~; the texts: ;;•rere: hot-vTithout. bias or inaccuracy. •For• example, the attitudes• t•owards .. God.Nirre are• quite different in all three texts. • The C text is somewhat hostile towards God\'r.ine-~ despite' the• fact. ne generally had. good• relations~ with: Abingdon. The D text is relatively neutral rrhile the E text is ' •' Scandinavia making it• a-difficult if not impossible• task for an author to construct a historically acc:;urate account. Inaccuracies crept .. in for :a number o•f .reasons: bias and deliberate tampering ~1i th sources, misu_lJ.derstandings of earlier accom:tts, reliance .on oral tradition ;which had .cle:viated .from historical accuracy .. over the years,• :or .catteli!pts \by • a.utbors t:o fill •in gaps where no information Has I<..no;m or to rationalize conflicting. accounts. These 'inac:curacies ''i:n .turn wrere :c:ompou.'1ded .:and :built upon by later authors. As a result, the disentanglement of historically accurate information is. extreme],y difficult indeed v.rben no contemporary source •-can corroborate. One of the most important non-contemporary sources for Scand-.••. ..inavian •history in •the •first half•of the eleventh century is Adam Hann var inn •mesti herma~r ok var l9ngum l herna~l. Hann var kallaor SkC(g1ar-Tosti.-J4

If we rely solely on the narrative provided by the annalists and authors of the Carolingian empire, the appearance of the Vikings in Western Europe was an abrupt and unexpected one.

VIKING WARS, 2021

The Norwegian Archaeological Society is proud to present the very first special Viking volume: VIKING WARS. The 13 articles presented in this publication represent some of the latest, and most relevant research on Viking warfare from the Viking and early Scandinavian medieval period in Europe. The Vikings fought for power, wealth, and land in many areas of the Northern hemisphere, and left traces of their activities from Canada in the West to the Caucasus in the East. In many parts of Europe visual, literary, and material culture contain influences of past Viking activities. This volume offers new insights on Viking female warriors; local defense systems; a Danish-Obodrite attack on a Frankish fortress; deeply rooted traditions relating to weapon production; viking encampments in Atlantic Europe; rune carvers in campaign; textiles essential for sea journeys, and related warfare; the symbolic power of weapons; the roles of Rus’ captives and slave soldiers; as well as the relationship between Viking and Norse settlers, and the local Picts of the Western Isles. Viking Special Volume 1 is co-funded by the Centre for Viking-Age Studies (ViS) and the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo.

Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 8, 2012

VIKINGS IN AQUITAINE AND THEIR CONNECTIONS, NINTH TO EARLY ELEVENTH CENTURIES , 2021

In the autumn of 892 a good part of the very conglomerate and so-called Great Army which had been plaguing northern France and the Low Countries for the last thirteen years departed for England. After many adventures there some of them returned to France. These Northmen who seem to have initially included the ‘Alsting/Hasting’ who was discussed in earlier chapters - or at least on the outward journey - are yet another example of how the Northmen constantly moved from place to place, usually and inevitably ‘over the sea’, here between France and England. We will look at the connections between the attack on Tours on the Loire in 903 and that on the important Breton monastery at Landévennec in 913. Not only do these two attacks seem to be connected but they were also, as will be shown, connected with Scandinavian-related events in the British Isles - in England, Wales and Ireland. Regarding Tours, we will assess what we know of the attack on Tours from a Latin text from the first half of the tenth century added to the opening page of a ninth-century manuscript of Hrabanus Maurus’s commentary on Saint Matthew. As well as much else this text contains the names of the two leaders who led the attack: Baret and Heric (ON Bárðr and Eiríkr/Hárekr). By considering these names in the context of the activities of the Northmen immediately before and in the years after the attack it will be argued that at least part of this fleet had come from Ireland after the Scandinavians’ expulsion from Dublin in 902 and that later they returned to Ireland in 914 after raiding in Brittany, England and Wales. Additionally, and importantly, it will also be suggested that there may well be a connection between the attack on Tours and the famous ‘viking’ silver hoard buried at Cuerdale on the river Ribble in Lancashire in c.905-910. This chapter will also explore what those Northmen who returned to France in 896 did in the years immediately afterwards. Of most interest for our purposes is that they overwintered in Aquitaine in 897-898 making attacks before returning to the Seine region and undertaking more raids there, probably including a raid up the Canche in 898. The raids along the Loire over the winter of 897-898 could well have been where and when at least some of the about 900 West Frankish Cuerdale coins were collected and the Northmen’s subsequent activities back in the North must have been the time when another large group of about 100 Carolingian coins in the Cuerdale hoard which can only have been gathered in the Low Countries were obtained. Finally, this analysis will be followed by an exploration of the information contained in a second very different source: three works of Bishop Radbod of Utrecht concerning the attack on Tours, written in Frisia in the years just after the attack itself. Where Radbod might have got his information about events in faraway Tours will also be discussed. This is followed by an exploration of what the ethnic terms Radbod uses to describe the Scandinavians involved might actually mean - terms such as ‘Danes and Swedes’, ‘Swedes’ and even ‘Francia, calling them Danes, names them with their fatherly name as Swedes’. Does Radbod’s use of these labels provide any meaningful information regarding the ethnicity or identity of those involved, or is it rather just an example of a ‘distorting Frankish discourse’ used for Scandinavian raiders in the ninth and tenth centuries, and thus has nothing useful to tell us about the origin or identity of the Northmen who had attacked Tours? Lastly, we will look briefly at the question of whether Radbod’s ‘Danes and Swedes’ might conceivably be in any way connected to the so-called Swedish dynasty in Denmark, certainly raiding in Frisia (including Utrecht) in the early tenth century when Radbod had actually encountered and been threatened by some of them.

Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics, 2016

This paper relates diachronic change in discourse strategies of the Viking-age historical writing to political changes of the period and to communities of practice that produce these histories and chronicles. It examines the labels and stereotypes applied to the Vikings and establishes their sources and evolution by applying a fourfold chronological division of historical sources from around 800 to 1200 (based on the political developments within Anglo-Saxon history and on the manuscript history of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle). The data for the study come from both Old English and Anglo-Latin chronicles. The results are interpreted in terms of critical discourse analysis. It is demonstrated that the chroniclers employ strategies of dissimilation exploiting the notion of illegitimacy and criminality of the Viking outgroup. These strategies change over time, depending on the political situation (raiding vs. settlement vs. reconquest period) and communities of practice involved in the maintenance and dissemination of a particular political discourse.