The Beginnings of the Feudal Age139cautious and relied upon speed and evasion to make
good their escapes.
The Vikings were perhaps the most formidable
raiders of all. The name is generic and refers to all of
those Scandinavians—Danish, Norwegian, and
Swedish—who terrorized the coasts of Europe between
800 and 1050. Their society bore a marked resemblance
to that of the early Germanic tribes. Scandinavia was a
world of small farmers and fishermen who lived in
widely scattered communities connected primarily by
the sea. The heart of such communities was their mar-
ket and their Thing, the assembly of free men that met,
usually on market days, to discuss matters of public con-
cern. These gatherings also ratified the selection of
kings, who were in the beginning little more than re-
gional warlords. Drawn mostly from the ranks of a
hereditary aristocracy, these chieftains relied upon per-
sonal loyalties, the fellowship of the chief’s great hall
where warriors drank and celebrated, and the distribu-
tion of loot to organize war parties of free farmers and
craftsmen. The leisure for such pursuits was provided by
a large population of slaves, or thralls. Even the smallest
farms might have at least three, and the need to replen-
ish their numbers was an important incentive for the
raids. In the summers while the men raided, the women
managed the farms, the slaves, and the continued pro-
duction of craft goods and services. Following the pat-
tern of other maritime communities before and since,
Scandinavian women tended to be far more indepen-
dent and economically active than their inland sisters.
Warfare and raiding was endemic in the region
long before the dawn of the Viking age, as was an ex-
tensive trading network that helps to explain the cul-
tural similarities of the Scandinavian peoples. Danes,
Swedes, and Norwegians spoke related languages,
shared the system of formal writing known as runes,
and enjoyed a common tradition of oral literature that
was finally committed to writing in the thirteenth cen-
tury. Its characteristic form was the saga, a mixture of
historical fact and legend that reached its highest de-
velopment in Iceland. Scandinavian religion was poly-
theistic and bore a close resemblance to that of other
Germanic peoples.
Viking burial customs reveal much about Scandina-
vian art and technology. Dead chiefs were sometimes
surrounded by their possessions and buried in their
boats, a practice that left behind rich hordes of artifacts
including exquisite carvings and jewelry. The boats
were an extraordinary technical achievement. The typi-
cal Viking longship was about sixty-five feet in length,
open-decked, and double ended (see illustration 8.1). It
could be propelled by oars at speeds up to ten knots or
by a single square sail and was strongly built of overlap-
ping planks that carried the structural load of the hull.
Such vessels could cross oceans. Because their draft was
rarely more than three feet they could also be beached
without damage or rowed far into the interior on the
shallowest of rivers. With a crew of forty to sixty men
and no decks for shelter they cannot have been com-
fortable, but they provided the ultimate in operational
flexibility.
The reasons for the Viking incursions are unclear.
The Scandinavian population presumably had begun to
exceed the available supply of food, perhaps because
the cold, wet weather that troubled the rest of Europe
in this period reduced northern harvests to an unten-
able level. Charlemagne’s conquest of the Saxons may
also have roused the suspicions of their Danish neigh-
bors. In any case, the Northmen grew more aggressive
with the passage of time. In the early years of the ninth
century they contented themselves with lightning raids
on coastal settlements, stealing what they could and
putting out to sea before the inhabitants could call for
reinforcements. Within a generation they had adopted
the Muslim tactic of establishing bases from which they
could loot the surrounding countryside. By midcentury
they were establishing permanent colonies on the Euro-
pean mainland.
Their range was enormous. In 844 Vikings raided
the Atlantic ports of Spain. In the following year they
sacked Paris, and in 859–860 they reached Italy, pene-
trating the Val d’Arno almost to the outskirts of Flor-
ence. Fortunately for the Italians they did not return. In
the north the Vikings soon learned how to extend their
range by traveling on stolen horses when their ships
reached the limits of navigation. Nothing seemed be-
yond their reach.
The establishment of permanent settlements grew
from the habit of wintering in England or on the Conti-
nent in preparation for the next raiding season. Given
that the dangers of this practice were minimal, Vikings
brought their wives and families. In the decades after
851 they occupied all of northeastern England from Es-
sex to the further limits of Yorkshire. The region came
to be known as the Danelaw because the legal auton-
omy granted to the Danes by Saxon kings survived un-
til the thirteenth century. From 1014 to 1042 England
was ruled by a Danish dynasty. In 1066 it was con-
quered by the Normans, who as their name indicates,
were also of Viking origin. They were the inhabitants
of the great Norse state established around the mouth
of the Seine at the beginning of the tenth century.
At the opposite end of Europe, Viking traders pen-
etrated the Russian heartland by following the great