proper, given the unfortunate common translations of fyrd in particular. But it has to be
said that in the original text of ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’ (to 892 ) the distribution of
usage does seem to be as has often been indicated. Nevertheless, it is clear – as Peter
Sawyer observed more than forty years ago (Sawyer 1962 : 120 ) – that there is more to
these distinctions than an opposition of ‘them’ and ‘us’; and, after the First Viking Age,
the terminology found in ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’ for military forces becomes more
complex in its usage. The rare employment of wicing(as), ‘pirates’ (Plummer 1892 / 9 ,
vol. 1 : 415 ), in annals 879 , 885 and 917 A is a further aspect of this, but that word finds
reflexes (as pirata[e]) in Continental Latin writing, which we also see in England after the
Norman conquest (Richardson and Sayles 1963 : 77 , 102 ).
Another aspect of otherness of vikings was their difference in religion. Old English
hæðene, ‘heathens’, is found – less in chronicles than in texts with overtly religious
messages –, and in Latin writing (one thinks first of the ‘Life of King Alfred’ by
Asser, with his Welsh, Frankish and English educational experiences; Stevenson
1904 : xciii–xciv; Keynes and Lapidge 1983 : 51 – 5 ) pagani, with the same meaning, is
common currency. Æthelweard’s Latin usage in relation to vikings is often quite
vigorously racist (Page 1987 ; for various translations see Giles 1848 : 1 – 40 ; Stevenson
1853 – 8 , vol. 2 , part 2 : 407 – 40 ; Albrectsen 1986 ). Gaelic and Welsh chroniclers felt the
difference of religion too, calling vikings Old Gaelic gen(n)ti, ‘foreigners of different
religion’, borrowed from the Biblical usage of Latin gentes, gentiles (‘Gentiles’ in the
traditional language of the English Bible), Old Welsh gint, gynt (we also find Welsh
pobloedd, in effect a loan-translation from Christian Latin gentes or nationes). Abandon-
ment of such terminology by Gaelic chroniclers has been taken as recognition of
conversion to Christianity (Abrams 1997 ; Dumville 1997 : 37 – 8 ).
Simple recognition of vikings as foreigners – even archetypal foreigners – is a mani-
fest element of Gaelic usage. Old and Middle Gaelic Gaill, ‘Foreigners’ (Modern Gaelic
Goill), is the word which from the first appearance of vikings in the Gaelic world until
the third quarter of the twelfth century conveyed the idea of Scandinavians or colonists
of Scandinavian speech or descent or mores (Mac Cana 1962 ; Ní Mhaonaigh 1998 ).
Persons of hybrid Gaelic and Scandinavian culture could be called Gall-Gaedil,
‘Foreigner-Gaels’ (Dumville 1997 : 26 – 9 ). The word Gaill etymologically means
‘Gauls’, who therefore until the beginning of the Viking Age were the archetypal
foreigners: what they had done in Gaelic prehistory to gain that status is unknown and
was probably unpleasant. The appellation passed in the later twelfth century to those
foreigners of French speech who (after 1166 ) invaded and settled Ireland, the immedi-
ately successive Angevin king of England and his government who claimed lordship of
Ireland, and by natural extension to the English at large (for colonial identity in Ireland
in that period, see the important and controversial work of Gillingham 2000 ).
The other aspect of nomenclature which is characteristic of Gaelic and (probably
derivatively) Welsh usage is the recognition of a pair of groups of vikings characterised
by the prefixed adjectives Old Gaelic find (Middle Gaelic finn, Modern Gaelic fionn)
and Old Gaelic and Old Welsh dub: literally, these mean ‘light’ and ‘dark’, ‘white’ and
‘black’, and there has long been speculation as to their usage in relation to vikings,
when compounded with Gaelic gen(n)ti (Welsh gint, gynt) and Gaill. Racial or ethnic
interpretations have long been favoured in modern scholarship, a characteristic reflex of
contemporary culture (Downham 2004 b). Seventeenth-century Gaelic writers took this
opposition to mean ‘the former’ / ‘the latter’, and some recent scholars have accepted this
–– chapter 26: Vikings in Insular chronicling––