Viking period and would see a gradual shift in the focus of Islamic interests from the
Mediterranean and the west to the more lucrative trade with India, China and the east.
The great exception was Spain, whose Islamic governor Yusuf al-Fihri was facing
grave civil disturbances at the time of the Abbasid revolt. This situation was exploited
by the sole surviving member of the Umayyad family, one Abd al-Rahman, who in the
aftermath of the Abbasid takeover had first fled to North Africa and then in 756 had
quickly crossed into Spain. There he assumed command of the Muslim forces opposed
to the governor, defeated Yusuf, and established his own independent realm. At the
very beginning of the Viking Age, forty years before the first longships beached at
Lindisfarne, a new Umayyad emirate called al-Andalus was thus proclaimed in Spain,
with its capital at Córdoba (Collins 1995 : 181 – 221 ). This city quickly became a centre
for learning, science and culture as the royal court was swelled by refugees who flocked
there from Mesopotamia and Syria, and in later centuries it was from Córdoba that many
of the most important intellectual developments would spread to the medieval courts of
France and Italy. During the Viking period, however, an uneasy peace was established
with the Iberian Christians and the Franks to the north, and much of modern Castilla y
León and the Duero valley in northern Portugal was only sparsely populated, forming
a sort of demilitarised zone between the warring states (see Hill 1981 : 38 ). The entire
Viking Age saw constant skirmishing across the border, often developing into full-scale
campaigns in which the Muslims sometimes struck deep into Frankia.
This was the complex situation in Iberia at the time of the first Scandinavian incur-
sions, with the political intricacies of the region fortunately reflected in the richness
of the historical source material that has survived (Dozy 1881 ; Jón Stefánsson 1910 ;
Birkeland 1954 ; Melvinger 1955 ; Wikander 1978 ; Almazán 1986 ; Morales Romero
2004 a: 55 – 7 ; see González Campo 2002 a for a comprehensive bibliography).
The earliest confirmed Viking attack on the region occurred in 844 , but prior to this
there are occasional hints in Arab and European sources at Scandinavian encounters
in the Basque Country in the early ninth century (Pons-Sanz 2001 ; Erkoreka 2004 ). The
first substantial contact seems, however, to have been a violent one, when the great raid
of 844 saw a fleet of fifty-four ships sailing southwards from Brittany and their base on
the Loire at Noirmoutier (see Price, ch. 33. 2 , above). This first expedition to Iberia is
worth recounting in detail, as it was to set a pattern for much of the Vikings’ subsequent
contacts with the region including the other major raids.
Navigating along the coast, the Scandinavians first raided on the Garonne in southern
France before continuing west to the kingdom of Galicia and the Asturias (Morales
1997 ; Almazán 2004 ). Sources such as the Chronicon Rotensis from c. 883 refer to the
‘naval army’ of the Northmen (Ruiz de la Peña 1985 : 38 – 41 ) that launched two attacks
on the ports of Giljón and La Coruña. According to the Annals of St-Bertin, the Vikings
were driven off partly by a storm and partly by the defenders’ use of missile-throwing
war machines; other sources refer to an even greater defeat. The coordinated resistance
that King Ramiro I of the Asturias presented to the raids was perhaps made more
effective by the Christians’ more-or-less constant state of mobilisation, in readiness to
counter the Arab threat from the south. Having met with only poor returns for their
efforts in Galicia, the Vikings rounded Cape Finisterre and headed for Muslim territory.
Here their luck seemed to turn, and for several weeks the Scandinavians were
extraordinarily successful in the emirate – it must have seemed that the rich pickings
in Frankia were expanding limitlessly to the south. Lisbon was taken and sacked on
–– chapter 34: Spain, North Africa and the Mediterranean––