Ulfr. The last recorded raids occurred during the period 1047 – 66 when Cresconio,
the bishop of Santiago de Compostela, fought several battles against the Scandinavians.
The intensity of these attacks against the Spanish Christians may imply some kind
of attempt at settlement or even conquest: the assaults of 968 – 71 and 1047 – 66 seem
to have been virtually military campaigns. The documentary sources are unfortunately
too meagre to draw any firm conclusions, and in the absence of new archaeological
evidence the motivations behind the later Viking raids on northern Spain remain
obscure.
If we take the long view of Scandinavian activity in Iberia, despite the spectacular
nature of the 859 – 62 expedition and the undoubted violence of the tenth- and eleventh-
century raids, Viking contacts with the Muslim and Christian polities of Spain were
minimal (see also Price 1994 : 146 – 7 ). This is in stark contrast to the experiences of the
Frankish kingdoms, and there is little doubt that Spain and the western Mediterranean
formed the south-western periphery of the Viking world. However, the memory of the
Gibraltar passage and what lay beyond was not lost in Scandinavia (Musset 1992 : 92 ),
and was revived as early as the twelfth century by Norwegians attempting a new kind of
assault on Islam: the Crusades.
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–– Neil Price––