Around the same time as they made forays eastward toward Novgorod, some
Scandinavians were traveling to western shores. Their kings and chieftains were
competing mightily for power in a society that valued gift-giving above all to cement
relationships. (See the discussion of the “gift economy” on p. 61.) The most precious
and sought-after gifts were beautifully crafted and decorated jewelry made of gold
and silver; weapons, too, well forged and ornamented, were highly prized. Chieftains
fed their warrior followers’ hunger for gifts by controlling nearby agricultural
production, indigenous crafts, and long-distance trade. Some found that raids for
plunder served them even better. This was the background to the “Viking invasions
of Europe.” Traveling in long, narrow, and shallow ships powered by wind and sails,
the Vikings sailed down the coasts and rivers of France, England, Scotland, and
Ireland. Some crossed the Atlantic, making themselves at home in Iceland and
Greenland and, in about 1000, touching on the North American mainland. While the
elites came largely for booty, lesser men, eager for land, traveled with their wives and
children to settle after conquest in Ireland, Scotland, England, and Normandy (giving
their name to the region: Norman = Northman, or Viking).
In Ireland, where their settlements were in the east and south, the newcomers
added their own claims to rule an island already fragmented among four or five
competing dynasties. In Scotland, however, in the face of Norse settlements in the
north and west, the natives drew together under kings who—in a process we have
seen elsewhere—allied themselves with churchmen and other powerful local leaders.
Cináed mac Ailpín (Kenneth I MacAlpin) (d.858) established a hereditary dynasty of
kings that ruled over two hitherto separate native peoples. By c.900, the separate
identities were gone, and most people in Alba, the nucleus of the future Scotland,
shared a common sense of being Scottish.
England underwent a similar process of unification. Initially divided into small
competing kingdoms, it was weak prey in the face of invasion. By the end of the
ninth century, the Vikings were plowing fields in eastern England and living in
accordance with their own laws. (Later the region was called the Danelaw.) In
Wessex, the southernmost English kingdom, King Alfred the Great (r.871–899)
bought time and peace by paying a tribute with the income from a new tax, later
called the Danegeld. (It eventually became the basis of a relatively lucrative taxation
system in England.) In 878 he led a series of raids against the Vikings settled in his
kingdom, inspired the previously cowed Anglo-Saxons to follow him, and camped
outside the Viking stronghold until their leaders surrendered and accepted baptism.
Soon the Vikings left Wessex.
