The Normans and Their World Read online

  But king Olaf and the Northmen’s fleet with him rowed quite up under the bridge, laid their cables round the supporting piles, and then rowed off with all the ships as hard as they could down the stream. The piles were thus shaken in the bottom and loosened under the bridge. Now as the armed troops stood thick of men upon the bridge, and there were likewise many heaps of stones and other weapons upon it, and piles under it being loosened and broken, the bridge gave way, and a great part of the men upon it fell into the river, and all the others fled, some into the castle, some into Southwark. After that Southwark was stormed and taken.[41]

  The poet Ottar Svarte made up a song that began, ‘London Bridge is broken down’.

  A more apocryphal tale is told in the Jornsvikinga Saga. We read how at the time of the midsummer fair armed Englishmen got under the covers of the market waggons. Thus they slipped into the city and massacred the Danes who were gathering unarmed for a church service at midnight, and only three Danish ships escaped. The story perhaps derives from the fact of Aethelred’s treacherous slaughter of Danes ordered for St Brice’s Day, 1002. Under 1016 the Chronicle says that when Edmund was chosen king in London, ‘then came the ships to Greenwich, at Rogation Days’. They too found a defended bridge in the way, but this time the lack of resistance from Southwark enabled the Danes to make a frontal attack. ‘They dug a great ditch on the south side and dragged their ships to the west side of the bridge; and then afterwards they ditched the city round, so that no one could go in or out. And they repeatedly fought against the city, but the citizens strenuously withstood.’ A second attempt later in the year, by land and water, again failed. To attacks of this sort we may ascribe the Viking axes, spears, and other implements found near the site of Old London Bridge.[42]

  Of placenames along the Lower Thames, Sheerness, Shoeburyness, Thorpe, Northfleet, Greenwich, Woolwich, and perhaps Deptford seem to be of Norse origin; and in London the dedications to St Olaf on both sides of the river suggest a Norse connection. Stories describe St Clement Danes in the Strand as a Danish burial ground. In the twelfth century a monk at Crowland told about Siward Digri, a Norse adventurer, who took service under the Confessor and was promised the first vacancy in the ranks of the nobility. Siward created the vacancy himself by killing Tosti, earl of Huntingdon, on a bridge near Westminster. The followers of each man then fought; Tosti’s were beaten and buried in a field on which was erected a memorial church still known as the Danes Church.[43] A legend, recorded in the Chertsey Register of the thirteenth century, stated that the Danes who destroyed Chertsey Abbey were later ‘by the just judgement of God all killed near London at the place called the Church of the Danes’. There seems some genuine link between the site and the Danes, and early in the thirteenth century the street in which the church stood was called Dencheman’s Street.[44] Again, William of Malmesbury tells us that Harthacnut, ‘at the instigation of Elfric, archbishop of York, and others whom I’m loth to name, ordered the dead body of [his brother] Harald to be dug up, the head to be cut off and thrown into the Thames, a pitiable sight for men. But it was dragged up by a fisherman’s net and buried in the Cemetery of the Danes in London.’[45] The runes tell of Norsemen dying in London. At Valleberga (Skåne) the stone declares of two men, Manne and Svenne, ‘May God help their souls well: and they lie in London’. Two stones with runes have been found in London, one is in St Paul’s churchyard; both were parts of coffins of the first half of the eleventh century. More surprisingly a monument from Småland says of Gunnar: ‘Helge laid him, his brother, in a stone coffin, in England, at Bath’.[46] Such details make us feel how omnipresent was the Norseman in England in these centuries, how wide and deep his impact.

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  We have then made a brief survey of the Norse raids, invasions, and settlements, which did so much to transform western Europe between the ninth and eleventh centuries; the mingled aims of piracy and trade, war and colonization; the ethnic composition and the size of the bands. The emphasis has been largely on the destructive aspects: aspects stressed by the chroniclers in the monasteries which, because of their concentrations of treasure, were the main victims of raids. We have examined the bond between lord and companions which emerges as the central cohesive element in the Germanic tribal societies as they collide with the Roman world, and which provides the basis on which later the feudal system is to develop. Though there were similar elements in the Germanic tribes known to Tacitus and in the Norse societies exploding in the ninth century, we cannot equate the two. The Norsemen in their relatively isolated regions developed certain aspects of their way of life more than others, and the world on which they irrupted was very different from that of the Roman empire. We have looked at the Danes in their attacks on London and at the Norsemen who settled under Rollo-Rolf in the region that was to become Normandy. In the next chapter we shall explore more closely some of the specific characteristics of these Norsemen.

  Chapter Two – A Closer Look at the Vikings

  We have noted that the Norse expansion had its strongly constructive as well as its destructive side. The Vikings cannot be treated merely as troublesome outsiders who were finally absorbed into a superior culture. Indeed, the insiders, as the more direct inheritors of the remnants of Roman civilization, could in certain aspects claim superiority; but the conception of the Vikings as disruptive nuisances crashing into an ordered world gives us a limited and misleading idea of what happened. We must see both the pagan Norsemen and the nominally Christian West as sections of a living whole, in which many of the most valuable new impulsions come from the outsiders — or at least in which the shocks and breakdowns they cause become the basis of yet more vigorous integrations.

  First, we must look at Norse society and its way of life, which bred a strong spirit of initiative and independence. As with other Germanic societies, Norse society had three levels, but it had a mobility that had been lost in England and Gaul. At the bottom were the slaves or thraells, war captives or men broken by debt; they could be sold and at times even sacrificed at a master’s burial. The karls were free peasants; if they came of servile stock, they still owed services to the family of the man who had been their master. They could own land, but more often they held it in exchange for services or hired themselves out. Protected by law, they had a share in the administration, and they provided the soldiers, craftsmen, pedlars, even traders. On top were the jarls or nobles, with retainers, who had begun to fall into a sort of proto-feudal dependence on the king. In time merchant guilds grew up. The king imposed taxes and built up his own estate. Superficially the society was not unlike that developing in the West; but it was looser, less centralized, with many more opportunities for individual assertion and activity.[47]

  A keystone was the system of land-holding. By the odal law the ancestral household was held jointly by the family. When the father died, the eldest son inherited, but had to pay compensation to his brothers for their shares. Such a system tended to encourage the younger sons to clear new ground, go on voyages of trade or piracy, or join in colonizing ventures. An owner could sell his land as long as he shared the price with the co-heirs. The younger sons got, as well as their compensation share, a share (defined by the law-codes) of any other lands, of chattels, and of silver; they thus had a basis on which to build up their own fortunes. Land was freehold without dues or duties to an overlord — though a man might accept a lord from need for protection in war or support in legal disputes and feuds. The tie was personal and could be transferred. A chief gave justice to his followers, rewards for services, support in disputes, and he shared out spoils and lands.

  The Rigsmal thus vividly describes the three classes:

  Thrall was of swarthy skin, his hands wrinkled, his knuckles bent, his fingers thick, his face ugly, his back broad, his heels long. He began to put forth his strength, binding bast, making loads, and bearing home faggots the weary long day. His children busied themselves with building fences, dunging ploughland, tending swine, herding goats, and
digging peat. Their names were Sooty and Cowherd, Clumsy and Lout and Laggard, and so on.

  Carl, or churl, was red and ruddy, with rolling eyes, and took to breaking oxen, building ploughs, timbering houses, and making carts.

  Earl, the noble, had yellow hair, his cheeks were rosy, his eyes were keen as a young serpent’s. His occupation was shaping the shield, bending the bow, hurling the javelin, shaking the lance, riding horses, throwing dice, fencing, and swimming. He began to waken war, redden the field, and fell the doomed.

  Here the class divisions are more hardened than in the early days, but we see certain continuing characteristics.

  Divorce was easy, and a woman could ask for it. The status of women was relatively high, and they could own land. An inscription from Hillersjö, Sweden, sets out a complicated case of inheritance:

  Read these runes. Geirmund married Geirlaug, then a maiden. Later they had a son, before Geirmund was drowned. Afterwards the son died. Then she had Gudrik as husband...They had children, of whom only a girl survived. She was called Inga, and Rögnvald of Snottsa married her.

  Afterwards he died, and their son too; and the mother (Inga) inherited from her son. Inga later had Eirik as husband. Then she died. Then Geirlaug came into this inheritance after her daughter Inga. The poet Thorbjorn carved these runes.

  Bastards were common, as men mostly did as they liked with female slaves. They had their lesser rights of sharing in property and blood-money; and they could gain full rights if adopted. The distinction between marriage and concubinage could become blurred; and we find illegitimate sons succeeding to the Norwegian throne.

  Village settlements seem rare. There were many scattered farms, with agricultural methods growing more intensive and breeding more selective. The houses were of turf laid on two stone courses, with the main rooms wainscotted. A farm had a long hall with a hearth in the middle, benches along the walls, and various side-rooms, stores, kitchen, guestroom, dairies, haphazardly added. Almost everything went on in the hall, where at meals the master sat on a high seat near the middle and tables were brought in. A big feast might last several days, with songs, tales and games. If a man’s thraells could not get in a harvest in time, he had the right to claim help from his neighbours; and it was the custom for crops and tools to be left out in the open, with severe penalties for thieving. The aim of the custom was to save time in the busy seasons; but it could only have grown up in a community with strong cooperative traditions. Youngsters were expected to work hard; despised was the charcoal-chewer, who hung round the cooking hearth. At twelve a boy was legally adult and might go on a Viking cruise. St Olaf embarked at that age and was a leader in his teens. At the Things or assemblies of free men the local chieftains dominated; but though any simple tribal democracy had been left far behind, the gatherings still did much to nourish the spirit of independence. Danish and Norwegian kings were bound to consult local or regional assemblies; and a striking expansion of the powers of the Thing occurred in Iceland where the colonists sturdily resisted any centralized forms of government and the courts functioned effectively without any basis in state force for carrying out their judgements.

  The capacity for mingling extreme independence with strong discipline was shown by the Jomvikings established in Pomerania at the mouth of the Oder, a sort of military guild held together by a very strict rule and described in a thirteenth-century saga. Only men of proved courage, between the ages of eighteen and fifty, were admitted; no women were permitted in the castle; no man might be absent for more than three days at a time. Members assumed the duty of mutual support and revenge, and plunder was shared out by lot. The fact that the Jomvikings were set in a castle in the midst of Wendish foes helped to enforce the discipline; but the system is none the less remarkable. It helps us to understand how the Normans could hold together a compact front in England or in Italy in the early years of their invasions. The Icelandic Althing ruled without king from 930 to the thirteenth century.

  The man of initiative, even of wilful and headstrong self-assertion, was the one respected. The saga writers are pleased to tell of someone: ‘He was a difficult boy to deal with, strong-willed and quarrelsome.’

  He [Gold Harald] went as usual to his friend Hakon and complained to him of his fate and asked for good advice and if he could help him to get his share of the kingdom, saying that he would rather try force and the chance of war than give it up.

  Hakon advised him not to speak to any man so that this should be known. ‘For,’ said he, ‘it concerns your life. And rather consider with yourself what you are man enough to undertake. For to accomplish such a purpose requires a bold and firm man, who will neither stick at good nor evil to do that which is intended. For to take up great resolutions and then to lay them aside would only end in dishonour.’[48]

  In such a society not only the tie of man and lord but that of freeman and freeman was a deep concern. Hence the ceremonial swearing-in of blood-brotherhood (called foster-brotherhood), which created bonds similar to those of kinship. We have several accounts of the rite; thus the Saga of Gisli describes it:

  They cut a neck-ring of turf from the ground and raised it up in such a way that the two ends were still fast, and under it they set an inlaid spear, tall enough for a man to lay his hand just on the rivers of the socket. The four of them were to pass underneath it...Now they drew blood and let their blood run together into earth scraped up from under the turf-ring. They mixed all this together, both earth and blood. After this they all fell on their knees and swore an oath that each would avenge the other like his own brother, and they called all the gods to witness this. And as they were about to clasp hands...[49]

  The neck-ring of turf was a long strip cut so as to make a complete circle; the ceremony is a typical example of the passage-rite of a tribal initiation, a passage through the womb of mother-earth into a rebirth on a new level: here that of an enlarged brotherhood.

  The kindreds too were strong. The laws dealing with wergild for murder have come down in a thirteenth-century form. The wergild is divided into three parts, one met by the killer, a second by his paternal kin, a third by his maternal kin. Each degree of kindred pays one half less than the nearer degree. The Jutland law, which restricts the kindred to the fourth man (the third cousin), insists that the king cannot let the killer buy peace from him unless he is reconciled to the kindred of the dead man. Clearly the laws were in force at the time they were recorded. The liability of the kindred for wergild was annulled by royal edict earlier in Denmark than elsewhere in Scandinavia; but a contemporary historian says that the edict of Knud VI for Skåne could not check manslaughter and that Valdemar II (1204-41) issued a more definite ordinance: the killer himself paid all the money, but it was still distributed to the whole kindred of the dead man. However, we still find kings in the sixteenth century complaining that wergild was collected from the killer’s ‘innocent kindred and friends [? connections by marriage], yes, the very babe in the cradle’. The kindreds were capable of acting corporately for nearly a century after the Reformation. Christian IV at last broke them, but only because of the backing he got from Protestantism.[50]

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  The Norse gods reflected the lives of their people, were linked with all human activities but did not intrude overmuch. There were spirits for every man, whether he lived by wisdom and statecraft, war and plunder, trade and seafaring, ploughing or pasturing. The functions of the gods overlapped so generously that Odin’s man, Thor’s man, Frey’s man, and the rest, could expect to be looked after in all aspects or moments of life and death. The gods themselves lived in Asgard where each had his hall; here was Yggdrasil, the sacred world-tree, under which sat the three Norns spinning men’s fates. There was a strong feeling of conflict and violence, of an attacking principle of evil. Ragnorök, world-end, was looming over both gods and men; all things would be consumed by fire and water in the midst of the battle against the dark forces led by Loki. Then a new world would arise; the gods would return, and
happiness, wisdom, and fertility would reign. But there was no central organization of religion, no set doctrine, no uniform system of worship. The priests were not a separate caste, and often temples seem to have been served by the landowners. Much ritual took place in the open air, in woods, on mounds or stones, or at springs. There were many lesser deities, guardian spirits, heroes and divine kings. Some men revered the gods; others had a sort of partnership with one of them. Many enjoyed the feastings, but believed only in their good right hand and defiant self-reliance, with the gods perhaps as applauding spectators. When Christianity was imposed, it lay lightly on large numbers, as on Helgi the Lean who ‘believed in Christ and yet made vows to Thor for sea-voyages or in tight corners and for everything that struck him as of real importance’.[51] These men could be ferociously cruel, cutting a bloodeagle by splaying out the ribs of a dead enemy; and the murder-spirit could descend on them in a berserk fury. The poet describing Harald Fairhair’s court mentions a company of picked fighters on whom the king particularly relied, berserks, also known as wolfskins. The texts show that such men had an aura of mystery and horror; Snorre calls them devotees of Odin, filled with his power. ‘They advanced without mailcoats and were as frenzied as dogs or wolves; they bit their shields; they were as strong as bears or boars; they struck men down, but neither fire nor steel could mark them. This was called the Berserk Rage.’[52] The term berserk means bear-shirt; and the possessed men were clad, at least in early times, in animal skins; they even became wildbeasts, werewolves. A pre-Viking Swedish relief shows two figures, one naked but for a horned helmet, the other wearing a wolfskin; they seem to be engaged in a ritual dance or combat. But in the sagas the skins seem to have been discarded. The Saga of Grettir the Strong tells us: