Viking

Viking is an Old Norse term which only came into common usage in the 19th cent. to describe peoples of Scandinavian origin who, as raiders, settlers, and traders, had major and long-lasting effects across large areas of northern Europe and the Atlantic seaboards between the late 8th and 11th cents.

Archaeological evidence suggests that trading activity between Britain and Scandinavia had existed from at least the 6th cent. In the later years of the 8th cent., however, contemporary documents record the beginnings of more aggressive contact, with Viking raids on weakly defended coastal sites in both Britain and Francia; the sacking of Lindisfarne in 793 was but one of a series of such attacks. This pattern of attacks on England changed significantly in 850 when a Danish army overwintered on Thanet in Kent; a more permanent presence was now envisaged. In 866 the ‘great raiding army’ invaded East Anglia, after several years fighting in the Carolingian empire, and one branch of this group subsequently captured the commercial and political centre of York in 867; from this base attacks were launched on Mercia, East Anglia, and Wessex. The final years of the century saw a military and political struggle for power in southern England between the Danes and Alfred (871-99), who ruled the only remaining Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex; during this period recognition of a distinct legal and administrative system in the Scandinavian-settled areas north of the Thames-Chester line emerged with the establishment of Danelaw c. 886. Alfred's successors in the early years of the 10th cent. gradually re-established their power over the Anglo-Scandinavian midlands and north but it was only with the expulsion of the last Viking king of York, Erik Bloodaxe, in 954 that England achieved a precarious political unity under a single crown. The Danelaw Scandinavians in eastern England were largely of Danish origin. During the first two decades of the 10th cent., however, groups from Norway, together with second-generation settlers familiar with western Scotland, arrived in Cumbria.

The middle years of the 10th cent. were largely free of Scandinavian activity in England, but a second wave of widespread raids began early in the reign of King Æthelred (978-1016). The ultimate aim was now political domination of England and this was eventually achieved by Cnut who became king of England and of Denmark in 1017. Anglo-Scandinavian relationships had a complex history after his death in 1035 but the defeat of Harold Hardrada at Stamford Bridge represented the last important Scandinavian attempt to conquer England.

Elsewhere in Britain (outside Ireland) Scandinavian raids and colonization are less well recorded. Apart from a few coastal place-names there is little trace of any impact on Wales. By contrast archaeological and onomastic evidence in Orkney, Shetland, the Hebrides, together with the Isle of Man, points to heavy Norwegian settlement from the early 9th cent. Much of this western area remained as a recognizable political entity (the ‘kingdom of the Isles’) until 1266, whilst the Scandinavian settlement of Orkney and Shetland accounts for their continued allegiance to Norway which only ended in 1469.