Download Game Viking Wars
Ernest Babin
A history of Britain in the violent and unruly era between the first Scandinavian raids in 789 and the final expulsion of the Vikings from York in 954.
In 865, a great Viking army landed in East Anglia, precipitating a series of wars that would last until the middle of the following century. It was in this time of crisis that the modern kingdoms of Britain were born. In their responses to the Viking threat, these kingdoms forged their identities as hybrid cultures: vibrant and entrepreneurial peoples adapting to instability and opportunity.
Traditionally, Alfred the Great is cast as the central player in the story of Viking Age Britain. But Max Adams, while stressing the genius of Alfred as war leader, law-giver, and forger of the English nation, has a more nuanced narrative approach to this conventional version of history. The Britain encountered by the Scandinavians of the ninth and tenth centuries was one of regional diversity and self-conscious cultural identities, depicted in glorious narrative fashion in The Viking Wars.
In 830s the size and frequency of viking raids on France and England increased. In 834 vikings attacked Frisia, laid waste the important trading town of Dorestad (on mouth of Rhine), and returned for the next three years in a row to pillage this port city. From 841-892 West Francia was subject to wave upon wave of viking raids.
One ought not to draw too distinct a line between these activities. Vikings came both as traders and pirates. If a town was strongly held, or if the viking party was laden with booty it wished to trade, the vikings would sell their goods. If a town was easy prey, they would sack it.
Violence, warfare and warrior ideology are seen as vital components in understanding Viking society, and the many facets of a warrior society appear through landscapes, material culture, religion, poetry, and in traces of ritualised actions and gendered practices. Warfare also present ambiguities: Weapons were instruments for terror and murder, but they also formed the basis for identity and self-esteem. The brutal realities of violence stands in contrast to the idealized images of warriors met with admiration and honour. Violence and warfare are linked to aggression and power, but intrinsically also bound to fear, bereavement and loss. Conflicts and warfare are based on drawing of thresholds for inclusion and exclusion, and even though warfare is fracturing and destructive, it can also create cohesion, social change and new political conditions. As scholars we regularly encounter the public perception of the violent Viking, calling also for reflection on the ways in which Viking violence and wars feed back into public dissemination and the present Viking fascination.
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