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Norse Warfare: A Portrayal of Combat, Raids, and Plunder in the Viking Age
They came in waves from the barren lands of the north—young,
energetic, and adventurous men looking for a fight. One can only
imagine the fear and surprise the monks at Lindisfarne, the
monastery of St. Cuthbert on Holy Island on the Northumberland coast
in northeastern England, felt when sighting the Viking fleet of
long-ships that suddenly appeared at the horizon. The monks were men
of peace and had been living and working at this holy sanctuary
since the sixth century, and could not fathom the harm and
destruction they were about to witness. An attack on God’s church
was not only unexpected; it was thought inconceivable that a siege
on such a scale could be carried out from the sea:
“This year came dreadful fore-warnings over the land of the
Northumbrians, terrifying the people most woefully; there were
immense sheets of light rushing through the air, and whirlwinds, and
fiery dragons flying across the firmament . . . and not long after .
. . the harrowing inroads of heathen men made lamentable havoc in
the church of God on Holy Island, by rapine and slaughter.”
The Vikings came over the North Sea and built their reputation as
unconventional and fearsome warriors by focusing the attacks on the
monasteries along the shores of the British empire. When the
long-ships neared the coast, the monks went down to the water to
greet the arriving strangers, but this was not a time to be
gullible. Without warning, crazed Norsemen beached their ships,
robbed the monastery of its treasures, wrecked and shattered the
precious altars, and murdered the monks, leaving only blood and
destruction in their path. By the time the sails of the Viking fleet
disappeared over the horizon, the monastery stood in ruins. The
situation was dreadful. If God would not protect the monasteries,
then who would protect the rest of Britain?
The raid on Lindisfarne in 793 has been credited with starting the
Viking Age, but was preceded by an earlier appearance of the
Norsemen in England, when a smaller fleet of three long-ships
arrived at Dorset in 787. A Saxon tax officer, thinking the
strangers were traders, asked that they face the king and pay tax.
The Vikings responded with displeasure at the request and killed the
tax officer: “And in his days came first three ships of the Northmen
from the land of robbers. The reve then rode thereto, and would
drive them to the king’s town; for he knew not what they were; and
there was he slain. These were the first ships of the Danish men
that sought the land of the English nation.”
Most of these early raids comprised small parties of just a few
ships, but laid destruction on the land so heavy that the victims
truly felt it was punishment from God. These early attempts at
pirating the monasteries and convents along the coasts of England,
Scotland, Ireland, and Wales were ambitious, but they were also
sporadic in nature, and the great raid on Lindisfarne came as a
shock to most of the civilized world.
“[T]he calamity of your tribulation saddens me greatly
every day,” wrote Alcuin of York in a letter to the Bishop of Lindisfarne upon hearing of the attack. The assault was so gruesome
that Alcuin had to justify the occurrence by relating it to the sins
of the people: “. . . when the pagans desecrated the sanctuaries of
God, and poured our the blood of saints around the altar . . . truly
it has not happened by chance, but is a sign that it was well
merited by someone.” The Vikings, who embraced a polytheistic
heathen religion that by Christian standards had few rules and moral
values and encouraged bravery in battle, must have laughed in
mockery at the monks, who in their stupidity thought their Christian
god would protect them.
The monasteries were targeted not because the Vikings were
particularly concerned with exploiting the Christians, however, but
because these holy sites were known to store great riches that were
irresistible temptations to pirates. The monasteries were also
poorly protected, at least by the standards of the Norsemen, because
Europe’s organized armies were frequently involved in conflicts
among themselves and preoccupied fighting wars in other parts of the
country. When the Frankish, German, and English leaders tried to
resolve their internal squabbles, the defense of the monasteries and
coastal communities was neglected. Many towns were also built along
the coasts for the purpose of being easily accessible to travelers
and merchants from the sea. Their location made them soft targets
vulnerable to piracy and gave the Vikings opportune moments to raid.
It was a double-edged sword: Ease of access was an essential feature
of a thriving community, but a thriving community was also a primary
target for pirates.
But the Vikings, or Norsemen, were not like other pirates of the sea
who focused on raiding what was considered easy takes, namely the
common undefended folks of society. Their strategy shifted piracy
instead toward the places that housed the greatest treasures, namely
the churches and monasteries. Many of these holy sites were
purposely located where there was no harbor and where a ship
generally could not reach, and had previously been considered safe
against looting. The Lindisfarne monastery on Holy Island, for
example, was not accessible by land and thought to be secure against
attack. But its so-called strategic location was a minor nuisance
that the Vikings overcame through the construction of their ships,
which distinguishing features were speed and surprise. The ingenuity
in ship design allowed the Vikings to sail up and down a targeted
country’s coastline and handpick their prey one-by-one. The broad
bottomed ships could be sailed in shallow waters and needed no
harbor, so the Vikings could make landfall wherever they chose. In
order to effectively defend against the attacks, a country must
therefore protect its entire coastline, an immense task that was not
possible to carry out, especially since military strongholds were
generally located away from the coasts and there were seldom enough
forewarning of the attacks to muster the forces in time.
Likewise, the Vikings rarely traveled inland since their goal was to
come away with booty and not to secure territory. Greater riches may
have loomed inland, but venturing too far from the water would have
defeated their prime source of strength, which involved attacking in
small groups with speed and surprise while avoiding land warfare
against stronger armies, and to leave as quickly as they had come.
With the exception of short travels across terrain in order to get
to the village or monastery they wanted to raid, and sometimes in
order to transport the ship short distances on land from one
waterway to another, long overland marches were generally avoided.
Of course, quick entries and exits were only possible when operating
in small groups. The raids were therefore often random, comprising
just a few ships and in accordance with the spirit of the warriors
of the time, who went wherever they pleased and took whatever they
could. A huge fleet of several hundred ships, as will be discussed
later, required a different strategy. Any Viking could arrange a
raid and most men acted on their own initiative, but the great Norse
leaders, such as Ragnar Lodbrok, Sven Forkbeard, and Olaf Trygvason
organized some of the bigger and more memorable campaigns. These
leaders frequently paved the way for their offspring to follow.
