Why Vikings were nice boys, really
A Danish academic says the invaders simply had worse PR than earlier Anglo-Saxon tribes, writes.
Forget tales of rape and pillage – the Vikings are much misunderstood and were nicer invaders of Britain than popular myth would have you believe.
That, at least, is the view of a Danish academic who claims his forebears were the victims of fake news spread by disgruntled English monks and compare favourably with the Anglo-Saxons.
Centuries after the ancestors of the English carried out ‘‘ethnic cleansing’’ against native Britons, the Vikings came and built a ‘‘Scandinavian multiethnic culture’’ in their British territories, according to Mads Ravn, head of research at Vejle Museums.
Writing in ,he said the calumny goes back to 793 when Alcuin, a Northumbrian monk and scholar, described a Viking raid on Lindisfarne in chilling detail. ‘‘The heathens poured out the blood of saints around the altar, and trampled on the bodies of saints in the temple of God, like dung in the streets,’’ he wrote.
This picture of bloodthirsty invaders has endured, with the History Channel’s series depicting the raiders of Lindisfarne taking pleasure in splitting the skulls of effete clergy. Tenth-century reports that Edmund the Martyr, king of East Anglia, was tied to a tree, riddled with arrows till he resembled a hedgehog and beheaded following his capture by the Viking Great Heathen army in 869 have not helped the Scandinavians’ PR. Nor have names such as Eric Bloodaxe and Sigurd Snake-in-the-Eye.
Yet, according to Ravn: ‘‘The reported plundering and ethnic cleansing are probably overrated. The Vikings simply had worse ‘press coverage’ by frustrated English monks, who bemoaned their attacks.’’
These Anglo-Saxon clerics may have had more reason than most to despise and fear the Vikings, who were pagans and targeted their monasteries for their treasures. According to Ravn, modern studies of DNA, archaeology, history and linguistics paint a more nuanced pictured of Viking activity. ‘‘They indicate that the Vikings were not the worst invaders to land on English shores at that time. That title goes to the Anglo-Saxons,
400 years earlier.’’
Ravn suggests the AngloSaxons – who arrived as Angles, Saxons and other tribes from today’s Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands in the 400s and
500s, dominating England by the
mid-600s – oppressed and terrorised the existing population to a far greater extent than the Vikings did when they raided Britain and gained ascendancy over large areas of northern England in the 800s.
This is partly evidenced in language, he says: ‘‘In the 5th and
6th centuries, old English wiped out the earlier Celtic language in a similar way that modern English eradicated the language of the Native Americans in the US in the 19th and 20th centuries . . . The Vikings’ impact was significantly less. Linguists do see some influence from the old Norse of the Vikings in old English. But it doesn’t come close to the eradication of Celtic by the AngloSaxons.’’
Ravn contrasts Anglo-Saxon subjugation of the native Britons to Viking intermingling with the populations they came to rule. In a measure, which he points out has been likened to ‘‘apartheid’’, Anglo-Saxon rulers imposed different laws on their own people and native Britons, or wealas, who had a lower status. Moreover, he argues that the case for an ‘‘ethnic cleansing’’ of the Britons is ‘‘likely’’, suggesting that many fled the conquered territories to areas such as Wales and Brittany that remained under native British control. He cites DNA studies that suggest the Anglo-Saxons came over in large numbers and account for a large part of the ancestry of the modern English.
All this recalls the traditional view referenced by Sellar and Yeatman in 1066 And All That: ‘‘The brutal Saxon invaders drove the Britons westward into Wales and compelled them to become Welsh; it is now considered doubtful whether this was a Good Thing.’’
In contrast, Ravn says the Vikings, who settled in smaller numbers, ‘‘most likely’’ intermarried with the AngloSaxons, bequeathing some homely words such as ‘‘bairn’’ (from Old Norse, barn) for ‘‘child’’ to their northern English descendants.
The Danish historian is not the first to speak up for the Vikings’ good points. The Jorvik Viking Centre in York teaches visitors about the ‘‘evolution of a multicultural society’’ in the city under Viking rule.
Ravn’s depiction of the AngloSaxons as worse than Vikings fits with accounts from British writers such as the 6th-century monk Gildas. He recorded how,
‘‘The heathens poured out the blood of saints around the altar, and trampled on the bodies of saints in the temple of God, like dung in the streets.’’
following the withdrawal of the Romans, the Britons invited ‘‘Saxon’’ mercenaries to fight off Picts and Irish.
The mercenaries rebelled and conquered areas of England. Gildas described the AngloSaxons as ‘‘like wolves in the sheep-fold’’ and ‘‘a race hateful both to God and men’’.
Elements of Ravn’s thesis are likely to be controversial, however. Genetic studies indicate that the Anglo-Saxons intermarried extensively with the Britons, who still account for the larger part of the ancestry of the English, according to recent studies. In addition, the earliest rulers of Wessex, who were supposedly Saxons, had names such as Cerdic (Caratacus in Latin) that indicate a British or mixed origin.
This supports the idea of a hybrid culture.