WHY THE VIKINGS LOVED TAR

...the increase in tar production was driven by an evolving maritime culture.

New research by Sweden’s Uppsala University suggests the Vikings’ extraordinary reign of terror over Europe in the 8th century was aided by the discovery of a sticky, nondescript substance – tar.

Once they’d mastered the manufacture of tar on an ‘industrial’ scale, they used it to seal their longships – allowing them to embark on lengthy voyages with confidence. Those boys-away-trips saw plenty of ribald conquering and pillaging – and misery for victims on both sides of the Atlantic.

The research was carried out by Uppsala University’s Andreas Hennius. Writing in the British journal Antiquity, Hennius says production output from Scandinavia’s tar pits increased dramatically and coincided with the beginning of the Viking raids. He believes the increase in tar production was driven by an evolving maritime culture. Vikings were fearsome warriors – as witnessed by Alcuin of York, a monk at the Lindisfarne monastery in Northumbria which the Vikings ransacked in AD793. “Behold the church of St Cuthbert, spattered with the blood of the priests of God … a place more venerable than all in Britain is given as a prey to pagan peoples.”

Hennius says large tar pits and kilns found during recent road construction in Sweden date to between 680 and 900AD, when the Vikings began their adventures.