Viking

Viking Chester
Vikings[a] were the seafaring Norse people from southern Scandinavia (in present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden) who from the late 8th to late 11th centuries pirated, raided and traded from their Northern European homelands across wide areas of Europe, and explored westward to Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland. In modern English and other vernaculars, the term also commonly includes the inhabitants of Norse home communities during this period. This period of Nordic military, mercantile and demographic expansion had a profound impact on the early medieval history of Scandinavia, the British Isles, France, Estonia, Kievan Rus' and Sicily. The Vikings were known as Ascomanni ("ashmen") by the Germans for the ash wood of their boats, Dubgail and Finngail ("dark and fair foreigners") by the Irish, Lochlannach ("lake person") by the Gaels and Dene (Dane) by the Anglo-Saxons. Geographically, the Viking Age covered Scandinavian lands (modern Denmark, Norway and Sweden), as well as territories under North Germanic dominance, mainly the Danelaw, including Scandinavian York, the administrative centre of the remains of the Kingdom of Northumbria, significant parts of Mercia, and East Anglia.

Expert sailors and navigators aboard their characteristic longships, Vikings voyaged as far as the Mediterranean littoral, North Africa, and the Middle East. After decades of exploration around the coasts and rivers of Europe, Vikings established Norse communities and governments scattered across north-western Europe, Belarus, Ukraine and European Russia, the North Atlantic islands all the way to the north-eastern coast of North America. The Vikings and their descendants established themselves as rulers and nobility in many areas of Europe. The Normans, descendants of Vikings who conquered and gave their name to what is now Normandy, also formed the aristocracy of England after the Norman conquest of England.

Judging from the rather limited historical evidence for Scandinavian settlement in the Wirral, the Norse, under the leadsership of Ingimund, were allowed to settle in Mercian territory by permission of Æthelflæd who effectively ruled Mercia from 911 until her death in 918.

The Evidence
The presence of a Viking settlement in the Wirral and at Chester is evident from place names and has more recently been confirmed by DNA studies. There is additional evidence in the form of church dedications and physical objects.

Place Names
Evidence of Norse settlement in Wirral can be seen from its place names, such as the '-by' (meaning "village" in Scandinavian languages) suffix, which is common in the area i.e, Helsby - hjalli-byr village at the ledge, Raby, from the Old Norse ra-byr meaning boundary or border settlement, Frankby (Franki's settlement), Greasby (wooded stronghold). Tranmere comes from trani melr ("cranebird sandbank"), Meols derives from the Old Norse for sandbanks or sandhills. West Kirby, or West Church Settlement, the settlement of Vestri Kirkjubaer in Iceland has exactly the same name, which translates from Icelandic as West Kirby. Thor’s Stone, also known as Thor’s Rock, on Thurstaston Common, a large red sandstone outcrop of unusual shape and appearance, is a place shrouded in legend. Early Viking settlers are purported to have held religious ceremonies there in honour of the thunder god Thor. Further examples include Heskeths field (which derives from hestaskeið = horse race track), Storeton is old Norse for great farmstead or farmstead by a young wood. Claughton means hamlet on a hillock, Neston (farmstead at the promontory), Hinderton (village lying at the back), Arrowe (shieling or hill pasture), Denhall (Danes' well), Gayton (goat farmstead) and Ness (promontory, a almost lost feature of the original coastline).

DNA
Recent Y-DNA research has also revealed the genetic trail left by Vikings in the Wirral, specifically relatively high rates of the Haplogroup R1a, which is distributed in a large region in Eurasia, extending from Scandinavia and Central Europe to southern Siberia and South Asia. It is associated in Britain with Norse ancestry.‘Viking DNA: The Wirral and West Lancashire Project’ is the culmination of several years of research by Wirral-raised Professor Steve Harding from the University of Nottingham, Professor Mark Jobling and Dr Turi King from the University of Leicester. A group of volunteers were selected according to certain areas and specific surnames present in these areas at least prior to 1600. DNA tests on around 100 men from the area who had local surnames dating back hundreds of years. Some names were sourced from a tax register from the time of Henry VIII, others from lists of alehouse and criminal records, and a list of people who contributed to the stipend of a priest. Scientists found two men from Meols who shared identical historical links to Scandinavia during DNA studies, their strongest DNA link was to Gotland, an island off the east coast of Sweden.

Physical Evidence
The presence of isolated finds of "Viking" artifacts does not always indicate invasion or settlement, but could be an idem lost by a traveller or trader passing through an area.

In the museum in the old school-house by the churchyard at West Kirby one may see a stone, which, from its shape, antiquaries call a 'hog-back'. The hog-back is generally believed to be a tombstone or grave-slab that marked the burial-place of some Scandinavian chief, although hogbacks are not found in Scandinavia. They are considered a unique invention made by the Viking settlers in Northern England. The hog-back stone bears heavy damage on its top surface and there has been speculation that it has lost short parts of both of its ends (which possibly included "end-beasts" - although not all do). The decoration consists of three bands; wheel and bar ornament on side A’s top, skeuomorphic shingle-roof tegulae (tiles) in the middle and plaitwork beneath. This stone, said to date from the 10th century AD was discovered during the restoration of the church in 1869. It has been suggested that the monument type was invented in the late 9th century, at a time when Viking warlords had seized power at York. However, a tenth-century date has been generally accepted due to the ornament on hogbacks, largely influenced by the Borre and Jellinge styles which appeared in Scandinavia in the late ninth and early tenth centuries.

The West Kirby stone presents something of a puzzle as it is not of the local rock but appears to be from the Cefn quarries near Ruabon/Wrexham. This was a much sought-after building stone for centuries, but the quarries are well outside the Hiberno-Norse sphere of influence. The Pillar of Eliseg is from the same hard, grey, quartz-rich sandstone, as is the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct over the River Dee. Despite that some earlier hogbacks have pagan imagery, the fact that they are typically found in churchyards may indicate that they were made for wealthy Christian Scandinavians. The puzzle is further complicated by looking at the distribution of hog-backs through England and Wales - this type of monument is rare outside of the north-east, with only a few elsewhere. The majority of the stones appear to come from areas which were not settled by what might be called "Ingamund's People". However, the coincidence of hogback distribution with that of Norse-Irish place-names in Northern England allows for the possibility of ultimate Irish influence. Tegulated house-shaped caps are common on tenth-century high crosses in Ireland. The earliest forms of hog-back are found in the Allertonshire area of North Yorkshire, those from Brompton being well executed copies of long houses with "bombe" sides and large-muzzled bears as end-beasts, each occupying a third of the monument. Houses of this type have been revealed in an eleventh-century context in England, though not in Yorkshire as yet, and Scandinavian sites, notably the Danish forts of Trelleborg and Fyrkat, have yielded ground plans of very similar buildings. Curiously, recent excavations at Hilbre Island may have revealed a similar structure.

"Scouse"
Lapskaus is a thick Norwegian stew made of meat and potatoes. In Britain such a dish and its variants are known in areas which were settled by the Vikings. "Lobscouse", a European sailors' stew or hash particularly associated with Liverpool. Similar dishes include the Danish "labskovs", Finnish "Lapskoussi" or the German "labskaus". Latvian "Labs kauss", means "good bowl" or hotpot, Lithuanian "labas káušas", means the same. Many other origins for the culinary term "scouse" have been suggested.

It has been suggested that the presence of this dish arrived in all these places through the agency of sailors - the "Oxford Companion to Food" states that lobscouse:


 * "almost certainly has its origins in the Baltic ports, especially those of Germany"

Potatoes and salted meats were a standard fare of sailors and Labskaus would make a "less than fresh" cut of meat more palatable and stretch the meat supply. Obviously, the potato would not have been known to the Vikings (they were introduced to Europe from the mid-Americas in the second half of the 16th century by the Spanish). Very few root vegetables were known at the time (possibly only the parsnip).

The History
The political history of human migration and settlement has been the subject of much debate. Views on population movements range from invasion and "ethnic cleasing" with wholesale eradication of any "indigenous" population, to replacement of the controlling classes by new rulers and artisans with inter-breeding into the previous society. Future archaeologists may well find the remains of Japanese cars in Chester, but this does not mean that the City was invaded by the Japanese. Similar arguments may be applied to earlier cultures, where technology such as the replacement of bronze with iron need not always mean that there were "Iron Age invaders". The Romans invaded Britain, as did the Normans, but neither replaced the existing population with "Italians" or "French". The impact of the Vikings on the history of Chester is best seen against the background of previous events.

Anglo-Saxons
The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England from the 5th century. They comprised people from Germanic tribes who migrated to the island from continental Europe, their descendants, and indigenous British groups who adopted many aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture and language. The Anglo-Saxons established the Kingdom of England, and the modern English language owes almost half of its words – including the most common words of everyday speech – to their language. The Old English ethnonym "Angul-Seaxan" comes from the Latin Angli-Saxones and became the name of the peoples Bede calls Angli and Gildas calls Saxones. Anglo-Saxon is a term that was rarely used by Anglo-Saxons themselves. It is likely they identified as ængli, Seaxe or, more probably, a local or tribal name such as Mierce, Cantie, Gewisse, Westseaxe, or Norþanhymbre. Scholars have not reached a consensus on the number of migrants who entered Britain in this period.

Mercia
Archaeological surveys show that Angles settled the lands north of the River Thames by the 6th century. The Mercian kings were the only Anglo-Saxon ruling house known to claim a direct family link with a pre-migration Continental Germanic monarchy, via Icel supposedly the son of Eomer (443-489), last King of the Angles in Angeln. Icel supposedly led his people across the North Sea to Britain around 515. Eomer would later give his name to a major character in "Lord of the Rings".

In many ways Mercia was the dominant English kingdom for three centuries, between about 600 and about 900. In much later medieval times, historians would begin to refer to the early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms as the "Heptarchy", listing its members as East Anglia, Essex, Kent, Mercia, Northumbria, Sussex, and Wessex. Although heptarchy suggests the existence of seven kingdoms, the term is just used as a label of convenience and does not imply the existence of a clear-cut or stable group of seven kingdoms at all times. The number of kingdoms and sub-kingdoms fluctuated rapidly as kings contended for supremacy. In the late 6th century, the king of Kent was a prominent lord in the south. In the 7th century, the rulers of Northumbria and Wessex were powerful. In the 8th century, Mercia achieved hegemony over the other surviving kingdoms, particularly during the reign of Offa. Mercia was a perculiar state in that it does not appear for much of its existence to have had a capital as such, but made use of a "portable court" with the ruler moving from place to place and perhaps over-wintering at a royal estate.



"First" raids
Initially, the Vikings limited their attacks to "hit-and-run" raids. However, they soon expanded their operations. In the years 814-820, Danish Vikings repeatedly sacked the regions of Northwestern France via the Seine River and also repeatedly sacked monasteries in the Bay of Biscay via the Loire River. Eventually, the Vikings settled in these areas and turned to farming. This was mainly due to Rollo, a Viking leader who seized what is now Normandy in 879, and formally in 911 when Charles the Simple of West Francia granted him the Lower Seine.

Hiberno-Norse
The First Viking Age in Ireland began in 795, when Vikings began carrying out hit-and-run raids on Gaelic Irish coastal settlements. Over the following decades the raiding parties became bigger and better organized; inland settlements were targeted as well as coastal ones; and the raiders built naval encampments known as longphorts to allow them to remain in Ireland throughout the winter. In the mid 9th century, Viking leader Turgeis or Thorgest founded a stronghold at Dublin, plundered Leinster and Meath, and raided other parts of Ireland. He was killed by the High King, Máel Sechnaill mac Máele Ruanaid, which was followed by several Irish victories against the Vikings and the seizure of Dublin in 849. Shortly after, a new group of Vikings known as the Dubgaill ("dark foreigners") came to Ireland and clashed with the earlier Viking settlers, now called the Finngaill ("fair foreigners"). The wavering fortunes of these three groups and their shifting alliances, together with the shortcomings of contemporary records and the inaccuracy of later accounts, make this period one of the most complicated and least understood in the city's history.

Ingimund
Some historians have suggested that allowing the Vikings to settle was a strange decision. What may be relevant is that Æthelflæd's brother, Edward the Elder had other issues with the Vikings at the time. Becoming king was not straightforward for Edward. A cousin, Æthelwold, disputed the succession and seized the royal estates of Wimborne, symbolically important as the place where his father was buried, and Christchurch, both in Dorset. Edward brought an army to Dorset, but Æthelwold fled to Viking-controlled Northumbria, where he was accepted as king - although it is not clear whether he was accepted as "king of Northumbria" or simply recognised as having a claim to Wessex. No explanation can be offered as to how he came to be on apparently friendly terms with the Northumbrians. In 901 or 902 Æthelwold sailed with a fleet to Essex, where he was also accepted as king (again it is not clear of what). The following year Æthelwold persuaded the East Anglian Danes (Vikings) to attack Edward's territory in Wessex and Mercia.

At about the same time the Hiberno-Norse exile Ingimund sought to settle near Chester. Ingimund was a Viking who had been expelled from Ireland and had attempted to settle in north Wales where he came into immediate conflict with the Welsh. According to the Welsh Annals, Ingimund came to Anglesey and held "Maes Osmeliaun", whilst the Welsh vernacular chronicle reports that Ingimund held "Maes Ros Meilon". The site itself appears to have been located on the eastern edge of Anglesey, perhaps near Llanfaes (effectively the later site of Beaumaris) if the aforesaid place names are any clue. Another possibility is that Ingimund was settled near Llanbedrgoch, where evidence of farming, manufacturing, and trading has been excavated at a Viking-age settlement. There is reason to suspect that the Llanbedrgoch site formed an aristocratic power centre, and that it may have originated as an informal Viking trading centre just prior to Ingimund's attempted colonisation. The centre itself could have provided an important staging post between the Welsh and other trading centres in the Irish Sea region. The conflict with the Vikings is well-attested in the Welsh records but Ingimunds subsequent move to the Wirral is only based on fragmentary evidence. There is no reason to suppose that the events on the Wirral and in East Anglia were related, but any arrangements reached with Ingamund could have been affected by the threat from Danes on two fronts, and the close timing of these two events is often overlooked by historians. Ingimund may well have been a member of the wealthy slave-trading rulers of Viking Dublin before his expulsion and could have offered a substantial cash bribe, which would have been of considerable benefit to Æthelflæd. This may even have been a quanity of silver sufficient to kick-start the expansion of a mint in Chester.

Edward now retaliated with a raid on East Anglia, forcing the enemy to return home in order to protect their own lands. When Edward withdrew the men of Kent lingered and met the East Anglian Danes at the Battle of the Holme (13 December 902). The Danes were victorious but suffered heavy losses, including the death of Æthelwold.

In the Wirral, the Norse possibly landed somewhere between "Vestri-Kirkubyr" (West Kirby) and "Melr" (Meols). At Meols over 4000 artefacts and nearly 1000 coins and tokens have been recovered from the eroding shore. The finds, mainly made in the 19th century, date from the prehistoric, Roman, medieval and post medieval periods and are an indication that in the past Meols was a major coastal trading site with links to places as far away as mainland Europe and the Mediterranean. The exiles, led by Ingimund, were granted land in Wirral by Æthelflæd and soon established a community with a clearly defined border, its own leader, its own language (Norse), a trading port, and at its centre a place of assembly or government (þing vollr) - the "Thing" at Thingwall. They also brought their religion with them to "Thor's Stone" (Mjollnir) at "Thorsteinn's farmstead", now Thurstaston Hill. It is also possible that the Norwegian "Labskause" may have come to this part of the country at that time and survived as "scouse". See: Hilbre Island for more.



Archaeology also confirms a Hiberno-Norse presence in Chester itself: a brooch with Borre-Jellinge ornament found at Princess Street/Hunter Street is identical with a brooch found in Dublin, and must have derived from the same mould. So trade had been established with Chester but the Vikings cast covetous eyes on the wealth of the city. In 905 (some sources say 912), the Norsemen revolted and attempted to take the city of Chester. The opening of the story involves a certain amount of treachery:


 * At first, the Saxon inhabitants of Chester placed a force outside the city gates and then staged a mock retreat. The Norse followed and the gates were closed behind them, trapping them in the city where a great number were slain.


 * Following this, the Saxons came to an arrangement with the Irish, who were "no friends of the Saxons but hated the Norsemen more" to meet with the Norse and propose to betray Chester. Unfortunately this was a double-cross and the Norse that came (unarmed) to the meeting were also slain.

Their subsequent Norse attempt at taking the city took on all the elements of a farce:


 * The first Norse attack upon the walls was driven off by dropping rocks upon them. The Norse answer to this was to protect their heads with wooden hurdles supported by wooden beams;


 * The Saxon answer to the hurdles was to pour boiling beer on the Vikings (which of course ran through the hurdles). The Norse response to this was to cover the hurdles with animal skins;


 * Fire would have been the next Saxon weapon, and the Vikings would have countered this by protecting their assault on the wall with soaking-wet sails from their ships;


 * Unfortunately for the Vikings the Saxons has a secret weapon - they threw at the Vikings "all the beehives of the town". For the Vikings, trapped inside their heavy, soaking wet, hide and sail-covered siege shelters - now also filled with very agitated bees - that was enough, and the attempt on the city was abandoned.

"Ingamunds saga" (and the "Three Fragments" of the "Annals of Ireland") repeat the story as follows:


 * "..But the other forces, the Norsemen, were under hurdles piercing the walls. What the Mercians and the Irish who were among them did was to throw large rocks so that they destroyed the hurdles over them. What they did in the face of this was to place large posts under the hurdles. What the Mercians did was to put all the ale and water of the town in the cauldrons of the town, to boil them and pour them over those who were under the hurdles so that the skins were stripped from them. The answer that the Norsemen gave to this was to spread hides on the hurdles. What the Mercians did was to let loose on the attacking force all the beehives in the town, so that they could not move their legs of hands from the great number of bees stinging them. Afterwards they left the city and abandoned it. It was not long before they returned."

The later fortunes of Ingamund's people is not entirely certain: there was a sizeable Scandinavian "ghetto" in the southern quarter of Chester later on, centred on the church of St Olave’s (the Norwegian king, Olaf Haraldsson, martyred in 1030), and it would appear that many of them settled down in the city as merchants, possibly giving rise to the Gloverstone enclave.

When Edward died in 924, he controlled all of England south of the Humber and had concluded treaties with his neighbours to the north, including Scotland, Strathclyde and Scandinavian York. The simplest way of explaining what happened next is that Edward's successor Æþelstān broke his father's treaties as soon as the opportunity to do so presented itself.

Cnut
An English payment of 10,000 Roman pounds (3,300 kg) of silver was first made in 991 following the Viking victory at the Battle of Maldon in Essex, when Æthelred was advised by Sigeric the Serious, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the aldermen of the south-western provinces to buy off the Vikings rather than continue the armed struggle. In 994 the Danes, under King Sweyn Forkbeard and Olav Tryggvason, returned and laid siege to London. They were once more bought off, and the amount of silver paid impressed the Danes with the idea that it was more profitable to extort payments from the English than to take whatever booty they could plunder. Further payments were made in 1002, and in 1007 Æthelred bought two years peace with the Danes for 36,000 troy pounds (13,400 kg) of silver. In 1012, following the capture and murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the sack of Canterbury, the Danes were bought off with another 48,000 troy pounds (17,900 kg) of silver. In 1016 Sweyn Forkbeard's son, Canute, became King of England. After two years he felt sufficiently in control of his new kingdom to the extent of being able to pay off all but 40 ships of his invasion fleet, which were retained as a personal bodyguard, with a huge Danegeld of 72,000 troy pounds (26,900 kg) of silver collected nationally, plus a further 10,500 pounds (3,900 kg) of silver collected from London.

Related Pages

 * St Olave: the decommissioned church in Lower Bridge Street;
 * Olaf II: saint or psychopath?;
 * Battle of Brunanburh: fought near Chester?;
 * Amphitheatre:
 * Ælfgar: the end of the Dark Ages from a Mercian perspective;