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English Heritage
Viking Age England
From shortly before AD 800 until the Norman Conquest, England was subject to raids from seafaring peoples from Scandinavia - the Vikings. However, they were not only raiders but also traders and settlers. During this period, the English state was unified under a single ruler for the first time and Anglo-Saxon society underwent great changes. Using the latest archaeological evidence from places such as London, Lincoln and York, the author reassesses the Viking contribution to Late Anglo-Saxon England and examines the creation of a new Anglo-Scandinavian identity.
190 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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134 people want to read
About the author
Julian D. Richards
6 books2 followersJulian D. Richards is professor of archaeology at the University of York. He is co-director of the Tents to Towns project, exploring the transition from Viking raiding to trading. Julian is author of Viking Age England, now in its third edition, and The Vikings: A Very Short Introduction.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 19, 2015
An interesting and surprising account of the evidence for Viking Age England. This is not a book about the Vikings, this is what the archaeology of England looked like during the Age of the Vikings and in many ways how much of the Anglo-Saxon culture continued to survive and shape the 'Viking archaeology', especially in the towns.
June 28, 2018
I've enjoyed reading it and gathered new information about how life was in England in 9 - 11th century A.D.
July 22, 2021
The History of the Norse goes all the way back to the Stone Age, but they are best known for a period of time when they raided several parts of Europe known as the Viking Age.
The Viking Age is characteristically recorded in history as occurring around around 793 AD to 1066 AD. This is not the time span of the Norse people themselves, nor was it the climax of their civilization. This is simply the height of the time when the Norse people were most written about. The time they went Viking and the World noticed and was terrified.
The Norse Viking Age began someplace just before the date of 800 AD. The authentic beginning of Viking Age is a bit hazy and different areas argue different time periods. Consequently, the beginning of the Viking Age is usually accepted to have formally began on the 8th of June 793 AD when Norse Raiders (Vikings) made an attack on a monastery on Lindisfarne, an island off the northeast coast of England.
Lindisfarne was a vulnerable place known as the “Holy Island.” The Viking raid on it caused much consternation throughout the Christian West and is most oftenly marked as being the beginning of the Viking Age, a period of time when the Norse are most often talked about -- the Age when the Norse invaded as Vikings.
History became conscious of the people who are today referred to as Vikings in 793 AD, when a force of raiders from across the North Sea landed on Lindisfarne Island and sacked the monastery there. This was no chance landfall, nor was it the first time that Viking ships had landed on the Northumbrian coast.
The Vikings, then, were a resilient and warlike people who had developed a high standard of technology. They were professional weapon-makers and workers of metal, and could build excellent ships. They would trade when it was more profitable than raiding, and they did not destroy for the sake of it – there was no profit in that. The Vikings were driven by the same motivations that had always inspired their people: wealth and word-fame. A thriving expedition – whether trading or raiding – would bring its participants both of these precious commodities.
A triumphant return with a ship full of booty and tall tales !!
The raiders knew about the monastery and the easy plunder to be had there from their previous expeditions. The origin of these raiders is open to some debate. Most historians agree that they were Scandinavians, although it has been suggested that they might have been Frisians. It is most likely that they were of Danish or Norwegian origin, possibly sailing from settlements in the Orkney or Shetland Islands.
Contemporary sources refer to them as coming ‘from the north’ or ‘from the land of robbers’, which suggests that enough raids had occurred previously for these seafarers to have acquired a reputation long before they struck Lindisfarne.
The term ‘Viking’ is thought to initiate with the Scandinavians themselves, in the Old Norse nouns víking (a pirate raid) and víkingr (a pirate). But how those terms came to mean what they did remains a mystery – scholars still disagree over whether they have their origin in the verb víkja (to move swiftly), or the noun vík (an inlet or bay). In the latter case it may refer explicitly to one bay in particular, the ‘Vik’, that leads to the site of modern Oslo.
Or, the word may have a different root, leading back through the Anglo-Saxon wic to the Latin vicus, a place of trade.
Whatever its origins, the term itself was unknown in English until the 19th century – the Oxford English Dictionary does not record an appearance until 1807 – and remained little used for several decades thereafter.
However, by the latter half of the Victorian era, we see a veritable explosion of Viking-related books resting heavily for their inspiration on translations of the sagas of Iceland, particularly Samuel Laing’s landmark Heimskringla, an account of the early kings of Norway, published in 1844, and reprinted with substantially greater success in 1889.
This book is about the development of Anglo-Saxon England from AD 800 until the Norman Conquest. For almost 250 years England was subject to attacks from Scandinavia.
Contemporary chroniclers called the raiders by many names, including heathens and pagans, as well as Northmen and Danes, but one of the names used to refer to them by the English was ‘Viking’, and this is now used to describe not only the raiders, but also the period during which they carried out their attacks. These centuries, from the 9th to the 11th , have become known, therefore, as the Viking Age.
The Vikings themselves can be indefinable. The introduction of Scandinavian art styles can be seen on jewellery and sculpture, but Scandinavian-style houses and graves are often hard to categorize. Indeed, the association between Scandinavian settlers and the existing population must be considered to see how far the newcomers adopted inhabitant customs or invented new ones, sometimes rendering themselves impossible to tell apart from the local people and invisible to the archaeologist; sometimes creating new identities.
This book focuses, hence, on the period rather than on the people, and scans all the archaeological traces of Viking Age England. It will be concerned particularly with England where, as a result of major excavations conducted over the last 30 years in towns like York, Lincoln and London, and in the countryside at sites such as Goltho, Raunds and Wharram Percy, we may now be closer to understanding the nature of Scandinavian interaction with the local population. Scotland, the Northern Isles, and the areas bordering the Irish Sea were also subject to separate Scandinavian influence, but are outside the scope of this book.
The Scottish Hebrides and the Isle of Man were settled as a Norse kingdom of Man and the Western Isles. They formed part of an important axis between the Hiberno-Norse of Dublin and the Anglo-Scandinavian kings of York. The Isle of Man maintains elements of its Norse heritage to the present day, including the tradition of meetings of the Viking assembly or Thing in an annual open-air meeting of the Manx Parliament, the Tynwald.
Nonetheless both Scotland and the Isle of Man have been the subject of several recent books, and Scandinavian settlement there will only be considered in relation to developments in England.
The book has been divided into the following eleven chapters:
1) The Viking Age
2) Viking raids
3) Viking colonisation
4) The growth of towns
5) The built environment
6) Feeding the people
7) Craft and industry
8) Trade and exchange
9) Churches and monasteries
10) Death and burial
11) Monuments in stone
The most significant contributions to the arrival of the Vikings had less to do with the rich pickings of undefended English monasteries, and more to do with the strengthening of sea defences elsewhere, and with earlier contacts formed through trade. When the Vikings attacked their victims, it seems that it was rare that they stumbled across a target by accident – they knew what they were looking for because they had been there before.
They knew whom they were robbing, because perhaps only months earlier, they or their associates had been trading with them.
One must bear in mind that in most cases, the Norse Viking Age is recorded to have officially began in 793 AD with the first recorded raid through to 1066 AD, ending with the Battle of Hastings. However, these dates vary upon scholars.
The Battle of Hastings wasn't precisely the end of the Viking Age, because the Norse were spread out across Europe and Viking raids continued to take place in other locations. With that said, dating the conclusion of the Viking Age is fairly generic because Viking raids were sporadic in many locations and when one area was under control, another area was being raided. Additionally, because Viking raiders weren't unified efforts and most Norsemen tended to 'vikingr' (raid) at their own whim. This places the conclusion of the Viking Age at approximately the beginning of the 12th Century-ish.
This is also about the time when Norse and other Kingdoms were becoming increasingly solidified and more able to repel Viking incursions. This was also around the time when the Christianization of Northern Europe and Norse dominated lands began to take a firmer hold. So dating the exact end of the Viking Age is vague at best.
Two major themes run through this book. In the first place, it raises a number of significant questions, such as:
1) What was the Scandinavian contribution to the development of Late Saxon England?
2) How far did the newcomers simply modify local developments already in progress?
3) Was there anything distinctive about Scandinavian settlements?
4) Were the major trading towns, such as Jorvik, already established before Scandinavian traders arrived?
5) What was the Scandinavian influence on the formation of the English state?
Secondly, the author takes up the question of Scandinavian and native interaction. Here too he raises questions and seeks to provide a roadmap through which the reader can look for his own answers. He asks:
1) What was the native response to Scandinavians in the areas settled?
2) What was it about the Scandinavian character that meant that in some areas, such as the Danelaw, they disappeared, fusing with the local traditions; whilst in others, such as the Isle of Man, they preserved a distinctive culture?
3) How did they adapt, both economically, and in social and religious terms, to local circumstances?
One needs to bear in mind that interaction between the two peoples would have been subject to a number of factors: the extent of social, economic and political dependence of one group on the other, the ability of people to talk with one another, the degree of intermarriage, or of cultural and religious assimilation. We must also bear in mind that this was a long and complex process, spanning three hundred years, with much local variation.
Between the 8th and the 11th centuries, around 200,000 people left Scandinavia to settle elsewhere. These voyagers were primarily men with nothing to lose. The water-ways of the Baltic and the inlets of Norway turned them into fishermen and merchants, and the first of their ventures were undoubtedly trading ones.
In some parts of the world, this is how they stayed – their behaviour towards foreigners largely dictated by comparative strengths.
Where a land was mainly deserted, such as Iceland or the Faeroes, the new arrivals simply settled and stayed! The dispossessed sons of Scandinavia found some land, bought some wives and slaves and, more often than not, fell back into the farming routine from which they had sprung.
Such conditions prevented them, at least, from turning into bona fide ‘Vikings’, although there was no guarantee their descendants might not go in search of plunder elsewhere – even the relatively peaceful Icelanders occasionally exported their criminal element back to Europe.
Where voyagers encountered local inhabitants, their behaviour depended on what they could get away with. While Viking marauders feature in the local histories of England, Ireland and France, such tales are not so well known elsewhere.
Encounters with the unquenchable menace of Greek fire, for example, put paid to most Viking attacks on the Byzantine world. In Constantinople, the Byzantine Empire enjoyed generally positive relations with the men from the northern lands, and relied heavily on them as mercenaries.
The greatest achievement of this book is to prove the fact that Vikings were often defined by what they were not. They were, to the contemporary chroniclers that hated and feared them, not civilized, not local, and most importantly not Christian. The so-called Viking Age petered out when these negative traits were annulled. Scandinavia was eventually Christianized, ironically in part through the experiences of its sons abroad, forcing the Vikings to rethink who constituted friend and foe.
By the 12th century, when Scandinavian crusaders converted Estonia to Christianity at the point of a sword, they were now not only raiding somewhere sufficiently out of the way of Western European consciousness, but doing so in the name of the Lord.
However, the Vikings did have a aesthetic side to them as well. Vikings loved elaborate decorations and they decorated many of the things they used: weapons, jewelry, runestones, ship woodwork and even their common, everyday items. They loved abstract and intricate animal designs and multiple interlacing lines. They had music and their own concepts of administration.
As a reader I have been into Nordic history and culture for quite some time. Accordingly, I did not face a quandary with the often monotonous and dowdy narrative approach of the book.
This to my mind is the lone reason that would make this book something of a pickle for the informal reader.
You can grab a copy if you choose.
The Viking Age is characteristically recorded in history as occurring around around 793 AD to 1066 AD. This is not the time span of the Norse people themselves, nor was it the climax of their civilization. This is simply the height of the time when the Norse people were most written about. The time they went Viking and the World noticed and was terrified.
The Norse Viking Age began someplace just before the date of 800 AD. The authentic beginning of Viking Age is a bit hazy and different areas argue different time periods. Consequently, the beginning of the Viking Age is usually accepted to have formally began on the 8th of June 793 AD when Norse Raiders (Vikings) made an attack on a monastery on Lindisfarne, an island off the northeast coast of England.
Lindisfarne was a vulnerable place known as the “Holy Island.” The Viking raid on it caused much consternation throughout the Christian West and is most oftenly marked as being the beginning of the Viking Age, a period of time when the Norse are most often talked about -- the Age when the Norse invaded as Vikings.
History became conscious of the people who are today referred to as Vikings in 793 AD, when a force of raiders from across the North Sea landed on Lindisfarne Island and sacked the monastery there. This was no chance landfall, nor was it the first time that Viking ships had landed on the Northumbrian coast.
The Vikings, then, were a resilient and warlike people who had developed a high standard of technology. They were professional weapon-makers and workers of metal, and could build excellent ships. They would trade when it was more profitable than raiding, and they did not destroy for the sake of it – there was no profit in that. The Vikings were driven by the same motivations that had always inspired their people: wealth and word-fame. A thriving expedition – whether trading or raiding – would bring its participants both of these precious commodities.
A triumphant return with a ship full of booty and tall tales !!
The raiders knew about the monastery and the easy plunder to be had there from their previous expeditions. The origin of these raiders is open to some debate. Most historians agree that they were Scandinavians, although it has been suggested that they might have been Frisians. It is most likely that they were of Danish or Norwegian origin, possibly sailing from settlements in the Orkney or Shetland Islands.
Contemporary sources refer to them as coming ‘from the north’ or ‘from the land of robbers’, which suggests that enough raids had occurred previously for these seafarers to have acquired a reputation long before they struck Lindisfarne.
The term ‘Viking’ is thought to initiate with the Scandinavians themselves, in the Old Norse nouns víking (a pirate raid) and víkingr (a pirate). But how those terms came to mean what they did remains a mystery – scholars still disagree over whether they have their origin in the verb víkja (to move swiftly), or the noun vík (an inlet or bay). In the latter case it may refer explicitly to one bay in particular, the ‘Vik’, that leads to the site of modern Oslo.
Or, the word may have a different root, leading back through the Anglo-Saxon wic to the Latin vicus, a place of trade.
Whatever its origins, the term itself was unknown in English until the 19th century – the Oxford English Dictionary does not record an appearance until 1807 – and remained little used for several decades thereafter.
However, by the latter half of the Victorian era, we see a veritable explosion of Viking-related books resting heavily for their inspiration on translations of the sagas of Iceland, particularly Samuel Laing’s landmark Heimskringla, an account of the early kings of Norway, published in 1844, and reprinted with substantially greater success in 1889.
This book is about the development of Anglo-Saxon England from AD 800 until the Norman Conquest. For almost 250 years England was subject to attacks from Scandinavia.
Contemporary chroniclers called the raiders by many names, including heathens and pagans, as well as Northmen and Danes, but one of the names used to refer to them by the English was ‘Viking’, and this is now used to describe not only the raiders, but also the period during which they carried out their attacks. These centuries, from the 9th to the 11th , have become known, therefore, as the Viking Age.
The Vikings themselves can be indefinable. The introduction of Scandinavian art styles can be seen on jewellery and sculpture, but Scandinavian-style houses and graves are often hard to categorize. Indeed, the association between Scandinavian settlers and the existing population must be considered to see how far the newcomers adopted inhabitant customs or invented new ones, sometimes rendering themselves impossible to tell apart from the local people and invisible to the archaeologist; sometimes creating new identities.
This book focuses, hence, on the period rather than on the people, and scans all the archaeological traces of Viking Age England. It will be concerned particularly with England where, as a result of major excavations conducted over the last 30 years in towns like York, Lincoln and London, and in the countryside at sites such as Goltho, Raunds and Wharram Percy, we may now be closer to understanding the nature of Scandinavian interaction with the local population. Scotland, the Northern Isles, and the areas bordering the Irish Sea were also subject to separate Scandinavian influence, but are outside the scope of this book.
The Scottish Hebrides and the Isle of Man were settled as a Norse kingdom of Man and the Western Isles. They formed part of an important axis between the Hiberno-Norse of Dublin and the Anglo-Scandinavian kings of York. The Isle of Man maintains elements of its Norse heritage to the present day, including the tradition of meetings of the Viking assembly or Thing in an annual open-air meeting of the Manx Parliament, the Tynwald.
Nonetheless both Scotland and the Isle of Man have been the subject of several recent books, and Scandinavian settlement there will only be considered in relation to developments in England.
The book has been divided into the following eleven chapters:
1) The Viking Age
2) Viking raids
3) Viking colonisation
4) The growth of towns
5) The built environment
6) Feeding the people
7) Craft and industry
8) Trade and exchange
9) Churches and monasteries
10) Death and burial
11) Monuments in stone
The most significant contributions to the arrival of the Vikings had less to do with the rich pickings of undefended English monasteries, and more to do with the strengthening of sea defences elsewhere, and with earlier contacts formed through trade. When the Vikings attacked their victims, it seems that it was rare that they stumbled across a target by accident – they knew what they were looking for because they had been there before.
They knew whom they were robbing, because perhaps only months earlier, they or their associates had been trading with them.
One must bear in mind that in most cases, the Norse Viking Age is recorded to have officially began in 793 AD with the first recorded raid through to 1066 AD, ending with the Battle of Hastings. However, these dates vary upon scholars.
The Battle of Hastings wasn't precisely the end of the Viking Age, because the Norse were spread out across Europe and Viking raids continued to take place in other locations. With that said, dating the conclusion of the Viking Age is fairly generic because Viking raids were sporadic in many locations and when one area was under control, another area was being raided. Additionally, because Viking raiders weren't unified efforts and most Norsemen tended to 'vikingr' (raid) at their own whim. This places the conclusion of the Viking Age at approximately the beginning of the 12th Century-ish.
This is also about the time when Norse and other Kingdoms were becoming increasingly solidified and more able to repel Viking incursions. This was also around the time when the Christianization of Northern Europe and Norse dominated lands began to take a firmer hold. So dating the exact end of the Viking Age is vague at best.
Two major themes run through this book. In the first place, it raises a number of significant questions, such as:
1) What was the Scandinavian contribution to the development of Late Saxon England?
2) How far did the newcomers simply modify local developments already in progress?
3) Was there anything distinctive about Scandinavian settlements?
4) Were the major trading towns, such as Jorvik, already established before Scandinavian traders arrived?
5) What was the Scandinavian influence on the formation of the English state?
Secondly, the author takes up the question of Scandinavian and native interaction. Here too he raises questions and seeks to provide a roadmap through which the reader can look for his own answers. He asks:
1) What was the native response to Scandinavians in the areas settled?
2) What was it about the Scandinavian character that meant that in some areas, such as the Danelaw, they disappeared, fusing with the local traditions; whilst in others, such as the Isle of Man, they preserved a distinctive culture?
3) How did they adapt, both economically, and in social and religious terms, to local circumstances?
One needs to bear in mind that interaction between the two peoples would have been subject to a number of factors: the extent of social, economic and political dependence of one group on the other, the ability of people to talk with one another, the degree of intermarriage, or of cultural and religious assimilation. We must also bear in mind that this was a long and complex process, spanning three hundred years, with much local variation.
Between the 8th and the 11th centuries, around 200,000 people left Scandinavia to settle elsewhere. These voyagers were primarily men with nothing to lose. The water-ways of the Baltic and the inlets of Norway turned them into fishermen and merchants, and the first of their ventures were undoubtedly trading ones.
In some parts of the world, this is how they stayed – their behaviour towards foreigners largely dictated by comparative strengths.
Where a land was mainly deserted, such as Iceland or the Faeroes, the new arrivals simply settled and stayed! The dispossessed sons of Scandinavia found some land, bought some wives and slaves and, more often than not, fell back into the farming routine from which they had sprung.
Such conditions prevented them, at least, from turning into bona fide ‘Vikings’, although there was no guarantee their descendants might not go in search of plunder elsewhere – even the relatively peaceful Icelanders occasionally exported their criminal element back to Europe.
Where voyagers encountered local inhabitants, their behaviour depended on what they could get away with. While Viking marauders feature in the local histories of England, Ireland and France, such tales are not so well known elsewhere.
Encounters with the unquenchable menace of Greek fire, for example, put paid to most Viking attacks on the Byzantine world. In Constantinople, the Byzantine Empire enjoyed generally positive relations with the men from the northern lands, and relied heavily on them as mercenaries.
The greatest achievement of this book is to prove the fact that Vikings were often defined by what they were not. They were, to the contemporary chroniclers that hated and feared them, not civilized, not local, and most importantly not Christian. The so-called Viking Age petered out when these negative traits were annulled. Scandinavia was eventually Christianized, ironically in part through the experiences of its sons abroad, forcing the Vikings to rethink who constituted friend and foe.
By the 12th century, when Scandinavian crusaders converted Estonia to Christianity at the point of a sword, they were now not only raiding somewhere sufficiently out of the way of Western European consciousness, but doing so in the name of the Lord.
However, the Vikings did have a aesthetic side to them as well. Vikings loved elaborate decorations and they decorated many of the things they used: weapons, jewelry, runestones, ship woodwork and even their common, everyday items. They loved abstract and intricate animal designs and multiple interlacing lines. They had music and their own concepts of administration.
As a reader I have been into Nordic history and culture for quite some time. Accordingly, I did not face a quandary with the often monotonous and dowdy narrative approach of the book.
This to my mind is the lone reason that would make this book something of a pickle for the informal reader.
You can grab a copy if you choose.
April 28, 2021
This book had so much potential, but I grew impatient with it very swiftly.
There are many examples of the author stating as facts things that are not confirmed, speculation, or at best, a best academic guess, but the author rarely acknowledges this. No references or sources are provided for these statements, so it is impossible to fact check the text, which is disappointing.
I think what bothered me most was how often he writes in generalities when the reality was a lot more complex (and interesting). For example, Viking raiding parties, especially in the later centuries of the period, and particularly when we get to the period of the Great Army & Summer Army, were not made up of only Scandinavians, and the use of Vikings and Scandinavians as interchangeable terms in this context is really problematic.
I suppose the idea was to provide a kind of brief overview of the history of the period, but if so, too much was sacrificed for the sake of brevity.
You would definitely be better off spending your time reading ‘The Children of Ash and Elm’ by Neil Price.
There are many examples of the author stating as facts things that are not confirmed, speculation, or at best, a best academic guess, but the author rarely acknowledges this. No references or sources are provided for these statements, so it is impossible to fact check the text, which is disappointing.
I think what bothered me most was how often he writes in generalities when the reality was a lot more complex (and interesting). For example, Viking raiding parties, especially in the later centuries of the period, and particularly when we get to the period of the Great Army & Summer Army, were not made up of only Scandinavians, and the use of Vikings and Scandinavians as interchangeable terms in this context is really problematic.
I suppose the idea was to provide a kind of brief overview of the history of the period, but if so, too much was sacrificed for the sake of brevity.
You would definitely be better off spending your time reading ‘The Children of Ash and Elm’ by Neil Price.
May 5, 2022
Good overview of the history and evidence for Anglo Saxon/Viking society; the first part of the book is a broad overview of historical sources, while the latter part concentrates on material culture and archaeological evidence.
November 24, 2024
This was a fine overview of the 'Viking Age' in England. I'm not sure what I was expecting going into this but half way through I realised that it is very much an introduction. The scope of the book is a little bit too big which leaves some chapters feeling a little thin.
February 23, 2025
Richards looks at the impact Scandinavian raiders and settlers had on Saxon England. He explores whether there was more integration than first believed and if the archaeological discoveries don't tell the whole truth. A little dry in parts but an interesting topic.
April 14, 2022
Really good as a starting off point - plenty of topics covered, and very quick and easy to read. The bibliography is a good size and includes a really good range of further sources.
September 19, 2010
Overall this book is a very interesting read and does make the reader aware of a lot of important and influental factors affecting not just the Anglo-Saxon people at the time period its writen about but also the factors that influenced many of the Norwegian and Danish viking settlers and their lives since the founding of the Danelaw.
It is rather dry in its tone though, it isn't as informal or as enthusiastic than some other factual books on the middle ages and viking era I have but it did prove to be interesting and a worthwhile read if you want a deeper insight into this time period.
It is rather dry in its tone though, it isn't as informal or as enthusiastic than some other factual books on the middle ages and viking era I have but it did prove to be interesting and a worthwhile read if you want a deeper insight into this time period.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews