The Viking Heart

How Scandinavians Conquered the World

Arthur Herman

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780358699200
• eBook ISBN: 9781328595201
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

“An absorbing and humane account . . . Mr. Herman is at pains to remind us that the Viking world was never just a stage for mayhem. It was, he says, ‘about daring to reach for more than the universe had gifted you, no matter the odds and the obstacles.’ In short: We might all take our own life’s cue from the Viking heart.”—The Wall Street Journal

From a New York Times best-selling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist, a sweeping epic of how the Vikings and their descendants have shaped history and America

Scandinavia has always been a world apart. For millennia Norwegians, Danes, Finns, and Swedes lived a remote and rugged existence among the fjords and peaks of the land of the midnight sun. But when they finally left their homeland in search of opportunity, these wanderers—including the most famous, the Vikings—would reshape Europe and beyond. Their ingenuity, daring, resiliency, and loyalty to family and community would propel them to the gates of Rome, the steppes of Russia, the courts of Constantinople, and the castles of England and Ireland. But nowhere would they leave a deeper mark than across the Atlantic, where the Vikings’ legacy would become the American Dream.

In The Viking Heart, Arthur Herman melds a compelling historical narrative with cutting-edge archaeological and DNA research to trace the epic story of this remarkable and diverse people. He shows how the Scandinavian experience has universal meaning, and how we can still be inspired by their indomitable spirit.

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The World the Vikings Made, Part One

From Russia to the British Isles

The island of St. Patrick was burnt by the Danes, they taxed ye Landes with great taxations, they took the Reliques of St. Dochonna & made many Invassions to this kingdome & tooke many rich & great bootyes, as well from Ireland as from Scotland.

—Annals of Clonmacnoise, entry for 795

FOR THE BETTER part of two centuries, from 780 to about 950, waves of Scandinavians descended upon the rest of Europe and penetrated as far as the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

Those from Denmark divided their attacks between the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and the European mainland, from Frisia (the modern Netherlands) and Francia to Spain. Norwegian marauders traced an arc of destruction from the Faroe Islands to Scotland and Ireland. Swedes chose a more easterly route, across the Baltic to the rivers of present-day Germany and Russia.

Then, slowly, a change came over the Scandinavian conquest of Europe. As time went on, their role shifted from marauder to trader to settler, in a trajectory that would alter the face of western Europe and open new frontiers in the east. To be clear, these three roles were never completely distinct. The Vikings themselves could shift from one to another with a flexibility that baffled contemporaries, as it still does historians. But the Vikings’ role in history was steadily moving from a destructive one to something more constructive.

As already mentioned, it does a disservice to the Vikings to exaggerate the savagery and violence of their raids. Of course the Norsemen were capable of great brutality. But in a world where rape, pillage, and the murder of war captives or their sale into slavery were largely the norm, the Vikings do not stand out as particularly bloodthirsty or ruthless, no matter what the chronicles of contemporary monks suggest.

A good example is the supposed violence and rapacity of the original raid on Lindisfarne in 793, which in one stroke made the Vikings both famous and infamous.^* But looking more closely, beyond the propaganda and fake news of the day, it’s likely that the Vikings’ savage attacks on this and other Christian sites were actually a reaction against Charlemagne’s ongoing genocidal war on the Vikings’ pagan Saxon neighbors. The renegade Saxon rebel leader Widukind had taken refuge in the court of the Danish king Sigfrid. No doubt he wove horrific stories of the atrocities the Franks were committing on his people, stories that would have been passed along to Sigurd’s successor, Godfred, and then his successors. The message would have been clear: these Christians were waging a war of extermination on their neighbors and kin, and it was time to hit back hard.

Viewed from their perspective, aspects of the Lindisfarne raid (which was almost certainly conducted by Vikings sailing from Denmark) make sense. The destruction of holy relics and the deliberate vandalizing of Catholic holy sites like the monasteries at Lindisfarne and Jarrow were very likely part of a “culture war” between two different systems of belief. Paganism was fighting back against an alien religion, Christianity, whose leaders were determined to wipe it out.

Part of the reason for the earliest wave of large-scale Viking raids, then, may have been to make Christians pay in blood and treasure for what they had already done to the Norsemen’s fellow pagans. Then, as they carried out these acts of retribution, the Vikings learned something valuable: their European neighbors were both wealthy and unable to defend themselves. Given the standards of the age, it was a tempting opportunity and one that most anyone might seize to their advantage. The Saracens and the Hungarians did exactly the same.^*

Still, even after that discovery, the Norsemen proved to be interested in far more than plunder and wanton destruction. Their actions over the next two centuries reveal a deeper pattern: the desire to make better lives for themselves and their families, at first by bringing wealth home to Scandinavia but then later by acquiring land overseas. What happened in England with the Danelaw became increasingly the model for Viking adventurers and their followers. Wherever their longships could take them, they were prepared to put down stakes, establish an outpost or two, and hold their claim against all comers, as shown in this passage from The Saga of the Greenlanders:

They then left to sail to the east of the country and entered the mouths of the next fjords until they reached a cape stretching out seawards. It was covered with forest. After they sheltered their ship in a sheltered cove and put out gangways to the land, Thorvald and his companions went ashore.

He then spoke: “This is an attractive spot, and here I would like to build my farm.”

This is the other side of the Viking Age, a contrast to the dangerous sea cruises and the raiding expeditions. It’s actually the side that would make the more lasting impact on Western civilization. At first the Norsemen thought of their voyages as a way to steal anything they could carry—gold, silver, precious objects, wine—anything manufactured or crafted by others, as well as men as slaves and women as concubines, that could add to their status at home or circulate as an object of trade.

Eventually, however, trade took precedence, then settlement. The Norwegian and Danish and Swedish adventurers and warriors transformed themselves into merchants and entrepreneurs, and proved themselves adept in their new roles. The temporary shelters the Vikings used for wintering between raids gradually became permanent trading posts, doing business with the locals—sometimes the very folks they had ransacked the summer before.

As we’ve noted, for a long time this network’s chief commodity was human chattel, drawn from the lands the Vikings raided. At the same time, it accommodated other goods, including the loot that Norse chieftains had stolen in earlier raids. As time went on, this would become the Vikings’ chief contribution to the making of medieval Europe: their role as middlemen. They returned to circulation the wealth that had been stored up as church and royal treasure during the Dark Ages and made it part of daily commerce and trade.

This development was particularly crucial following the Muslim invasions of the seventh century, which had severed western Europe’s access to the Mediterranean, its traditional source of wealth, particularly gold. From the ninth to the mid-tenth century—a time when Europe’s traditional routes to the wealth of the east were almost entirely sealed off—any merchant looking for Arab silver could find it circulating in towns along the shores of the Baltic, thanks to the Vikings. Before the heyday of the Vikings was over, they had created new sea routes for trade across the North and Baltic Seas and the North Atlantic, circumventing the Mediterranean altogether. These new routes would eventually allow the countries of western and northern Europe to dominate an entire continent. One could even say they would eventually dominate the world.

The best example of how this change happened lies in Russia, far to the east of those early Viking raids on Frankish Europe. But the story begins in Birka, in south-central Sweden.

Birka is an island town off Sweden’s Lake Mälaren. It had traditionally marked the dividing line between Gothic tribes and their fierce rivals, the Svear. Originally founded in the eighth century, when the trade routes through the Mediterranean to the rest of Europe broke down after the Arab invasions, Birka became a hub for securing the wealth of the east in new ways. Whereas the other major Viking trading entrepôt, at Hedeby in Denmark, had a tumultuous history of claims and counterclaims for the right to rule, as different leaders competed for power, Birka’s affluence apparently grew without serious interruption, apart from the occasional brutal sack, such as the one mounted by Norwegians in the year 1000.

Archaeology at Birka reveals a settlement with population of seven hundred to a thousand, clustered around the harbor and protected by a wall. From time to time the community gathered in what’s become known as Warrior’s Hall, a large chamber some 19 meters long and 9.5 meters wide that is split into two rooms, with a massive fireplace at the end of each. As you look over the site, it’s not difficult to imagine the walls lined with shields and swords (shield bosses and iron spearheads have been found along the remains of the walls) as a Swedish king or chieftain enters the hall to thunderous cheers. Then his followers and housecarls raise silver goblets in salute (many silver slivers from such goblets remain as evidence) while valuable gifts (such as a bronze dragon’s head and more than forty comb cases, also found in the hall) are handed out to one and all. Adding to Birka’s attractions was its location not far from Upp-sala, the pagan cult center of Sweden: a convenient stop on some chieftain’s ceremonial tour of his native country.

All the same, the comb cases may come as a surprise. They were almost certainly not for women. Viking males were famous for being meticulous about their long hair. And it wasn’t just for vanity’s sake. Like the Scandinavian penchant for bathing in hot water, personal grooming of the hair probably prolonged the men’s lives, since the Viking comb was also useful for removing fleas and lice—major carriers of contagious diseases. Again, it’s not hard to imagine a well-laden Viking traveler coming home to Birka, bruised and filthy from his long journey, and ready to settle in for a cup of mead, a hot bath, and an hour of grooming his tangled hair with a comb presented by his grateful chief.

For a long-distance merchant, Birka was a perfect base of operations. It was only five days’ sail from the Baltic entrance to the trio of rivers—the Dnieper, the Volga, and the Dniester—that would give Sweden’s Vikings access to eastern markets as far away as Constantinople. In addition, it was five days’ sail from Hedeby, the main mart for Danish kings and the western end of a thread of trade connecting the two halves of the Norse world.

That thread consisted of many goods, including slaves. But most important, it included silver, almost all of it coming from the lands ruled by Islam. The coin hoards the Vikings left behind in their homeland suggest just how much silver was brought from Arab sources to Birka and then spread to the west—not only around Birka but to the island of Gotland, a major stop in the trade from the east. The first Arab silver dirhams started arriving in the ninth century. Their numbers steadily grew until 900, when the trade really took off, culminating in about 950, the approximate date that archaeologists associate with no fewer than eight major silver hoards—almost all of it in the form of Arab coins.

More than eighty-four thousand silver coins from Muslim lands have been found in what is now Sweden. Gotland itself grew so affluent that the Swedish king could charge every household an annual tax of twelve grams of silver without missing a beat. Even after taxes, the Gotlanders hardly knew what to do with their wealth. The most satisfactory solution was to bury it, a real convenience for the archaeologist and the historian.

Not all, but perhaps the majority, of this wealth came from means other than trade. This included payments of tribute from local rulers around the Baltic Sea to Viking mercenaries serving in their endless wars; they became known to the locals as Varangians (just as the Baltic itself became known as the Varangian Sea). Some coins were simply stolen during raids, as plunder. In the early stages of the Norse intrusion into the Slavic hinterland, we don’t find much evidence of Swedish or Scandinavian goods being imported into Russia in enough volume to account for this heady flow of Arab silver into Scandinavia.

Nonetheless, the trade routes were there for the enterprising Norseman. The men who established them (and there doesn’t seem to be much evidence of women accompanying them on their epic journeys east) would ultimately use them to reshape the region in their own image. These men became known to their neighbors as the Rus, or “the men who row”—a tribute to their amazing maritime enterprise along the rivers leading east.

The route they founded went all the way to Constantinople, home of the Roman emperor and the wealthiest city in the world. From the Gulf of Finland, Viking adventurers would make their way up the Neva River to its mouth at Lake Ladoga (the future site of Saint Petersburg). After rowing across Lake Ladoga, they passed through the Volchow River and Lake Ilmen, where they picked up the Lovat and the upper Dnieper Rivers (going from the Lovat to the Dnieper required some overland portage, a familiar undertaking for any intrepid Viking). Then they followed the Dnieper by easy stages down to the Black Sea, and thence to the gates of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire.

There was also an alternate route back and forth, passing from the Dnieper to the Dvina on the homeward journey, into the Gulf of Riga. And a third more easterly route ran to the Volga and the Bulgar. A merchant could use this route to get from Lake Ladoga along the Svir and Lake Onega, followed by a short overland route jogging south to Lake Beloozero. There he would pick up another river that led straight into the Volga, where he found an inviting waterway measuring almost one kilometer wide. Soon other Viking explorers managed to blaze still another route to the Volga, via Lake Ilmen.

Four routes, four paths to wealth but also danger. A Swedish merchant adventurer in those years regularly passed through local Slavic tribes—often hostile, sometimes not; at times friendly during a previous spring’s visit and then murderously hostile the next. It was a way of life that demanded not the skills of a tip-and-run raider but those of a master negotiator and deal maker, backed with a firm, ruthless hand when it was needed, but more often by a friendly hand ready to cut a deal.

The Varangians were already showing their prowess in the middleman role when they agreed, in 839, to go to the court of the Holy Roman emperor for the sake of the Byzantine emperor. It must have come as a shock to Emperor Louis the Pious when “he investigated the reason for their coming here, [and] discovered that they belonged to the people of the Swedes.” In short, they were the Scandinavian cousins of the same Norsemen who had been harrying his coastline year after year.

The settlements the Rus built, starting at Volkhov, where the Vikings had to switch from seagoing ships to river craft, sprang up as early as the seventh century. One of the most strategic was Staraja Ladoga on the Lovat, where an active Swedish community grew up among the Finnish majority. The most important, however, took shape at the northern end of Lake Ilmen, with its access by river and portage to the upper Volga, or the western Dvina, or the Dnieper: you could take your pick. Known to locals as Gorodsce, the Scandinavian settlement a little farther south became “new” Gorodsce, or Novgorod. By the start of the ninth century, it was the capital of an emerging Viking colony fifteen hundred miles away from Birka and Uppsala, and eight hundred miles from Constantinople.

For a truly intrepid Viking taking the journey to Constantinople on the Volga route, the eastern Roman capital was just his first stop. He could bank to the east and take the Volga to its mouth at Itil, the principal seat of the Khazars on the Caspian Sea. In 922 the Arab merchant Ibn Fadlan would meet Rus slave traders there. Then he would follow the shore of the Caspian Sea until he reached what is modern-day Rasht, where a river would lead him to the threshold of the western Zagros Mountains, and then over the Mesopotamian plain to Baghdad, the capital of the Islamic world.

How far Rus traders actually got, no record tells us.^* Some scholars, however, do think that at least some reached Baghdad. They probably returned home via a circuitous westward route, since relations with their neighbors were never very stable. The archaeological remains of Novgorod and other settlements show constant efforts at fortification, reflecting sustained tension and warfare.

The real turning point in Scandinavian fortunes in the east, however, came in around 840, when the local Slavic tribes south of Lake Ilmen decided they needed a leader. After being at one another’s throats for years, the tribes sensed that prosperity could be within their grasp if only they could put an end to enmity and anarchy. That would require a strong ruler, who could impose order, but no such person could be found in their own ranks. “Here was no law among them, but tribe rose against tribe,” says the Nikonian Chronicle, a sixteenth-century Russian compilation of much earlier historical narratives, many of which are now lost. So “they said to themselves, ‘Let us seek a prince who may rule over us and judge us according to the Law.’ ” And “they accordingly went overseas and . . . then said to the people of the Rus: ‘Our land is great and rich, but there is no order in it. Come to rule and reign over us.’ ”

So the Rus did so, in the persons of three brothers: Signitur, Thorvadr, and Hroeker. They are better known by their names as they came down in Russian histor...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Frontispiece
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Map: The Voyages and Conquests of the Vikings
• Preface
• The Wrath of the Norsemen
• Being Vikings
• The World the Vikings Made, Part One
• The World the Vikings Made, Part Two
• Twilight of the Gods
• Conquerors
• Vikings into Scandinavians
• Viking Heart Empire
• Photos
• Scandinavians into Americans
• “We Are Coming, Father Abraham”
• “More Wonderful Than Riches”
• Land of Wonders
• Men at Work
• The Viking Heart Comes Home
• The Viking Heart in War and Peace
• The Viking Heartand the Land Beyond
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix: Runes and the Vikings
• Notes
• Index
• Coming Soon from Arthur Herman
• About the Author
• Connect on Social Media
• Footnotes