878: A Tour of Viking Britain

in the year 865 a great army of Scandinavian warriors appeared off the eastern shores of Britain in glittering mail with gilded swords and deadly Spears they had come from all corners of the Scandinavian world to bring death upon the anglo-saxon kingdoms Vikings had come to Britain before for close to a century in fact the dark sales of their dragon boats had been an all-too-familiar occurrence at remote monasteries and bustling trade centres that even settled down to make new lives for themselves in the far north and across the sea in Ireland yet as the hundreds of war vessels manned by thousands of battle-hardened warriors came ashore that summer amulets of Thor and Odin clearly visible around their necks it soon became clear that this force was different it wasn't just that it was a larger army than those that had come before it it was that this one was headed straight for the jugular rather than focusing on wealthy ports and monasteries this army shot directly for the ruling monarchies of the anglo-saxon kingdoms in an attempt to stamp out their existence entirely and build anew in their own image after making landfall in East Anglia an ancient realm that had thrived for three centuries since the fall of the Western Roman Empire the extorted horses from the helpless King Edmund before promptly making their way north to the neighboring kingdom of Northumbria once the most powerful of the lot now beset by civil war within weeks they succeeded in killing the king of Northumbria allure and conquering the land for themselves rather than heading back aboard their ships laden down with plunder and prisoners this great army of Norse men and Danes lightly drawn from every Viking settlement in northern Europe remained upon the island heading back south to East Anglia before long to make a martyr out of King Edmund and claim his kingdom - they hadn't just come to plunder this time they come to conquer and to settle the land and after they were finished nothing would ever be the same again by 878 after a 13-year lits Krieg which saw the destruction of every anglo-saxon realm bar 1 the last remaining Kingdom Wessex and its young King Alfred managed to defeat the last remnants of the great army at a place named Eddington in Wiltshire Alfred had saved his kingdom but as the smoke cleared from the maelstrom of violence that had become the norm over the past decade and more the political map of Britain had been completely redrawn in the place of the old anglo-saxon kingdoms in the southern portion of the island and sitting firmly alongside the original inhabitants of the far north now resided a plethora of new Viking states as the weeks months and years went by it became clear to Alfred and his contemporaries that like it or not the Vikings were here to stay a new age had dawned and the older inhabitants of Britain would either have to adapt to it or go down in flames the Viking chieftain who alfred had defeated at Eddington was good for him a ruthless sea king who probably arrived slightly later than the original leaders of the great even army Ivar half Dan and Oba all already dead by this point younger warlords having taken their places in the aftermath of Eddington Guthrum the last great leader of the army seems to have had a change of heart rather than joining his old comrades in Valhalla he moved back eastwards to settle down in East Anglia and rule as a king yet unlike most of the other Vikings in Britain at this time he brought back with him something from Wessex a uniquely non Viking characteristic when gothram settled his warriors in East Anglia that year he went as a Christian under the new name Athelstan with Alfred as his Godfather however much this may have been a ruse to begin with this change of character apparently seems to have remained with Guthrum for the rest of his days for a decade to come whilst East Anglia likely still harbored nests of Vikings coming over from the continent to raid gothram wouldn't go to war again he changed and in doing so he'd laid the foundations for the conversion of many more of his kin over the years to come perhaps a precursor to the eventual integration between Saxon and Dane that would occur over the next century and more whilst Saxon culture inevitably rubbed off and at least some Vikings after they had come to Britain the reverse is true as well scores of people from the lowest rungs of anglo-saxon society a thought to have escaped from slavery to become Vikings themselves seeking service aboard long ships and within war buttons perhaps most importantly however Alfred and the West Saxon political elite adopted the Scandinavian tendency to fortify certain settlements against outside attack a policy not usually used before this time throughout Wessex these new strongholds known as burrs began to spring up to act as a safe haven for local people from attack these fortified settlements gave enough time for townspeople and farmers to fend off attackers their walls and a weight relief forces in time these birds would become the large towns of the medieval period and in many cases the cities that we know today to the south of East Anglia lay Essex the old realm of the east saxons a marshy land of inlets and waterways long under the sway of Wessex before the coming of the Vikings Essex would remain a den for pirates and incoming Scandinavians from the continent for decades to come those small pockets of fearful east saxons still clung on to normal life as much as they could amidst the reeds in the marshes for the most part they now looked fearfully to new scandinavian overlords still further to the south they Kent the oldest anglo-saxon kingdom like Essex Kent had long been a vassal of the West Saxons it still retained its own unique culture and local rulers there a hard-fought war had been waged against the Scandinavians during the 1860s and 1870s and finally with Alfred's victory at Eddington in 878 some relief had come for the battered inhabitants of England's far southeast and extremity though places off the shore such as the Isle of Sheppey would remain staging posts for Vikings for generations to come all along the southern coast of wessex trading towns such as Southampton had once thrived as Centers of Commerce seeing incoming vessels from Frankia and freesia bringing their wares from as far afield as the Mediterranean now many of these centers lay abandoned their inhabitants either having fled of being enslaved by Viking raiders further west still at the far extremity of southern Britain lay the old realm of the Britons this was a truly ancient place older than any of the Saxon realms and one never fully subjugated by their West Saxon neighbors there the kings of dawn onea bided their time in their ancient castles and hilltop fortresses waiting for the perfect moment to try and reclaim their lost lands it was a realm that had existed since the legendary Age of Heroes in the fifth century that gave rise to the tale of King Arthur a century or more before the supremacy of the anglo-saxons they saw in the coming of the Vikings a means by which to pursue their own independent struggle against Wessex not only providing a safe haven at times for Viking newcomers but even a lying themselves with them on occasion to fight back against their old enemy just to the north across the Bristol Channel they the similarly ancient kingdoms of Wales like Domino Nia they were breath onyx peaking survivors from the chaotic mass of warlords and invasions that followed the Roman withdrawal from Britain in the early 5th century a dizzying array of kingdoms and principalities had long existed there in the mountains and valleys long pitting their warriors against each other in a centuries-long struggle for supremacy both against fellow Welshman and against the anglo-saxons across the border to the east just like in the anglo-saxon kingdoms of modern-day England the Viking Age had been tough on the Welsh kings in particular the southwestern kingdom of divet the Welshman there having suffered incursion after incursion from the thriving Viking towns that had sprung up across the sea in Ireland at first these Raiders had carried off goods and plunder back to the slave markets and bartering grounds of Dublin and Waterford but before long they began to overwinter in Wales using islands and coves that still bear unmistakeably Norse names today such as flat home as staging grounds for further raids unlike in the anglo-saxon kingdoms however and in the far north of Britain these inroads never amounted to much more than brief over winters and small colonies in the northern Welsh kingdom of gwyneth however traditionally one of the strongest of the Welsh kingdoms and long ago a real contender for the position of superpower in Britain during that murky epoch that followed the exodus of the Romans something quite extraordinary had happened during the Viking Age a powerful leader had arisen there one who like Alfred and Wessex is traditionally regarded in the Welsh chronicles as truly deserving the title of great Rodri the great king of gwyneth not only successfully fought off his share of Viking raiders in eight 50s and eight 60s just as the anglo-saxon kingdoms began to burn on the eastern side of britain but he managed to use the renown he gained from defending his borders to further exert his influence outside of his traditional heartland the neighboring Welsh kingdom of Powis immediately to the east was the first to fall and before long he sent his warriors south to curette again and towards divet for the first time in well over 200 years Gwyneth was growing [Music] before long like Alfred and Wessex Rodri began to conceive of the idea of a strong unified wales an unheard of and seemingly impossible concept up until this point just like in Wessex it was outside invasion from the Vikings and the unity forged out of the necessity of fighting back that had made this a reality in 878 however just as Alfred won his great victory against gothram and the solidified his nation's survival Rodri faced an outside invasion of his own not from the Vikings this time but from the mercy and kingdom to his east traditionally the most powerful anglo-saxon kingdom before the rise of Wessex in the first half of the ninth century and still a contender for power even with Vikings settling down all over its eastern portion and a puppet King on the throne [Music] Rhodri died that year in 878 killed in battle by mercy and source his sons however placed on the thrones of Gwyneth powers and Sai Slawek by the mercy and Lords themselves likely wishing to curtail any potential of a powerful unified wails on their doorstep Rodri sons vowed to uphold his course knowing that one day and soon the Vikings would return to the east meanwhile times had been hard in murcia of late that puppet ruler now in charge with shell wolf the last mercy and king in history and one of uncertain origins the last fully legitimate King Bergeret had fled to Rome in 874 in fear for his life having witnessed the kings of Northumbria and East Anglia being murdered one after the other their royal lines extinguished forever yet with Alfred's victory in 878 had come a brief respite for the western portion of Mercier at least which remained under its own native nobility divided from the Danish held east by the old Roman Road of Watling Street that eastern portion of Mercia soon to be known as the five boroughs wasn't so lucky being permanently ceded to the Vikings who began to settle there in large numbers leaving a permanent trace on the five borough towns of Nottingham Darby Leicester Stamford and Lincoln for generations to come and a remaining legacy in place names to this day in the western portion of Mercia saxon control lingered on as a shadow of his former self under the control of shell wolf seeing more and more nobles and farmers alike fleeing across the border from the east to bolster their numbers they've just across the thames to the south the ever expansionist and ambitious alfred gazed northwards seeking to exert his influence there and make the kingdom of Mercia the first piece of his jigsaw puzzle of a unified angle Lunt to the north of the five borås past the inhospitable fence the wash and the river Humber lay Northumbria once made up of two distinct Anglian kingdoms that had carved out kingdoms for themselves from the formerly romano britain held lands during the 6th and 7th centuries the southernmost deira was based around the town of Yaffa which by the humber estuary the other Benicia had its seat of power at the formidable fortress of bebbanburg modern-day Bamburgh on the eastern coast the two kingdoms had been unified under a single monarchy during the 7th century though the fall of the offer which in the 8th 60s to the great Viking army saw this fragile unity crumble away for good by 878 the offer which had been under Scandinavian rule over a decade and in that time it had gained a new name over the years and decades to come it would become one of the largest cities in Northern Europe a bastion for Viking culture and trade for more than two centuries to come their goods and commodities from a far afield is Central Asia Constantinople northern Africa and Italy flowed into the packed city streets and markets making its rulers and townspeople wealthy and prosperous in the process that settlement was of course the city of your vaq a Viking city which would soon begin to rival Dublin in commercial importance for the Scandinavians of Britain and northern Europe in the first few years after the great heathen army conquered Northumbria the leaders of the expedition Ivar halfdan and uber had set up a puppet ruler in order to legitimize their rule and to ease the transition to Scandinavian overlordship much like they later did in Murcia his name was Egbert but soon enough they did away with him completely by the mid-1870s haven't finally given up on conquering Wessex half-down had himself made king in Northam much like gothram would do slightly later in East Anglia though unlike gothram half Dan were made resolutely a pagan he and his warriors settled the land likely bringing over women and children from Scandinavia but also into marrying with the locals at least some semblance of anglo-saxon identity survived in daraa yet the language and place names became notably scandinavian for more than a century to come though soon enough by around 877 half Dan was on the move again heading across the sea this time to Ireland to stake a claim to the kingdom of Dublin he was killed there within the confines of a bleak northern lock off the northern irish coast and in the wake of his death Northumbria came under the rule of a coalition of ruling magnates and power brokers for close to a decade to come interestingly by the time a Scandinavian King again came to rule in the north by the name of goth forth just like gothram Athelstan in East Anglia he may have been at least in part a Christian king and certainly tolerated the Christian beliefs of his subjects even if he didn't understand the Christian faith as the anglo-saxons did perhaps like other Vikings seem to do in the early years of their interaction with Christianity he merely added Jesus to his existing list of deities alongside Odin and Thor in order to hedge his bets [Music] further north along the coast late bebbanburg an imposing cliff top citadel perched atop a rocky outcrop facing into the cold North Sea once home to the ancient line of Venetian kings bebbanburg had never been conquered during its centuries long history and now the Lords of Bamburgh looked on with horror as they saw their southern rivals decimated and colonized by warriors from beyond the sea yet as the years went by and the dust and bloodshed of the initial invasion finally settled the Anglian Lords of the north began to see the Viking invasion as an opportunity in itself a chance to exert their own independence once more for close to a century to come until the reign of Alfred the Great's grandson Athelstan saw the emergence of a unified angle and become a reality in the nine 20s I'll be it only for a short time this unique and remote enclaves of Anglian culture and language survived up there in the north were set on all sides by Vikings to the south Britons from Cumbria to the west and the rapidly merging cultures of the Scots and the Picts from the north in time another powerful foe would emerge - in the form of Irish Vikings possible descendants of Ivar the boneless ruthless pagan warriors who sought to exert their authority from that power base of Dublin across the Irish Sea to control the entirety of the north of modern-day England up until the time of the great even army Vikings had arguably had their greatest successes of all in Ireland where they had ravaged monasteries since the end of the eighth century and eventually established thriving commercial centres their ancient kingdoms and dynasties had set aside their differences for a time to do battle against the newcomers some of whom had originated from the north sailing around the northern tip of Britain from Norway others having arrived from the south spilling out of the river systems of West Frankia one of the rapidly fragmenting remnants of Charlemagne's Carolingian Empire once hailed as the father your ax now rifle feuding local Lords brimming with nests at piratical Raiders yet before long not only did the Irish Kings fall back to their old ways of doing battle against one another but some even began to recruit Vikings to fight in their battles for them this allowed the Vikings to fully integrate themselves into the existing political system as source for Hire later still temporary Scandinavian settlements on river mouths became prosperous towns Dublin being the largest but other notable settlements growing up at Waterford Wexford Limerick and caught by 878 the lines had already begun to blur between Norseman Irish and Dame Scandinavian Vikings could just as often be seen fighting against each other in the armies of regional Irish kings as they fought as a unified force against Irishmen most notably the various branches of the OE O'Neill clan that held sway in the north often recruited the men of Dublin whereas for the kings of Munster in the south from where the famous Bryan Burrough would arise a century later maritime support often came from the Vikings of Limerick the late 70s are often seen at a time of relative peace between Vikings and Irishmen the former having already integrated themselves to a certain extent into the political system though it wouldn't be long before their descendants again began to grow in power eventually seizing control of your vehicle either nine-tenths and terrorizing both sides of the Irish Sea for decades to come just to the north of Ireland within a sprawling mass of archipelagos and islands they lie between modern-day Ulster and Western Scotland a line between Viking and Gale had begun to blur even more than in Ireland there that once existed a powerful kingdom originating to the south that had spread north to encompass the majority of Scotland's rugged western coastline it's name was dal Riata and for a time in the 5th and 6th centuries it had been one of the most powerful realms in Britain launching campaigns far afield to the Isle of Man and the Orkneys as well as against the growing power of Northumbria times were hard upon the west coast of Scotland during the Viking Age and by the late eighth century inhabitants of dal Riata were one of the first areas to be hit after Norwegians began raiding the shores of the Hebrides in the late eighth century intensifying their rage during the 9th and finally settling down to colonized by the eight 20s and 30s the dal Reardon's were forced to either move east or adapts to a new life under new overlords many of them did pledging their allegiance to an incoming Norse warrior elite some of them retaining their old ways largely unchanged others entirely or partly adopting Norse customs and even religion but the 870s intermarriage and merging have become so common that it was now almost impossible to differentiate between Norse and Gale leading to the emergence of a brands new uniquely Norse scale culture the Scottish Isles would remain resolutely unique with its blend of Scandinavian and Gaelic culture until well into the late medieval period those of the dal Riordan elite who had fledged during the early days of the invasions found there in the rugged mountains and deep forests of the north a mysterious and elusive people painted men the Romans had caught them covering themselves in intricate tattoos wild long hair separated from much of the rest of Britain by the difficulty and harshness of their natural geography the Picts had lived up there in the north for millennia long fighting against the Romans for their independence never fully being subjugated despite numerous hard for two towns the pics however remain one of the most unfortunate casualties of the Viking Age their unique pictorial script has never been fully deciphered meaning they remained one of those all two unfortunate cultures who are unable to tell us their own story instead we have to rely on others such as the gales to tell it for them it seems that the picks for their own series of wars against the Vikings winning some battles but for the most part being pushed back just like their neighbours the doll Reardon's to the west eventually these two formerly distinct people began to merge likely making common cause out of the necessity of survival the ninth century is an incredibly murky time in the north of Britain the very little concrete evidence remaining to confirm what happened but out of the chaotic mess of waves of invasion a new culture emerged possibly instigated by some members of the exiled dál Riata and warrior elite along with a sizeable Pictish population the first great leader of the north was Kenneth MacAlpin allegedly a former dal Riordan king but in the records apparently calling himself king of the pits before long this new royal family began to call themselves kings of the Scots a Gaelic term previously used to refer to residents of dál Riata by the 10th century Pictish culture had died out entirely only to be replaced by a new Scottish one just like the house of Rodri in northern Wales and the house of Alfred and Wessex this new elite would in time form a strong centralized state eventually expanding outwards to encompass the entirety of the north though in 878 the kings of the north engaged themselves still in a baptism of fire waging a lengthy largely undocumented against Viking invasions perhaps even more brutal than those fought in England and Wales [Music] yet there was another kingdom in the north to formerly based at the imposing citadel of Dumbarton rock on the coast of the river clyde after surviving intact for more than three centuries the citadel was finally sacked and destroyed by Vikings in the eight 70s perhaps under Ivar the boneless yet these Hardy people pushed on reestablishing a new base of power slightly upriver the burnt-out remnants of their original ancient capital still visible upon the horizon like the Welsh in the Cornish these people were Britain's the last vestige of the old North kingdoms that thrived in the wake of the Roman imperial extraction and before the coming of the anglo-saxons [Music] the kings of Strathclyde were destined to merge somewhat with the Vikings over the coming years retaining their own brittonic culture and language but adopting Viking raiding and fighting techniques as well as actual Viking settlers in Galloway for a time over the coming years Strathclyde extended his tendrils south into Cumbria the seat of the ancient kingdom of rageth extinguished long ago by the kings of Northumbria like Gwyneth in northern Wales as a result of the coming of the Vikings Strathclyde was growing larger yet still the rulers of all these disparate kingdoms and cultures knew that just over the sea in northern Europe within the sprawling rivers of Frankia the mudflats of Denmark the fjords and mountains of Norway and amidst the marshes of freesia ever larger fleets of Vikings amassed day by day drilling training and preparing themselves to try their luck once more against the kingdoms of Britain [Music] you [Music]

Channel: History Time

Views: 696,877

Rating: 4.8978987 out of 5

Keywords: iMovie, viking britain, vikings, viking, alfred, wessex, mercia, history, history time, thrones of britannnia

Id: z2DGAvPecKY

Length: 28min 0sec (1680 seconds)

Published: Fri May 11 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/WotNoKetchup]

Men's history is quite interesting, it's a pity women weren't entitled to one though because trying to find out about women's that is not merely some male opinion on them is nigh on impossible.

What is unaccounted for, what's missing from this forum

is women's history, cos women weren't afforded the right to document it, in a man's world

Hence why history is a male curriculum and we know far more about the conquerors and their exhilaration of their tyrannical behaviour than those they enslaved to their male cause while busily smothering their voices to silence their opinions of them.

[u/rocknrollnobody]

Wow. I love shit like this.

Have an upvoted for finding and posting it.