PINE BARK BREAD

~ TRADITIONAL SCANDINAVIAN RECIPE

When you hear “eating bark” your mind probably jumps to a pretty dire survival situation, but historically that’s not the case. Bark, specifically pine bark and birch bark, have been used for centuries to flavor food and boost nutrition, even in times of plenty.

Bark breads are a staple of Nordic indigenous cuisine. The Sami of northern Sweden harvested pine bark and mixed it with reindeer milk in their traditional breads. Since the richest sami had the most reindeer, they’re also the ones that harvested the most pine bark. It wasn’t out of desperation, but out of a quest for flavor.

In the case of birch bark, the historical evidence is clear that the papery outer bark was used to make food storage vessels, while the nutritious inner bark was ground into birch bark flour. In the case of pine bark, the records are a bit less clear. There are some sources that say only the inner bark was used, and others that claim only the outer bark was used. Since I’ve been able to find recipes using both, I’ll share them all with you.

PINE BARK FLOUR USING OUTER BARK

The outer bark of a tree is mostly there to protect the tree from the elements and doesn’t contain much in the way of calories. Calories aren’t the only reason to eat something, and pine outer bark seems to have other benefits. Pine outer bark may contain compounds that help keep food from spoiling or important nutrients that were scarce in a northern climate.

According to Nordic Food Lab, though pine outer bark is not calorie rich, it does “contain condensed tannins called procyanidins that are being researched for potential health benefits. Aromatic hydrocarbons such as terpenes and phenols which give pine its distinctive warm, woody scent also deliver antimicrobial properties, perhaps useful for blending with other flours to preserve their shelf life.”

These days, nutritional supplements are made from pine bark, and you can buy bags of powdered pine bark online which claim that “Pine Bark is used worldwide for its antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties. When used regularly, pine bark may support healthier cardiovascular and circulatory function.”

The outer bark was harvested from a section of the tree to create a “window pane” of exposed cambium. Over time, the bark slowly healed over the wound, and since the inner cambium was not harvested the tree continued to grow. Such trees could be harvested multiple times over the course of their life. There’s evidence of window panning on 700+-year-old pine trees in northern Sweden.

Obviously, if you’re going to harvest the bark of a tree, know that you are damaging the tree in a way that will impact it for hundreds of years. This particular pine tree has a partially dead top, and it’s very near our wind turbine. It’s going to be cut in the spring, so it’s a good candidate for bark harvest.

I started out using a draw knife, but it’s actually pretty difficult to use one just on the surface without really digging into the cambium. Since I only needed a small amount of pine bark flour, I was able to just use my hand to flake off chunks of shaggy exterior bark from a large pine tree growing on our land. No need to window pane a tree and cause it damage in any case.

Initially, I tried to grind the pine bark flour in a food processor, but it was in vain. The exterior bark is quite hard, but not brittle enough to fly apart. After several minutes the motor was heating up and had almost no pine bark flour to show for it. The bark, even exterior bark, needs to be dried out thoroughly before grinding.

I put the bark chips in the oven at 350 for about 45 minutes. The house smelled nice and toasty, like the warm scents of the high desert pine forests of my youth. Once the bark was toasted it ground much more easily. It would be possible to dry the bark out over a low fire in a similar way, which would make it much easier to grind by hand. When the pine bark was dried, I put it back into the food processor for grinding.

This recipe for pine bark bread using the outer bark comes from Laila Spik, a Sami elder and indigenous ambassador from Northern Sweden. It was printed in A Boreal Herbal, which I found to be a great resource for foragers in Northern climates like myself.

While it’s called “bread” it’s actually crisp crackers that are completely unleavened. The dough is formed using a mixture of pine outer bark flour and whole wheat flour, and then it’s rolled thin on a baking sheet. The pine bark crakers cook for about 4 minutes in a 500-degree F oven.

Pine Bark Bread (with outer bark)

This recipe for pine bark bread comes from Sweden and uses the outer bark of a pine tree ground into a fine flour. The resulting bread is more like what most people would consider crackers.

Ingredients

7/8 cup Pine Bark Flour 200ml
3 3/4 cup whole wheat flour 900ml
1 tsp salt 5ml
1 3/4 cup cold water 400 ml

Instructions

Preheat oven to as hot as it goes, around 500 degrees for mine.
Mix all ingredients to form a dough. Adjust with more water or flour if it is either too sticky or dry.
Roll the bark flour cracker dough into very thin sheets and prick it every inch or so with a fork. Cut it into bite-sized pieces and place them on an oiled baking sheet.
Bake for about 3 minutes, turning the sheets halfway through. When the crackers come out of the oven they’ll have a soft texture, but they’ll be crisp once the cool.

So how did the finished pine bark crackers taste? Honestly, absolutely horrible. I know, you’re probably not shocked, but I was. When I made birch bark flour, it was delicious.

Maybe it’s a cultural thing. Maybe I’m just horrible at making crackers. I baked up half the dough into a tray of crackers, but I saved the second half of the dough for experimentation.

Pine Bark Bread Crackers

At this point, I had a mass of unleavened dough, but it’s not hard to incorporate a bit of yeast after the fact. One of my favorite bread books makes whole grain bread using a slow fermentation technique. The method starts out with two different starters, one with yeast and one without. They’re then kneaded separately before being chopped into tiny pieces and then kneaded together. That allows you to seamlessly add yeast to a mass of unleavened dough.

I used this technique to turn the remaining pine bark bread dough into a yeasted loaf. After about 35 minutes in the oven, my tiny bark bread loaf was done. My 3-year-old daughter, the bread fiend that she is, was eager to try it and she stole the first piece. It met with her approval, and she handed it to me for a taste. The verdict…It’s shockingly good. It tastes quite a bit like any dark brown bread, but with the same warm notes of pine forest that I smelled when the bark was originally toasting.

Wild Foraged Pine Bark Bread made with Pine Bark Flour

The inner bark of pine trees is much milder, and actually contains calories (instead of just nutrients). I now have high hopes for making a really tasty loaf with pine cambium flour…

PINE BARK FLOUR USING INNER BARK

Unlike the outer bark of pine trees, the inner bark of pine trees contains a surprising amount of calories. According to The Nordic Cookbook, Pine bark flour made from the phloem (inner bark) “contains about 80 calories per 100 grams, compared with wheat flour, which contains well over 800 calories per 100g.”

Beyond just the caloric content, studies show that pine bark flour may have been an important source of vitamin C for the Sami people. Similarly, Nordic Food lab notes that “The phloem of the pine is rich in ascorbic acid (Vitamin C), which during the 1800s helped the Sami of the interior of Norway and Sweden avoid the scurvy that was at the time devastating the coastal populations of non-Sami farmers.”

Again, the flour from the inner bark, similar to the flour from the outer bark, was not just a famine food. A type of rye bread known as pettuleipä is still eaten in Finland in Modern times. The Nordic Cookbooknotes that pine bark flour is available at some health food stores in Scandinavia, and “Especially in Finland, breads baked with pine bark had a strong tradition and historically have been eaten on a regular basis, not just when grains were not plentiful enough to last through the winter.”

The author provides a recipe for traditional pettuleipä which is a full page of text (with small font!) and requires 4 full days of slow fermentation. Starting with a very wet batter and yeast starter, increasing amounts of rye and pine bark flour are added to the dough each day. The author notes how the bread should look at each stage of the slow fermentation, and at the end of day 3, the bread should be “frothing” and asks you to taste it to make sure that it’s tart from the activity of abundant lactobacilli (lactic acid bacteria as in yogurt).

I had hoped to make this bread, but when I went out to harvest pine phloem the temps were too cold. Traditionally pine bark is harvested in late spring or early summer, with the peak harvest in June. Likely that has to do with the fact that there will be more sugars in the phloem when the tree is actively growing, but it’s also a matter of practicality. Trying to harvest pine bark in freezing temperatures is just impractical, and the phloem just flaked away in shards rather than coming off in clean sheets. So much for pine bark being a winter survival food.

I should note that harvesting the inner bark from a tree can kill it, and this should only be done with trees that are slated to be cut down anyway (as mine was). Alternatively, you can harvest the inner bark from pine branches that you’ve cut off for that purpose.

OTHER WAYS TO EAT BARK

Beyond grinding it into flour, the inner cambium can be eaten as it is.

The author of A Boreal Herbal notes, “The inner bark (cambium layer) has long been used as a survival food and can also be eaten in raw slices.I like to use the soft, moist, white inner bark for making pesto.Most pesto recipes call for pine nuts.But one day, when I was making pesto I didn’t have any around.Remembering the flavor of the pine’s inner bark, I thought, why not?I’ll try it.It was wonderful— I haven’t used pine nuts since. The inner bark contains lots of starch and many sugars and can be boiled or ground and then added to soups and stews.”

Though not quite pine, Tamarack is a related conifer. In Rogers Herbal Manual, Herbalist Robert Rogers gives a recipe for tamarack bread: “Scrape off the softwood and inner bark of tamarack, mix with water, and ferment into a dough to be mid with rye meal.Bury under the snow for a day.As fermentation begins, the dough can be cooked as a camp bread or as dumplings, the sweet wood pulp acts as a sugar for the yeast in the rye.”

So there you have it, yet another way to eat a pine tree. Pine nuts are tasty, their needles are edible, the sap is medicinal and now you know how to eat pine bark.

Wild Foraged Pine Bark Bread ~ Traditional Scandinavian Recipe for bread made with the bark of pine trees. Historical evidence shows it has been eaten for hundreds of years, and it's still made today. #bread #recipe #pine #bark #foraged #foraging #edible #homemade

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DOUGLAS CARRUTHERS, ORKNEY SCOTLAND

CLAN CARRUTHERS INT SOCIETY CCIS HISTORIAN AND GENEALOGIST

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The Viking Age, Uncategorized

CLAN CARRUTHERS – VIKINGS IN IRELAND- PART III

April 15, 2020April 15, 2020 ClanCarruthers

CLAN CARRUTHERS INT SOCIETY CCIS PROMPTUS ET FIDELIS

VIKINGS IN IRELAND

795 – 1014

PART III

The Vikings in Wales

One side effect of the strength of Irish resistance was to increase Viking interest in Wales. At its closest points, Wales was only a day’s sail away from Dublin, Waterford and Wexford, and from the Viking colony in the Isle of Man, but despite this had so far suffered relatively little from Viking raids. A combination of strong military rulers such as Rhodri Mawr (r. 844 – 78) of Gwynedd, difficult mountainous terrain, and Wales’ poverty compared to England, Ireland and Francia, seem to have deterred any major Viking invasions in the ninth century. Only a dozen Viking raids are recorded in the period 793 – 920, compared to over 130 in Ireland in the same period. This was fewer than the number of English invasions of Wales in the same period. Place-name evidence points to areas of Viking settlement in the south-west, in Pembrokeshire and Gower, but, as they are undocumented, it is not known when they were made. There was also a small area of Viking settlement in the far north-east, modern Flintshire, most probably by refugees from Dublin following its capture by the Irish in 902. This was probably overspill from the successful Viking colony a few miles away across the estuary of the River Dee in Wirral.

In the first half of the tenth century, Wales was dominated by Hywel Dda (r. 915-50), the king of Deheubarth in the south-west. During his long reign Hywel came close to uniting all of Wales under his rule but his death in 950 was followed by a civil war and the break-up of his dominion. This was a signal to Vikings based in Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Hebrides to launch a wave of attacks on Wales. The area most exposed to Viking raiding was the large and fertile island of Anglesey off the coast of North Wales, which lay only 70 miles due east of Dublin and just 45 miles south of the Isle of Man: raids are recorded in 961, 971, 972, 979, 980, 987 and 993. Another place hit hard was St David’s monastery on the Pembrokeshire coast, Wales’ most important ecclesiastical centre. Founded c. 500 by St David, the monastery became the seat of the archbishops of Wales in 519. Only 60 miles from Wexford, St David’s was first sacked by Vikings in 967, then again in 982, 988 and 998, when they killed archbishop Morgeneu. St David’s would be sacked at least another six times before the end of the eleventh century. In 989 the raids had become so bad that King Maredudd of Deheubarth paid tribute to the Vikings at the rate of one silver penny for each of his subjects. Viking raids declined quickly after 1000, perhaps because the Viking towns in Ireland had come under the control of Irish rulers, but raids from the Hebrides and Orkney continued into the twelfth century. Vikings from Ireland also continued to come to Wales, but they did so mainly as mercenaries signing on with Welsh kings to fight in their wars with one another and with the English.

The Rock of Cashel

The end of Ireland’s Viking Age is traditionally associated with the rise of the O’Brien (Ua Briain) dynasty of Munster, and of its greatest king Brian Boru (r. 976 – 1014) in particular. Brian’s career certainly had an epic quality about it. Brian was a younger son of Cennétig mac Lorcáin (d. 951), king of the Dál Cais, whose kingdom, which was roughly equivalent to modern County Clare, was subject to the kings of Munster. As a younger son Brian probably never expected to rule and his early life was spent in the shadow of his elder brother Mathgamain. Even Brian’s date of birth is uncertain. Some Irish sources claim that he was eighty-eight when he died in 1014, which would mean he was born in 926 or 927, but other sources give dates as early as 923 and as late as 942. Brian’s first experience of war came in 967 when he fought alongside his brother at the Battle of Sulcoit against Ivar, king of the Limerick Vikings. The following year the brothers captured and sacked Limerick, executing all male prisoners of fighting age. The rest were sold as slaves. Ivar, however, escaped to Britain and in 969 he returned with a new fleet and regained control of Limerick only to be expelled again by the Dal Cais in 972.

Probably in 970, Mathgamain expelled his nominal overlord, Máel Muad the king of Munster, from his stronghold on the Rock of Cashel. The rock is a natural fortress, a craggy limestone hill rising abruptly and offering a magnificent view over the fertile plains of County Tipperary. The rock is now crowned by the ruins of a medieval cathedral and one of Ireland’s tallest surviving round towers, so little evidence of earlier structures survives. In legend, Máel Muad’s ancestor Conall Corc made Cashel the capital of Munster after two swineherds told him of a vision in which an angel prophesised that whoever was the first to light a bonfire on the rock would win the kingship of Munster. Conall needed no more encouragement and had hurried to Cashel and lit a fire. This was supposed to have happened around sixty years before St Patrick visited around 453 and converted Munster’s then king Óengus to Christianity. During the baptismal ceremony the saint accidentally pierced Óengus’ foot with the sharp end of his crozier. The king, thinking it was part of the ritual, suffered in silence.

Mathgamain’s success in capturing Cashel promised to make the Dál Cais a major power as Munster was one of the most important of Ireland’s over-kingdoms, covering the whole of the south-west of the island. However, before Mathgamain could win effective control of Munster, Máel Muad murdered him and recaptured Cashel. Brian now unexpectedly found himself king of the Dál Cais and quickly proved himself to be a fine soldier. After his expulsion from Limerick in 972, Ivar established a new base on Scattery Island, close to the mouth of the Shannon, from where he could still easily threaten Dál Cais. This sort of tactic had served Vikings well since the 840s, but no more. Brian had learned the importance of naval power from the Vikings and in 977 he led a fleet to Scattery Island, surprising and killing Ivar. A year later Brian defeated and killed his brother’s murderer to regain control of Cashel. Very shortly afterwards he defeated his last serious rival for control of Munster, Donnubán of the Uí Fidgente, and the remnants of the Limerick Vikings under Ivar’s son Harald. Both Donnubán and Harald were killed. This spelled the end of Viking Limerick. The town now effectively became the capital of Dál Cais, but Brian allowed its Norse inhabitants to remain in return for their valuable military and naval support. In the years that followed, Brian also became overlord of the Viking towns of Cork, Wexford and Waterford.

Now secure in his control of Munster, Brian began to impose his authority on the neighbouring provinces of Connacht and Leinster. Brian’s ambitions inevitably brought him into conflict with Dublin’s overlord, Máel Sechnaill. Almost every year, Brian campaigned in either Leinster, Meath or Connacht. Limerick and other Viking towns provided Brian with fleets, which he sent up the River Shannon to ravage the lands of Connacht and Meath on either side. When Donchad mac Domnaill, the king of Leinster, submitted to Brian in 996 Máel Sechnaill recognised him as overlord of all of the southern half of Ireland, including Dublin. Brian almost immediately faced a rebellion by Donchad’s successor in Leinster, Máel Morda, and the king of Dublin, Sihtric Silkbeard (r. 989 – 1036). Sihtric was another son of Olaf Cuarán, by his second wife Gormflaith, who was Máel Morda’s sister. Brian’s crushing victory over the allies at the battle of Glen Mama in 999 left him unchallenged in the south. Brian dealt generously with Sihtric, allowing him to remain king, and marrying Gormflaith, so making him his son-in-law. There was a brief peace before Brian, his sights now set on the high kingship itself, went back onto the offensive against Máel Sechnaill. Sihtric played a full part in these campaigns, providing troops and warships. Finally defeated in 1002, Máel Sechnaill resigned his title in favour of Brian and accepted him as his overlord: it was the first time that anyone other than an Uí Néill had been high king. Two more years of campaigning and every kingdom in Ireland had become tributary to Brian, hence his nickname bóraime, ‘of the tributes’.

The Battle of Clontarf

Brian’s achievement was a considerable one but he did not in any meaningful sense unite Ireland: outside his own kingdom of Dál Cais, Brian exercised authority indirectly, through his tributary kings, and he created no national institutions of government. Nor was the obedience of Brian’s tributaries assured: he faced, and put down, several rebellions. The most serious of these rebellions began in 1013 when Máel Mórda of Leinster renewed his alliance with Sihtric Silkbeard, who, despite Brian’s conciliatory approach, still hoped to recover Dublin’s independence. To strengthen Dublin’s forces, Sihtric called in an army of Vikings under Sigurd the Stout, the jarl of Orkney, and Brodir, a Dane from the Isle of Man, which arrived at Dublin just before Easter 1014. Brian quickly raised an army that included several of his tributary kings, including Maél Sechnaill, and a contingent of Vikings under Brodir’s brother Óspak. The two armies met in battle at Clontarf, a few miles north of Dublin on Good Friday (23 April) 1014. Neither Brian nor Sihtric fought in the battle. Sihtric watched the battle from the walls of Dublin, where he had remained with a small garrison to defend the city if the battle was lost. Now in his seventies or eighties, Brian was too frail to take any part in the fighting and spent the battle in his tent. The exact size of the rival armies is unknown but Brian’s was probably the larger of the two.

The battle opened around daybreak in heroic style with a single combat between two champion warriors, both of whom died in a deadly embrace, their swords piercing one another’s hearts. The fighting was exceptionally fierce but Brian’s army eventually gained the upper hand and began to inflict severe casualties on the Vikings and the Leinstermen. Brian’s son and designated successor, Murchad, led the attack and was said personally to have killed 100 of the enemy, fifty holding his sword in his right hand and fifty holding his sword in his left hand, before he was himself cut down and killed. Among Murchad’s victims was jarl Sigurd. Of the Dublin Vikings fighting in the army, only twenty are said to have survived the battle and the Leinster-Dublin army as a whole suffered as many as 6,000 casualties. By evening, the Leinster-Dublin army was disintegrating in flight and many Vikings drowned as they tried desperately to reach their ships anchored in Dublin Bay. At this moment of victory, Brodir and a handful of Viking warriors broke through the enemy lines and killed Brian as he prayed in his tent. Brodir’s men were quickly killed by Brian’s bodyguards and, according to Icelandic saga traditions, Brodir was captured and put to a terrible death. His stomach was cut open and he was walked round and round a tree until all his entrails had been wound out. Máel Mórda and one of his tributary kings were also killed in the fighting, as too were two tributary kings on Brian’s side.

For the anonymous author of the Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh, Clontarf was the decisive battle of Ireland’s Viking wars, but this exaggerates its importance. The author of the Coghad was essentially a propagandist for Brian Boru’s Ua Briain dynasty and he intended, by glorifying his achievements, to bolster his descendents’ claim to the high kingship of Ireland, which they contested with the Uí Néills. The true impact of the battle was rather different. The deaths of Brian and Murchad caused a succession crisis in Dál Cais that brought the rise of the Ua Briain dynasty to a crashing halt. Brian’s hard-won hegemony immediately disintegrated, Cashel reverted to its traditional rulers, and Máel Sechnaill reclaimed the high kingship. Sihtric found himself back where he had started his reign, a sub-king to Máel Sechnaill. There could have been no clearer way to demonstrate how far gone in decline Viking power in Ireland already was. Sihtric continued to take part in Ireland’s internecine conflicts but his defeats outnumbered his successes, and Dublin’s decline into political and military irrelevance continued. Dublin continued to prosper as Ireland’s most important port, however, making Sihtric a wealthy ruler. In 1029 he ransomed his son Olaf, who had been captured by the king of Brega, for 1,200 cows, 120 Welsh ponies, 60 ounces (1.7 kg) of gold, 60 ounces of silver, hostages, and another eighty cattle for the man who had conducted the negotiations. Though he was quite willing to sack monasteries when it suited him, Sihtric was a devout Christian and in 1028 he made a pilgrimage to Rome. Such journeys were primarily penitential and, as an active Viking, Sihtric no doubt had much to be penitential about. On his return to Dublin he founded Christ Church cathedral but pointedly placed it under the authority of the Archbishopric of Canterbury in England, then ruled by the Danish King Cnut. It was not until 1152 that the diocese of Dublin became part of the Irish church. His alliance with Cnut briefly resurrected Dublin as a power in the Irish Sea, but Cnut’s death in 1035 left Sihtric in a weak position. In 1036 Echmarcach mac Ragnaill, a Norse-Gaelic king of the Hebrides, captured Dublin and forced Sihtric into exile: he died in 1042, possibly murdered during another pilgrimage to Rome.

Echmarcach never succeeded in securing his hold on Dublin and in 1052 he was expelled by Diarmait mac Máel, the king of Leinster, who ruled the city directly as an integral part of his kingdom. For the next century Dublin became a prize to be fought over by rival Irish dynasties interspersed with periods of rule by Norse kings from the Isle of Man, the Hebrides, and even Norway.

Ostman Dublin

By the eleventh century the Viking towns had become fully integrated into Irish political life, accepted for the trade they brought and the taxes they paid on it, and their fleets of warships, which made them valuable allies in the wars of the Irish kings. Pagan burial customs had died out during the second half of the tenth century so it is likely that by now the Irish Vikings were mostly converted to Christianity. It was not only kings like Sihtric Silkbeard who had taken Irish wives, and in many cases the children of these mixed marriages were Gaelic speaking. It is even possible that people of Norse descent were minorities in the Viking towns among a population of slaves, servants, labourers and craftsmen that was mostly Irish. The Irish Vikings had become sufficiently different from ‘real’ Scandinavians to have acquired a new name, the Ostmen, meaning ‘men of the east’ (of Ireland). The name seems to have been coined by the English, who by this time had had ample opportunities to learn how to distinguish between different types of Scandinavian.

In its general appearance, Ostman Dublin was probably much like other Viking towns of the period, such as York or Hedeby in Denmark. In the tenth century the site was divided up by post-and-wattle fences into long narrow plots along streets. Sub-rectangular houses built of wood, wattles, clay and thatch were built end-on to the streets, with doors at both ends. Though the houses were often rebuilt, the boundaries of the plots themselves remained unchanged for centuries. Irish kings used these plots as the basic unit for levying tribute on Dublin, as Máel Sechnaill did in 989 when he levied an ounce (28 g) of gold for every plot. Paths around the houses were covered with split logs, or gravel and paving slabs. The streets of Ostman Dublin lie under the modern streets, so it is not known what they were surfaced with, but split logs were used in other Viking towns like York. Different quarters of the town were assigned to different activities. Comb-makers and cobblers were concentrated in the area of High Street, while wood-carvers and merchants occupied Fishamble Street, for example. Other crafts, like blacksmithing and shipbuilding, were probably carried out outside the town. The wreck of a Viking longship discovered at Skuldelev near Roskilde in Denmark proved to have been built of oak felled near Glendalough, 22 miles south of Dublin, in 1042.

The town was surrounded by an earth rampart, which was probably surmounted by a wooden palisade. By 1000, Dublin had begun to spread outside its walls and a new rampart was built to protect the new suburbs. By 1100 it had proved necessary to extend the defences again, this time with a stone wall that was up to 12 feet high. This was such a novelty that a poem of 1120 considered Dublin to be one of the wonders of Ireland. Dublin probably lacked any impressive public buildings – even the cathedral founded by Sihtric Silkbeard was built of wood and it would not be rebuilt in stone until the end of the twelfth century. Dublin’s four other known churches were probably also wooden structures. The basic institution of Dublin’s government, as in all Viking Age Scandinavian communities, was the thing, the meeting of all freemen. The thing met at the 40-foot (12 m) high thingmote (‘thing mound’), which was sited near the medieval castle. This survived until 1685, when it was levelled to make way for new buildings. Of the other Ostman towns, only Waterford has seen extensive archaeological investigations. Like Dublin it was a town of wooden buildings laid out in orderly plots within stout defences.

The end of Viking Dublin

Viking Dublin was finally brought to an end not by the Irish but by the Anglo-Normans. In 1167, Diarmait MacMurchada, exiled to England from his kingdom of Leinster, recruited a band of Anglo-Norman mercenaries to help him win back his kingdom. Reinforcements arrived in Leinster in 1169 and, with their help, Diarmait captured the Ostman town of Wexford. In 1170, Richard Fitzgilbert de Clare, popularly known as Strongbow, the earl of Pembroke, brought an army of 200 knights and 1,000 archers to support Diarmait, and within days he had captured another Ostman town, Waterford. On 21 September in the same year, Diarmait and Strongbow captured Dublin. The city’s last Norse king Asculf Ragnaldsson (r. 1160 – 71) fled to Orkney where he raised an army to help him win it back. In June 1171, Asculf returned with a fleet of sixty ships and attempted to storm Dublin’s east gate. The Norman garrison sallied out on horseback and scattered Asculf’s men. Asculf was captured as he fled back to his ships. The Normans generously offered to release Asculf if he paid a ransom, but when he foolishly boasted that he would return next time with a much larger army, they thought better of it and chopped his head off instead. Cork was the last Ostman town to fall to the Anglo-Normans, following the defeat of its fleet in 1173.

The Anglo-Norman conquest was a far more decisive event in Irish history than the advent of the Vikings. Despite their long presence in the country, the Viking impact on Ireland was surprisingly slight. Viking art styles influenced Irish art styles, and the Irish adopted Viking weapons and shipbuilding methods, and borrowed many Norse words relating to ships and seafaring into the Gaelic language, but that was about it. The Vikings certainly drew Ireland more closely into European trade networks and by the tenth century this had stimulated the development of regular trade fairs at the monastic towns. However, on the eve of the Anglo-Norman conquest, the Viking towns were still Ireland’s only fully developed urban communities. In contrast over fifty new towns were founded in the century after the Anglo-Norman conquest. Sihtric Silkbeard was the first ruler in Ireland to issue coinage in c. 997, but no native Irish ruler imitated his example: coinage only came into common use in Ireland after the Anglo-Norman conquest. The impact of Viking raiding did accelerate the slow process of political centralisation in Ireland, but even in 1169 the country still lacked any national government institutions. The high kings still exercised authority outside their personal domains indirectly through their tributary kings (though there were many fewer of them than when the Vikings had first arrived). A true national kingship would likely have emerged eventually, but the Anglo-Norman conquest brought this internal process to a sudden end. English governmental institutions were imposed in those areas controlled by the Anglo-Normans, while in those areas still controlled by the Irish, kingship degenerated into warlordism. There were no more high kings.

Dublin prospered after the Anglo-Norman conquest, becoming the centre of English rule in Ireland. England’s King Henry II (r. 1154 – 89) granted Dublin a charter of liberties based on those of the important English West Country port of Bristol. This gave Dublin privileged access to Henry’s vast British and French lands, spurring a period of rapid growth. One of Henry’s edicts took the Ostmen of Dublin and the other Norse towns under royal protection: their skills as merchants and seafarers made them far too useful to expel (though some chose to leave voluntarily). An influx of English settlers gradually made the Ostmen a minority in the city, however. The Ostmen also found that they did not always receive the privileges they had been granted because of the difficulty in distinguishing so many of them from the native Irish. In 1263, the dissatisfied Ostmen appealed to the Norwegian king Håkon IV to help them expel the English, but the collapse of Norse power that followed his death later that year ended any possibility that Dublin would recover its independence. Norse names soon fell out of use and by c. 1300, the Ostmen had been completely assimilated with either the native Irish or the immigrant English communities. A last vestige of the Viking domination of the city survives in the suburb of Oxmantown, a corruption of Ostmantown.

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The Viking Age, Uncategorized

CLAN CARRUTHERS – THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND – PART II

April 15, 2020April 15, 2020 ClanCarruthers

CLAN CARRUTHERS INT SOCIETY CCIS PROMPTUS ET FIDELIS

THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND

795 – 1014

PART II

The Viking slave trade

Archaeological evidence indicates that by 902 Dublin had begun to outgrow the longphort and become a true town rather than an armed camp. Significantly, following the Irish conquest in that year, Dublin was not abandoned: there is clear evidence of continuity of settlement through to its recapture by the Norse in 917. That there was an exodus of Scandinavians from Ireland at that time is not in doubt, so this is probably evidence that Dublin had a significant Irish population living alongside the Norse and that they were allowed to remain: they may even have been the majority because genetic studies have found scant evidence of Scandinavian DNA in the modern Irish population.

Dublin owed its transformation to a town to trade. Pre-Viking Ireland did not play a large part in international trade so it had no trading towns to compare with the likes of Dorestad or York. Coinage was not used either. Ireland was not poor, however. The hoards of magnificent gold and silver liturgical vessels from Ardagh and Derrynaflan stand testimony to the wealth of Ireland’s monasteries in the early Middle Ages. Major Irish monasteries like Armagh or Clonmacnoise were much more than communities of monks, they were also centres of political power and economic activity. Secular communities of craftsmen and merchants grew up around the more important monasteries and by the eighth century a few were becoming small towns. Kings, seeking the authority and safety that close association with the saints was believed to confer, often had residences, treasuries and garrisons in these monastic towns. All of this was more than enough to justify the Vikings’ attentions, but their main interest was in Ireland’s people.

Crude estimates based on a count of known settlements suggest that Ireland’s population was about half a million when the Viking Age began. Thanks to the country’s mild winters, cool summers and reliable rainfall, grass grew all year round so cattle and sheep did not have to be kept inside during the winter. The Irish did not bother to gather hay in the summer as it was so rarely necessary. Despite occasional famines caused by cattle epidemics and severe weather, the Irish population was generally well nourished and very few people were desperately poor. The Vikings rounded up these people in their thousands to be ransomed or sold as slaves according to their wealth and status. Slavery was rare in pre-Viking Ireland – it was used mainly as a form of debt bondage – so there was no slave trade. Plundering in wars between the Irish was usually confined to cattle rustling, so Viking slaving added a new form of suffering to the experience of warfare. Perhaps inevitably, Irish kings soon began to take captives during their wars and sell them to the Vikings. Irish captives who were not lucky enough to be ransomed by their relatives could expect to be sold abroad. Anglo-Saxon England and the Frankish kingdoms both had active slave trades but most Irish captives probably finished up in Scandinavia or the Moorish kingdoms in Spain and North Africa. Through developing the slave trade, the Vikings drew Ireland into fuller participation in the international trade networks. This is usually presented as one of the positive impacts that the Vikings had on Ireland, but it is unlikely that their victims were quite so sanguine about it.

*** OUR THEORY ON FEMALE SLAVES THAT WERE TAKEN AS WIVES IS, OUR GOTLANDER ANCESTORS ONLY TOOK THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMEN FOR THEIR WIVES. THAT IS WHY TODAY, THE CARRUTHERS WOMEN ARE BEAUTIFUL. IF NOT, THEY MAY NOT BE A CARRUTHERS***

We know enough about the horrors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade of the eighteenth century to guess at the human misery Viking slaving must have caused. Its economic impact is harder to estimate but it is likely that Vikings targeted the young and healthy rather than infants and the elderly. The kidnapping and breaking-up of communities of learned monks must have had a far more serious impact on Ireland’s flourishing monastic culture than ever the destruction of books, sacred vessels and buildings did. As mere commodities, the voices of slaves are rarely heard in the historical record, but two remarkable accounts have survived about the experiences of Irishmen who were captured by Viking slavers. One relates to a Leinsterman called Findan whose sister was captured by Viking raiders some time around the middle of the ninth century. Findan’s father sent him to the Vikings to arrange his sister’s ransom, but they immediately clapped him in irons and carried him off to their ship too. After keeping him without food and water for two days, the Vikings discussed what to do with him. Luckily, his captors decided that it was wrong to capture people who had come to pay ransom, no doubt because it would discourage others from doing so, and they let him, and presumably his sister, go. A short time afterwards Findan got caught up in another Viking raid but evaded capture by hiding behind the door of a hut. For Findan it was third time unlucky, because in his next encounter with the Vikings he was taken prisoner and sold into slavery. After changing hands several times, Findan finished up on a ship bound for Scandinavia. Findan gained his owner’s confidence by helping the crew fight off some pirates and he was released from his leg irons. When his owner made a stop-over in Orkney, Findan seized the opportunity to jump ship and escape. Findan eventually made his way to Rome as a pilgrim and ended his life as a monk at the monastery of Rheinau in Switzerland: one of his fellow monks recorded his life story shortly after he died.

The second story concerns an Irishman called Murchad, a married man with a daughter, who was captured by Vikings and taken to Northumbria, where he was sold as a slave to a nunnery, with comical consequences. After he had seduced several of the nuns and turned the nunnery into a brothel, Murchad was expelled and cast adrift on the sea in a boat without oars or a sail as a punishment for his impiety. Murchad was rescued by Vikings, who took him to Germany and sold him to a roguish widow, who paid for him with counterfeit money. Murchad seduced her too, of course. After many more adventures, Murchad eventually returned to Ireland, was reunited with his family, and took up a career teaching Latin grammar. How much real history there is in this tale is hard to tell; perhaps it is really about making the best of hard times. It is unlikely that many captives were as lucky as Findan and Murchad but neither is it likely that all came to bad ends: most of the thousands of Irish slaves who were taken to Iceland later in the ninth century were eventually freed and became tenant farmers, for example.

Division is strength

By the early tenth century, Vikings had conquered and colonised substantial parts of England, Scotland and Francia, as well as the uninhabited Faeroe Islands and Iceland. Yet for all the fury of their onslaught, in Ireland the Vikings had not even been able to retain a toehold. Appearances can be deceptive. Ireland’s divisions might have been a handicap in combating plundering raids but they also made it all but impossible for the Vikings to conquer and hold territory. On the face of it, it would have seemed that Ireland’s disunity should have made it more vulnerable to conquest by the Vikings than England, which was divided into only four powerful centralised kingdoms. In fact the opposite was true. In early medieval Europe it was always the centralised kingdoms that got conquered most easily. After the ‘Great Army’ of Danish Vikings invaded England in 865, the kingdoms of Northumbria and East Anglia both collapsed as soon as their kings had been killed in battle. Mercia too collapsed when its king decided he would prefer not to get killed and fled the country. Only Wessex survived to prevent England becoming Daneland. The centralised nature of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms meant that it was relatively easy for the Vikings to destroy the small ruling class and take over; just one battle might do the trick, as it did, more or less, in 1066. Little trouble would then be expected from the leaderless peasantry. Ireland, however, had dozens of kings and even more lineages from which new kings could be chosen. No victory, therefore, could ever have the decisive knockout effect it could in a country like England. Nor was there much chance of a lasting peace agreement with so many kings to negotiate with because what one agreed was not binding on the others.

The military resources of the Irish should not be underestimated either. Most Irish local kingdoms could raise armies of around 300 men. This was inadequate to deal with anything but a small Viking raiding party, but there were a great many local kingdoms. Local kings owed military service to their over-kings, so an over-king who could enforce the obedience of his vassals could raise a very large army indeed. However, in a clash of shield walls an Irish warrior was no match for a well-equipped Viking. The Irish fought almost naked without armour or iron helmets, armed with spears and using only bucklers (small round shields) for protection. The Irish recognised the superiority of the Viking warrior and they usually avoided formal battle in favour of irregular tactics, harassing raiding parties and wearing them down with sudden ambushes before melting away into the woods and bogs. In this kind of fighting, their lack of armour was an advantage to the Irish, making them more agile than a mail-clad Viking. A weary Viking raiding party returning home burdened with loot, captives and stolen cattle would have been particularly vulnerable to these tactics.

The Irish countryside was scattered with as many as 50,000 ringforts, but these were probably less of a hindrance to Viking raiders than Ireland’s warriors. Ringforts varied in size according to the status of their inhabitants. An over-king might have a substantial stone structure like the Grianán of Aileach in Donegal, a stronghold of the Northern Uí Néill dynasty. Built in the eighth century, the Grianán’s 15 foot (4.5 m) thick stone walls enclose an area 75 feet (23 m) in diameter. But although it is an impressive structure, modern experiments have shown that it would not have been at all easy to defend so it may have been built mainly as a ceremonial centre rather than to withstand a siege. Local kings and aristocrats had more modest forts, sometimes as little as 30 feet (9 m) in diameter, with earth ramparts and a palisade, containing its owner’s house and ancillary buildings. The ramparts of these small forts were primarily markers of status, for they were barely adequate for keeping livestock in, never mind keeping raiders out. More secure were crannogs, high status dwellings built on artificial islands in the middle of lakes. Communal fortifications like the English burhs, intended to provide refuges for the general population, were unknown.

During the course of the Viking Age, monks began to provide their monasteries with tall, slender, stone round towers. These were primarily used as bell towers and treasuries but they were also refuges against Viking raids. Over eighty round towers are known to have been built: the tallest surviving round tower, at Kilmacduagh in Galway, is 113 feet (34.5 m) tall. The towers’ entrances were set well above ground level so that they could only be entered with a ladder. The entrances of some towers show signs of fire damage, which is likely a result of Viking attacks. Having no source of water, or battlements from which to fight off attackers, round towers could not withstand a long siege but a small Viking raiding party could not really afford any delay.

The Vikings return

During Ireland’s ‘Forty Years’ Rest’, the bulk of Viking forces were busying themselves plundering England and Francia. By the first decade of the tenth century, the English and Franks were finally getting the measure of the Vikings so Ireland once more began to look attractive to them. In 914 Ragnald, a grandson of Ivar I, appeared in the Irish Sea and defeated a rival Viking leader in a sea battle off the coast of the Isle of Man before going to set up a longphort at Waterford in south-east Ireland. The Vikings were back and with a vengeance. In 917, Ragnald’s brother Sihtric Cáech (‘squinty’) recaptured Dublin and in 919 smashed an Irish counter-attack at Islandbridge, killing the Úi Néill High King Niall Glúndubh and five other kings. In 922, Tomar mac Ailche (Thormódr Helgason) re-established Viking occupation at Limerick and around the same time other Viking leaders established themselves at Cork and Wexford. As was the case in the ninth century, the Vikings made no extensive territorial conquests or settlements outside their heavily fortified towns. Dublin came to control the most extensive territory: known as Dyflinnarskíri or ‘Dublinshire’, it extended along the coast from Wicklow (Vikinglo) in the south to Skerries (from Old Norse sker meaning a ‘reef’) in the north, and as far inland as Leixlip (Old Norse lax hlaup meaning ‘salmon leap’) on the River Liffey. A dearth of Norse place-names in the countryside of Dublinshire supports the conclusion that there was little or no Viking settlement outside Dublin and its immediate environs.

The history of the revived Viking kingdom of Dublin is frequently entangled with that of the Viking kingdom of York across the Irish Sea. While the Norse had been exiled from Ireland, Ragnald had briefly held power in York and now he wanted it back. Using Dublin as a base to campaign in northern England, Ragnald recaptured York in 919. York must have seemed a greater prize than Dublin because when Ragnald died in 921, Sihtric gave up the kingship of Dublin to another brother, Guthfrith, and took up the kingship of York. An aggressive ruler, Guthfrith immediately launched a furious campaign of plundering and slaving raids against the Irish, culminating in a curiously respectful sack of Armagh in November. Guthfrith spared the monks, the sick and the monastic buildings, ‘save for a few dwellings which were burned through carelessness.’ It may be that Guthfrith was a Christian. If so, Guthfrith’s show of respect for St Patrick did him no good because he was intercepted on his way home by Muirchertach of the Leather Cloaks (r. 919 – 43), the king of the Northern Uí Néill, and heavily defeated. This set the tone for Ireland’s second Viking Age: the days when Vikings might criss-cross Ireland without meeting serious opposition were gone. Muirchertach won another victory over the Dublin Vikings at Carlingford Lough in 925, when 200 of them were captured and beheaded, and the following year he killed Guthfrith’s son Alpthann (Halfdan) in another battle at Linn Duchaill. Muirchertach besieged the survivors in the longphort there until Guthfrith brought an army north from Dublin to rescue them. The longphort was afterwards permanently abandoned.

What had changed since Ireland’s first Viking Age? The shock of Viking raiding had forced change upon the Irish. Irish society became increasingly militarised and those kings who offered the most effective military leadership against the Vikings enhanced their status and power and, as they tightened their grip over their sub-kings, they could raise larger armies and enhance their power even more. It was the same virtuous circle of success that was driving political centralisation and state formation in contemporary Scandinavia. Irish kingship was gradually becoming more territorial and many local kings found themselves reduced to the status of local chieftains. At the same time, the Irish had learned from the Vikings, making greater use of swords and axes in battle. Though they still lacked armour, this went some way to evening the odds on the battlefield. War was also waged with a new ruthlessness, against both the Vikings and other Irish kingdoms. Ravaging and burning had been rare before the Viking Age, but now Irish kings used it routinely as a weapon against their foes irrespective of whether they were Irish or Norse.

After Sihtric’s death in 927, Guthfrith went to York, whether to claim the throne for himself or to support his brother’s son Olaf Cuarán is not known. Both were quickly expelled by Æthelstan of Wessex. Guthfrith returned to lay siege to York, but was forced to surrender to Æthelstan, who allowed him to return to Dublin, which he ruled until his death in 934. Guthfrith’s son and successor, Olaf Guthfrithsson, established dominance over all the Norse in Ireland when he defeated the Limerick Vikings in a naval battle on Lough Ree in 937. It was in the same year that he allied with the Scots and the Welsh of Strathclyde in another attempt to win the kingdom of York only to be defeated by Æthelstan at the Battle of Brunanburh (see p. 124). Muirchertach sacked Dublin the following year, taking advantage of its weakness after Olaf’s defeat in England. However, Æthelstan’s death in 939 finally gave Olaf the chance to seize York and unite it with Dublin in a single kingdom. Olaf did not enjoy his success for long: he died shortly after raiding the Northumbrian monasteries at Tyninghame and Auldhame in 941, a victim, it was said, of divine displeasure. A tenth-century Viking burial discovered in the monastic cemetery at Auldhame almost certainly belongs to a high-status Viking who was involved in these raids. It has been speculated that the burial was even that of Olaf himself. As Olaf was married to the daughter of King Constantine II of Scotland he must have been at least a nominal Christian. The king might therefore have been buried on consecrated ground as a posthumous act of penance. Following Olaf’s death his cousin Olaf Cuarán became king of York, while his brother Blácaire succeeded him at Dublin.

Blácaire was an active raider. On 26 February 943 he defeated and killed Muirchertach at the Battle of Glas Liatháin and five days later sacked Armagh. Muirchertach’s death was mourned by the Irish, the Annals of Ulster described him as ‘the Hector of the western world’ and lamented that his death had left the ‘land of the Irish orphaned’. Irish retaliation was swift. The following year, the newly acknowledged High King Congalach Cnogba captured and burned Dublin, carrying away a vast amount of booty. Four hundred Vikings were said to have been killed in the fighting and Blácaire fled into exile. In his absence, Congalach installed Olaf Cuarán, recently expelled from York by the English, as king of Dublin. Olaf’s dependence on Congalach was such that when the pair were defeated by a rival for the high kingship in 947, Blácaire was able to depose him and reclaim his throne. After his death in battle against Congalach in 948, Blácaire was succeeded by his cousin Godfred, another son of Sihtric Cáech. In 951 Godfred led an enormously successful expedition in the Irish midlands, plundering half a dozen monasteries including Kells. According to the Annals of Ulster, ‘three thousand men or more were taken captive and a great spoil of cattle and horses and gold and silver was taken away’. Divine vengeance followed swiftly, of course. A severe epidemic, described in the annals as dysentery and leprosy, broke out in Dublin on Godfred’s return and the king was one of its victims.

While Godfred had been plundering in Ireland his brother Olaf had briefly regained control of York before being expelled by the Norwegian Erik Bloodaxe in 952. Olaf now succeeded as king of Dublin but the dream of uniting Dublin and York was dead. The Dublin Vikings would never be a power in England again. It is doubtful that a Dublin-York axis was ever really viable in the long term. York is much more remote from Dublin than a casual glance at a map would suggest. As York could only be reached by ship from the North Sea, sailing there from Dublin involved a long, dangerous and time-consuming voyage around the north of Britain. The only alternative would have been to sail from Dublin to north-west England and then trek across the Pennine Hills to York. However, it is far from clear how much, if any, control the kings of York actually exercised west of the Pennines. And, fighting off the English and the Irish at the same time must have been way beyond the resources of the Dublin Vikings.

Olaf was not a peaceable king but neither was he a traditional freebooting Viking, as he rarely raided unless he was acting in alliance with an Irish king. Olaf was also closely linked to Irish dynasties by marriage – made possible by his baptism in England as part of a peace deal with king Edmund in 943. Olaf’s first wife was Dúnlaith, the sister of the high king Domnall ua Néill (r. 956 – 80) and, after her death, he married Gormflaith, daughter of Murchad mac Finn, king of Leinster.

** GENEALOGICALLY THE CARRUTHES ARE LINKED TO KING DONMALL UA NEILL. **

Olaf seems to have gained little, if any, political advantage from his marriages because his reign was dominated by conflicts with Domnall and with successive kings of Leinster (some of whom Olaf held hostage in Dublin). On Domnall’s death in 980, Dúnlaith’s son by an earlier marriage, Máel Sechnaill mac Domnall, the king of Meath, succeeded his uncle as high king. Máel Sechnaill clearly had no love lost for his stepfather as he had begun his reign as king of Meath in 975 with an attack on Dublin, in which he burned ‘Thor’s Wood’ (a pagan sacred grove) outside the city. Shortly after becoming high king, Máel Sechnaill heavily defeated a force of Vikings from Dublin, Man and the Hebrides in battle at the Hill of Tara, the traditional inauguration place of the high kings. Máel Sechnaill followed up his victory by laying siege to Dublin, which surrendered after three days. Máel Sechnaill imposed a heavy tribute on the citizens and deposed Olaf, who went into retirement as a monk on Iona, where he died soon afterwards. In his place, Máel Sechnaill appointed his half-brother Jarnkné (‘iron knee’) (r. 980 – 9), Olaf’s son by Dúnlaith, as tributary king. There was no disguising Dublin’s loss of independence.

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The Viking Age, Uncategorized

CLAN CARRUTHERS – THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND – PART I

April 15, 2020 ClanCarruthers

CLAN CARRUTHERS INT SOCIETY CCIS PROMPTUS ET FIDELIS

THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND

795 – 1014

PART I

Few places suffered more at the hands of the Vikings than Ireland. For the best part of 200 years the Vikings systematically milked Ireland of its people to supply the slave trade, yet, for all their military success they failed to conquer and settle in any territory besides a few fortified coastal enclaves. This is the conundrum of Viking Age Ireland; it was a land that looked weak but was in reality strong and resilient.

Superficially, Ireland must have looked to the Vikings like an easy target. There is no doubt that in England and Francia internal divisions worked to the Vikings’ advantage, and if there, why not even more so in Ireland, which was the most divided country in western Europe? Early medieval Ireland was a complex mosaic of around 150 local kingdoms and a dozen over-kingdoms. The local kingdoms or túatha were usually very small – often less than 100 square miles with populations of only a few thousand – and were defined as a ‘people’ or ‘community’, rather than as territorial units. The people of a túath were, in theory at least, an extended kinship group, or clan, and the king was the head of the senior lineage. The king (rí túathe) was responsible to his people for the fertility of their land and cattle, hence their prosperity: this was a legacy of pagan times when a king who failed to deliver would be sacrificed to the gods. Kings also had duties of lawmaking, judgement and leadership in war. In return all the free families of the túath owed the king taxes (paid in kind) and military service. Local kings might themselves owe tribute (usually in cattle), hospitality and military service to an over-king (ruirí), who in turn might owe it to a high king (rí ruirech). Over-kings, therefore, did not exercise direct rule outside their own túath, their power rested upon their ability to call on the resources and services of their client kings. The most powerful over-king of the day might be described as High King of Ireland (rí Érenn), but this was not really a formal institution with defined rules of succession. The relationships between kingdoms were not fixed. A local king with military ability and ambition could build a strong war band and use it to make himself an over-king by forcing other local kings to become his tributaries. Nevertheless, by the eighth century some stable dynasties of over-kings had emerged, the most powerful of which were the Northern and Southern Uí Néill dynasties of north-east Ulster and Meath respectively. To an outsider, early medieval Ireland would have appeared to be a chaotic and deeply divided country and, indeed, small-scale warfare between its kingdoms was endemic. Yet this highly decentralised political structure was to prove incredibly resilient, well able to absorb the shock of Viking invasions and constantly renew resistance.

In contrast to England and Francia where the Danes dominated, these raids were mainly the work of Norwegians, sailing to Ireland via the Northern Isles and the Hebrides. Viking activity in Ireland developed at first in much the same way as it did in England and Francia, beginning with small-scale hit-and-run raids on exposed coastal monasteries gradually escalating until the Vikings founded permanent bases and became a year-round presence plundering and captive-taking across the whole country. The first recorded Viking raids in Ireland took place in 795 when the same Viking band that sacked Iona sacked a monastery on Rechru, which may either be Lambay Island north of Dublin, or Rathlin Island off the northern Irish coast. In the 830s, larger fleets, numbering around sixty ships, began to arrive. Once its island monasteries had been plundered, Ireland’s wild and mountainous west coast, so similar to the west coast of Scotland, was generally shunned by the Vikings because of its poverty. The Vikings concentrated their efforts on the more fertile and densely populated east coast and the great midland plain. In 836, a fleet sailed for the first time far inland along Ireland’s longest river, the Shannon, and sacked the wealthy monasteries of Clonmacnoise and Clonfert. The following year, a Viking fleet sailed from Donegal Bay into Lough Erne to plunder monasteries around its shores. Another sacked the monastery of Áth Cliath – on the site of modern Dublin – while a third army ravaged on the Boyne, and a fourth was on the Shannon again. Nowhere was safe: ‘the sea cast floods of foreigners into Ireland, so there was not a point thereof that was without a fleet’, wrote one chronicler.

Although the Irish often fought fiercely, the Vikings’ advantage of mobility meant that they often escaped unchallenged: the saints slept and did not protect their monasteries. Monks trembled in their cells and prayed for bad weather to keep the Vikings off the seas. As kings were rarely inclined to help their rivals, the Vikings often benefited from the divisions between the Irish kingdoms. Indeed, most kings took a thoroughly pragmatic view of the Vikings, treating them as just another element in their country’s complex political geography, often welcoming them as allies who could help weaken a rival kingdom. Some bands of Irishmen took advantage of the disorder created by the Vikings to go plundering themselves ‘in the manner of the heathens’. One such band was destroyed by Máel Sechnaill mac Máele Ruanaid (r. 845 – 62), the powerful Southern Uí Néill high king of Meath, in 847.

The first longphuirt

In 839 there was a step-change in Viking activity. A Viking fleet sailed up the River Bann into Lough Neagh. Instead of plundering and leaving, the Vikings built a fortified ship camp on the lakeshore, which they used as a base to plunder the heart of Ulster for three successive summers. This was the first of many such bases – known as longphuirt by the Irish – that Viking armies were to build in Ireland over the next few years as they intensified their raids. The foundation of the longphuirt subtly changed the dynamics of Viking activity in Ireland. The Vikings were now a permanent presence in Ireland and could raid all year round, but at the same time, they lost some of their mobility, making them more vulnerable to Irish counterattack.

The leader of the fleet on Lough Neagh was a warlord who the Irish called Turgeis, that is probably Thórgestr or Thórgils in Old Norse. Turgeis’ origins are not known, but he may have come from the Hebrides as he had as his allies the Gall-Gaedhil, those ‘foreign Gaels’ who were the product of marriages between Norse settlers and the local Gaelic-speaking population. Turgeis’ greatest coup was plundering St Patrick’s monastery at Armagh three times in 840: after his final attack he burned it down for good measure. Armagh was an especially rich prize; apart from its precious reliquaries and sacred vessels, many Irish kings had their royal treasuries there, hoping that they would enjoy the protection of its powerful patron saint. It would not only have been monks who suffered in these attacks. Armagh was surrounded by a small town of craftsmen, merchants, estate managers and others who serviced the needs of this most prestigious of all Irish ecclesiastical centres. Turgeis’ activities are uncertain for the next few years, but he is thought by some historians to have been the leader of the Vikings who in 841 founded what would become the most successful of all the longphuirt at Dublin. In 844, Turgeis led his fleet up the River Shannon as far as Lough Ree, where he built another longphort from which he plundered widely in the midlands. The following year, in the first serious reverse suffered by the Vikings in Ireland, he was captured by Máel Sechnaill, who drowned him in Lough Owel in County Westmeath.

Turgeis’ reputation grew with the telling and after his death he became a symbol of everything that was wicked about the Vikings. In the colourful but unreliable twelfth-century history of Ireland’s Viking wars, Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh (‘The War of the Irish with the Foreigners’), Turgeis has become the king of all the Vikings in Ireland, bent on conquering the whole island. This Turgeis is a militant pagan who expels the abbot from Armagh and sets himself up as a pagan high priest. His wife Ota (probably Auðr) is just as bad, performing acts of witchcraft on the altar of the abbey at Clonmacnoise. This story might not be wholly improbable as Ota may have been a völva, a Viking seeress with powers to predict the future. According to the Welsh churchman Gerald of Wales, who travelled in Ireland during the 1180s, Turgeis actually conquered Ireland but was lured to his death by his weakness for women. Turgeis took a fancy to Máel Sechnaill’s daughter. The king, ‘hiding his hatred in his heart’, agreed to hand her over to Turgeis on an island in Lough Owel along with fifteen other beautiful girls. Turgeis was delighted and went to the rendezvous with fifteen of his leading warriors, all of them expecting amorous encounters. But Máel Sechnaill had laid a trap for them. His daughter was waiting for Turgeis on the island not with fifteen girls but with fifteen hand-picked young men, all clean shaven and dressed in women’s clothing, under which they carried knives. Turgeis and his unsuspecting warriors were stabbed to death ‘in the midst of their embraces’. Gerald probably recorded the story not to flatter the Irish for their cunning but because it chimed comfortably with his own prejudices: he regarded the Irish as a thoroughly deceitful and untrustworthy bunch who always negotiated in bad faith.

More reverses for the Vikings followed. In 848 the Irish won four major battles against the Vikings, killing over 2,000 of them in the process, according the Annals of Ulster. Irish annalists described these battle casualties as ‘heads’: Irish warriors still practiced the ancient Celtic custom of taking enemy heads as war trophies and rarely took prisoners. Then, in 849, Máel Sechnaill captured and plundered Dublin. Discouraged by their defeats, many Vikings left to seek easier pickings in Francia. The Norwegians suffered another blow in 851when a large force of Danish Vikings expelled them from Dublin. The following year the Norwegians suffered another crushing defeat by the Danes in a three-day battle at Carlingford Lough in County Down. The Danish intervention in Ireland was short-lived. In 853 two brothers, Olaf and Ivar, recaptured Dublin for the Norwegians and expelled the Danes.

The kingdom of Dublin

The arrival of Olaf and Ivar at Dublin in 853 was a decisive moment in Ireland’s Viking Age. Olaf and Ivar (who are called Amláib and Ímhar in Irish annals) became the first kings of Dublin and under their rule it developed from a rough ship-camp into the dominant Viking power centre of the whole Irish Sea area. Irish sources describe Olaf and Ivar as sons of King Gofraid of Lochlann, which is the usual Gaelic name for Norway, but their origins remain uncertain. Most modern historians identify Olaf with Olaf the White, a king of Dublin who features in Icelandic saga traditions. Attempts to identify Ivar with the legendary Viking Ivar the Boneless are unconvincing: Ivar the Boneless’s father was the equally legendary Viking Ragnar Lodbrok who, if he existed at all, was most likely a Dane. What is more certain is that the descendants of Olaf and Ivar, known to the Irish as the Uí Ímair, would dominate the Irish Sea for the next 200 years.

There is not enough evidence about the careers of Turgeis and Tomrair to be sure of their motives: did they aspire to found Viking states in Ireland or were they really just out for the plunder? It is clear, however, that Olaf and Ivar were trying to create a kingdom for themselves because their first actions were to impose tribute on all the Viking armies operating in Ireland. It is hard to work out from the Irish annals exactly how many of these there were but there must have been at least three or four. In their efforts to build a secure power base, the brothers took full advantage of the complex political rivalries of the Irish kingdoms. In 859 Olaf and Ivar allied with Cerball mac Dúnlainge (r. 842 – 880), king of Osraige, against his overlord Máel Sechnaill. According to saga traditions, the alliance was sealed by a marriage between Olaf and one of Cerball’s daughters. A Christian king is unlikely to have married his daughters to pagans, so, if the tradition is true, it is likely that Olaf had at least been baptised. In 858, Ivar and Cerball campaigned together in Leinster, and in Munster against the Gall-Gaedhil. The next year Olaf, Ivar and Cerball together invaded Máel Sechnaill’s kingdom of Meath. After Cerball came to terms with Máel Sechnaill, he dropped his Norse allies. Olaf and Ivar soon found a new ally in Áed Finnliath (c. 855 – 79), the northern Uí Néill king of Ulster. Together they plundered Máel Sechnaill’s kingdom in 861 and 862. After Máel Sechnaill’s death in 862, Olaf and Ivar switched to supporting his successor Lorcán against Áed. The brothers did Lorcán’s standing no good at all when, in 863, they dug open the great Neolithic burial mounds at Knowth on the River Boyne to look for treasure. Although pagan in origin, these ancient mounds were rich in mythological significance for the Irish and this desecration was thought to be shocking behaviour even by the Viking’s low standards. The following year Áed captured the discredited Lorcán, blinded him and forced him to abdicate.

Olaf and his brothers had now run out of willing allies in Ireland and, in 866, they took their fleet across the Irish Sea to raid Pictland in alliance with the Gall-Gaedhil. Áed, now high king, took advantage of their absence to plunder and destroy all the Viking longphuirt in Ulster. After a victory over the Vikings on Lough Foyle, Áed took 240 heads home as trophies. The limited extent of Viking territorial control was starkly demonstrated in 867 when Áed’s ally Cennétig king of Loigis, destroyed Olaf’s border fortress at Clondalkin just 5 miles from Dublin, which he then went on to plunder. Olaf now allied with the southern Uí Néill and Leinster against Áed. Áed crushed the alliance at the Battle of Killineer (Co. Louth) in 868: among the dead was one of Olaf’s sons. Olaf struck back at Áed in 869, brutally sacking Armagh and leading off 1,000 captives for the slave markets. This was a severe blow to Áed’s prestige – he was supposed to be the monastery’s protector. After this success, Olaf and Ivar crossed the Irish Sea to Strathclyde and laid siege to its capital, Alt Clut, on the summit of Dumbarton Rock, overlooking the River Clyde. Alt Clut fell after four months and the brothers returned to Dublin with a hoard of treasure. They went back to Strathclyde for more the following year and this time returned ‘with a great prey of Angles, Britons and Picts’. Olaf and Ivar were back plundering in Meath in 872, but in the next year Ivar died of ‘a sudden, horrible disease’. Olaf survived until 874 or 875: he was killed in battle with Constantine I of Scotland at Dollar in Clackmannanshire.

**** We do have DNA evidence, not genealogical, that the Carruthers ancestors from Gotland, landed in Winchester or Cinchester first around 400 AD. They later were welcomed at Dumbarton Castle on the Clyde River, by Hael Ryddech. King Hael gave them land across the River Clyde from the castle, and it was call Cair-muir. ***

We also have DNA evidence of various times of our Gotland ancestors landing on the east coat of Scotland and the Northern islands. *****

The deaths of Ivar and Olaf began what the Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh dubbed the ‘Forty Years’ Rest’, a long period of reduced Viking activity in Ireland that lasted until 914. Deprived of the strong military leadership provided by Olaf and Ivar, Dublin became politically unstable under a succession of short-lived successors. Olaf’s first successor as king of Dublin, his son Oystín (Eystein), lasted barely a year: he was killed when Dublin was captured by a Danish Viking who Irish annalists called Alband. Alband is most likely to have been Halfdan, the Danish king of York. Áed Finnliath came to the rescue of his Viking allies, quickly expelling Alband and placing Ivar’s son Bárðr on the throne. Alband returned to Ireland in 877, but was killed fighting the Dublin Vikings at Strangford Lough. However, his dream of uniting Dublin and York into a trans-Irish Sea kingdom survived. Bárðr died in 881 and was followed by six short-lived kings, none of whom was able to arrest the kingdom’s decline. In 902, Cerball mac Muirecáin, king of Leinster and Máel Finnia of Brega launched a co-ordinated pincer attack on Dublin from the north and south, forcing the Norse to flee for their ships after a fierce battle. The refugees fled mainly to North Wales and north-west England. Ireland’s first Viking Age was over.

From longphort to town

Most of the Vikings’ longphuirt were either abandoned, or were destroyed by the Irish, after relatively short periods of occupation. Dublin was one of a small group of longphuirt, which also included Wexford, Waterford, Cork and Limerick, which developed into permanent towns. These longphuirt all had in common good tidal harbours. The exact location of the original Viking longphort at Dublin now lies buried beneath later buildings. This has necessarily limited archaeological investigation of the city’s origins to rescue excavations on sites that have been temporarily cleared for redevelopment. Evidence for early Viking occupation, including warrior burials, buildings, ship rivets and a possible defensive rampart, excavated from sites at Ship Street Great and South Great George’s Street, suggest that the longphort was probably in the area where Dublin Castle now stands, close to the Dubhlinn, the ‘black pool’ from which the city got its English name. This was a now-vanished tidal pool at the confluence of the River Liffey and its small tributary the Poddle. Dublin was already a place of some importance before the longphort was built as a monastic centre and the site of the lowest ford across the River Liffey: its Gaelic name Áth Cliath means ‘the ford of the hurdles’. This ford made Dublin a natural focus of overland routes and, with its good harbour and short sailing distances to Wales, north-west England, Galloway and the Isle of Man, it was ideally situated to become a successful port and trading centre. The same geographical advantages also made Dublin an ideal base for raiding, not only in eastern Ireland but around the whole Irish Sea region. No other longphort in Ireland had the same combination of advantages: it was almost inevitable that Dublin would become Ireland’s dominant Viking centre.

Early Dublin was probably similar to the well-preserved longphort at Linn Duchaill, about 40 miles further north, near the village of Annagassan in County Louth. Founded in the same year as Dublin, this longphort was built on the site of a minor monastery on the banks of the River Glyde, close to its estuary into the Irish Sea. The Vikings occupied the longphort until 891, when the Irish expelled them. Vikings reoccupied the site c. 914 only for it to be abandoned for good in 927. The site has been open farmland ever since so, unlike Dublin, this longphort’s remains have seen little disturbance. Covering about 40 acres (16 hectares), the longphort at Linn Duachaill was large enough to accommodate an army that was several thousand strong. A rampart and ditch, ¾ of a mile long, protected the landward side of the fort and there was a small citadel on higher ground within the fort. Excavations yielded large numbers of ships’ rivets, testifying to ship repair and perhaps shipbuilding on the site. Pieces of hacksilver and the remains of scales show that loot was divided up here and an iron slave chain dredged from the river is evidence of slave raiding. A shuttle and spindle whorl provide evidence of spinning and weaving in the fort. As these were not occupations for Viking warriors, women must have lived there. Geophysical surveys suggest that the waterfront was densely built-up but this has not yet been confirmed by excavations. Linn Duachaill did not have the good harbour that Dublin had, and it was that which probably prevented it ever developing into a permanent town.

The first longphuirt

The kingdom of Dublin

From longphort to town

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Uncategorized

CLAN CARRUTHERS-VIKINGS OR VARANGIANS

April 9, 2020April 9, 2020 ClanCarruthers

CLAN CARUTHERS INT SOCIETY CCIS PROMPTUS ET FIDELIS

WERE THE CARRUTHERS VIKINGS OR VARANGIANS

The word Viking does not translate in the Baltic Sea region. They used the word Varangians.

Formally the Vikings were warri-ors, from the second half of the 700s, from Denmark, Sweden and Norway who sailed westwards.

The word Vikings appear sporadically across some six centuries in Arabic texts. They mention different groups of Vikings.

In early Arab texts, it makes no distinction between Vikings, Varangians, Norsemen and Scandinavians Vikings who, with Ireland as a base, operated in and around the Atlantic seaboard of western Europe and who occasionally made their presence felt in parts of Islamic Spain and those who made in roads into northern mainland Europe via the Baltic Sea and the Volga portage routes, coming into contact with Muslims in and around the Caspian Sea.

The Vikings in texts tend to be called ‘Magians’, that is, Zoroastrians (Ar. al-Majus), while Vikings who were Varagians are known as ‘Rus’ (Ar. al-Rus, written as al- rws), and variously connected with either the Slavs (Ar. Saqaliba) or the Turks (Ar. Atrak). This group ” Rus ” who entered the military service of the Byzantines are referred to as the Varangian Guard by the arabs.

Many Carruthers are starting to proceed with more and more advanced studies of DNA that are becoming available. The results show a large amount of the Carruthers genome showing up in various parts of eastern Europe, especially Romania. Some R1b studies have shown this but more CTS studies than before are producing results. A CTS study starts at 30 markers after an R1b study begins. So you can be talking of thousands and thousands of years.

A Division of Varangians and Vikings

Elbe River | river, Europe | Britannica

There is a clear line in the river Elbe between Vikings and Varangians. East of the river Elbe there is no mention of Vikings, only Varangians (Askeberg, Fritz,Norden och Kontinenten i gammal tid, 1944)

The River Oder is believed to be older than the Elbe river, and is more correct in the line between the two groups or just a name.

If you look at the two maps, today the river meets at the “big bend” as they call it, and the Oder goes to the right and the Elbe goes to the left.

In the early 1900’s , the Oder was flooding all the lands, and they made the Elbe go to the left to prevent all the flooding.

At the time we are talking, the accuracy would be to use the Oder River as the division in the two groups.

On a rune stone from Hablingbo on Gotland it says: ”Vatgair and Hailgar rose the stone

after Hailgi, their father. He had gone west with the Vikings.” What is

remarkable here is the claim that Hailgi had gone west with the Vikings,not “in

Viking”. To be “in Viking” meant to be at war and rampage, i.e. be on a

Viking expedition. But as it says that Hailgi went with Vikings, one can wonder

if it means that Gutar unlike mainland Scandinavians did not regard themselvesas

Vikings.

The historians of ancient times, believe that the Viking Age starts with the attack

on Lindisfarne in 793. This may just be because before this time little was written down.

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Teutonic Mythology Gods and ...

In the Baltic Sea region, after the signing, in the 550s, of the trade and peace treaty with

the earlier immigrated Svear (Herulic royal family and entourage) to the Lake Mälar

area, the Gotlanders (Varangians) continued to dominate trade in the Baltic Sea area and

could freely trade under Svea protection in the areas now controlled by the immigrant

Svear. Instead of paying duty every time they came to Svea trading places they paid an

annul fee and could move freely.

There were large Gotlandic trading Emporiums, i. a. in Grobina (Latvia) ca 650-850 CE,

an area at that time conquered by the Svear. With these large trading Emporiums, came

money. Gotlanders were wealthy and looking for more ways to make money. They

welcomed all traders and merchants to Gotland. There were large gathering halls for

Gotlanders, Curonians, Danes, Slavs, Svear and la-ter Germans. Gotland has through its

position as a continental outpost in the north or Nordic outpost to the south, on the

border between East and West,a cultural key position. Gotland plays a similar role for the

Baltic Sea region as Cyprus and Sicily have played as intersections for the Mediterranean

countries’trade relations and cultures.

Were the Carruthers from Gutland Vikings or Varangians. As you learn more and more

history of that region you will discover that Gutland was similar to Switzerland. Neutral

in war, but not in being a warrior. They would put armies of men together and travel

west, and also the same and travel east.

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CLAN CARRUTHERS INT SOCIETY CCIS HISTORIAN AND GENEALOGIST

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The History of Gutland, The Viking Age, Uncategorized

CLAN CARRUTHERS-MESSAGES FROM PICTURE STONES

April 5, 2020April 8, 2020 ClanCarruthers

CLAN CARRUTHERS INT SOCIETY CCIS PROMPTUS ET FIDELIS

Messages from Ancient Stones

Gotland Picture Stones from the Viking Era

Ancient stories that belong to a world far removed from technology have horses and great ships as modes of transport on this ancient Picture Stone. A round disc with six points on a shield held by a warrior on horseback represents the Sun. The carved stones were limestone and there were three notable periods with different styles.

This Gotland Picture Stone was created over a thousand years ago, about 700 – 800 CE and like many other stones on the island still holds secrets that are yet to be uncovered or confirmed. The story on this stone is in pictures and decoding the meaning is a complex task for history and iconography. Picture motifs were inscribed on gravestones, road markers, weapons and amulets. Norse myths and legends were not written down in words and so the pictures on stone are very precious records.

My painted drawing was sketched from one ornate carved Picture Stone, one of about four hundred known today, mostly from the island of Gotland, Sweden. I have tried to be accurate with the detail. The Stones belonged to the Viking Age in Scandinavia and often reference Norse myths and legends. Ancient Stones and sometimes Rune Stones with Runic letters were erected and inscribed to commemorate fallen warriors, rituals, myths and legends.

In this keyhole shaped Picture Stone there are several panels above each other. At the top the rider could be the God Odin astride the horse Sleipnir from Norse mythology. Sleipnir was the fastest of all horses and with Odin could travel between realms. The triple triangle or Valknut behind the horseman is the magical symbol in Nordic paganism for Odin. The horseman is welcomed by a female Valkyrie offering a drinking horn, possibly as a welcome to the Otherworld paradise or afterlife known as Valhalla. Some believe it could be the Goddess Freya holding a cornucopia or cup of abundance.

In the middle band there are Runic letters from the ancient Runic Alphabet below what looks like a figure walking. The Runic alphabet originated among the Nordic peoples of Europe about two or three centuries before the Christian Era. Carved runic inscriptions sometimes issued warnings about the future or issued messages but mostly the letters on these Gotland Picture Stones simply named the memorialized person.

In the panel below this we see a common theme on Picture Stones: a Viking long ship with a crisscross sail. This time there are two figures on board, possibly representing the soul being transported to the afterlife. Below that are big abstracted shapes with an extending interlace pattern that could represent the waves carrying the ship to another realm. All the picture story panels are enclosed by a plait knotwork border.

Messages in these Picture Stones tell us about a different Age, an Age when horses were thought to carry the Sun across the sky and ships were the key to adventure and trade for an island people. The messages inspire the imagination and leave us with a sense of wonder about a pagan life before Christianity, a world of beliefs in gods and goddesses connected to the natural world.

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Gutland / Gotland, The Viking Age, Uncategorized

CLAN CARRUTHERS-WARRIORS OATHS TO THE CHIEF / KING

April 4, 2020April 8, 2020 ClanCarruthers

CLAN CARRUTHERS INT SOCIETY CCIS PROMPTUS ET FIDELIS

Warriors’ Oaths To The Chief / King

Like rulers elsewhere, the Viking age king or jarl had warriors in his service, serving in a similar role to the High Medieval knight. Modern scholars have noted that Germanic kings from antiquity through the Viking Age collected about them a group of such warriors, often referred to using the Latin term comitatus, which might be translated as “war-band.”

In Old Norse, the term for the leader of such a war-band was dróttin, while the term for the war-band itself was drótt. The members of the comitatus were called húskarlar, “house-carls”, especially those found in King Knut’s Danelaw forces as described in Þingliði (Foote and Wilson, p. 100; Barfod, p. 717). Other terms used to describe members of a comitatus included O.N. drengr (“warrior member of a ship’s crew”) and O.N. þegn (“mature man, seasoned warrior”). The conduct of the comitatus was termed drenskapr in Old Norse, meaning “the ideal of conduct for warriors, roughly equivalent to the ideal of chivalry” (Foote and WIlson, pp. 425-426).

If the leader of the comitatus was a powerful noble, such as a king or a jarl, the war-band might then be called a hirð in Old Norse (Foote and Wilson, p. 101; Bagge). The hirð had a special ceremony of reception for new members and held regular meetings, which functioned as a court of law for its members and as a council advising the king (Bagge). By the 12th and 13th centuries, there were three groups within the Norwegian hirð: the hirðmenn (“men of the hirð“); the gestir (“guests”), who served as a royal police force; and the kirtisveinar, young men who served as pages (Bagge). From the hirðmenn came the officers of the hirð. The highest officer of the hirð was the stallari (literally “marshall”) who served as the king’s champion and also as a sort of general of the comitatus forces. The second ranking officer in the hirð was the merkismaðr (standard-bearer) (Bagge; Foote and Wilson, p. 103). Ranking after these officers were the lendir menn, the “landed men”, equivalent to barons, and then finally the body of warriors who made up the bulk of the hirð (Bagge). The relationship between the king and his hirðmenn was based on a contract or reciprocal oath, and the king’s hirð was usually dissolved upon his death (Bagge).

It should be noted that the comitatus, dróttin or hirð was a fairly small, elite band. The Vikings did not maintain standing armies: when it was needful, a levy was called up of free men and farmers. The kings and jarls instead maintained only their small group of core troops between wars. Confusion on this topic is rampant, in large part due to chroniclers’ tendency to wildly exaggerate the numbers of enemy armies and the tally of the dead (Evans, p. 27). The size of the comitatus is put into sharp perspective when one examines the law code of Ine of Wessex at 13.1, which states:

Ðeofas we hatað oð VII men;
from VII hloð oð XXXV;
siððan bið here.

A party of armed men numbering less than seven are thieves;
between seven and thirty-five are a band;
more than that is an army.
(Attenborough, p. 41; Evans, p. 27)

Within the comitatus, the Germanic ruler’s primary duty was to lead his warriors in battle. The literature records that the ideal ruler was the foremost warrior and best of the men in the war-band (Cherniss p. 39). This idea gave rise to descriptions such as Old English cyning-bald which means “very brave” but literally reads “royally brave, brave as a king” (Klaeber, glossary s.v. cyning-bald, p. 314). As Stephen Evans notes:

The major duty of a Germanic or Celtic lord was the conduct of warfare, in which he was expected to take an active part. The lord of a comitatus was expected not only to fight, but to fight with a great deal of martial prowess. At least during his younger years, a lord was expected to be one of the most formidable and valiant warriors of his warband.
(Evans, p. 50)

This appears to have been true for Germanic kings and lords back into antiquity, since Tacitus reports in his Germania:

Cum ventum in aciem, turpe principi virtute vinci, turpe comitatui virtutem principis non adaequare. Iam vero infame in omnem vitam ac probrosum superstitem principi suo ex acie recessisse. Illum defendere, tueri, sua quoque fortia facta gloriae eius adsignare praecipuum sacramentum est. Principes pro victoria pugnant, comites pro principe.

When they go into battle, it is a disgrace for the chief to be surpassed in valour, a disgrace for his followers not to equal the valour of the chief. And it is an infamy and a reproach for life to have survived the chief, and returned from the field. To defend, to protect him, to ascribe one’s own brave deeds to his renown, is the height of loyalty. The chief fights for victory; his vassals fight for their chief.

Aside from the bonds that form between comrades-in-arms, there were specific bonds in the form of oaths and reciprocal rights and responsibilities from ruler to warrior and from warrior to his lord, much like the formal Oath of Fealty used between the king and a knight during the medieval period. “The bond between a Germanic lord and his retainer, in a hierarchical society, places specific, clearly differentiated, though nevertheless similar, responsibilities and privileges upon social superior and inferior, leader and follower” (Cherniss, pp. 30-31). In Skáldskarpamál 53 Snorri Sturluson says:

Konungar ok jarlar hafa til fylgðar með sér þá menn, er hirðmenn heita ok húskarlar, en lendir menn hafa ok sér handgengna menn, þá er í Danmörku ok í Svíðjóð eru hirðmenn kallaðir, en í Nóregi húskarlar, ok sverja þeir þó eiða svá sem hirðmenn konungum.

Kings and jarls have in their train men called hirðmenn and húskarlar, but lendir menn also have men in their service who in Denmark and Sweden are known as hirðmenn, but in Norway húskarlar, and yet they take oaths just as hirðmenn do to kings.
(Prose Edda, p. 129)

The first bond is that of the oath between king and his warriors. “All oaths are important in heroic society, but most important and most binding is the oath of loyalty to one’s lord. This oath takes precedence over any oath which may conflict with it” (Cherniss, p. 63).

The importance of this relationship between warrior and lord cannot be overstated:

The most important relationship within a warband, and the one that was most instrumental in protecting and strengthening its social and cultural integrity, was the lord-retainer relationship. It is the internal social relationship that best explains the structure of the comitatus, and provides us with the social and cultural context in which Dark-Age warbands functioned. At least for the warrior aristocracy, by the period of Germanic migrations to Britain, the bonds established between a lord and his men had become more important than traditional kinship ties and in fact had usurped some of the duties associated with the older social system. The lord-retainer relationship was one that bound the warriors of a warband to their lord, a relationship whose fundamental and underlying roots lay in a bedrock of personal loyalty, and one whose operational framework is reflected in the series of obligations and duties which the lord and his men owed to one another
(Evans, p. 52).

The Teutonic peoples used an oath sworn on a sword hilt since antiquity, as the custom is attested to in the writings of Ammianus Marcellinus (Ellis-Davidson, Sword in A-S England, p. 185). Many early Germanic swords are known to have had special rings set into their pommels, and it is believed that these rings were used as oath-rings (Ellis-Davidson, Sword in A-S England, p. 75), similar to the sacred arm rings made of silver or gold which were kept in the temples of Thórr. These oath-rings were used to swear oaths upon, by having the oath-giver place his hand upon the ring while swearing (Ellis-Davidson, Gods and Myths, pp. 76-77). Later, as ring-swords went out of fashion, the oath was sworn directly upon the sword itself rather than upon a ring associated with the sword.

Early Norwegian law codes, including Hirðskrá (ca. 1270) describe the oath sworn by a warrior to his ruler. These sources state that the hilt of a king’s sword had to be presented to the man who entered his service, and that as the follower swore the oath of allegiance to his new lord he had to touch the hilt of the royal sword as it lay across the king’s knee: this is reminiscent of the kings of the Lewis chess-men, which all bear their swords across their laps as symbols of their temporal authority, and in a position where it may quickly be used for oath-swearing. A 13th century law, which is itself known to be a revision of an earlier 12th century law code, states:

At the time when the king appoints hirðmenn, no table shall stand before the king. The king shall have his sword upon his knee, the sword which he had for his crowning, and he shall turn it so the chape goes under his right arm, and the hilt is placed forward on his right knee. Then he shall move the buckle of the belt over the hilt, and grasp the hilt. so that his right arm is over everything. Then he who is to become a hirðsmaðr shall fall on both knees before the king on the floor … and shall put his right hand under the hilt, while he keeps his left arm down in front of him in the most comfortable position, and then he shall kiss the king’s hand.
(Ellis-Davidson, Sword in A-S England, pp. 76-77).

It is believed that the ritual used in this account was substantially the same during the Viking Age, two to three hundred years earlier, for there are similar accounts in Viking Age literature as well:

Oblato Wiggone perinde ac munere gratulatus, an sibi militare vellet, perquirit. Annuenti destrictum gladium offert. Ille cuspidem refutans capulum petit, hunc morem Rolvoni in porrigendo militibus ense exstitisse praefatus. Olim namque se regum clientelae daturi tacto gladii capulo obsequium polliceri solebant. Quo pacto Wiggo capulum complexus cuspidem per Hiarwarthum agit, ultionis compos, cuius Rolvoni ministerium pollicitus fuerat.
(Gesta Danorum 2.8.4)

Then Wigg came forth, and Hiartuar, as though he were congratulating him on the gift, asked him if he were willing to fight for him. Wigg assenting, he drew and proferred him a sword. But Wigg refused the point, and asked for the hilt, saying first that this had been Rolf’s custom when he handed forth a sword to his soldiers. For in old time those who were about to put themselves in dependence on the king used to promise fealty by touching the hilt of the sword. And in this wise Wigg clasped the hilt, and then drove the point through Hiartuar; thus gaining the vengeance which he had promised Hrólfr to accomplish for him.
(Danish History, Book II)

Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla tells how the Anglo-Saxon king Æthelstan played a trick on Harald Fairhair of Norway. Æthelstan sent a messenger to Harald:

Hann selur konungi sverð gullbúið með hjöltum og meðalkafla og öll umgerð var búin með gulli og silfri og sett dýrlegum gimsteinum. Hélt sendimaðurinn sverðshjöltunum til konungsins og mælti: “Hér er sverð er Aðalsteinn konungur mælti að þú skyldir við taka.” Tók konungur meðalkaflann og þegar mælti sendimaðurinn: “Nú tókstu svo sem vor konungur vildi og nú skaltu vera þegn hans er þú tókst við sverði hans.”
(Haraldar saga hárfagra, ch. 40)

The emissary went up to the king, handing him a sword adorned with gold and silver and set with precious stones. The emissary offered the king the sword hilt and spoke these words, “Here is the sword which King Aethelstan asks you to receive from him.” Then the king took hold of the hilt, whereupon the messenger said, “Now you seized the sword in the fashion our king desired you would, and now you shall be his leigeman since you seized hold of his sword.”
(Heimskringla, “Haralds saga Harfagra” ch. 38, p. 92).

Sveno in his Lex Castrensis records that the custom of Viking kings presenting swords to the men in his fealty persisted up until the time of King Knut (Ellis-Davidson, Sword in A-S England, p. 186).

A young man might also receive a sword from the lord whom he pledged himself to serve as a poet or warrior, thus Hallfred [Troublesome-skald] took a sword from King Olaf Tryggvason and Sigvat a sword from King Olaf the Holy. We know from one of Sigvat’s own poems what this gift meant to him: “I received thy sword with pleasure, O Njord of battle, nor have I reviled it since, for it is my joy. This is a glorious way of life, O Tree of Gold, we have both done well. Thou didst get a loyal housecarle, and I a good leige lord.”
(Ellis-Davidson, Sword in A-S England, pp. 212- 213).

The actual oath that was sworn probably varied from person to person and from place to place. The oath binding a warrior to his lord was of supreme importance within the warrior’s life: “All oaths are important in heroic society, but most important and most binding is the oath of loyalty to one’s lord. This oath takes precedence over any oath which may conflict with it (Cherniss, p. 63).

The typical vow or oath began with a declaration of the lineage of the warrior.

“I will make known my ancestry to one and all: I came from a mighty family of Mercian stock; my grandfather was Ealhelm, a wise ealdorman…” (The Battle of Maldon)
“I am Hygelac’s kinsman and thane…” (E. Talbot Donaldson, trans. Beowulf. New York: Norton. 1966. p. 8).

This condensed genealogy was then followed by a listing of the warrior’s past heroic deeds, especially those which had some bearing upon the deeds he hoped to perform in the immediate future.

“I came from the fight where I had bound five, destroyed a family of giants, and at night in the waves slain water-monsters, suffered great pain, avenged an affliction of the Weather-Geats on those who had asked for trouble – ground enemies to bits.” (Beowulf)

This collection of past feats recalled the warrior’s heroic exploits in order to project the heroic actions so described upon the future acts of the speaker: “the past is made present as it is brought to bear upon some future situation… the spirit of past deeds must be revived and renewed in future struggle” (Conquergood, pp. 27-29). This listing of deeds emphasized the speaker’s heroic virtues (I fought… I avenged… I endured… I ventured…) — never events that did not conform to the ideals of a warrior society (I hesitated… I weighed the alternatives… I surrendered…).

Heroic poetry gives a good idea of the actual promises made in the oaths that a warrior made to his lord or king. For instance, in the Old English poem, The Battle of Maldon, Earl Bryhtnoth’s men have sworn:

not to forget the goods and wealth received from their lord (ll. 185-197)
to always fight before their lord (i.e., in the van, ll. 15-16)
to wrest glory from the foemen they face (l. 129)
that they will not flee one foot-step from the battle (ll. 246-247, 275-276)
to avenge their lord if he is slain or die trying (ll. 207-208, 216-224)
to avenge their lord and fight themselves until slain (ll. 249-253, 288-294, 317-319)

Saxo Grammaticus records the theme of vengeance owed by the warrior to his lord’s slayer as well. After a young man named Wigg bestows King Hrólfr with his famous nickname, kraki, the king gifts the youth with a pair of arm-rings, and Wigg in turn makes an oath:

Nec Wiggoni rependendi beneficii cura defuit. Siquidem artissima voti nuncupatione pollicitus est, si Rolvonem ferro perire contingeret, ultionem se ab eius interfectoribus exacturum. (Gesta Danorum 2.6.12)

Nor was Wigg heedless to repay the kindness; for be promised, uttering a strict vow, that, if it befell Hrolfr to perish by the sword, he would himself take vengeance on his slayers (Danish History, Book II).

The warrior entering a lord’s service made an oath to fight for his lord, to support the lord in battle and protect him, and to avenge the lord if needed, dying if necessary while trying to exact vengeance. Some warriors may have vowed to die in battle if their lord died, taking as many of the foemen with them into death as possible to exact veneance for the ruler’s death (Cherniss, pp. 50, 62).

Another duty of the members of the Germanic lord’s war-band was serving as advisors and counsellors to their lord. While this duty may have fallen primarily to the veteran members of the comitatus based on their age and experience, still it was an important role:

Regardless of the precise constitutional underpinnings and authority of these advisors, it is clear that the chieftains and kings of this period did consult them, at least on matters in which they all had a vested interest; the initiation of hostilities, the course of a campaign, and other important matters pertaining to the kingdom
(Evans, p. 66).

This advice also extended to the selection of new members of the war-band, as is seen in Beowulf, where King Hrothgar’s warrior Wulfgar offers his lord advice on the newly-arrived war-band led by the redoubtable Beowulf, first suggesting that the king should hold audience with the Geatish warrior:

….. no ðu him wearne geteoh
ðinra gegncwida, glædman Hroðgar!

….. give no refusal to him
in your answer, gracious Hrothgar!
(Beowulf ll. 366-367; Evans, p. 66).

Then the Danish warrior assesses the worth of Beowulf and his men, advising his lord as to this assessment:

Hy on wiggetawum wyrðe þinceað
eorla geæhtlan; huru se aldor deah,
se þæm heaðorincum hider wisade.

In battle-gear, they seem worthy
of nobles’ esteem; surely that chief is strong,
who led these battle-warriors here.
(Beowulf ll. 366-367; Evans, p. 66).

In addition to the portion of the oath which specified what the warrior would do in his service to his lord, the sword-oath also was likely to contain a section defining penalties should the warrior fail to perform as he has sworn to do. Sigrun’s curse from Helgakviða Hundingsbana II v. 32 suggests the type of language that may have been used in this portion of the oath:

Bíti-a þér þat sverð
er þú bregðir
nema sjalfum þér
syngvi of höfði.

May that sword pierce thee
which thou dost draw!
May it sing only
round thy own head.

The effect of this type of penalty was that if the warrior should fail to uphold his oath sworn upon the king’s sword then the the sword itself will turn against him in battle, and wrath of the gods will be brought upon him Davidson, Sword in A-S England, p. 210).

The warrior’s oath would then be closed as formally as it was begun, acknowledging the audience as witnesses to the oath by mentioning that the warrior would have no need to fear the scorn or censure of his fellows:

“No thanes shall ever reproach me amongst the people with any desire to desert this troop and hurry home…” (Battle of Maldon).
“No loyal warrior living at Sturmere need reproach me for returning home lordless in unworthy retreat…” (Battle of Maldon).
“My liege lord Hygelac may be glad of me in his heart…” (Beowulf).

An interesting parellel oath structure is preserved in the Russian Primary Chronicle, where the activities of concluding peace treaties between the 10^th century pagan Scandinavian Rus and the Christian Byzantine Emperor are recorded:

The first treaty was negotiated in 907 between Oleg, Prince of Rus, with five delegates on one side, and the Emperors Leo VI and Alexander on the other. Probably it was concluded after an attack by the northerners on Constantinople, which was bought off by payment of a tribute:

Thus the Emperors Leo and Alexander made peace with Oleg, and after agreeing upon the tribute and mutually binding themselves by oath, they kissed the cross, and invited Oleg and his men to swear an oath likewise. According to the religion of the Russes, the latter swore by their weapons and by their god Perun, as well as by Volos, the god of cattle, and thus confirmed the treaty.

The next treaty was made in 911 between Oleg, Prince of Rus, with 15 delegates, among them the five men of the previous treaty, and the Emperors Leo, Alexander and Constantine:

Our serenity, (…) deemed it proper to publish and confirm this amity not merely in words but also in writing and under a firm oath sworn upon our weapons according to our religion and our law. (…) to maintain as irrevocable and immutable henceforth and forever the amity thus proclaimed by our agreement with you Greeks and ratified by signature and oath.

In 941, a kinsman of Oleg, Igor, Prince of Rus, attacked Constantinople. The Rus assault was halted by Greek fire, which terrified the pagan Rus, who supposed the Greeks had the lightnings at their command. The resulting treaty was concludied with fifty Rus emissaries and confirmed on oath:

The unbaptised Russes shall lay down their shields, their naked swords, their armlets, and their other weapons, and shall swear to all that is inscribed upon this parchment, to be faithfully observed forever by Igor and his boyars, and all the people from the land of Rus. If any of the princes or any Russian subject, whether Christian or non-Christian, violates the terms of this instrument, he shall merit death by his own weapons, and be accursed of God and of Perun because he violated this oath. So be it good that the Great Prince Igor shall rightly maintain these friendly relations that they may never be interrupted, as long as the sun shines and the world endures henceforth and forevermore.

The last treaty reported by the Primary Chronicle was concluded by Sviatoslav, son of Igor, a definite pagan who had firmly rejected his mother’s Christian faith. In 960, Sviatoslav attacked the Bulgars on the river Danube in an attempt to create a more convenient shipping-route to the Black Sea, since the river Dnieper with its falls and predatory Pechenegs was a difficult route for Rus trade. As with the earlier Rus assaults against Byzantine territories, Sviatoslav was forced to bow to the greater might of the Greek armies and conclude a treaty:

I, Svyatoslav (…) confirm by oath upon this covenant that I desire to preserve peace and perfect amity with each of the great emperors, (…) until the end of the world.(…) But if we fail in the observance of any of the aforesaid stipulations, (…) may we be accursed of the god in whom we believe, namely, of Perun and Volos, the god of flocks, and we become yellow as gold, and be slain with our own weapons. Regard as truth what we have now covenanted (…), as it is inscribed upon this parchment and sealed with our seals

All four of the Rus oaths recorded in the Primary Chronicle follow familiar patterns seen in other Scandinavian oaths. Perun, god of weather, lightning and power, was worshipped by Slavs and Balts, but adopted by Rus as the local equivalent of the Scandinavian god Þórr. “Volos, the god of flocks” was surely considered as the local equivalent of the Scandinavian’s own god Freyr. These invocations are also seen in the Old Icelandic Úlfljót’s Law:

A ring of two ounces or more [the stallahringr] should lie on the altar of every main temple. (…). Every man who needed to perform legal acts before the court must first swear an oath on this ring and mention two or more witnesses. ‘I name witnesses’ he must say, ‘that I swear the oath on the ring, a lawful oath. So help me Freyr and Njörðr and the Almighty áss [god, often identified as Þórr, Óðinn, or Ullr]…’

The “laying down” of shields, weapons, and arm-rings by the Rus in the Primary Chronicle accounts may indicate the presence of a truce-area, since such areas were hallowed by the names of the gods Freyr and Njörðr elsewhere in Scandinavia, or it may reflect that, as in Úlfljót’s Law, the oath-swearers were actually swearing their own oaths upon these items, their weapons, which would turn against them should they fail the oath, and the sacred ring in the old pagan ritual of oath-giving.

One last common and interesting feature of the Rus oaths is the duration the oaths are sworn to run, “as long as the sun shines and the world endures henceforth and forevermore,” which echoes the Trygðamál, or “Peace Guarantee Speech” found in the Old Icelandic lawbook Grágás as formula for settling disputes:

But the one of you who tramples on treaties made or smites at sureties given, he shall be a wolf and be driven off as far and wide as ever men drive wolves off, Christians come to church, heathens hallow temples, fire flames, ground grows, son calls mother, mother bears son, men make fires, ship glides, shields flash, sun shines, snow drifts, Finn skis, fir tree grows, falcon flies a spring-long day with a fair wind beneath both wings’, and so on…

Once the warrior had sworn his oath to the king, the king in turn had to swear to his new retainer. As has already been mentioned, the most important role of the king in the war-band was as the foremost warrior, so it is possible that the king’s side of the oath would include a promise to lead in battle.

After battle-prowess and leadership, the next most important virtue of the Germanic king or lord was generosity. The spoils of war which are captured in battle by the war-band belong entirely to the ruler. In turn, it is the duty of the lord to be open handed in the extreme with these riches. As the Old Norse proverb has it: Gjöf sér æ til gjalda, “A gift always looks for a return” — in return for service, the lord granted gifts, in return for gifts, the warrior granted service (Foote and Wilson, p. 424).

All of the treasures and favors which the retainers receive come directly from their lord, even though they have originally won these treasures in battle themselves. … Generosity towards his retainers is, along with prowess in battle, the most important virtue which a lord can possess, and is the quality most often praised in Germanic heroic poetry” (Cherniss, p. 41).

Therefore a second component in the oath sworn by the Viking king to his new warrior might be that the lord would reward his new liegeman generously, earning the epithets such as the Old English terms beag-gyfa or beaga brytta (“ring-giver”), gold-wine (“gold-friend, prince, king”), or hord-weard (“treasure-hoard warder”) to the point that these terms became synonyms for “king, lord, prince, ruler.” This motif occurs in Old Norse poetry as well, for example Þjóðólfr Arnórsson calling King Haraldr, Lét vingjafa veitir, varghollr (“The dispenser of gifts to friends, benificent to the wolf”), showing both the king’s generosity to his followers and using generosity as well in a kenning showing him as a warrior, leaving corpses upon which the wolves will dine (Poole, p. 62) or calling him snjóllum hrings, “giver of rings” (Poole, p. 63). Snorri Sturluson, in Skáldskarpamál 53, states that:

…þeir menn, er hersar heita. Kenna má þá sem konung eða jarl, svá at kalla þá gullbrjóta ok auðmildinga…

“…those men, who are called hersar (lords) can be referred to like a king or a jarl, by calling them gold-breakers and wealth-bountiful ones…”
(Prose Edda, p. 129).

By being open-handed with gifts and riches given to the warrior the king fulfilled his side of the contract enacted by the fealty oath:

He beot ne aleh,
beagas dælde,
sinc æt symle.

[King Hrothgar] did not leave unfulfilled his oath:
rings he dealt out,
and treasure at the ale-feast.
(Beowulf ll. 80-81)

The Germanic lord was also known as protector of his people. Many of the kennings for “lord” or “king” reflect this: for instance the Old English terms eþel-weard (“guardian of the native land”), eorla hleo (“protector of earls”), rices weard (“guardian of the kingdom”), folces hyrde (“folk-herd, guardian of the people”), rices hyrde (“kingdom-herd, guardian of the kingdom”). The lord protects his people directly, by his personal battle-prowess, and indirectly by forming advantageous alliances with other tribes, either by mutual exchange of gifts or intermarriage or by adopting a warrior of another tribe as a son:

The devotion of the lord to his followers, and the love of the followers for their lord, are at least partially the result of the role which the lord plays as protector of the people. The lord’s first duty towards the comitatus is to protect his followers from whatever harm might befall them were he not present.
(Cherniss, p. 44-46)

Finally, the ruler might cement the swearing by giving a gift to the new warrior, beginning the reciprocal relationship by his generosity. This gift might be a valuable arm-ring, embodying the oath within the circle of the ring, which has no beginning nor ending and which brought with it connotations of the sacred oath-ring of Thórr. Many times a king or lord would gift his new warrior with a sword, perhaps one captured in battle, or maybe even a famous sword with a lineage:

We know, however, that the gift of a sword from the king or leader to a warrior entering his service was considered to form a bond of mutual obligation and loyalty between them.”
(Ellis-Davidson, Sword in A-S England, pp. 75-76)

Warriors entering the war-band might also be given lands or a home: the Old Danish word for a member of the comitatus was hemþægi, literally “one who receives a home” (Foote and Wilson, p. 100).

Whatever gift was given by the lord to his new warrior, the gift served as a symbol of the warrior’s obligation – the treasure which was gifted to the retainer by the lord demands eventual repayment by the retainer via martial service.

SAMPLE FEALTY

Warrior: “(Lineage) I am Ragnar, son of Ulfgar, grandson of the mighty Snorri of whom many are the songs and stories! (History) I have come from the fight where I alone slew five, furious in the fell play of wound wands! From Skaggerak to Skye my sword is known, and in Skane and among the Skrit-Finns they sing dirge-songs where I’ve slain their sons! (Future deeds) Greater deeds than these shall I gain, garnering fame like grains of gold! In this war-band shall my wound-wand strike hard against the steel of byrnies, so all hear them sing their sad, dire song, if the guardian of the folk grants me the gift I ask, accepting my oath ay!”

Lord: A mighty man in byrnie are you, of proven bravery, bold in battle. Into my war-band will you come, to serve as warrior and counsel wise words?

Warrior: Aye!

Lord: (Calls for sword, which is kept in the sheath, hilt on the knee pointed toward the arrior with the length of the blade running along his leg, and the point passing between the right arm and the body. The buckle of the sword belt should rest upon the hilt, and the lord should grasp the hilt so that his arm lays on top of the sword along its length.) Speak then your oath!

Warrior: (The warrior shall kneel before the king and shall put his right hand under the hilt) I, Ragnar, make this oath: that I shall be in the forefront of fierce battle, forging ahead with my lord and friend, coming to the war-call carrying my weapons; and when no battle causes the war-horn to blow, I shall not forget the ring-giver’s generosity, but will offer wise counsel as I may. And though I had liefer lay down my life than see harm come to my lord, still should the poisoned point or aged edge strike him down, then I shall not flee a single footlength from the field, but rather shall advance into the enemy army, slaying as I might, to avenge the protector of the people. And by Freyr, and by Njordr, and the Almighty Ase, may this sword smite me upon which my hand rests, may my own edge twist and turn against me should I fail to keep this oath. (Leans forward and kisses the lord’s hand or the sword hilt).

Lord: I have heard your oath, as have the holy Aesir. Hear you then my vow to you: with red gold shall I gift you, granting good gifts as you merit, round rings rolling from my hand to yours; among my earls shall you sit in the sumbel, with sweet mead strong filling your stoup; if to the lawcourt you are called, in legal tangles twisted and tied, then I and all of my earls and kin shall stand as oath-helpers if you should need this; and finally, my sword shall stand between you and your enemies, my strength and my war-band beside you boldly, for bare is brotherless back. May Óðinn Allfather, God of Oaths listen, may Freyr and Njörðr witness my words, let Frigga hold me faithful, may Saga keep this oath in memory, and may Thórr, Almighty God hallow this vow! (Lord stands and hands sword to assistant, who in its place gives him an arm-ring or necklace of heavy gold chain, or a sword or other worthy gift, which the Lord gives to his new warrior.)

Preserving Our Past, Recording Our Present, Informing Our Future

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Gutland / Gotland, Uncategorized

CLAN CARRUTHERS-ENGLISH TREASURE ON GOTLAND

April 4, 2020April 8, 2020 ClanCarruthers

CLAN CARRUTHERS INT SOCIETY CCIS PROMPTUS ET FIDELIS

English Treasure on Gotland

And Irish treasure And Frankish treasure. And German treasure. And Arabic – most especially Arabic.

Through the Carruthers DNA studies, the Genetic Genealogist have shown us that our CTS DNA genome has shown up in two large waves of coming ashore in England and Scotland. We are sure there have been more, but it takes a lot of money for testing. One wave was in the middle to late 450 AD, in Winchester or Cinchester, Dunbarton and along the Clyde River, and on the east coast of Scotland, around 850 AD.

The Carruthers Historians along with Mark Stewart, and Douglas Stewart, have shown possible travel routes between Scotland and Ireland for these same time periods.

Gotland coat of arms; sheep, called
on Gotland “lamm” have always
been important to the local economy

More than 700 purposefully assembled collections, or hoards, of silver treasure have been found on the Baltic island of Gotland, most deposited in the ground for safe keeping during the Viking age (9th through mid-11th centuries).

A few of these hoards are of unequalled size, including the largest ever found. The Spillings Hoard, unearthed by a farmer in his field in north-eastern Gotland in July 1999, contains more than 14,300 silver coins, and much silver jewellery: hundreds of armlets, and numerous finger rings, as well as silver ingots, coils of rolled silver, and hack-silver, pieces of broken jewellery and cut-up coinage.

The Spillings Hoard was buried under the floorboards of a farmhouse about 881 CE, as the latest coin is dated to then. The house quite possibly was that belonging to a metalsmith – always a prosperous member of society in medieval times – judging by the other metal remains found on site. The earliest coins in the hoard are 6th c Sasanian. The vast majority of the coins are Arabic dirhams, not brought to the island as plunder but rather through the extensive trade around the Baltic basin that connected Gotland with the Silk Road and its fabled riches of silk, furs, and spices. The area where the Spillings Hoard was found abounded in well-to-do savers; a hoard was found in the same field in 1883 and numbered 5,922 coins.

Gotland is an island 109 miles long and 32 miles wide in the Baltic sea, and today is home to some 58,000 residents. An independent nation until captured by the Danish King Valdemar Atterdag in 1361, Gotland did not become part of Sweden until 1645.

The walled capital city of Visby, on the eastern coast, grew immensely rich in the later middle ages as part of the Hanseatic League, leaving it and all of Gotland dotted with impressive medieval buildings, including the 94 parish churches it is justly famed for.

It is a place of exceptional beauty, its extensive coast and many inlets dotted with rauk – wind- and water-swept limestone rock formations – and blessed with the sunniest location of all Sweden. The name “Gotland” – Gutland in Gutnish, the original language of the settlers, is “Goth-land”, land of the Goths. Although the official language politically is Swedish, Gutnish is still spoken amongst some residents, although sadly barely survives in written form. Swedish friends living and studying on Gotland tell me that when they overhear Gutnish it is unintelligible to them, so distinct a language it is.

Nearly 200,000 old coins have been found on Gotland, including more late Anglo-Saxon coins than have been found in Britain itself. Yes: more late Anglo-Saxon coins have been found on this small distant island than in England itself. Many of these English coins were almost certainly plunder, and from the payment of thousands of pounds of danegeld (the payments paid by Anglo-Saxon rulers to stave off the predations of the Vikings). But the Gotlanders themselves were not “Vikings” – they were prosperous and peaceful farmers and traders, highly independent, pragmatic, and successful. Gotland’s location in the Baltic Sea made it perfect for trading runs across to the eastern and southern shores, where tribes such as the Polanie, Pomerani, and Prus ran Summer trading posts. These connected to trade routes heading further East deep into Russia, South to present day Iraq and Uzbekistan, and West to the great trading towns of the Svear (Swedes) such as Birka, and Aros (Aarhus) of the Danes.

The Spillings Hoard, along with much more treasure and examples of Gotland’s famed standing memorial stones, are on view in Visby at the Gotlands Museum. An excellent book is available on the Hoard: The Spillings Hoard: Gotland’s Role in Viking Age World Trade, Visby, Gotlands Museum, 2009.

Preserving Our Past, Recording Our Present, Informing Our Future

Ancient and Honorable Clan Carruthers Int Society CCIS LLc

carruthersclan1@gmail.com carrothersclan@gmail.com

Octavia Randolph

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Gutland / Gotland, The Viking Age, Uncategorized

CLAN CARRUTHERS-VIKING BOAT BURIAL REVEALS ITS SECRETS

March 27, 2020April 4, 2020 ClanCarruthers

CLAN CARRUTHERS INT SOCIETY CCIS PROMPTUS ET FIDELIS

VIKING BOAT BURIAL REVEALS ITS SECRETS

Six years after discovering and excavating the first Viking boat burial site discovered on the UK mainland, archaeologists have provided a glimpse into some of the mysteries this rare burial reveals.

Originally unearthed in 2011, the site in Swordle Bay, Scotland, was the first undisturbed Viking boat burial found on the UK mainland. After six years of work, Ardnamurchan Transitions Project’s findings were recently released in an in-depth report in the Journal of Antiquity, revealing, among other things, the growing relationship between Scotland and the Viking world at that time.

Viking boat burials themselves were extremely rare. Only practiced for the deaths of prominent individuals, the ritual used a boat as a coffin for the body and burial goods. Discovered under a low-lying natural mound close to the shore, this particular site was small, measuring approximately 17 feet by 5 feet, and thought to have contained a row boat that was accompanying a larger ship.

After excavating the site, archaeologists were able to reconstruct the steps of the burial. A boat-shaped depression was first dug into a natural mound of beach shingle. The boat was then inserted into the ground, and the body was placed inside, along with the grave goods. Stones were place inside and around the boat. As part of the closing of the site, a spear and shield boss (the round or convex piece of material at the center of a shield) were deliberately broken and deposited.

The ship, along with the human remains, decayed in the acidic soil long ago, but the grave artifacts remained, offering a glimpse into the possible origins of the deceased as well as the reach of Viking culture. A single copper alloy-ringed pin with three bosses—a style found in Ireland—was also found, believed to have originally been fastened to a burial coat. There was also a copper alloy drinking horn, thought to be Scandinavian in origin. Other grave goods included a sword, an axe, a sickle (found mostly in Scotland), a whetstone (probably Norwegian), flint strike-a-lights and two teeth—molars from only identified human remains. Hundreds of metal rivets that once held the vessel together, some with wood shards, were also discovered.

An isotopic analysis of the teeth (the lower left first and second molars) revealed further information. The individual likely lived on, or close to, the coast, as indicated by an increase in consumption of marine proteins between the ages of 3 and 5. While marine protein was rarely consumed by humans in Britain, it was popular in Viking-era Norway. Further analysis of the teeth narrowed down the place of origin to eastern Ireland, northeastern mainland Scotland, Norway or Sweden.

The weapons included in the burial point to a warrior status and the artifacts and their internment infer high status, but the gender cannot be confirmed. While it is likely a male burial, some of the goods, such as the sickle, are more commonly associated with females. Current Viking’s scholarship points to a number (albeit smaller) of female warriors, as well as the discoveries and excavations of female boat burials.

While there is still more to learn from this rare burial site, an important finding was revealed in the variety of grave goods from multiple geographic locations: The growing relationship between Scotland and the Viking world at that time.

Preserving Our Past, Recording Our Present, Informing Our Future

Ancient and Honorable Clan Carruthers Int Society CCIS LLc

carruthersclan1@gmail.com carrothersclan@gmail.com

Patricia Peck

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Gutland / Gotland, The Viking Age, Uncategorized

CLAN CARRUTHERS-OSBERG VIKING SHIP

March 26, 2020April 4, 2020 ClanCarruthers

CLAN CARRUTHERS INT SOCIETY CCIS PROMPTUS ET FIDELIS

CLAN CARRUTHERS – OSBERG VIKING SHIP

In 1904 a remarkable archaeological site was uncovered at Oseberg, Norway. It consisted of an astonishingly well-preserved Viking ship that contained the remains of two women along with a wide array of accompanying grave goods. This vessel, which is widely celebrated as one of the finest finds of the Viking Age, had been buried within a large mound or haugr.

When the Carruthers ancestors first landed on the Celtic Islands, they called us the Red Dragon. You can see why.

The burial mound measured approximately 40m long by 6.5m high and it completely covered the boat. The conditions within the mound were particularly damp and this meant that the ship and its contents survived nearly intact. Constructed primarily out of oak planks, the vessel measured 21.40m long by 5.10m wide. Its bow and stern were covered in elaborate carvings, while it contained 15 pairs of oar holes which meant up to 30 men could row the ship as required.

Centrally placed on the ship were the skeletons of two women whose remains had been placed in a specially built wooden tent. One of the woman was in her eighties and this was reflected in the condition of her bones which showed that she had suffered badly from arthritis during her final years. The second woman was younger and had died in her early fifties.The connection between the two women is unclear; it is possible that they were related or more sinisterly represent the remains of a noble woman interred with her sacrificed slave. Indeed, some have speculated that one of the women may be Queen Åsa, the grandmother of Norway’s first king, although this remains unproven.

Radiocarbon analysis of the women’s bones indicated that they died c. 1220±40 and 1230±40 before present and this ties in with the dendrochronology dates from the burial tent timbers, which indicate it was constructed in 834 AD. Other skeletal remains found on the ship included 13 horses, 4 dogs and 2 oxen. It is likely that these represent animals that were sacrificed to accompany the female burials into the afterlife.

The grave was disturbed in antiquity and any precious metals that may have been present were stolen. However, a remarkable collection of wooden and textile artefacts were left behind by the grave robbers. These included four elaborately decorated sleighs, a richly carved four-wheel wooden cart, three beds as well as a number of wooden chests. More mundane items such as agricultural and household tools were also found.

This bucket was one of several found on on the ship. Made out of yew wood it is surrounded by decorative brass fittings and held together with iron hoops. A wooden ladle and 6-7 wild apples were found inside it.

The famous Oseburg ‘Buddha’. Sitting in the lotus position this stylised human figure is found on another bucket from the ship. This bucket most likely originated in Ireland as the decorative motifs on the ‘Buddha’ are paralleled in Irish art work most noticeably The Book of Durrow. This suggests that bucket may represent booty captured during a Viking raid on Ireland.

Five of these zoomorphic posts, all carved with different animal heads, were found in the Oseberg burial. They are fashioned out of maple wood and are of similar size. The posts contain slots for handles suggesting that they were originally carried and it is likely they had some sort of magical or religious significance.

Four wooden sledges were also uncovered, three of which, were covered in ornate carvings.

The ship under excavation (image after http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/2007/09/11/oseberg-skeletons-exhumed/) The Oseberg ship and its treasure trove of artefacts are currently on display at the Viking Ship Museum, Oslo, Norway.

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Ancient and Honorable Clan Carruthers Int Society CCIS LLc

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Colin Moriarty

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