1,100-year-old ‘ceremonial’ Viking shields were actually used in battle, study suggests
Dozens of Viking round shields from a famous ship burial unearthed in Norway were not strictly ceremonial as long thought; instead they may have protected warriors in battle, a new study finds.
1000 YEAR OLD SHIELD FOUND IN DENMARK. CARRUTHERS ANCESTORS WERE MAINLY DANISH VIKINGS.
A reanalysis of the wooden shields, which were unearthed in the Gokstad ship in southern Norway in 1880, suggests they may have once been covered with rawhide (untanned cattle skin) and used in hand-to-hand combat, according to a new study published on March 24 in the journal Arms and Armour.
“The [Gokstad] shields are generally in accordance with our understanding of shields that have been used in combat,” study author Rolf Warming , a doctoral student of archaeology at Stockholm University, told Live Science in an email. “The craftsmanship is in the tradition of the Germanic flat round shield tradition, which is a widespread weaponry technology in Scandinavia between the early 3rd to late 13th centuries.”
A drawing of a reconstructed shield from the Gokstad ship, adapted from the original 1882 report of the discovery. (Image credit: Nicolaysen et al, 1882)
A total of 64 shields — possibly one for each of the crew on board, Warming said — were tied along the top edge of the hull of the ship, just above its oar-holes.
The vessel was once used at sea, probably for warfare, trade and transportation. But about 900, it was dragged onto land and used for the burial of a Viking king .
Vikings were feared and respected. Some viewed and portrayed them as godless pagans, barbarian invaders. Others looked up to them, regarding them as brave, fearless legendary warriors.
Viking Ship found carved in stone on Gotland (Swedish island)
Vikings formed part of a complex and sophisticated Scandinavian culture. They originated from what are now Norway, Sweden and Denmark, though there are mentions in historical records of Finnish, Estonian Varaginian and Saami Vikings as well.
As well as raiders they were traders, reaching as far east as the rivers of Russia and the Caspian Sea, far across the Atlantic where they would land on the coastline of North America ten centuries before Columbus; poets, composing verse and prose sagas of great power, and artists, creating works of astonishing beauty. While the Vikings had the runic alphabet, they didn’t have written history, it was transmitted orally. These seafaring warriors known collectively as Vikings or Norsemen (“Northmen”) began by raiding coastal sites, especially undefended monasteries, in the British Isles in 793 CE.
Terror descended on the coast of Northumbria (U.K), as armed raiders attacked the defenceless monastery of St Cuthbert on Lindisfarne. The terrified monks watched helplessly as these invaders made off with a haul of treasure and a clutch of captives, mainly monks most likely. It was the first recorded raid by the Vikings, who would prey on coastal communities in north-western Europe as well as parts of modern-day Russia, Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland for more than two centuries. The attack and plunder of Lindisfarne echoed throughout the next 300 years of European history, what historians refer to as The Viking Age, had begun.
Lindisfarne Raid: Viking Ships arriving in Britain as depicted in an English illuminated manuscrpit, c. 1130.
The exact reasons for Vikings to leave their homeland remain unclear, but we do know that at first they were looking for riches and not land which out rules the theory that they were overpopulated. It is a historic fact that Europe was growing richer, fuelling the growth of trading centres such as Dorestad and Quentovic on the Continent and Hamwic (now Southampton), London, Ipswich and York in England. Scandinavian furs were highly prized in the new trading markets. Their knowledge on new sailing technology and inner conflicts between European kingdoms would be used to expand their fortune-seeking activities into the North Sea and beyond. Special ship construction techniques made the long ships and larger dragon ships versatile enough to sail great distances, carry up to 200 men, withstand rough seas while still being light enough to drag over land or carry through portages. They traded all the goods of the north – furs, amber, iron and timber – for all the goods of the south – silver, gold, silks and spices. And all along the trade routes, the Vikings traded in slaves. It is worth noting that women in Viking society had more power than most other European women of the time. They could divorce their husbands, own some property and sell their own handicrafts. Some women became wealthy landowners too.
So Vikings took to raiding towns, churches and monasteries in Christian faith countries, e.g. Francia; many of the attacks took place on the coasts as they were easiest to reach. With their swift and easily landed ships, they quickly swarm over the communities, killing and looting, and just as fast returned to their ships and left. They were gone before any defence or counter-attack could be made. Strangely enough, for most of the men who went plundering, it was only part time. They often returned in time for harvest in the fall. However, raiding was very profitable and many farmers did become full time pirates and raiders.
Vikings presence in Britain
Gradually, Viking raiders began to stay, first in winter camps, then settling in land they had seized, mainly in the east and north of England. Outside Anglo-Saxon England, to the north of Britain, the Vikings took over and settled in Iceland, the Faroes and Orkney (an archipelago in the Northern Isles of Scotland), becoming farmers and fishermen, and sometimes going on summer trading or raiding voyages. Orkney became powerful, and from there the Earls of Orkney ruled most of Scotland. To this day, especially on the north-east coast, many Scots still bear Viking names.
To the west of Britain, the Isle of Man became a Viking kingdom. The island still has its Tynwald, or ting-vollr (assembly field), a reminder of Viking rule. In Ireland, the Vikings raided around the coasts and up the rivers. They founded the cities of Dublin, Cork and Limerick as Viking strongholds. Meanwhile, back in England, the Vikings took over Northumbria, East Anglia and parts of Mercia. In 866 they captured modern York (Viking name: Jorvik) and made it their capital. They continued to press south and west. The kings of Mercia and Wessex resisted as best they could, but with little success until the time of Alfred of Wessex, the only king of England to be called ‘the Great’.
Portrait of King Alfred the Great (849-899 AD).
King Alfred ruled from 871-899 AD and after many trials and tribulations he defeated the Vikings at the Battle of Edington in 878. After the battle, the Viking leader Guthrum converted to Christianity. In 886 Alfred took London from the Vikings and fortified it. The same year he signed a treaty with Guthrum. The treaty partitioned England between Vikings and English. The Viking territory became known as the Danelaw. It comprised the north-west, the north-east and east of England. Here, people would be subject to Danish laws. Alfred became king of the rest. Alfred’s grandson, Athelstan, became the first true King of England. He led an English victory over the Vikings at the Battle of Brunaburh in 937, and his kingdom for the first time included the Danelaw. In 954, Eirik Bloodaxe, the last Viking king of York, was killed and his kingdom was taken over by English earls.
England, 878 AD.
Moreover, in 991, during the reign of Aethelred ‘the Unready’ (‘ill-advised’), Olaf Tryggvason’s Viking raiding party defeated the Anglo-Saxon defenders (recorded in the poem The Battle of Maldon), with Aethelred responding by paying ‘Danegeld’ in an attempt to buy off the Vikings. So the Vikings were not permanently defeated – England was to have four Viking kings between 1013 and 1042. The greatest of these was King Cnut, who was king of Denmark as well as of England. As a Christian, he did not force the English to obey Danish law; instead he recognised Anglo-Saxon law and customs. He worked to create a north Atlantic empire that united Scandinavia and Britain. Unfortunately, he died at the age of 39, and his sons had short, troubled reigns.
The final Viking invasion of England came in 1066, when Harald Hardrada sailed up the River Humber and marched to Stamford Bridge with his men. His battle banner was called Land-waster. The English king, Harold Godwinson, marched north with his army and defeated Hardrada in a long and bloody battle. The English had repelled the last invasion from Scandinavia. Nonetheless, immediately after the battle, King Harold heard that William of Normandy had landed in Kent with yet another invading army. With no time to rest, Harold’s army marched swiftly back south to meet this new threat. The exhausted English army fought the Normans at the Battle of Hastings on 14th October, 1066. At the end of a long day’s fighting the Normans had won, King Harold was dead, and William was the new king of England. The irony is that William was of Viking descent: his great-great-great-grandfather Rollo was a Viking who in 911 had invaded Normandy. ** Carruthers have a genealogy link to King Robert I also know as King Rollo ). His people had become French over time, but in one sense this final successful invasion of England was another Viking one.
Interesting facts:
Viking Age Scandinavia’s runic alphabet, the Futhark, is named after its first six symbols (f, u, th, a, r, and k). During the Viking Age (800-1050 CE), runestones were often painted and the carved lettering filled in with bright colors. Runestones were raised along waterways and property boundaries, by road intersections, and on hilltops so people could find and read them.
English and Frankish Christian priests and monks had begun missionary tours to the Viking lands from the 700s to 800s but it wasn’t until King Harald Bluetooth was baptized in 965 that Christianity took a firmer hold in Denmark.
Viking warriors usually went into battle bareheaded. The whole horned-helm idea came about in Victorian times when Vikings were romanticized.
In English speaking countries, names for days of the week come mainly from Norse gods – Tuesday from Tiw or Týr, Wednesday from Woden (Odin), Thursday from Thor and so on. Many of their other words have also become part of English, for example egg, steak, law, die, bread, down, fog, muck, lump and scrawny.
This first post will not exactly help you to dye clothes in red. Not directly. It aims at helping you gain awareness of why it’s actually not so easy to build certainties while dealing with accurate, archaeology-based reenactment.
I had to make this post, because doing reenactment is really a matter of how deep you are willing to delve, how much you are willing to read… and where you will choose to stop.
The better I get, the more uncertainties I have to face concerning the “accuracy” of what I’m doing.
Let’s start with a few facts. When making costumes, we base ourselves on archaeological finds.
Firts obvious statement : what we have been able to recover from the past is extremely little. Concerning viking age, we have maybe a dozen of extent garments, and they are not all coming from Scandinavia. Is a dozen garments representative from a period of history that lasted something like 300 years ?
Certainly not.
Second (a little bit less obvious) statement : fabric rots. The fragments that we have recovered were preserved by special conditions, whether mineralized in contact with metal (from brooches, knives, swords, shield bosses, silver and gold thread from table-woven trims, silver and gold posaments, pins, pendants, etc.) or preserved by particular qualities of the soil (for example, in bogs, like Huldremose “peplos-dress” which is not from viking period).
Tablet-woven trim from the Kostrup suspended dress photo by Hilde Thunem taken in Odense museum, Denmark
Some fabric have been recovered in funny circumstances, for example, Haithabu’s (modern Hedeby, Germany) viking-age harbour yielded fabric that had been used to repair ships, that had been doused in tar.
That leads us to the third (not obvious at all) statement : you have to be very careful when using evidence to back your costume projets. If you base yourself on evidence recovered from a grave, most likely, that means mineralized fabric in contact with metal. And if there is metal, most likely, that means a wealthy grave. Check if the assessed level of wealth of the grave matches your character’s level of wealth.
Ship-burials are for very wealthy people. Oseberg’s lady was a queen, or a chieftain’s lady. That means that despite the fact that we are very happy to have plenty of evidence from her grave, maybe, you shouldn’t use that for your costume. Tablet-woven trims were luxury items, if there are gold and silver threads to preserve them, you will need all of your costume to be accordingly rich.
NOT a middle-class garment, so if you are, choose something else.
Dress made by Toril Sørbøe Rojahn,
Some of the fabric recovered from excavations are more likely to have belonged to humble people. The clothes from bodies found in bogs, the fabric from Haithabu harbour are probably better evidence if your character is humble. But it’s not easy to make out their colour !
The acidic Ph of the bogs makes it difficult to analyze the dyes. It’s the same for clothes that have spent a long time in the sea, or under ice (the Greenland settlements have yielded a lot of extent garments, although they are XIIIth-XIVth century, not viking-age).
The conclusion is : the coloured clothes samples that are at our disposal to guess what was used for dyeing are not representative of “the viking period”. They can be representative of the settlement, or of the burial site, though. In Birka, there was a wealthy area of burials, and a poorer one. Guess what ? More grave goods are recovered from the wealthy area. Solid information about a specific site doesn’t allow us to jump to general conclusions.
Most costumes we see in festivals are typical of high-rank individuals. There are trims and jewels galore. Do not let this lead you to the conclusion that most people of the viking period dressed this way !
In Thor Ewing’s opinion, red clothes were more likely to be costly items, the dyed fabric either being imported, or dyed with imported madder.
Can we be sure of that ? No. We can only gather evidence, and make educated guesses.
In my opinion, fabric produced domestically could not have only been dyed with the top-quality, most-efficient dyestuffs. Some must have been dyed with local plants. But this would have been done by poorer individuals… and unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of evidence for them, because their graves have been lost.
Red dyes achieved with bedstraw, by Jenny Dean
Moreover, when dyes can actually be analyzed, they are not always recognized. Quite a lot of yellow samples from the viking age haven’t been identified at all. They are referred as “X yellow”. Dyer’s broom and weld are quite commun yellow dyes, but they are not the only ones. A considerable number of plant gives yellow, and many of them are solid dyes that would not be sneezed at by the housewife when she made her cloth.
A smaller number of plants gives really interesting red colour, which (thankfully !) restrains the field of investigation, but still there is a lot of space for study.
I intend to research evidence for red dyes and their use during the viking period, and write an article on the subject. But it’s a tricky subject indeed, and we have to speculate, guess, and make hypothesis.
I hope this preliminary article have “rung your bell” and made you more aware of the need for carefulness when embarking on making a costume, choosing the fabric, the weave, the colour and the ornaments.
OFFICIAL AND REGISTERED CLAN CARRUTHERS CCIS -1983-CLAN OF OUR ANCESTORS
SCOTTISH CLAN, IRISH CLAN, NORSE CLAN
CLAN CARRUTHERS - OUR NORSE ANCESTORS 
