The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings

Book Preface

As readers will discover, the contributors to this book do not agree on all matters. That is not surprising: differences of interpretation, which occur in all periods, are perhaps more prominent in discussions of the Vikings than in most topics in medieval history. There are several reasons for this degree of uncertainty. In the first place, the vast range ofViking activity means that our knowledge of it depends on a great variety of sources that were produced in very different circumstances, at different times, and in Old Irish, Old English, Old Norse, Arabic, and Byzantine Greek, as well as Latin. As few, if any, scholars have mastered all these languages, any discussion of Viking activity as a whole depends to some extent on translations that are themselves interpretations and maybe unreliable. What is more, apart from runic inscriptions no texts were written before the eleventh century in Scandinavia or in many ofthe areas in which Scandinavians settled in the Viking Age. Great weight has, therefore, been put on the histories written in Scandinavia and the Scandinavian colonies in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that are discussed in Chapter 10. Until recently the history of the Viking Age was largely based on Icelandic sagas, the history of the Danes written by Saxo Grammaticus, the Russian Primary Chronicle., and the War of the Irish with the Foreigners. Although few scholars still accept these texts as reliable sources of information about the Viking Age, traditional accounts of the period that have been based on them continue to influence discussions of the subject.

Historians of Scandinavia, the Atlantic Islands, and Russia in the Viking Age now rely more on archaeology and numismatics, disciplines that have in recent decades made remarkable contributions to our understanding of the period, even in parts of Europe that are relatively well provided with contemporary texts, for they cast light on many topics about which the texts are silent. Both material remains and coins can also furnish valuable dating evidence. Remains of timber structures can, in suitable circumstances, be closely dated by the pattern of annual growth rings in the wood. This has made it possible, for example, to discover when some ships were built, and to date the various stages of the construction of Danevirke. The legends of Islamic coins, many of which reached Scandinavia in the ninth and tenth centuries, indicate the year they were struck; and from the end oi the tenth to ^g beginning of the twelfth century the types of English coins were changed frequently and can therefore be dated within at most six years. Such coins provide date limits for the buildings, graves, or other contexts in which they are found. Such evidence cannot, however, provide the continuous chronological framework based on the chronicles and other contemporary texts produced in Frankia, England, and Ireland. The lack of contemporary texts particularly affects Orkney, Shetland, and the Hebrides; there is, for example, disagreement about when the Scandinavians began to occupy these islands.

Even in well-documented parts of Europe the written sources say very little about the Scandinavian settlements. Place-names provide the best evidence for this colonization but, as emphasized in Chapter 3, they can be interpreted in very different ways. The main problem is that the names reflect the influence of the Scandinavians on language and do not necessarily indicate places in which Scandinavians settled. The fact that Scandinavian influence on place-names in Normandy and Ireland is much less than in England cannot be taken to prove that fewer Scandinavians settled in those colonies than in England.

Discoveries made in the future and the re-examination of familiar evidence may help to settle some disagreements; they will certainly enlarge our understanding of the period in ways that cannot be foreseen.