Paradoxes and bloodshed
From the wrath of the Northmen, O God, deliver us! This cry rose from countless churches as the Vikings spread across Europe, from Hamburg to Bordeaux. At the end of the eighth century, the long boats of the men of the North, low on the water, the prow adorned with a red dragon, silently ascended the estuaries and the rivers, bringing with them fire, rape and plunder. . In 793, the monastery of Lindisfarne, off the northeast coast of England, was sacked, its monks massacred, its treasures plundered. Two years later, the Vikings had reached the Irish coast, near Dublin; in 799, the west coast of France. The monks of the abbey of Saint-Bertin, near Rouen, said of the “Danish pirates”, in 841, “that they carry everywhere a fury of rapine, fire and sword”; and a monk who recounts the siege of Paris in 885 calls the Vikings "wild beasts that go on horseback and on foot through the hills and fields....killing infants, children, young people, old men, fathers, sons and mothers... They ravage, they plunder, they destroy, they burn...”
But all these relations come to us from the victims of the Vikings, and more precisely from men of the Church, the only ones who knew how to read and write at the time. And quite naturally, they tend to exaggerate both the number and the ferocity of their opponents. Unfortunately, there are no Viking records, as these people were illiterate at that time. So we have to rely on archeology and third-party accounts, especially Arabs, and the picture that emerges is quite different.
Certainly, the Vikings plundered and destroyed, and particularly churches and monasteries. To these pagans, Christians must have seemed really stupid to fill their churches with precious objects and leave them in the custody of a few monks. This rich booty could only bait their greed, just like defenseless towns and villages.
But the Vikings didn't just leave smoldering ruins behind. They had fallen with such rapacity on a stunned and terrified Europe that the image of the pirate from the North became a popular stereotype. It is mostly ignored that the Vikings were also a people of great traders whose merchant ships plied the waterways of Europe, from Greenland to the Caspian Sea. We do not know that they used their new wealth, ill-gotten it is true, to build ships and trade with distant countries, or even to colonize lands more fertile than the bare expanses of their Scandinavia. This is the case of the Dane Rorik, who, after repeatedly ransacking the port of Dorestad, at the mouth of the Rhine, ends up settling there to become a prosperous merchant. Others were more adventurous, founding settlements in the distance that became large cities, such as Dublin in Ireland and Kiev in Russia. The Vikings came to plunder, but they often stayed to trade. Scandinavian trade was already flourishing in Roman times, when merchants traded furs, cattle, dairy products and amber from the Baltic for luxury items. Historical sources are scarce for the centuries that followed, but the treasures amassed by the Scandinavians, their costly burials, show that even as Europe was plunged into darkness, the Scandinavian peoples continued to trade and settle. 'enrich.
By the 10th century, raids were becoming rarer, and the Vikings had turned into settlers. In 911, for example, they received Normandy, where they quickly adopted the language and religion of their French neighbours. The Duke of Normandy became one of the most powerful sovereigns in Europe; his soldiers conquered England in 1066 and, a few years later, Sicily and southern Italy. To the north, the Norwegians dared to go further than the travelers who had preceded them. Without a compass or a map, aboard single-sailed boats that were little more than 20 meters long, the daring Vikings ventured on the vast ocean.
In Iceland, hitherto deserted, they founded a republic of fishermen and peasants, governed by an assembly where all free men spoke. This democracy, the first since ancient Greece, still survives, a tribute to the genius of the Vikings. Further west was an island even larger than Iceland. A Norwegian, Eric the Red, discovered it in 982 and baptized it - with a certain optimism - Greenland, that is to say the Green Earth. A few years later, Leif, his son, landed on a land he called Vinland - the Land of the Vine, probably Newfoundland -, which he tried in vain to colonize. If it had been otherwise, the honor of having discovered America would probably have gone to a Viking rather than an Italian.
Near Fittja in eastern Sweden is a grave where the remains of a Viking trader (or pirate, since he was probably both) were buried. When archaeologists opened it, they were amazed to discover the true extent of Viking trade:silver coins from Cordoba, Spain, coins from Egypt, Syria, Baghdad, and even Tashkent, in the center of Asia.
Where does the name "Russia" come from?
In the year 907, Byzantium (present-day Istanbul), capital of the Byzantine Empire and the largest market in the world, began to tremble as a huge Viking fleet approached led by Oleg, the Swedish king of kyiv. Sheltered by its triple walls and the chains that barred its ports, the brilliant metropolis had long thought itself safe. Yet the ingenious Vikings bypassed its defences. According to a 12th century Russian chronicle, Oleg brought his boats ashore and put them on wheels. Then, “when the wind was favourable, they hoisted the sails and descended on the city”. Overwhelmed, the Byzantines were forced to sue for peace.
The Russian chronicle, however, forgets to mention that the Byzantine emperor and the bulk of his troops were outside the city. When Igor, son of Oleg, attempted to repeat the feat in 942, he was crushed and his fleet destroyed. From this date, however, close commercial and cultural ties united the largest of the eastern Mediterranean cities and the dynamic, but rough-hewn princes of Rus. But why Rus - who naturally gave the word Russia -? Rus is the name their Finnish neighbors gave to the Vikings. Still according to the Russian chronicle, the Slavs, in the 9th century, invited the Viking invaders to reign over their territory, in these terms
"Our land is rich but there is no order with us. Come reign over our people. No well-born Viking could have resisted such an invitation. Riourik and his descendants therefore soon settled in Novgorod, Smolensk and - more importantly - in kyiv, which they declared "mother of Russian cities" and which became the first capital of this Slavic land, the future Russia. The words "Russian" (russkie) and "Russia" (Rossija) are probably derived from "rus".
At the crossroads of the great trade routes that led to the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, the Viking invaders became considerably richer and the kingdom of kyiv experienced wealth and power under the influence of its Swedish masters. The Viking warriors mingled with the local population, and by the tenth century their Slavization was already well advanced. Grand Duke Vladimir I, under whose reign the prosperity of the Kingdom of Kiev was at its peak, already bore a Slavic name. After his marriage to Anna, a Byzantine princess, he requested baptism, thus bringing Russia into the group of Christian countries.
In the intimacy of the Vikings
"Never have I seen people with a more perfect physique:they are as tall as palm trees and red in color", wrote Ibn Faldan, Arab ambassador of the Caliphate of Baghdad, on mission to the "Rus" - this that is, of the Vikings of the East - in the year 922. It is one of the few first-hand documents left to us by a civilized, but impartial observer, of what the Vikings were like. If he was impressed by their physique, he found them very dirty. Judge for yourself:“They are the most loathsome creatures of God. They do not wash after satisfying their natural needs, nor their hands after meals. They are like stray donkeys... Ten or twenty of them live in one house; every man has his couch, where he sits and amuses himself with the pretty slaves he proposes to sell, or even makes love in front of his comrades. Sometimes the affair turns into a collective orgy. Every day everyone washes their face and hands in the same water... A girl brings her master a huge bowl in which he washes his face, hands and hair, which he combs over bowl. Then he blows his nose and spits in the water. When he is finished, the girl passes the same bowl to the neighbor, who does exactly the same, until the bowl has gone around the house. »
Rude lascars, these Vikings from Russia. But they had their sensitive side. Ibn Faldan describes the cremation of a Viking chief:the corpse was placed in a special boat covered with brocades; an old woman called "the Angel of Death" presided over the ceremonies. She took the slave who had offered to die with her master into a tent and killed her with a dagger, while outside the men beat their shields to stifle the cries. Finally, the boat was set on fire, the body of the slave next to that of his master, for this brief journey to Valhalla, the sky of the Vikings.
Twenty or thirty years later another Arab traveller, the geographer Ibn Rustin, paints a slightly more smiling picture of the Vikings:“They wear clothes, he writes. They respect their guests and are hospitable and friendly to strangers. But if one of them is provoked into battle, they all come together as one, until they are victorious. Ibn Rustin did not spare his criticisms either:“There is little security among them, and much deceit; a man would not hesitate to kill a brother or a comrade to plunder it. Both travelers agree that the Norse are quarrelsome by nature and extort tribute from nearby Slavic villages.
Vigorous, enterprising, aggressive without a doubt, the Vikings were really difficult to live with.