Statue of Byrhtnoth in Maldon, the site of the battle where this Anglo-Saxon leader fought the Vikings in 991 • WIKIMEDIA COMMONS The word "viking" is either a common noun:a "Viking" (which is written with or without an initial capital letter), or an adjective:[a boat] "viking". It first appeared in French during the 19th th century. Thus Augustin Thierry, in the third edition of his History of the Conquest of England by the Normans (1830), written about the Norwegian king Haraldr harðráði (“the ruthless”):“We had seen him alternately pirate and wandering warrior, Viking and Varing, as we spoke in the language of the North. And Xavier Marmier, fascinated by Erik Geijer's poem, Vikingen , translated from Swedish as The Viking and published it in 1842 in the Popular Songs of the North . It was also that year that the word “Viking” entered the Complément du Dictionnaire de l’Académie française :“VIKING, s.m. Title taken by the son of the king, among the Scandinavian peoples, when he commanded a maritime station. Some write Vikingue. » “Pagans”, “pirates” or “black army” Then, gradually, the word will supplant the one that has been commonly used since the Middle Ages:“Norman”. Indeed, from the IX th century, in Carolingian circles, the texts then written in Latin – annals, chronicles or literary works (such as the poem by the monk Abbo on the siege of Paris) – which all give a negative image of the Scandinavians by calling them barbari (“uneducated foreigners”), piratae (“pirates”), pagani ("pagans"), agree on the word Nordmanni to evoke the "men of the North". Observers of this time also use the word Dani (literally “Danish”), without necessarily implying a specifically Danish origin. It happens however to find more precise geographical references:the Annales de Saint-Bertin (Annals Bertiniani ) mention in 839 the presence of Sueones (Swedish) with Louis the Pious in Ingelheim, and the Annals of Angoulême (Annales Engolismenses ) indicate that in 843 the sacking of Nantes was the work of Westfaldingi , men from Vestfold (region on the west coast of Vík , the Oslo Fjord). Note also how Einhard, in the 820s, quotes in his Life of Charlemagne (Vita Karoli Magni ), among the peoples of the shores of the Baltic, "the Dani and the Sueons , which we call Nordmanni ". Adam of Bremen, better informed, will be surprised later in his History of the Archbishops of Hamburg (Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum ) around 1075, further associating the Latin piratae in Norse víkingar when he mentions “those pirates they call over there [in Denmark] Wichingos (Vikings) but whom we call Ascomannos (Ascomans)”. This name refers to their ash boats (askr ), which archeology denies:they are built of oak and pine. While the use of the geographical term Nordmanni (“northmen”) is becoming popular, the Vikings are mainly referred to according to the violent nature of their raids, which makes them pirate (“hackers”). The use of the word Nordmanni (also writes Nortmanni or Normanni ), understood by all, extends to a large part of Western Europe. But other language habits develop locally. In England, the Latin pagani or nice becomes hæðene ("heathens") in Old English texts, where this word stands alongside scipmen , sceigðmen , æskmen and floatmen which all refer to the navigators that are the Vikings. The Chronicle Anglo-Saxon (written in Old English) repeatedly evokes the Dene , and it is indeed the Danes. In Ireland, annalists and chroniclers also see the Vikings as pagans (in Gaelic geinti ), but above all as "strangers" (in Gaelic gaill ). They even distinguish between Norwegians and Danes by calling them respectively Finngaill and Dubgaill (literally “white foreigners” and “black foreigners”). Gold finn and dub probably not originally understood in this sense of colours, but perhaps relative to the chronology of their coming to Ireland, 'whites' are first, 'blacks' arriving from 850. In Wales, the chroniclers are not as adamant as their Irish contemporaries as to the origin of the Vikings who come to harass their shores. Whatever Welsh name they are, they are all “black” – so y llu of (“the black army”) or y kenedloedd duon (“the black pagans”). Finally, in Muslim Spain, it is also their paganism (sorcerers, fire worshipers?) that earned them the name of al-Maj ū s (Anglicized in Madjous) that Arab chroniclers evoke by adding the formula “May Allah curse them! . A word that already exists in Norse But what is the origin and meaning of the word “viking”? In England, in a glossary dating back to the end of the 7th century century, the Latin word piraticam (piracy) is translated into Old English as w ī cingsceaðan . Sceaða means "crime", "theft":it is therefore the work of the w ī cing , the pirate. A translation of the IX e century in Old English from the Historiae adversus paganos (Stories against the pagans ) of Orosius uses the word w ī cing to designate the pirates of the Mediterranean. Preserved in the Book from Exeter , a late 10th th manuscript century, the Old English poem Widsið , perhaps composed as early as VII e century, refers, in an enumeration of peoples, to the w ī cingum and at the w ī cinga cynn ("Viking tribe"). This is Grammar by Ælfric d'Eynsham, at the end of the 10th th century, which shows that at that time the word w ī cing is associated with the Scandinavian pirate:w ī cing vel scegðman . Curiously, the word appears only five times in the entire Chronicle Anglo-Saxon . But he is prominently in The Battle of Maldon , another poem in Old English whose subject is precisely this battle fought in 991 in Maldon, Essex, where the Vikings prevail over the Anglo-Saxons. In addition, in several Old Frisian law texts, dated around 1100, we find the equivalent:w ī tsing , a word that designates a pirate and is often specified by the qualifier north :the “northern pirate”. It seems that the word w ī cing was first a generic term to designate a pirate, a marauder, and then, in Anglo-Saxon sources during the Viking era, it refers more particularly – among other names – to a Scandinavian warrior. In Norse there are two nouns:the first, víking (feminine), designates the naval expedition, the Viking raid; the second, víkingr (masculine; plural:víkingar ), a man taking part in this type of expedition. In the Viking Age, the language was hardly written – except exceptionally under the mallet of rune engravers. The female name is attested three times:on the rune stones of Västra Strö and Gårdstånga (Scania) and that of Härlingstorp (Västergötland), erected for a brother, companions or a son who died , "during of a Viking raid". And the masculine is also found three times in the plural:in Denmark on the stone of Tirsted (Lolland) – , “all the Vikings” –; in Sweden on that of Hablingbo (Gotland) – , “went west with Vikings” – and on that of Bro (Uppland) – , “Viking watcher”. It also appears in the singular on about fifteen stones, probably once as a nickname:on the stone of Växsjö (Småland) – , “Toki, the Viking” –, and otherwise used as a proper name – , “Víkingr », anthroponym with a positive connotation. The Vikings, heroes of the Nordic sagas In their poems, composed orally, the skalds rarely use the word "Viking". The oldest occurrence of the feminine noun appears in a stanza of the Eiríksdrápa by Markús Skeggjason (shortly after 1100), where the Danish king Eiríkr "resolutely put an end to the Viking expedition" against the Wends. And the masculine noun, attested in a dozen stanzas (from the end of the X th century at the turn of the 12 th century), is always used in the plural. The víkingar in question can refer to the enemies of the Scandinavians as well as their own warriors. This is how the skald Sigvatr Þórðarson uses the word in three of his stanzas entitled Víkingavísur (Stanzas of raids vikings ), around 1014-1015, in honor of the future Norwegian king Óláfr Haraldsson who went to war:in the first, “the long ships of the Vikings [víkinga skeiðar ]” are indeed those of his men; in the second, when taking Hóll (Dol, in Brittany) that “the Vikings held [víkingar áttu ]”, these are local adversaries; and in the third, during the attack on London, it is difficult to decide. A century later, the skald Halldórr skvaldri (“the talker”), in his poem Útfarardrápa , describes as “despicable Vikings [fádýrir vikingar ]” the Moors faced in 1108, in the Mediterranean, by the fleet of the Norwegian king Sigurðr Jórsalafari ("the Crusader") sailing to Jerusalem. Also read A century of Viking raids Two or three centuries after the Viking Age, in the prose of Norse texts – notably the many sagas written mostly in Iceland in the 13th th and XIV th centuries – the word “Viking” comes up frequently. There is often talk of naval expeditions, led by such and such a warrior – whether a sovereign as in the Magnúss saga berfœtts (Saga of Magnús the Discalced ):“King Magnús returned from his Viking expedition to the west [ór vestrvíking ]”; or a leader as in Færeyinga saga (Saga of Faroese ):“Sigmundr says he preferred to go on a Viking expedition [fara í viking ] and find either glory or death. » When these texts call a man a "great Viking [víkingr mikill ]”, the notion of prestige generally disappears, only that of its commonly attributed activities remains. A pejorative meaning even very often prevails:this is particularly the case in the plural, where the word tends to designate undesirable bandits or pirates, whether they are Scandinavian like the Vikings harassing the coasts of Norway from the Orkneys (Haralds saga hárfagra ), or any other ethnic background:“As they sailed east, Vikings [víkingar ] attacked them, they were Estonians” (Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar ). An etymology that remains mysterious Was the word “viking” coined in England or in Scandinavia? The etymology remains mysterious:the most diverse hypotheses are not lacking, but none is absolutely certain. Advocating a purely Scandinavian origin of víking and víkingr , some see a connection with the noun vík (“a berry”) or the Vík (the Oslo Fjord), from where they embark; others a derivation of the verb víkja ("to travel", "to move", or "to tack") or the noun vika (“distance at sea”, originally that which a rower is able to travel between two breaks). As for the word w ī cing Anglo-Saxon, it is associated above all with a Germanization of the Latin vicus (“port, counter”):w ī c , which is found in composition in toponyms such as Eoforw ī c (York) or Quentovic, and also with the meaning of camp or temporary encampment in Old English. In contemporary sources, the term wīcing refers as much to acts of piracy as to a precise geographical origin. It is not impossible that the word w ī cing was borrowed by the Scandinavians, giving rise to the two forms:víking and its derivative víkingr . But it is also not impossible that originally a common form existed, designating the raiders who approached all the shores of the North Sea – and this, long before the time when Norwegians and Danes suddenly intensified them practice themselves. However, it is difficult to judge in the absence of sources written in the VIII e century in Scandinavia, unlike England. What is certain, on the other hand, is that at the end of the Middle Ages the word fell into disuse (except perhaps in Iceland) and that it only reappeared in Scandinavia when Renaissance historians turned their attention to Norse written sources that need to be translated. Then, from the beginning of the 19 th century, the Swedish romantic poets (Erik Geijer and Esaias Tegnér in the lead) rehabilitated the word "viking" in everyday language, but to designate an exclusively Scandinavian adventurer. After which the Norwegian historian P. A. Munch (in 1851) and the Danish archaeologist J. J. Worsaae (in 1863) associate the word "Viking" with a period of history - "the Viking Age" - a notion that was widely popularized in the XX th century. In France, from the Vikings to the Normans In France, for a long time, scholars designated the ancient Scandinavians by the same terms as their victims of the 9th th century:barbarians, pirates, pagans and, more specifically, Normans. Father Du Moulin, in his General History of Normandy , in 1631, wrote about them:“These Norman pirates spread everywhere like swarms of flies. The first major work in French devoted to them, that of Georges-Bernard Depping, in 1826, is entitled History of the maritime expeditions of the Normans . And there are many who continue to speak of the "Normans" and the "Norman invasions" until the middle of the 20 th century. But the word "Viking" eventually won out and the confusion with the Normans... of Normandy ceased. Since the XX th century, the word "Viking" is also given a much broader meaning than the original one. The Vikings are now also the entire Scandinavian population that lived from the end of the 8th th century in the middle of the XI th century – that is, the period in which the Viking expeditions across the seas were carried out. And the adjective therefore applies equally well to the "Viking warrior" who left on board his ship (stricto meaningful ) than to the “Viking woman” who remained in the country (broader meaning). This is how we talk about “Viking art” or “Viking cuisine” or even the “Viking language”, without worrying about etymology or the first meaning. Here is a convenient misuse of language… but which leads to a new confusion. This article is an excerpt from the special issue “L'Épopée viking” available at your newsagent and on the Histoire &Civilizations online store.
