Introduction to Viking Raids and Norman Conquests (Eighth to Eleventh centuries)

The Viking Age opened in the eighth century with unorganized but highly effective Viking attacks on unsuspecting villages bordering the rivers of Europe and the coast of England. It ended in the eleventh century with the descendent of a Viking launching one of the first major assaults on a kingdom across the water, a bold gamble that ended with a single battle (the Battle of Hastings) in 1066. Historians have called this battle the most important of British history because of the lasting and widespread influence the outcome had on governmental structure, language, and culture in that country. Yet the Vikings themselves—whose age ended with this decisive encounter and who had lost a major battle on English soil just weeks earlier—also altered the European landscape in ways that reverberate today.

The era began with the passage of the Frankish kingdom from the Merovingian dynasty to the Carolingians. The Carolingian line had plenty of trouble on their hands in the form of Viking invaders from Scandinavia. Their longships, later equipped with sails, drew so little water that these fearsome warriors could travel far inland along water routes, taking towns and monasteries by surprise. The Vikings soon found that European cathedrals and abbeys were undefended storehouses of treasure just waiting to be taken, and take them they did. They also made their way across the eastern part of the continent, from the Baltic to the Black Sea and Constantinople.

In an effort to forge a truce between Viking and Frank, Rollo the Viking received the duchy of Normandy from Charles the Simple in 911, a transfer that led to a melding of Frankish and Norse bloodlines and an almost complete assimilation of the Viking into Frankish culture. Rollo’s remarkably stable patrimonial line led straight to William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy and Conqueror of England in 1066. Just three weeks before William (descendent of a settle Viking who married a Frankish princess) defeated Harold Godwinson (also descended from Vikings) at the Battle of Hastings, Harold Godwinson had defeated the last major Viking onslaught against England, taking down the Norwegian army of Harald of Norway at the battle of Stamford Bridge. This loss signaled the dusk of the Viking Age in Europe, and the Vikings themselves either returned to their increasingly stable kingdoms in what is known today collectively as Scandinavia, or faded into the European countryside, becoming British or Irish farmers, Frankish nobility or peasantry, or Russian traders.

Their legacy remains one of awe at their daring and cruelty. The Vikings also left the snowballing effects of their trade and raiding practices, a brutal and wholesale method of opening up routes between cultures, but one so effective that even after the Viking age came to a close, the opened exchange between cultures—sometimes peaceful, sometimes warlike—would never be sealed again.