A wing-helmeted, axe-wielding barbarian leaping from a shield-hung longship onto a beachhead is perhaps the most enduring image of the Viking era held by the average modern punter. The Vikings of 800 – 1100 were the terrifying wolves of the sea who dominated the Eastern trade routes and the Western sea lanes with their superior ships, their formidable military prowess and their lust for land and plunder. The Vikings were not merely a bunch of axe brandishing, beer quaffing blondes only interested in taking the gold and the women and going back home. The Vikings were an incredibly powerful and effective wealth accumulating people who tailored their methods of acquiring the wealth, land and persons of their victims to the different circumstances encountered.
The measures that
the Vikings took to plunder wealth from the different arenas of Europe in which
they operated were almost extreme in their dissimilarity. In the eastern European countries that
would eventually become Russia, the Vikings came ‘first as pirates, then as
traders, and finally as the most trusted guards of the imperial person’[1] as well as being invited to become
the ruling class of the lands they traded through. Such a progression from pirate to Prince shows an exemplary
use of influence and force to glean the most profit from the situation. On the other hand, the rest of Western
Europe were subjected exclusively to the pirate version of the Viking
experience, while the British isles and beyond enjoyed the pleasures of
certainly one and debatably two heavy waves of extensive settlement by the same
ambitious warriors.
Of the many
interesting careers available to the average Viking warrior wanting to leave
home and pursue gold and girls across Europe, the top destination was the
Varangian Guard, the exclusively Viking elite bodyguard of the mighty Byzantine
Emperor based in the cosmopolitan Mecca of the eastern empire, Constantinople.[2] From a checkered past the Varangians Guards (Varangian being the name given to the Vikings in Eastern Europe) became a fighting
unit that marched victoriously across Europe, was commanded at its peak by the
indomitable Harald Hardradr and overthrew an Emperor. A place in the Varangian Guard was regarded at home in
Scandinavia as a position of great honor[3] and distinction.[4]
The Varangian
mercenary guard in Constantinople was a legacy of the Russian Riurikid Princes
jostling for power in the ninth century.
The Scandinavian settlers in Russia were ‘formerly the creators of trade
networks and tribute-collecting states’[5] but increasingly became the shock
troops of the Rus Princes jockeying for position and prestige. As the original Rus settlers around
Kiev, Novgorod and Lagoda developed a sense of nationality and established a
power base, the new wave of Vikings travelling the Volga and the Dneiper river systems, known as the ‘Varangian Way’,[6] were increasingly viewed as
interlopers and were hired as mercenaries. Vladimir and Iaroslav especially, towards the end of the
tenth century, used the Varangians against each other as well as against their
Byzantine neighbors and sometimes allies to the south. This created a situation that saw
Varangians sent variously to attack and or serve the Byzantine Emperor as the
mood of the Rus Prince or the terms of a treaty demanded.
This is a
dichotomy in the role of the Vikings in the East that goes beyond even the
inevitable currency of loyalty for money that mercenaries inevitably use. A parallel instance of the Vikings
playing two ends against the middle can be seen in the rest of Europe, with Danish, Swedish or Norwegian Vikings finding themselves in the position of being hired to protect a town from
other Vikings. Even
more impressive is the extortion of the vast amounts of money paid by the
British Kings through the Danegeld, to keep the Vikings to the Danelaw. The image of Vikings as violent raiders
of the coffers of Western Europe is eclipsed somewhat by their pure skill at securing
profits from whatever situation was presented to them.
The Varangian
Guard was the crack personal bodyguard of the Byzantine Emperor and was made up
of exclusively Scandinavian fighters until the end of the Viking period saw a
new ethnic makeup of the Guard.
The Varangian Guard were not meant to be politically active in Byzantine,
but served merely as a ‘mercenary center of excellence for all Viking military
skills.’[7] As with the rest of the Viking
influence in Europe, the political powers of the Varangians was greatest just
before their fall. In the case of
the Guard, the exiled Norwegian King Harald Hardradr’s intercession in the
rebellion against Emperor Michael brought the Guard into active political
maneuvering within Constantinople.
The power of the Varangian Guard to topple an Emperor[8] was due to the triumphant tour of
duty around the Mediterranean including the Middle East, Greece and Italy[9] that the Guard enjoyed under the
leadership of the famous Norwegian expatriate. The Vikings reached Sicily in this campaign and ‘an
historian on the lookout for key moments might be tempted to see this event as
the final completion of a Viking circle all around Western Europe.’[10]
This romantic
Viking circle around Western Europe is further closed by the impact of the
Norman invasion of England in 1066.
William the Conquerors triumph came only weeks after the defeat and
death at Stamford Bridge of the Varangian Guards greatest alumni, Harald
Hardradr. Many historians like to
claim that the Viking blood in the Normans renders the Norman invasion the last
and most successful Viking invasion of Britain. After 1066 the Varangian Guards
ethnic makeup changed dramatically to include ‘Anglo-Saxon and Danish
champions, chafing under Norman rule’,[11] changing the Guard from a purely
Viking enterprise to one that included the descendants of one wave of Viking
invasion escaping from the second wave,[12] ‘a most curious consequence for an
offshoot of the Norsemen in the east of the activities of the Norsemen in the
West.’[13]
This prestigious
role for the Vikings in the East of providing rulers and their armies was very
different to the Viking raiding of the rich monasteries and towns of Western
Europe and the raiding and settling of the Vikings in the British and
surrounding Isles. The difference
was in the plundering of wealth; in the West the wealth was already accumulated
and stored in central towns and monasteries while in the East systems had to be
established to accumulate the wealth themselves.[14] Thus, instead of the role of despoiler of the infrastructure
of wealth creation they embraced in the West, in the East the Vikings built and
administered the infrastructure for amassing wealth themselves.
The three
centuries of the Viking Empire were centuries in which Vikings took up their
axes, took to their boats and took what they liked from Europe. They established the Eastern European
trade routes, raided with impunity the treasure houses of West Europe and
settled in the lands of the British Isles and beyond. With their military prowess and tenacity they ruled Russia,
campaigned for the Byzantium Empire, looted Europe and conquered the islands
between their homeland and America, yet the different circumstances of each
area of enterprise was treated with it’s own unique style. As a people they set out into the world
to make their fortune and they made a place in history for themselves through
their success. Not bad, really,
for a bunch of blondes.
Bibliography
Dawkins, R. M.,
1947, ‘The later history of the Varangian Guard : Some Notes’, The Journal of
Roman Studies, London : Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, pg 39-47.
Griffiths, P.
1995, The Viking Art of War, Greenhill Books : London
Jones, G., 1907, A
History of the Vikings, Richard Clay Ltd : Suffolk.
Page, R.I., 1995,
Chronicles of the Vikings, Records, Memorials and Myths, University of Toronto
Press : Toronto Buffalo.
Sawyer, P., 1997,
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings, Oxford University Press : New
York.
Magnusson, M.,
1980, Vikings!, Bodley Head Ltd: London
[1] Dawkins, R. M., 1947, ‘The later history of the Varangian Guard :
Some Notes’, The Journal of Roman Studies,
London : Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies p 39.
[4] Page, R.I., 1995, Chronicles of the Vikings, Records, Memorials
and Myths, University of Toronto Press : Toronto
Buffalo., p 84.
[5] Sawyer, P., 1997, The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings, Oxford University Press : New York., p 155.
[6] Dawkins, ‘The later history of the Varangian Guard’, p39.
[9] Magnusson, Vikings!, p 297, Jones,
G., 1907, A History of the Vikings, Richard Clay
Ltd : Suffolk., p 266.
[10] Griffiths, The Viking Art of War, p
61. Ernie, I know this is perhaps a Cosmo reference, but almost every second
author I read likes to get misty-eyed about the Normans, the English and the
Vikings being one big happy axe-bearing family of European conquerors!
[12] Dawkins, ‘The later history of the Varangian, p 40.
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