Every January in Lerwick, Shetland, a replica Viking ship is set ablaze as the culmination of the festival of Up Helly Aa. Although a relatively modern event, forged in the 1870s, the fiery celebration reveals the impact that the Viking era had on our coastal culture and psyche.
The popular narrative of Vikings is one of marauding raids and violent battles. But how accurate is this? What sort of life did Vikings lead beyond looting and pillaging? And how did locals fare, following the arrival of these fierce maritime warriors? The answers may lie on our shores.
Around our coasts, we find evidence of the ordinary people of the Viking Age, whose stories come down to us today through the bits and pieces that survive, from jewellery to board games.
We explore six coastal artefacts that tell tales of those wild times.
The first Viking raid on England
The tidal island of Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, lies two miles off the wild Northumbrian coastline.
It was here, in the summer of 793 CE, that Scandinavian raiders attacked the monastery, slaughtered or kidnapped its inhabitants, and plundered their holy treasures. No eyewitness accounts survive of the bloody strike, although there are plenty of texts written by Anglo-Saxons reacting to the shocking events.
The only testimony from the monastery itself is a memorial stone made in the following century, known as the Domesday Stone. On one side, seven warriors stand ready to attack, swords and axes raised. On the other side, figures kneel before a cross, the sun and moon hang in the sky, and two hands reach out to encircle the world: Judgement Day has arrived.
The Inchmarnock Hostage stone
The island of Inchmarnock, off the western coast of Scotland, is just over three kilometres long; its present inhabitants include herring gulls, greylag geese, red deer and grey seals. Once, it was also home to an early medieval monastery.
On this shoreline, archaeologists discovered a little piece of slate, known as the Hostage Stone. It dates to the late eighth or early ninth century, when the first Viking raiders fell on the coastal monasteries of Britain.
On the slate, a vivid series of scratches seem to conjure such a scene. In the centre is a tall, punk-haired, bearded figure with chainmail and a scabbard. Behind him trails a figure with a rope around his neck, a hood over his eyes and his arms bound together. He is being taken towards a long, narrow ship.
It is likely that this little figure represents the many captives who were kidnapped by the Viking raiders, and either ransomed back to their communities or sold into a life of enslavement.
Unlike Lindisfarne, there are no written records of an attack on Inchmarnock. Perhaps the picture scratched on to this slate is a personal record of what was happening on the island sanctuaries at this time.
Viking burials
Between 850 and 900 CE, a young woman and a newborn baby were buried together on the island of Rousay, in north-east Orkney. Nestled together in the grave on the headland overlooking the Bay of Swandro, they likely died during or shortly after labour.
This is the richest female Viking Age burial ever found in Scotland, indicating the wealth of the deceased, or signifying a great outpouring of grief from the community. The extraordinary grave goods include a multicoloured necklace, textile tools and jewellery.
One item was a gilt bronze figure of a lion or wolf, leaping as if to pounce with its jaws wide open and tongue springing out. This fragment probably started life as decoration on a Christian gospel book plate or a reliquary, looted by Viking raiders from a monastery and later refashioned as a brooch. And here it found its final resting place, in the grave of a mother and her baby.
Viking boat burial on Sanday, Orkney
On the Orkney island of Sanday – Old Norse for ‘sand island’ – is the Scar boat burial, dating to between 875 and 950 CE.
In 1991, bad weather and coastal erosion meant the site had to be excavated quickly. The remains of a boat, 6.5 metres long, was uncovered, containing the bodies of a 70-year-old woman, a 10-year-old child and a 30- year-old man (ages approximate).
The most extraordinary of the items found in the boat was a plaque made of whalebone, carved with two toothily grinning dragon heads. It was found next to the older woman, together with other items for making textiles (including a comb, shears and two spindle whorls). The plaque may have also been a prized textile tool, for smoothing and cutting fabric.
Items placed with the younger man’s body included a sword, a quiver with arrows, a bone comb and several gaming pieces. To be sure, this was an age when weapons were prized, but as this burial reminds us, so was textile production, good haircare and hygiene, and board games to be played in idle moments.
Viking board games
From other coastal sites on Orkney, more evidence of how Viking Age people spent their downtime has been unearthed.
At the north-west tip of Orkney’s Mainland, a promontory called Buckquoy juts out into the sea to create the Bay of Birsay. This sheltered, fertile spot was prime farming territory, first for the Pictish settlers, later for the incoming Norse.
Here, three rough sandstone slabs were discovered in the Norse settlement phase, all with grids roughly scratched into them so that players could get stuck into a game of hnefatafl, a wildly popular Viking Age strategy board game with two players. In fact, the markings were so rough that archaeologists didn’t realise the significance of two of the boards and chucked them on to the waste stone pile.
It was only when heavy rains washed away the muck that the grids came to light. These were not the high-status board games of those at the top of the social pecking order, such as the intricate, ivory-carved chess pieces found on the Isle of Lewis. The rough-and-ready nature of these grids remind us that Viking Age Orcadians from many walks of life enjoyed such games during their downtime.
Vikings in the Isle of Man
Leaving Orkney and sailing west into the Irish Sea, we reach the Isle of Man, part of a chain of islands known to the Vikings as the ‘Southern Isles’, encompassing the Hebrides and the Clyde islands.
These coastal soils are heavy with the remnants of its Viking Age inhabitants, such as the silver ingot found in May this year, evidence of a well-established trading network.
During the Viking Age, the Isle of Man was inhabited by those of both Gaelic and Norse heritage. This multifaceted, mixed society brought together elements of both cultural traditions, illustrated by around 35 carved stones, dating from the 10th to the 12th centuries.
Many of the stones include writing that encompasses both spiky Norse runes and the notches and dots of ogam. Ogam was used to record early forms of the Irish language spoken in Ireland and parts of western Britain, including the Isle of Man.
On the island’s west coast is the churchyard at Kirk Michael, a resting place for many of these inscriptions. As well as the mingling of alphabets, several stones reveal a coming together of Norse and Gaelic personal names in families.
One inscription translates as: “Mael-Lomchon put up this cross in memory of his foster-mother MaelMuire, Dubgall’s daughter, the woman whom Adisl was married to. It is better to leave a good foster-son than a bad son.” The foster mother (Mael-Muire), her foster child (Mael-Lomchon) and her father (Dubgall) all have Gaelic names, while the husband (Adisl) has a Norse name.
We can’t tell whether this was a mixed-heritage family or whether Gaelic and Norse names had become part of the same naming stock on the Isle of Man. But it reminds us that, just as the islands provided connecting ports to different parts of the world, so those who lived there faced in many directions, in terms of their loyalties, identities and cultural backgrounds.
Through the everyday remnants of past lives, found on coastlines of the British Isles, the Viking Age is revealed as a time of violence and enslavement, but also a time of travel, settlement, crafts and cultural connections.
When was the Viking age?
The Viking Age spanned the latter part of the 8th century up to the 11th century, although its roots go further back in time and its branches extend into later centuries.
This was an era when those of Scandinavian origins and heritage raided, traded, explored, conquered and colonised lands throughout Europe and beyond, as far west as Greenland and North America, and as far east as the steppes and rivers of Eurasia.
When did the Viking age end?
The Viking Age is generally considered to have ended around 1066 AD, marked by the Norman Conquest of England.
Viking timeline
- 793 Viking raiders attack Lindisfarne, off the north-east coast
- 850 Vikings overwinter for the first time on Thanet, Kent
- 865 The Great Heathen Army arrives in England, toppling Anglo-Saxon kingdoms
- 886 King Alfred of Wessex makes peace with Viking leader Guthrum
- 886 onwards... The ‘Danelaw’ is established in northern and eastern England
- 937 King Aethelstan of England defeats an allied force at the Battle of Brunanburh
- 954 Erik Bloodaxe, the last Viking ruler of York, is driven out and killed
- 991 The Anglo-Saxon leader Byrhtnoth is killed during the Battle of Maldon in Essex. 1016 Cnut becomes king of England (also king of Denmark from 1018 and Norway from 1028)
- 1066 Norway’s King Harald Hardrada dies trying to claim English crown at Stamford Bridge
- 1263 King Alexander III of Scotland fights King Haakon IV of Norway at the Battle of Largs
- 1472 The Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland pass from Norway to Scotland