It is widely believed that one of the main motivations for Viking attacks on Britain and Ireland from the late 8th century was the loot to be gained from raiding monasteries, some of which were rich and poorly defended from the sea, and thus represented relatively easy targets. However, whilst the impact of the raids were considerable, it is far from clear that they were always as destructive as some commentators have alleged.
It is difficult to make an assessment of impacts on north-west England because of the dearth of early historical sources for the western parts of the Kingdom of Northumbria. By the late 8th century, a number of Northumbrian monastic communities were well established west of the Pennines in Carlisle, Dacre, Cartmel, Brigham, Workington, and Heysham, and Hoddom and Whithorn north of the Solway Firth. Several of these may have presented attractive targets for Viking raiders.
One of the best documented monastic sites is at the former Roman town of Carlisle (Figure 9.1). The two vitae of St. Cuthbert tell us of its existence by AD 685, the occasion of a visit by St. Cuthbert with Iurminburh, the Northumbrian queen (Colgrave 1969). Carlisle and the other monastic communities must have resembled small nucleated settlements, the centres of estates with the religious at their hearts.
At Carlisle a reeve (praepositus) named Waga oversaw the management of the estate and probably the lay population. Carlisle was a double monastery (a minimum of two churches, one for each sex). We still have little knowledge about other communities west of the Pennines. Some excavations have taken place such as at Dacre (Leech and Newman 1985), but very little formal investigation has been conducted elsewhere.
One uncertainty about all these sites is whether they survived the period of Viking raiding and subsequent settlement. Abbot Eadred, whose floruit was apparently in the 850s to the 880s period that spanned
FIGURE 9.1 Location of Carlisle. (Drawing courtesy of Philip Cracknell.)
The Viking take-over of Northumbria, was said by Symeon to be from Carlisle (Arnold 1885, p. 114). The Eadred name also appears several times in the Durham Liber Vitae. Eadred, an abbot of Carlisle, was also said to have given estates to St. Cuthbert at Chester-le-Street in about 883 (Hart 1975, p. 156), although how or why a Cumbrian cleric should distribute lands in the north-east is difficult to explain.
Even so, notwithstanding Symeon’s partisan attitudes about the Cumbrian estates formerly held by Lindisfarne and of particular interest to his employer at Durham (Rollason 1998; Sharpe 1998), the presence of an abbot named Eadred in mid 9th century Carlisle is certainly not implausible. Acceptance of that fact extends the life of the Carlisle double monastery into the second half of the 9th century.
We have few details of monastic communities in the west. Some may have been small and relatively impoverished, The case for believing that Carlisle was better endowed than most is based on the idea that a monastic community was established in a formerly important Roman town, Luguvalium, and that it was chosen as the setting for Queen lurminburh’s sojourn as she awaited the outcome of the battle of her husband, Ecgfrith against the Picts. What is interesting here is not just that we have an unusual body of anecdotal information about Carlisle in the vitae, but that it was selected as the venue for lurminburh’s wait, perhaps because she came from there.
If that was the case, we can surmise that Carlisle was the home of an important family with significant royal connections. We know little about lurminburh but Stephen’s comments in his Life of Wilfrid certainly suggest that she was a formidable lady (Colgrave 1985) and was remembered in later times as the appearance of her name in the 9th century Durham Liber Vitae suggests. These are small points but they lend weight to the idea that Carlisle, whilst not necessarily as wealthy as Ripon or Hexham, nevertheless occupied a relatively prominent position amongst western Northumbrian monasteries.
With this in mind, and given the Vikings’ much written-about predilection for loot, it seems inherently unlikely that Carlisle would have been bypassed or left unscathed. The one source that might provide a clue is John of Worcester, writing in the early 12th century, who tells us that the Danes destroyed Carlisle which then lay deserted for almost 200 years (McGurk 1998, pp. 62-63). The first part of John’s statement concerning Danish destruction, although not independently attested, may well be correct even though we cannot tell when it occurred. Smyth’s analysis of the movements of Viking kings and their armies draws attention to the Danish king, Ivarr the Boneless, who went from the Midlands to Dumbarton in 870—a route that may have taken him by way of Stainmore and the Eden valley, and by implication through Carlisle (Smyth 1977, p. 258). Ivarr was not a man to pass up an opportunity!
Carlisle’s interest to the Vikings is unlikely to have been confined to loot. An important factor was its location at the northern end of the Eden valley, close to the silt-choked Solway Firth and the west coast (McCarthy 2010, pp. 105-109). It stood astride the only major landward route in the west between what is now England and Scotland. On the English side, the fertile Eden valley was wedged between poor glacial tills, mosses, and uplands. On the Scottish side, routes go north by way of Annandale or Eskdale, also fringed with relatively poor soils.
In the middle of this is Carlisle and he who holds that, to coin a phrase, is in command of that crucial, landward north-south route. Its importance was earlier recognized by the Romans, and later by the earls of Northumbria, the kings of England, and the Scots (McCarthy 2010, pp. 109-118). From the later 7th century, it was the centre of an important royal estate. After the late 9th century it served as a crossroads or nodal point between the Danes in Yorkshire and eastern Northumbria, the Strathclyde Norse centred on Govan and the Clyde valley, and the Irish Norse sailing from Dublin following their expulsion in AD 902. Amongst the refugees fleeing to eastern Northumbria from west of the Pennines, we are told by the anonymous Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, were Abbot Tilred of Heversham (Cumbria), Alfred son of Brihtwulf, and possibly also Eadred son of Ricige, who received lands in Durham from Bishop Cutheard of Lindisfarne (Craster 1954, p. 190; Hart 1975, pp. 162-163; Whitelock 1979, p. 287).
Until recently knowledge of Viking Age Carlisle was very limited. However, after excavations at the cathedral in 1988, the situation becomes a little clearer (McCarthy 2014). Figure 9.2 shows the west end of the cathedral. Figure 9.3 shows excavations in progress. The Dean and Chapter commissioned the excavation in advance of building a new underground treasury at the west end.
FIGURE 9.2 West end of Carlisle Cathedral. The 12th century structure was built over a cemetery containing graves of Anglo-Scandinavian date. (Photograph courtesy of Mike McCarthy.)
FIGURE 9.3 Excavations in progress in 1988. (Photograph courtesy of Graham Keevill.)
Excavation revealed six phases of archaeology from Roman to medieval periods. The monastic site associated with St. Cuthbert would have been a clear target, but the excavations have not revealed anything structural with which it can be linked. Geophysical survey located a substantial anomaly below the former 19th century St. Mary’s Church that is thought to have been part of the complex, but confirmation of this is needed.
A pre-Norman cemetery of 41 graves was discovered and may include Anglian burials, but the radiocarbon dates available to date are ambiguous on that point (Batt 2014; McCarthy 2014). Whilst the overall quantity of pre-Anglo Scandinavian finds is limited, a third or more of the stycas known from Carlisle were recovered during the cathedral excavations. It is conceivable, therefore, that if the monastic site lay at the eastern end of the cathedral precinct, the western or north-western end as open ground may have functioned as a market. Metcalf long ago made a similar point about the incidence of stycas on ecclesiastical sites (Metcalf 1987).
The second part of John of Worcester’s statement about Carlisle’s desertion for 200 years after a Danish raid can now be seen as manifestly untrue. The cemetery excavation revealed furnished burials of the late 9th to early 10th centuries and clearly demonstrates the presence of a community at that time. Finds included gold, silver, and copper alloy objects, ironwork, and an antler comb with strong Hiberno-Norse affinities (Paterson and Tweddle 2103). The objects were personal or domestic in character, reflecting high or relatively high status and contrast with the warrior-like weapon burials located at Cumwhitton and found elsewhere in Cumbria as at Hesket, for example (Paterson et al. 2013). In that respect, the cathedral burials are closer to those at St. Michael’s Workington (McCarthy and Paterson, Chapter 8).
The ethnic nature of that community is of some interest, and to that end an examination of skeletal material combined with an analysis of isotopic data was undertaken with a view to seeing whether any individuals could have originated outside the immediate area of Carlisle. The osteological and isotopic data, limited in size though it is, includes men, women, and children, but revealed no sign of individuals brought up in a maritime environment as might be expected of Scandinavian immigrants. The sample size available, however, was very small and we should not attach too much weight to negative evidence. Even so, because Carlisle is at a nodal point, a population of mixed ethnicity would not be unexpected.
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