Introduction

The Viking Age in England lasted for just three centuries, from the earliest recorded raids in the AD 790s to the Norman take-over that took place between the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and William Rufus’s annexation of Cumbria in 1092. This 300-year period began with sporadic Viking raids, and saw increased political and economic interaction, settlement, and ultimately assimilation. Seen against the long-term background of two millennia of Roman, medieval, and modern history, the Viking Age was a relatively transient phase occurring when the national institutions and allegiances that we know today were barely beginning to take shape; it left a highly fragmentary and tantalizing set of physical and cultural traces.

The prominent and highly distinctive historical reputation of the Vikings, as it exists today, is out of all proportion to the muted and often contradictory evidence for their actual presence that has survived in historical, archaeological, and biological forms. An outstanding example of this—and the geographic focus of this book—is the north-west of England (Figure 1.1).

Attempts to quantify the Viking impact in England have encountered the difficulty of identifying historical Scandinavian influence clearly against an all-too similar Anglo-Saxon background. The Anglo-Saxons, of course, owed much of their cultural, linguistic, and biological inheritance to earlier waves of immigration and cultural influence from the North Germanic world including Scandinavia. A fierce

FIGURE 1.1 North - west England: Viking Age sites and political territories in their regional context. (Courtesy of Michael Athanson, University of Oxford.)

Debate continues as to the extent to which incoming Anglo-Saxon peoples and cultures assimilated the native and Romanized Britons who already inhabited Britain.

The challenge of detecting the Viking presence against such a complex existing picture is further complicated by the fact that Vikings themselves did not necessarily all conform to a single biological or cultural stereotype. The word Viking comes from the Norse word Vik (bay or inlet) and came to refer to a seaborne adventurer or marauder (Brink 2008). To be a Viking, therefore, was more like a reputation or an occupation rather than an innate biological status.

Indeed, few if any of the Scandinavians active in Britain would even have identified themselves primarily as Vikings. Kin and regional affinities were more important than a vague catch-all term that almost certainly has far more meaning today than it had a millennium ago. In the political and religious melee of contemporary Britain and Ireland, with hostages, slaves, and mercenaries abounding, it was therefore possible to cross over and adopt Viking culture by choice or by compulsion without ever having been to Scandinavia.

We now understand that Vikings were not exponents of a monolithic, alien culture, but constituted a multiplicity of small groups that interacted with Irish and British societies on a varied and circumstantial basis, often showing considerable aptitude for intermarriage and rapid assimilation. Yet Scandinavian-derived traits persisted, often echoing pagan stories and motifs in art, inscriptions, and material culture.

Hybridity between the Scandinavian diaspora and native cultures is a complex and fascinating area of study across the Viking world from Greenland to Russia, and one that is now being re-shaped by an increasing flow of genetic and isotopic data. This book seeks to highlight and discuss a number of interdisciplinary challenges in bringing together archaeological, biological, historical, and linguistic evidence and emphasise that a nuanced picture, taking account of regional and historical diversity, is essential to understanding this period.