Cat Jarman, River Kings (William Collins 2021)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53242328-river-kings?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=a0hSXkONkG&rank=1
In this book archaeologist Dr. Cat Jarman tells the story of the Repton dig and her remarkable conclusions about the history of Viking Age world.
Now armed with modern equipment and scientific practices (such as isotope analysis, DNA testing, micromorphology, GPR and lidar photography) Jarman discovers that the people buried in graves archaeologists had been calling ‘Danish Vikings’ were from the same places as the ones they’d called Angles, Jutes and Picts. They were connected to a far-reaching global slave trading economy, largely bullion-based, using as currency silver ingots melted down from looted treasure. That’s why they destroyed all those priceless works of art.
Movement eastward
Jarman focusses on one remarkable find, a single carnelian bead, which tells a story of ‘step-wise movement eastward’, with Viking trade connections going all the way back to Gujarat India.
The Repton finds show that the site of the ancient church of St Wystan was, indeed, the site of the Viking’s overwintering camp, just like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle said. The blue-eyed, blond-haired but bald, ‘Repton Warrior’, Grave 511, and the younger man buried next to him, G295, identified as Olafr (who raided with Ivar the Boneless) and his son Eysteinn.
Surprisingly, 20% of the skeletons were female, perhaps local wives or captive slaves. And yet, the people in the graves were of mixed origin, only a few were locals. This seems to indicate, says Jarman a pattern of ‘composite forces under joint leadership that could pick up and lose members along the way’.
A modern DNA study in Iceland determined that 75% of men had Scandinavian origin, where 62% of women came from the British Isles, surely a picture of Angle, Jute and Pict slavegirls being carted around in ships and impregnated. Ancient Scandinavian DNA, however, shows a more even mix of origins.
Before Repton, the Great Army overwintered at Torksey. They had to restock food and fodder supplies, the feorm (food rent) stored at monasteries and noble residences making them particular targets for raids. Setting up camp in autumn, at harvest-time, made sense. Wintersetl, places where local traders could sell their goods to Vikings, sometimes became tradetowns.
Out of the blue
Lindisfarne was not so out of the blue as all that. An 822 charter from Mercian puppet king Ceolwulf shows that many incoming pagans were merchants not conquerors.
Merchant Ohthere, visiting Alfred in 890, described his journey to ‘Sciringes healh’, a place now identified as Kaupang (trade bay) in Norway.
Tracing the bead’s journey backwards from Torksey comes around Scotland and Orkney to the Humber, or via Shetland, to the North Sea.
On Helgö was found some remarkable exotic artefacts including a bronze statuette of Buddha sitting on a double lotus flower.
Hordes and hoards
At Birka in Sweden, an 850 woman’s grave contained jewellery including a ring inscribed in Arabic, ‘for Allah’. Testing suggests the ring made it from the silversmiths in the caliphate to the Birka woman with very few steps in between. The exoticness of such items was probably a status symbol, showing that one had the means to travel or to import. Doubtless, the Birka woman was not a Muslim and could not read the inscription.
Conversion was used as a deliberate political tool, but was gradual. Great Army leader Guthrum had only to be baptised to win a truce with Alfred in 878. For most people, ‘religions… persisted side by side in an overlap period’.
Really, there is no such thing as a ‘genetic Viking’. At three sites in the Orkneys, considered to be fully Viking in culture, only a small proportion showed Scandinavian origin. most were locals. The genetic mix of Sigtuna graves was on a rough par with that of a Roman army camp. Of the Sigtuna migrants, there were as many women as men. At Oseberg, the grandest graves were those of two women. So were there also River Queens—Valkyrie, shieldmaidens? Did the wives wait in Kattegat for their men to return? Or did they migrate, too. Among the envoys cited in Byzantine/Rus treaties, several had female names.
Jarman’s own study of skulls in the Shreiner Anatomical Collection in Oslo showed that the majority of those showing mobility were women. These were not housewives who stayed at home. The 10th century ‘Birka Warrior Woman’ Bj.581 had originally been thought an archetypal Viking male warrior, buried with not only weaponry but two complete horses bridled to go. Was she, like Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians, or the bloodthirsty Freydís Eiríksdóttir, a leader of soldiers?
Exotic grave goods
At sites where modern techniques and equipment was used, the male/female ratio was 1/1. 50% of the weighing equipment, an indication that the person was a trader, was buried with females. This suggests trading as a family affair in which women played an active role.
The movement of people and goods may have been greater in the opposite direction than we had thought. Outside Scandinavia, more objects of Scandinavian origin were found in the east than in the west.
At Spillings on the island of Gotland, three spectacular hoards were found 14,295 coins, most of them Islamic. Why bury this wealth? According to Snorri Sturluson, this is because a warrior could take what he had buried underground with him to Valhalla. If you won the battle, you could come home and dig it up; if you lost, you could take it with you.
Silk and silver
Further tracing back eastward from the Baltic, we have the Silk Roads leading to Persia and China, already established thousands of years before any Norsemen got there. As well as silk from China, the road network, with Baghdad as its hub, transported luxuries like garnets and the Repton carnelian bead.
Why the sudden expansion eastward during the late 8th century? Silver mines were becoming exhausted, and there was a lack of supply, and traders began debasing the silver.
The females with eastern grave goods could also represent diplomatic marriages, like that between Sithric II, Viking leader of Dublin, and King Aethelstan’s sister.
The Rus
These trading sites were not just temporary stopping off points, they were nodes in a long-distance network. Though not so today, in the 9th century, it was possible to travel all the way from the Baltic to the Black Sea by boat. Two main arteries, the Dneiper and the Volga, fed the silver trade.
Staraya Ladoga was an important node, devoid of any fortifications, thus indicative of peaceful trade. Southward along the Volkhov, you come to Lake Ilmen, which sprouted the Rurikova Gorodische settlement in the 9th. This, on the other hand, was heavily fortified.
From there—eastward to the Volga and Caspian Sea or southward to the Dneiper and Black Sea—either direction you sail would have taken you to the land of the Rus. Vikings and Rus, before now thought of as two different peoples, were the same. Only since the lifting of the Iron Curtain have these relationships been able to be examined.
In 839, Louis the Pious received an embassage from the Rhos, bringing gifts and a letter from Byzantine Emperor Theophilus requesting safe passage through Frankia. Old Finnish sources refer to the Austrvegr (eastern route) by which they must have travelled to Frankia, through Eastern Europe.
The steppes
Westward to Hungary and eastward to Mongolia, the Steppe Roads were an early precursor to the Silk Roads.
At Gnezdovo (anciently Smaleskia), according to the Russian Primary Chronicle, some Rus brothers arrived to become the first rulers of Kyiv, who lost no time in setting up a protection racket like that of the Vikings in the west, taking over from the Khazars the role of oppressing the Slavs. At peak raiding season, a slave could cost as little as 3 dinars (20 sheep cost 1 dinar).
At one nearby hillfort was found a carnelian bead perfectly matching the one at Repton.
Trading posts filled a specific role in facilitating communications, and from there, often a local rural economy would develop. Ship maintenance created a market for wood, iron and tar for waterproofing. The organisation of a professional military supported elite rule and ensured peaceful trading conditions.
Scandinavian connections
At Shestovitsa, some of the buried had Scandinavian connections, 2 had ‘Swedish’ or ‘Norwegian-like’ ancestry. A conical fur cap mount was found almost identical to Bj.581’s.
Mixed identities
The first ruler of Kyiv to have a Slavic name, Svytoslav, had men in his retinue with Scandinavian names—Asmund, Sveinald. His mother, the bloodthirsty Olga, became Christian (and despite her gory murders was sainted), while he did not. Clearly identities were mixed, both culturally/linguistically and religiously. The traditional western references to ‘Danes’ and ‘pagans’ may be a false description of their make-up, both ethnically and geographically A similar picture is beginning to emerge in the east.
Beyond the Black Sea, beyond the Dniprov’ska Gulf, is the island of Berezan, where was found a runic inscription ‘Grani made this vault in memory of his (business/raiding) partner Karl’. They were probably on their way to Miklagard (Byzantium/Constantinople).
The first Rus attack on Constantinople was in 860, reported in diverse sources. Subsequent Rus/Byzantine trade was strictly regulated by treaty.
13th century Snorri said the gods lived ‘east of the fork of the Don’ (near Volgograd or Kazakhstan). In the ‘land of the Turks’, he said, ‘Odin had large possessions’. One Danish historian believed the historic Odin had lived in Byzantium.
By the 11th century, the silver supply had dried to the extent that Ingvar the Far-Travelled mounted an unsuccessful expedition to reestablish the old trade routes.
The Rus crossed the Caspian, raiding and massacring along the way. Finally, at Bardha’a they sickened due to eating fruit, which was unfamiliar to their diet, and were able to be defeated.
They Rus made it all the way to Baghdad, by the 9th century the largest city in the world, to trade furs and swords. From there, one could sail to the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean and China, or travel overland by camel caravan. Crucially, they could converse with the Slavs already living there.
One undesirable effect of this globalisation was smallpox, identified as early as 600, the spread of which can now be linked to Viking movements. In an ancient DNA study of 525 graves dating to the Viking Age or earlier, 13 had the infection. A 900-1000 mass grave at Oxford could be the site of the St Brice’s Day Massacre on 13 Nov 1002. One of the men had smallpox. A close genetic match (brother or cousin) to one of the men was found in Galgedil in Denmark. One female had grown up on Gotland, and one man was buried in the Slavic fashion, a migrant, perhaps. These last two came from the Rus’ port on the Dneiper, Gnezdovo.
Southwest of Ahmedabad is Lothal, by river from Lothal to the Gulf of Khambat. The carnelian mines are to be found at Ratanpur.
In 883 Alfred sent an embassage to ‘the shrine of St. Thomas in India’. This trip, said later William of Malmsbury, brought back ‘exotic precious stones’. Including, perhaps, a carnelian bead.
Conclusion
The big picture of the Vikings’ role in a global economy has revolutionised our thinking on the Viking Age. The story of the archaeology—how and why they came to what conclusion—is fabulous.
There was much greater East/West contact and migration and a more standardised currency system during the Viking Age than we had thought. Amazingly, Vikings could and did make it all the way to Baghdad by boat, crossing ‘rivers and harbourless seas’. Movement of both goods and people was greater in an easterly direction than southerly, and much of it was not gory raids but peaceful trade, challenging our earlier assumptions about ‘hordes from the North’. The ancestors of the Vikings came from the steppes of Eastern Europe.
Wonderfully researched and well written.
Susie Helme 