A liking for Vikings

Published on Saturday 10 February 2007 00:24

HAGAR THE HORRIBLE and pals have a bad reputation. We picture them as seafaring, bloodthirsty warmongers plundering the North Atlantic and British Isles in longboats, red hair blazing underneath horned helmets, ready to rape and pillage - and that's on a good day.

In reality, the Viking race had a complex culture that defies stereotype.

A new book, Exploring the World of the Vikings, by Richard Hall of York Archaeological Trust, investigates Viking culture from its origins in Scandinavia during the first millennium AD, through the period of raiding, trading and settling known as the Viking Age, to the last surviving settlements in 15th-century Greenland.

It covers everything from longboats to runes, costume to navigation. Now one of the foremost experts on Vikings, Hall's interest was sparked 35 years ago at school. "Others were interested in the Dark Ages or Greece, but I realised the British Isles had their very own dark ages," he says.

"Although we knew a lot about the Normans then, it's over the last 30 years that light has been shed on the Vikings, and archaeology has had a big influence on that."

Hall explains why the Vikings gained their notoriety: "This stereotypical image comes from the writings of contemporary monks who were literally on the sharp end of Viking attacks. Their monasteries were targeted as there was lots of portable wealth, and monks to be forced into slavery.

"Horror stories swept over Europe describing them as a revolting bunch of pagans coming from the North."

However, the book gathers evidence of the Vikings integrating into communities. "Archaeology has shown that these people took over by the sword initially but most settled, adapted, indulged in trade and soon became part of the local communities of farmers and fisherfolk".

Many images of artefacts in Exploring the World of the Vikings have been sourced by Hall from collections of the National Museum of Scotland, The Orkney Museum and the Museum nan Eilean in Stornaway.

Some of the best finds in Scotland were made in the Northern and Western Isles. Although older Viking books look at the Northern Isles, and especially Orkney and Shetland, the new book has a chapter focused on more recent finds from the less-studied Western Isles. "Over the last few years there's been a great deal of interest in the Western Isles," says Hall. "Viking cemeteries on Lewis have been found and there have been some important excavations. Also, South Uist has seen the discovery of house sites which show us where people were living in the Viking Age."

Hall says visiting many of Scotland's islands can be a profound experience for anyone with an interest in Vikings. "If you go to Colonsay you go in the knowledge that on the beach at Kiloran Bay in the 19th century a remarkable Viking burial of a warrior with horses was found. It's a beautiful and evocative landscape and I think that's true of many of these areas in the Western Isles, and the Northern Isles too."

The new book includes images of iconic Scottish finds, including the Lewis chessmen and the Maeshowe cairn in Orkney, a great prehistoric monument where Hall says you can "see the finest collection of Runic inscriptions in the Viking world, recording how people took shelter and telling of buried treasure. There are even lewd comments about the local ladies". That's the only proof we need that a proportion of Scottish men have inherited Viking genes.

Some of the best-preserved sites can be found at the Southern tip of Mainland, Shetland. Aerial photographs in the book show, on the very edge of the land, the ruins of a 16th-century residence given what Hall describes in his book as a "Vikingised" name of Jarlshof by Sir Walter Scott in his novel The Pirate. The land has traces of ancient buildings from the Bronze Age onwards, with Viking Age longhouse buildings built further from the sea. This area is looked after by Historic Scotland and can be visited in summer.

Treasure hunters and archaeologists are still unearthing Viking jewellery, silver and coins regularly with metal detectors and on professional digs. "There's no shortage of Viking Age archaeology," says Hall. His next project is in his hometown of York (or Jorvik, as the Vikings called it), a large-scale excavation in the Hungate area to find the Viking origins of today's streets. That's as well as his involvement in the Atlantic islands, Greenland and Iceland, investigating areas that are pointing to new habitation sites.

It seems that those Vikings really got around.

Exploring the World of the Vikings by Richard Hall is published by Thames & Hudson on Monday, priced 18.95.