Notes
1. Historically this has been the most popular explanation. As Will Durant rather poetically put it “The fertility of the women… outran the fertility of the soil.”
2. The version of this prayer that is usually quoted, “O Lord, deliver us from the fury of the Norsemen” was never actually used during the ninth century.
3. These three illuminated manuscripts – and the Lindisfarne Gospel in particular - are widely considered among the greatest achievements of British medieval art.
4. The Palatine Academy eventually became the University of Paris.
5. Reliquaries are containers for holy relics
6. The modern Netherlands and Belgium
7. Roughly 150,000 islands lie off the Norwegian coast.
8. Hnefatafl was a chess-like ‘hunting’ game, and Kvatrutafl resembled backgammon.
9. He was Olvir Barnarkarl, the brother-in-law of the man who discovered Iceland. His story is told in the medieval Icelandic Landnámabók.
10. At least by the standards of the time. The Arab writer Ibn Fadlan describes the Swedes in Russia as ‘the filthiest race that God ever created’, and gives lurid details of their behavior - not wiping after going to the bathroom, having sex in public, and washing with the same water they blew their noses in.
11. Polygamous marriages were relatively common among the rich. Marriages in general were usually arranged by the parents. The Vikings took the custom of asking permission seriously. According to the twelfth century Book of Icelanders, if a man tried to marry a woman against her parents’ wishes he could be legally killed by them.
12. If the husband failed to give a good reason for the divorce he could be killed by his wife’s family. Crossdressing, for example, was considered a good enough reason. Both breeches on a woman and a low cut blouse on a man were grounds for divorce.
13. Perhaps the best example of the autonomy that women could achieve is provided by the Arab historian Hasan-ibn-Dihya, who wrote about a Muslim embassy to Viking Dublin. They happened to arrive when the chieftain Thorgils the Devil was away, so his wife Odda received the ambassadors and performed ‘all the duties of a king’.
14. This could at times lead to trouble since a host could essentially force his guests to drink against their will. Egil’s Saga has a story in which the titular hero attends a feast where his devious host keeps passing the horn. When he realized he couldn’t take any more, Egil seized his host, pushed him up against a pillar, and nearly suffocated him in a gush of vomit.
15. The closest they came was sithr, which meant ‘custom’.
16. They also appear to have had a few ‘godless’ men who rejected all gods and believed that death was the final end. This can’t have been too common, however, since virtually all Viking burials included goods for use in the afterlife.
17. The Laxdæla Saga tells of Thorolf Clubfoot, a violent and unsociable farmer who came back to life to haunt his family one winter as a cross between a zombie and a vampire. His son, who eventually exhumed the body during the day to burn it, described his father as “incorrupt but terrible to look at, more like a troll than a man; black as pitch and as swollen as an ox.”
18. The Danish Skloldung dynasty claimed Odin as an ancestor.
19. Huginn means ‘thought’, and Muninn ‘memory’.
20. Odin was not above stooping to low cunning to win a contest. One famous example is his battle of wit and lore against the ice giant Vafthrudnir. When he discovered that the giant’s knowledge of the various worlds matched his own, Odin cheated by asking what words he had whispered to his dead son before lighting the funeral pyre - a question to which only Odin could possibly know the answer.
21. The famous image of a Viking funeral - a blazing ship sailing to Valhalla - comes from the pen of an Arab writer who witnessed the funerary rites of one of the Swedish Vikings on the Volga River. Although they both were practiced, burial seems to have been preferred to cremation.
22. The Viking alphabet has twenty-four symbols (literally ‘mysteries’) roughly based on the Greek and Latin cursive scripts. These are designed to be carved into hard surfaces, not written fluidly and are therefore not suited to literature. Most epic poems were memorized and circulated by traveling poets called ‘skalds’.
23. This is the first reference to the ‘land of the midnight sun’.
24. Roman sources hint that they also used small sails as early as the 3rd century, but this is not universally accepted. Undisputed use of sails doesn’t occur till the mid eighth century.
25. It was, however, still a significant investment of time. Modern estimates are that experienced Viking craftsmen could build a longship in about seven months, representing roughly forty thousand hours of work.
26. Oak is found across Scandinavia, but particularly in Denmark. A single oak trunk would make up the keel with the major branches forming the ribs. This was an advantage since the Vikings didn’t use saws, but instead split the wood with the grain to give it greater strength.
27. This is slightly menacing as the Vikings themselves had little need of this feature since the fjords are remarkably deep. Norway’s Sognefjord, for example, reaches a depth of 4,291 feet below sea level several miles inland. The average depth of the North Sea, by contrast is 312 feet. The longships were clearly intended for foreign shores.
28. They were also quite thin. Roughly an inch of wood separated a Viking sailor from the Atlantic ocean.
29. As Ragnar Lothbrok demonstrated in 845. In 1893 a replica of the Viking Gokstad ship, crewed by only twelve men, sailed from Bergen in Norway to Newfoundland in twenty-eight days.
30. This apocryphal story, written by a Swiss monk named Notker the Stammerer, was part of a collection of stories about the emperor composed for his great-grandson Charles the Fat - a man who was all too familiar with Vikings.
31. Modern Wijk bij Duurstede in the Netherlands and La Calotterie in France.
32. The Roman Empire in the west had collapsed in the fifth century with the forced abdication of its last emperor, Romulus Augustulus, in 476 AD.
33. For many of these projects, Charlemagne’s ambition outstripped the technical abilities of his engineers. The canal was soon abandoned, and the ineffective fleet was left to rot in its harbors by his successor.
34. Some historians speculate that Godfred’s attempts to consolidate his power in Denmark pushed out weaker rivals who turned to piracy, thus in part inspiring the early Viking raids.
35. Now the westernmost city of Germany.
36. A member of the king’s bodyguard.
37. Ansgar was eventually canonized for his efforts and is known as the ‘Apostle of the North’.
38. Louis’ rebellious son Lothar later rewarded Harald Klak with an island for ‘doing so much damage to his father.’
39. Ironically, however, it was this very policy that doomed him. He was assassinated a few years later by a nephew who he had expelled for treason.
40. In modern day Belgium
41. Virtually the only remnant of it is the name of the modern French territory of Lorraine.
42. Although Ragnar is a historical figure, some historians consider ‘Lothbrok’ a creation of legend.
43. Louis the Pious’ youngest son.
44. This has given rise to the theory that death by diarrhea was the origin of the nickname ‘Lothbrok’. His feces-stained breeches, blackened and sticky, would have looked as if they had been boiled in pitch.
45. This would have been difficult, as England does not have a ready supply of poisonous snakes.
46. The most famous example of a Viking slave is probably the Irish saint Findan. He was captured by the Vikings twice but managed to escape when they stopped in the Orkney Islands. He wandered through continental Europe, eventually settling in Switzerland where he lived out the last two and a half decades of his life.
47. The Old Norse name was Thorgísl which can be rendered either as Thorgest or Thorgils.
48. The northern district of Dublin is still called Fingall, meaning ‘place of the Fair Foreigners‘, the Irish name for the Vikings.
49. The ‘Fragmentary Annals of Ireland’, a tenth century chronicle from the kingdom of Osraige, present-day County Kilkenny.
50. This was a dissatisfying end to Ireland’s great tormentor, so the Irish made up a much better story. The High King lured the Vikings onto an island in the middle of the Lough Owel river by promising Thorgils and fifteen of his men beautiful brides - in reality young Irish soldiers in drag. When the Vikings went to embrace their new wives, the ‘women’ threw off their disguises and stabbed the Vikings to death.
51. The modern area of Galloway in Ireland derives its name from this word.
52. This was supposedly due to a curse. His mother Aslaug had been told by Odin to wait three days before consummating her marriage. Ragnar, however, wouldn’t wait and as a result his son’s bones were replaced by cartilage.
53. The future Alfred the Great
54. Not surprisingly, the French were less impressed. A Frankish chronicle reported rather laconically that the Vikings were ‘beaten with the aid of Christ’.
55. Modern estimates put it around three thousand fighting men – although the numbers would vary dramatically over the years.
56. There is considerable debate about the blood eagle. Since no contemporary account of its use exists, some have concluded that it is the fanciful invention of later writers.
57. The brutality extended to both sides. Several towns in southeastern England supposedly upholstered their church doors with the flayed skins of captured Vikings. Although it is almost certainly false, even Westminster Abbey in London at one time boasted decorations of Viking hides.
58. It should be noted that this diet is a bare minimum. Daily meals of nothing but cold gruel and water wouldn’t have kept morale very high.
59. They had been brought over by the Romans in the Claudian invasion of AD 43.
60. According to the local chronicle there was only one survivor. He was captured, but managed to escape while Ubba was distracted.
61. According to legend, Edward the Martyr’s head was found by some locals who were assisted in finding it by the howls of a large wolf. They found the head safely between the beast’s paws, and were allowed to retrieve it and reunite it with the body. Unfortunately the head’s human guardians were not as capable. It was stolen in the thirteenth century by some French knights.
62. He had stopped long enough to raid a monastery. The nuns, in an attempt to preserve their virginity, supposedly cut off their noses and upper lips. Ivar set fire to the building, nuns and all.
63. The exception was the king of Strathclyde who was taken back to Dublin while a suitable ransom was raised. Unfortunately for him, it was offered by a political enemy – not to rescue but to murder him.
64. His corpse was allegedly transported from Dublin and interred in English soil. In the seventeenth century a grave was found in Repton containing the intact skeleton of a remarkably large man - supposedly nine feet tall - surrounded by the disarticulated remains of two hundred and fifty Vikings. Since it dates from the right time, and is clearly a figure of importance, some have speculated that the bones are - ironically given his nickname - the remains of Ivar the Boneless.
65. The most colorful account has Halfdan fighting his way to Russia, only to be captured by a Slavic tribe. When asked to choose how to be executed he rather bizarrely selected burning.
66. Within a generation, the descendants of the Vikings who had killed king Edmund were venerating him as a saint.
67. One encounter had nine English ships pursuing six Viking longships. Three escaped, two were beached, and only one was captured. When an actual Viking fleet appeared, the English ships usually didn’t bother going to sea.
68. This would be a bit like telling modern politicians that they had to pass a test in advanced Calculus or they’d be relieved of duty.
69. Legion IX had a distinguished history. They fought for Caesar at Pharsalus and for Augustus at Actium, two of the most important battles in Roman history. They also served with distinction in the Claudian invasion of England.
70. He had already murdered one brother who had gotten in his way.
71. The later saga Eriksmal has a grand description of Bloodaxe entering Valhalla and being welcomed by the gods.
72. The Vikings of Ireland were assimilating in a similar manner as their English counterparts. Vikings allies from the Hebrides fought on both sides, and the ‘native’ Irish Vikings had started calling themselves ‘easterners’.
73. He supposedly killed Ivar of Limerick - probably a great-grandson of Ivar the Boneless – in single combat.
74. Some historians credit Sitric’s mother Gormflaith as the true mastermind of the rebellion. A ferocious Irish princess, she was either married to or directly related to every major participant.
75. According to tradition, both Brodir and Sigurd were recruited by Gormflaith. Brian had imprisoned her and she had promised to marry whichever hero killed Brian and liberated her, giving them Dublin as a dowry. Sitric’s thoughts on the matter aren’t recorded.
76. In addition to his Irish mother he may have had three Irish grandparents.
77. Such courage was to be expected from Sigurd who was a son of the terrifyingly-named Thorfinn Skull-Splitter.
78. According to a Norse saga, an Irish warrior named Wolf the Quarrelsome hunted down Brodir and enacted a terrible revenge. A slit was made in Brodir’s stomach and one end of his intestines was nailed to a tree. The dying Viking was then dragged around until his entrails were looped around the trunk.
79. This should not, however, be pushed too far. It was a violent age. In the first quarter century of Viking raids, Irish sources record twenty-six attacks on monasteries. In the same period they list eighty-seven assaults by fellow Irishmen.
80. The Irish word for penny, ‘pingin’ is a Viking word.
81. It also had the largest slave markets in western Europe since the fall of Rome.
82. His ancestry is still disputed, although most accept it as Norwegian. Sources that refer to him as Danish usually don’t bother to distinguish between different groups of Vikings, while pro-Danish historians like Saxo Grammaticus are tellingly silent.
83. The Norse sagas call him Hrolf Granger – Hrolf the Walker.
84. According to the Normans, Rollo was a part of this raid. There is no compelling reason to doubt the traditional claim, although Rollo doesn’t reliably appear until twenty-five years later. He would have been in his early thirties in 885.
85. He provoked the Vikings into yet another doomed attack of the northern bridge, hoping that the failure would prove his point. Not surprisingly for the hard-headed Norsemen who had spent months dreaming about the riches behind Paris’ walls, this did not prove compelling.
86. A better rendering would be Charles the ‘Straight-forward’, as in not flowery or verbose.
87. His partner was Sigfred who would later lead the attack on Paris.
88. Interestingly enough, he was given tacit permission to continue plundering Brittany - perhaps as an outlet for any residual Viking tendencies. Charles the Simple was determined not to repeat his cousin’s mistakes.
89. It could be said that this was a fitting metaphor considering the relationship of later Norman dukes and their nominal French overlords.
90. In the last glimpse we have of him, he is hedging his bets for the afterlife. He donated a hundred pounds of gold to the Church and sacrificed a hundred prisoners to Odin.
91. A far more useful bribe was offered by the Count of Brittany who gave Hastein five hundred cows to stop attacking his territory.
92. Robert was the great-grandfather of Hugh Capet, and therefore the ancestor of the Capetian line of kings which ruled France from 987 until 1328.
93. This was the Moorish version of ‘Greek Fire’, the Byzantine super weapon.
94. The ‘Blue’ men were probably Tauregs, a Berber tribe that tatooed themselves extensively. The ‘blacks’ were most likely sub-Saharans who had been captured by the Moors.
95. The spot they were in was one of the first to be developed as a winter resort destination. In the 18th century it was the place for members of the British upper class to go. The Vikings were clearly on to something.
96. That at least is the story. Given the Viking sophistication in choosing their targets, however, and the fact that they stayed in the Mediterranean for several years, it is difficult to believe that they would have made such an error.
97. Luna was certainly plundered, but the way the Vikings got in is not known for sure. Perhaps it was by the following ruse, but a version of the same story is told about nearly every famous Viking or Viking descendant, including the Danish king Frodo, the Norwegian Harald Hardråda, and the Norman Robert Guiscard.
98. At least from the west. The Vikings would eventually reach it again via Constantinople in the east.
99. He also seems to have lost his way in a fog.
100. The earliest Icelandic sources claim that there were some Irish monks on the island when the Vikings arrived. They got there - in what must have been a terrifying experience - by skin boats, tiny crafts without keels which would skim along the top of the waves. They had come in search of a refuge from the world, and wisely fled when the Vikings arrived.
101. Including Flóki himself. He later returned and spent the rest of his life in Iceland.
102. The last several centuries have seen an average of one eruption every five years.
103. This happened as late as 1783. An eruption of the craters around Mt. Laki killed 50% of all cattle, 80% of all sheep, and 75% of all horses. Within three years a third of the population had starved.
104. Although some Icelanders believe it, there is reason to doubt the story of the founding of Reykjavík. In 1974 during the millennial celebrations, more than a hundred marked pillars were thrown into the ocean along the southeastern and southern coast. None of them made it anywhere near Reykjavík.
105. A huge number (some say up to a quarter) of all Icelanders were named in honor of Thor during the Viking age. This has declined in modern times, but there are still plenty of Thors, Thorgills, Thorbergs, and Tors, etc
106. The Vikings had three social classes: Slaves (thralls), freed slaves, and free men. The middle group did not have all the rights of free men.
107. At their height they boasted eighteen farms. What made even this possible was the presence of hot springs which the colonists used for bathing, dressing their meat, and baking their bread. Unfortunately, this geothermal activity proved the colony’s undoing. In 1346 a volcanic eruption destroyed them completely.
108. This was the lighter of two possible sentences. The worst crimes were punished by death.
109. The Inuit population wouldn’t arrive till the fourteenth century.
110. When water freezes a small amount of heat is released - roughly 80 calories per gram of water frozen. The Vikings noticed that if they continuously watered a plant it would survive through even the most brutal winter.
111. These are referred to as the ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ Settlements, which can be confusing since they are both on the west coast of Greenland. ‘Northern’ and ‘Southern’ would be more appropriate. A third colony may have been planted between them, but it’s not clear if this was just a part of the Western Settlement.
112. There is evidence that they reached Disko Bay, two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle.
113. Leif’s efforts were eventually successful and Greenland was christianized, but the lack of priests led to the development of some curious practices. When a man died, for example, he was buried on his farm in unconsecrated land. A stake was driven through his chest until a priest could arrive - at times more than a year later. The stake was then removed, holy water was poured in the hole, and a funeral service was conducted.
114. According to the Norse sagas, Erik agreed to go, but fell off his horse while riding to the ship and, seeing this as a sign of bad luck, changed his mind and stayed home.
115. This was probably the Labrador coast.
116. Most likely Baffin Island. Viking yarn, tools, and nails have been found on the island.
117. All of the surviving sagas portray a sad end to Bjarni’s life. Frontier societies are notoriously violent, but Bjarni’s experience was particularly brutal. Armed intruders broke into his home, killed his only son, and abducted his wife. After handing over his ship to Leif, he supposedly committed suicide.
118. The Inuit name for the region is Auyittuq, ‘the land that never melts’.
119. Although Leif didn’t establish a colony of Baffin Island, the Viking legacy remains in the name of several of its mountains. The highest peak is Mt. Odin, overlooking the nearby twin peaks of Mt. Asgard. The most famous, however, is Mt. Thor, a massive granite slope shaped like the thunder god’s hammer resting on its side. Its western face features Earth’s tallest vertical drop, some 4,101 feet, the height of nearly four Eiffel Towers stacked on top of each other. The first successful attempt to climb it took 33 days.
120. This is almost certainly L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland.
121. They were probably Algonquins.
122. Five and a half centuries would pass before there was a second.
123. Thorfinn named it Straumfjord, but its exact location is unknown.
124. Why they did so is a mystery. Perhaps the pungent Viking dairy products - unknown to the natives - convinced the Skrælings that the Vikings were trying to poison them.
125. The Icelanders were careful to preserve the stories of the new world. In 1477 Columbus, by his own account, sailed to the island to study these records about the land to the west.
126. For comparison, Jamestown – in a far more hospitable climate and with the advantage of guns – dwindled from 381 settlers to only 90 in its third winter.
127. Even Scandinavia forgot about them. In 1712, a Danish king who vaguely recalled reading about Greenland, realized that the Viking colony had probably not heard of the Reformation. He sent a protestant missionary to correct the situation, only to discover that the settlement had been abandoned nearly three centuries before.
128. The Finns were a distinct group of people living to the east of Sweden along the shores of the Baltic.
129. The English word ‘slave’ comes from the Greek ‘Sklávos’ which originally meant ‘captive’. ‘Slav’ derives from the same root, an indication of the frequency with which they were taken.
130. The “Rowing Way”.
131. When a tenth century Byzantine emperor listed the rapids along the Dneiper, he used the Viking names.
132. Their king lists read like a passage from the Old Testament; David, Joseph, Aaron, Obadiah, etc…
133. Hygienic standards obviously varied considerably as in Europe at this time the Viking’s bathing habits were considered slightly unmanly. After the 1002 St. Brice’s Day Massacre in England, John of Wallingford denounced the Danes for their excessive cleanliness. Among other sins, they combed their hair daily, bathed on the Sabbath, and frequently changed clothes.
134. Askold was supposedly a grandson of Ragnar Lothbrok.
135. Most prominent was the monumental statue of Athena from the Parthenon. It was moved to Constantinople some time before the tenth century.
136. Even the Byzantines found the building miraculous. An old legend had it that an angel came up with the design while the workers were on a lunch break. Coming down from heaven, the angel found only a young boy who had been left to guard the tools. He sent the boy off with the solution, assuring him that he would stand guard until the boy returned. When the architects heard the plan, they realized the mysterious being was an angel, and banished the boy from the capital. The angel, who had promised to stand guard till the boy returned, was therefore forced to remain in the church and watch over it forever.
137. Even Attila the Hun had thought better of attacking the city when he saw them.
138. He left a catalogue of all the books he read - most now lost - complete with his notes on what he thought of each. In effect, he created the world’s first book review.
139. The Bosporus is a notoriously treacherous stretch of water, but according to a later Byzantine source, the origin of the storm was the Virgin’s mantle that Photius had brought down to the sea and dipped into the water.
140. His dynasty came to an end with the death of Feodor I in 1598.
141. Today he is better known by his Slavic name, Oleg.
142. The Russian Primary Chronicle makes the absurd claim that there were two thousand ships and eighty thousand men. Byzantine sources - for obvious reasons - pretend the attack never happened.
143. They guarded it so zealously that even today we’re not quite sure how it was made.
144. The fear was that overuse would allow an enemy to reverse engineer it, a worry that in the Arabs’ case proved accurate.
145. His nickname was Basil the Bulgar-Slayer. After one battle, he is said to have gouged out the eyes of fifteen thousand prisoners.
146. Anna icily accused her brother of selling her like a slave.
147. Throughout their history, the Varangians were famously loyal to the throne, not necessarily to the man on it. They were sworn to serve the current occupant not avenge the previous one.
148. They were responsible, among other things, with guarding the keys to whatever city the emperor was visiting.
149. This was like a more dangerous Viking version of a modern cruise. The fun of travel without all the hassles of booking hotels or planning meals.
150. A document of the period refers to the ‘language of the Varangians’ as English.
151. Outside of the Byzantine Empire, this was the first legal tax system in Eastern Europe.
152. He left a detailed account of the entire ceremony in a book he wrote to his son.
153. This includes the yearly influx of Vikings from Scandinavia.
154. She had certainly earned her saintly credentials, however, by her robust adoption of the faith. In 1547 the Orthodox Church proclaimed her a saint, giving her the title Isapóstolos ‘Equal to the Apostles’, an honor only four other women share.
155. Constantinople was called ‘the second Rome’ because of its function as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. When it fell in 1453, Orthodox Russian Christians dubbed Moscow ‘the third Rome’.
156. Sviatoslav apparently impressed the barbarians with his last stand. Their leader allegedly drank a toast from the skull-cup and prayed that he would have a son as brave as the dead warlord.
157. According to one source they were Christians that Vladimir had killed as a human sacrifice to consecrate the temple.
158. Vladimir supposedly said “Vodka is the joy of the Russians and we can’t do without it.”
159. Generally speaking, the great religious dividing line in the east was along the forest / steppe border. The Vodka drinkers of the forests tended to embrace Christianity, while the hashish smokers of the steppes converted to Islam.
160. This was designed by the missionary St. Cyril who discovered that the Slavs didn’t have a written language. He based it on his native Greek alphabet.
161. The best example is the St Sophia of Novgorod that Vladimir built.
162. At least three different kings of Norway - Olaf the Stout, Magnus Olafsson, and Harald Hardråda - were hosted at Kiev.
163. A few Scandinavian names did cling on until the fifteenth century, but only in a corrupted form. Ivarr became Igor, Olaf became Uleb, etc.
164. Although it is notoriously difficult to calculate value across the centuries, one silver penny would probably have fetched several chickens or a dozen loaves of bread in the mid tenth century.
165. Having accomplished his goal, the dreadlocked king trimmed his mane, earning his surname ‘Fairhair’.
166. According to later sagas Erik killed eighteen of his nineteen brothers.
167. He is also called Gorm the Sleepy, or Gorm the Worm. According to tradition he was the son-in-law of Harald Klak, the petty king who had converted to Christianity to enlist the support of the Franks.
168. Harald’s nickname is thought to be due to a conspicuous rotten tooth.
169. This is the first mention of ‘Denmark’ as a nation and has therefore been called the country’s “birth certificate”.
170. Obviously the chronology is confused since Thyra was already dead by this point.
171. He was fifty-three when Harald Bluetooth converted. He lasted another eleven years on the throne.
172. This is believed to be the earliest depiction of Christ in northern Europe. A representation of Harald’s Jelling Stone is on the modern Danish passport.
173. This can best be seen in Viking graves. Danes began to be buried oriented east to west – so they would face the returning Christ – but they still were outfitted with representations of Thor’s hammer and other goods which would come in handy in Valhalla. The tradition of ship burials was also continued, although by this time usually with simple iron nails arranged in the outline of a ship.
174. The lone exception to this was a twelve-year old boy who defeated a Jomsviking in single combat and was rewarded with membership.
175. Fittingly, Harald’s name today is ubiquitous as a technology that unites disparate devices. Begun in 1994 by the Swedish company Ericsson, Bluetooth passes information wirelessly between phones and computers regardless of operating system or manufacturer. Just as the tenth century Viking king united fierce rivals, a Samsung phone will now communicate with an Apple computer. The two runes that make up the modern symbol for Bluetooth technology are the king’s initials.
176. By the tenth century Charlemagne’s old empire had split into three parts - Western Francia ruled by Charles the Simple, Eastern Francia ruled by Louis the Child, and a central kingdom ruled by Louis the Blind.
177. He was stabbed to death while visiting a royal hall in Dorset.
178. One of the many great-grandsons of Harald Fairhair, the first king of Norway.
179. It was a hundred and forty eight feet long, and powered by a crew of sixty-eight rowers.
180. To put this into context, six times as many Anglo-Saxon coins have been found in Scandinavia as in England. The largest single collection was found in Stockholm.
181. In 2008, remains of some of the victims of the massacre were found where they had been thrown into a ditch in Oxford.
182. They did so during a feast that got out of hand, supposedly carrying out the deed with the dinner bones. Thorkell the Tall was so disgusted that he promptly switched sides and fought for Athelred.
183. This was the first recorded agreement between an English king and his subjects - a grandfather of the Magna Carta and subsequent constitutional history.
184. During the second battle, Edmund’s forces were winning until Eadric Streona found a man who looked very much like the English king. Cutting off his head, Streona brandished the bloody item and shouted that Ironside was dead. The English soldiers fell back in confusion, and would have been routed but for a heroic stand by the very much alive Edmund.
185. One English source entertainingly claims that the execution was the result of a chess game. Eadric checkmated the king and despite veiled warnings, uncharacteristically stuck to his decision and refused to change the results.
186. Earl Godwin distinguished himself during the campaign by leading a daring night raid on one of Cnut’s enemies.
187. He essentially created a Viking version of the Euro and the Common Market
188. Cnut’s tradition was to build a church or chapel on the site of his important battles to commemorate those who died there.
189. The prominent cross, displayed on every Scandinavian flag, is evidence of the thoroughness of the eventual conversion.
190. In addition to the waning impetus for travel, the Scandinavians didn’t have the population to maintain their naval supremacy. By the fourteenth century German ships of the Hanseatic League had sacked Copenhagen and maintained a trade monopoly within most of Scandinavia.
191. Later he would claim that his father was also descended from Harald Fairhair. While certainly possible, this is most likely an invention to strengthen his dynastic ambitions.
192. In the attack, Olaf allegedly had his men attach ropes to London Bridge and row upstream, pulling the entire structure down. Although it’s highly unlikely, this episode has been suggested as the origin of the nursery rhyme.
193. At the time, canonization was usually a local matter. Olaf’s championing of Christianity in one of the more benighted corners of Scandinavia won him the admiration of Rome.
194. His harsh treatment of the rebels earned him the nickname ‘the Bulgar-burner’.
195. Physically, Maniaces was a man that the Viking Harald could respect far more than the diminutive emperor. One Greek chronicler claimed that the general’s appearance was “neither gentle nor pleasing, but put one in mind of a tempest… his hands seemed made for tearing down walls or for smashing doors of bronze.”
196. William would win lasting fame – and his nickname – by defeating the emir of Syracuse in single combat. One of his brothers, Robert Guiscard, would lead an attack on Constantinople, another, Roger, would conquer Sicily and found a powerful Norman Kingdom.
197. A later Norse Saga claims that the real reason was that the Empress Zoë - now in her mid sixties - had fallen in love with him. When he spurned her advances, she threw him in prison.
198. According to the Vikings, he bypassed the great chain guarding the imperial harbor by positioning his crew at the back of his boat. When the front of the vessel had cleared the chain, he rushed everyone to the front, tipping it over the barrier.
199. Harald’s wealth clearly impressed the Danish king, Svein Estridsson. In particular, one of the coins Harald brought back – the (now quite rare) gold Byzantine nomisma of Michael IV – provided the model for the Danish king’s money. He released a silver penny that was an exact copy of the Byzantine coin.
200. One account claims that the banner itself was the cause of the civil war. When asked by the Danish king, Svein Estridsson, what his most prized possession was, Harald responded that it was the Land-Waster because he had never lost a battle while holding it. This failed to convince the skeptical Svein, who casually remarked that he would only believe it if Harald attacked a real enemy like Magnus and won three times in a row to show it wasn’t a fluke.
201. Magnus, known as ‘the Good’, wrote down the laws of Norway on a parchment which - due to its color - is called the Grey Goose. It is a surprisingly enlightened collection of edicts ranging from weights and measures to succor for the sick and the poor. It was transmitted to the rest of Europe through the Hanseatic League and became the basis for much of modern European sea law.
202. In time, Oslo would become the national capital.
203. Supposedly the bridge was blocked by a single giant Norseman who held the entire Anglo-Saxon army at bay, building a defensive wall with the corpses of the forty men that he had dispatched. He was finally killed by an enterprising Englishman who floated underneath the bridge and stabbed the giant from below, mortally wounding him.
204. Two raven banners are depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry.
205. “Bekk” in Old Norse means stream, “by” comes from the word for farmstead.
206. Wednesday for Odin, Thursday for Thor, and Friday for Frey.