In the Footsteps of the Vikings
History and Travel Portal

The Vikings meet Christianity

One novelty that the Vikings encountered was Christianity. It was a new and strange religion that they often had to take a stand on.

The confrontation between Christianity and the Germanic folk religions took diverging and often dramatic expressions. … There is a strong flavour of practical necessity in this process. People were often left with no alternative, which the case of Harald Bluetooth illustrates. In 826 the exiled Danish king Harald Klack (Bluetooth ) agreed to baptise both himself, his wife and the 400 men who followed him, as a condition for support for his policies from the Frankish Emperor Louis the Pious. In order to make sure that the Danes would live up to their promises, they were accompanied by the monk Ansgar and his companion Ödbert, and with them missionary work speeded up in the North. (Baeksted, p. 215)

Or rational reasoning, as was the case when Edwin of Northumberland with his men discussed the attitude to take towards this religion. One of the arguments, which weighted in favour of Christianity was for them the following: "What comes after the worldly, and what preceded it, we do not know. If this new religion will bring some clarity about this I feel we should adopt it". (translation VS, Baeksted, p. 219) (Storlund, Social relations, p. 9)

Conversion could also be the product of democratic deliberation as was the case when the Icelandic 'ting' in 1000 by majority decision decided to adopt Christianity. In Egil’s saga we learn that many families ‘sprinkled their children with water’.

Egil’s saga Chapter 91 - Grim takes the Christian faith.

Grim of Moss-fell was baptized when Christianity was established by law in Iceland. He had a church built there, and ’tis common report that Thordis had Egil moved to the church. And this proof there is thereof, that later on, when a church was built at Moss-fell, and that church which Grim had built at Bush-bridge taken down, the churchyard was dug over, and under the altar-place were found human bones. They were much larger than the bones of other men. From the tales of old people it is thought pretty sure that these were Egil’s bones. Skapti the priest, Thorarin’s son, a wise man, was there at the (p.123) time. He took then the skull of Egil, and set it on the churchyard fence. The skull was wondrous large, but still more out of the common way was its heaviness. It was all wave-marked on the surface like a shell. Skapti then wished to try the thickness of the skull. He took a good-sized hand-axe, and brandishing it aloft in one hand, brought down the back of it with force on the skull to break it. But where the blow fell the bone whitened, but neither was dinted nor cracked. Whence it might be gathered that this skull could not easily be harmed by the blows of weak men while skin and flesh were on it. The bones of Egil were laid in the outer part of the churchyard at Moss-fell. (p 124)

This is how it started. The Vikings underwent many transformations. One of them is that both in England and Italy the Normans became crusaders, bearers of the true faith, self-styled “soldiers of Christ” … (Berman, p. 435)

Vikings transform into Normans

Rollo the Viking can be seen as a portal figure for the transformation of the Vikings. He had been a pain in the ass, but not lacking taste. Through colourful 'diplomatic' manoeuvres he managed to gain the title Duke of Normandy. It is hear that the Vikings turned into Normans. Of this you will learn more by following the Normans adventures in Italy. This will bring you all the way to Malta.

The Viking ancestor Rollon appears

EARL RAGNVALD was King Harald's dearest friend, and the king had the greatest regard for him. He was married to Hild, a daughter of Rolf Nefia, and their sons were Rolf and Thorer. Earl Ragnvald had also three sons by concubines, - the one called Hallad, the second Einar, the third Hrollaug; and all three were grown men when their brothers born in marriage were still children. Rolf became a great Viking, and was of so stout a growth that no horse could carry him. Wherever he went he must go on foot; and therefore he was called Rolf Ganger. (Later Rollon)

He plundered much in the East sea. One summer, as he was coming from the eastward on a Viking's expedition to the coast of Viken, he landed there and made a cattle foray. As King Harald happened, just at that time, to be in Viken, he heard of it, and was in a great rage; for he had now forbid the plundering within the bounds of the country. The king assembled a Thing, and had Rolf declared an outlaw over all Norway.

When Rolf's mother heard of it she hastened to the king, and entreated peace for Rolf; but the king was so enraged that here entreaty was of no avail.

Then she spoke up:

"Do you think, King Harald, in your anger,
To drive away my brave Rolf Ganger
Like a mad wolf, from out the land?
Why is your cruelty so fell?
Think twice, king, it is ill
With such a wolf at wolf to play,
Who, driven to the wild woods away
May make the king's best deer his prey."

Rolf Ganger went afterwards over sea to the West to the Hebrides, or Sudreys; and at last farther west to Valland, where he plundered and subdued for himself a great earldom, which he peopled with Northmen, from which that land is called Normandy.

Rolf Ganger's son was William, father to Richard, and grandfather to another Richard, who was the father of Robert Longspear, and grandfather of William the Bastard, from whom all the following English kings are descended. From Rolf Ganger also are descended the earls in Normandy.

What follows is from the Icelandic sagas.

1. After once being made an outlaw and shooed from Viking Norway, the giant warrior Rollo had to make it far away from home. He lived by the sword.

2. After much turmoil he won a district large enough to feed him, he got Normandy in three strides from the French king Charles the Simple - and married Poppa (Papia), the daughter of a count, and later the king's daughter or sister Giselle (Gizella). With Poppa he had four children, possibly. Some details are hard to verify.

3. From then on he and his family could rule what was to become the best part of France for centuries. They also took over England and Wales - and Normans also conquered the southern half of Italy, including Sicily, and several other tracts bordering on the Mediterranean Sea. (Rollo the Walker and Relatives)

“the Rollo story is largely historical fact, according to the Icelander Snorre Sturlason in Heimskringla, Book 3, section 24; Book 7, section 19, and other Icelandic sagas from medieval times, as the Orkneyingers' Saga, section 4.”

Very severe discontent with King Harald led many to settle elsewhere - not only in distant parts of Norway, but also the out-countries of Iceland and the Faroe Isles. They were discovered and peopled, in part by Celtic woman slaves, as genetic studies of Icelanders show.

The Northmen had also a great resort to Hjaltland (Shetland Isles) and many men left Norway, flying the country on account of King Harald, and went on Viking cruises into the West sea. In winter they were in the Orkney Islands and Hebrides; but marauded in summer in Norway, and did great damage.

Many were also the mighty men who took service under King Harald and became his flock in the land with him. (20)

From the Landnama Book [Lb]:

“The story of Rollo is especially interesting to us, because Rollo was the forefather of that famous Duke of Normandy who, less than a hundred and fifty years later, conquered England and brought into that country the Norman nobles with their French language and customs.” (Famous Men of the Middle Ages, by John Henry Haaren, [1904], at sacred-texts.com ROLLO THE VIKING DIED 931 A.D.

“After settling in Normandy in 911 the Norse rulers, starting with Duke Rollo, assimilated the governmental institutions of the Franks and established themselves as first-rate administrators…. Soon after the conquest of England, the Norman rulers introduced inquests of various kinds into English practice, the most famous being the Domesday tax census of 1086. The Normans also introduced into England their own earlier practice of sending special justices to hold local courts, and they established a new system of central agencies of finance in both polities. Berman

“In the early decades of the eleventh century, Norman knights began going from Normandy to Italy, singly and in small groups, to serve as mercenary soldiers and othervise to make their fortunes. Among them were 11 sons of a pentty Norman bron named Tancred de Hauteville. Trancred’s sons led an ever increasing number of other Norman countrymen, together with local mercenaries, in successful military raids on Apulia, Calabria, and Capua. By the 1050s they had established themselves as rulers of large parts of the southern Italian peninsula and were getting ready to attack Sicily.

For centuries Italy south of Rome had been chiefly under the rule either of Byzantium or of Islamic caliphates, or of both and the population was predominantly Greek and Arab but also Latin, and, to a lesser extent, Jewish. In addition, some places were under Lombard rule.” The pope’s move. Berman, p. 409

The forgotten history

“The history – and especially the legal history – of the Duchy of Normandy, like that of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily, have not been emphasized by modern historians because the duchy itself ceased to be an independent polity during the thirteenth century. In an age of nationalist historiography, these countries that eventually “didn’t make it” either have been forgotten – like Norman Sicily – or have been treated as part of some other country’s history – in Normandy’s case, that of France, which eventually conquered it, or else of – England, which it had previously conquered.” Bergman, Law and Revolution, p. 459. “The Duchy of Normandy, by its direct influence on both England and France, played a major part in the formation of the Western legal tradition.” Bergman, p. 461.

The two most prominent families to arrive in the Mediterranean were descendants of Tancred of Hauteville and the Drengots, of whom Rainulf Drengot received the county of Aversa, the first Norman toehold in the south, from Duke Sergius IV of Naples in 1030. The Hautevilles achieved princely rank by proclaiming Prince Guaimar IV of Salerno "Duke of Apulia and Calabria". He promptly awarded their elected leader, William Iron Arm, with the title of count with his capital of Melfi. Soon the Drengots had attained unto the principality of Capua, and the Emperor Henry III had legally ennobled the Hauteville leader, Drogo, as dux et magister Italiae comesque Normannorum totius Apuliae et Calabriae in 1047. (Wikipedia, "The early Norman castle at Adrano.) CONTINUES... (to the beginning)