How the West Won: The Neglected Story of the Triumph of Modernity (17 page)

In contrast to the knarr, the longships (known as
skei
) relied mainly on oars, and they probably could (briefly) achieve a top speed of fifteen knots. Because of its shallow draft, the longship could sail in waters less than three feet deep and land on beaches, allowing Viking raiders to sail up rivers. Being double-ended, longships could reverse their direction without turning around. Although used for war, the longboats were not fighting ships but troop transports. The largest longship that archaeologists have discovered is 118 feet long. (Columbus’s
Santa Maria
was only 75 feet long.) The longships were usually constructed of oak planks about an inch thick, which gave the boat considerable flexibility, and by overlapping the planks and riveting them together, the Vikings gave the longships great strength.

Together, the knarr and the skei gave the Vikings command of the water, whether salt or fresh. In addition, the shipbuilding industry must have been a major factor in the Scandinavian economy: “the foresters, carpenters, blacksmiths, sail-makers, rope-makers, and labourers involved must have been legion,” Robert Ferguson observed in his Viking history.
⁷

It took more than fine ships to sail from Norway and Sweden to Iceland, Greenland, and Labrador. The Greeks and Romans navigated by following the shore and by island hopping. The Vikings, by contrast, had several mechanical means for determining their latitude. They would sail along a particular degree of latitude and use well-established landmarks, the direction of currents, the appearance of seabirds, and remarkably accurate knowledge of astronomical cues to determine when to turn north or south.
⁸
Unfortunately, the Vikings who wrote the sagas were not interested in technology, so we know much less about Viking technology than might be expected. In fact, most of what we do know is the result of recent archaeology and scientific research. In 2011 French scientists reported that a particular kind of crystal, widely available in Scandinavia, can be used to accurately locate the sun even on very cloudy or foggy days.
⁹
This lends credence to traditions that the Vikings used a sort of sunstone.

Finally, the Vikings were experts at catching and drying codfish, and they relied on this form of “hardtack” to sustain them on long voyages.

Raids and Settlements

Viking voyagers discovered that none of the realms to the south could defend themselves against raiders from the sea and that there was enormous wealth to be taken, especially from the undefended monasteries. They took full advantage of the opportunity.

Viking raids began late in the eighth century; the first well-documented attack was in 793 on the monastery located on the island of Lindisfarne, off the east coast of England. As the twelfth-century chronicler Simeon of Durham reported, “They came into the church … laid everything waste with grievous plundering … dug up the altars and seized all the treasure from the holy church. They killed some of the brothers, took some away in fetters.… Some they drowned in the sea.”
¹⁰
Other monks soon reestablished the monastery, but the Vikings came again; this process was repeated several more times until the monks finally abandoned Lindisfarne in 875. The same thing happened to the monastery at Iona on the west coast of Scotland, first raided in 794 and abandoned fifty years later. The Vikings also pillaged the monasteries off Ireland’s west coast, beginning in 795. Throughout the ninth and tenth centuries the Vikings regularly raided the Frankish towns along the Atlantic coast and sailed up the Meuse, Seine, and Rhine Rivers and their tributaries, attacking and looting towns, churches, estates, convents, and monasteries.

It may have been that the Vikings were especially likely to raid church properties because they were undefended and wealthy. But it also has been suggested that they chose them, and were particularly brutal toward monks and nuns, because they were angry about vicious efforts to Christianize the North.
¹¹
Especially provocative would have been the atrocities committed by Charlemagne, who, for example, had about 4,500 unarmed Saxon captives forcibly baptized and then executed. The Vikings seem to have known that Charlemagne had issued an edict imposing the death sentence on all who tried to resist Christianization.

As time passed, the Viking raids involved ever-larger fleets. In 832 an armada of about 130 ships—each ship transporting about fifty Vikings—attacked along Ireland’s northern and eastern coasts. Twenty years later it was not unusual for a raiding party to have more than 300 ships. In 885 a fleet of 700 Viking ships sailed up the River Seine and laid siege to Paris (the raiders accepted a fortune in silver to leave).
¹²

The Vikings also began to establish settlements—founding Dublin, Limerick, Wexford, and Waterford in Ireland and Skokholm and
Swansea in Wales, and claiming all of northern Scotland as well as the whole of Russia. During the 880s they established their most lasting and historically significant settlements, along the Frankish coast. From this secure coastal base the Vikings raided further inland. In 911 Charles the Simple, king of France, signed a treaty with the Viking leader Rollo, ceding to him a substantial coastal area around Rouen (an area the Vikings already held) to be known as the Duchy of Normandy. In return, Rollo agreed no longer to raid any Frankish areas, to defend the Seine so that no Vikings could threaten Paris, to convert to Christianity, and to marry Charles’s daughter Gisela. Although both sides observed the provisions of the treaty, the boundaries of Normandy expanded substantially for about thirty more years.

Norman Triumphs

In principle, the dukes of Normandy were subjects of the kings of France, but they didn’t act like it: they struck their own coins, levied their own taxes, raised their own armies, and named the officials of their own new archdiocese. The Normans also quickly won the support of the local Frankish population, both peasants and nobility—who, in effect,
became
Normans. In fact, most of the Viking settlers of Normandy married local women and welcomed some talented local men to their ranks. Soon most Normans in Normandy were at least partly of Frankish origins.

To England

In 1035, at the age of seven, William the Bastard (1028–1087) became duke of Normandy. He survived various threats to his rule, defeating rebel barons in 1047. As William consolidated his power, the king of France attempted to invade Normandy but was beaten badly in 1054 and again in 1057. William proved to be a popular leader and attached the county of Maine to Normandy in 1060. All the while he was eyeing the English throne, to which he had a tenuous claim. When Pope Alexander II recognized his claim, William assembled an invasion fleet—in part by promising English land and titles to his fellow Normans. Before William sailed he got word that Harald III, king of Norway, also a claimant to the English throne, had landed a Viking army near York. Knowing that Harald II, the Anglo-Saxon king of England, had
marched his army north to meet the Norwegian Harald, William set sail across the channel.

The English overwhelmed the Norwegians and then rushed south to meet William and his Normans. The battle took place about six miles from Hastings on the road to London. This was the first appearance in England of crossbowmen, whose deadly volleys caused the English infantry to back up, whereupon William unleashed his heavy cavalry in a thundering charge. But the English infantry troops were sufficiently firm to turn back the cavalry. After another hour of fighting, one wing of William’s infantry fell back. Seeing this, the English infantry broke ranks in pursuit—at which point the Norman cavalry rushed in and routed the English forces.

There followed some maneuvering and negotiations, but William’s victory was not in doubt. He was crowned king of England at Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. William the Bastard was now to be known as William the Conqueror.

Soon after the battle most of the Normans returned to Normandy, with only about eight thousand remaining in England to form a ruling elite.
¹³
This is consistent with the many other instances considered in chapter 4 when “major” migrations involved only a small elite. In any event, this small number of Normans was sufficient to hold power. One might suppose that they soon were speaking English and assimilating. Not so—they remained a French-speaking elite for centuries.

William proved to be a very competent ruler, even though he spent most of his time back in Normandy. In 1085, to have full knowledge of the tax potential of England, he had an elaborate census taken to reveal the ownership and value of every parcel of land and of all livestock, the makeup of all villages (even noting each watermill), and all church properties. The English deeply resented this census as an intrusion; comparing it to the “final judgment,” they called the completed assessment the
Domesday Book
(pronounced “Doomsday”). What the
Domesday Book
showed was that the Normanization of English property was nearly total; the English owned only about 5 percent of the land, and this was further reduced in subsequent decades.
¹⁴
As a consequence, the English (Anglo-Saxon) nobility fled—many to Scotland and Ireland, some even to Scandinavia.
¹⁵
And sometime in the 1070s a large group of Anglo-Saxons sailed from England to the Byzantine Empire.
¹⁶
There they served as effective mercenaries, helping Alexius I Comnenus seize the imperial throne.
¹⁷

Finally, in part because Viking traditions limited the power of kings over the nobility, in 1215 the Norman barons imposed the Magna Carta on King John, thereby taking the first step toward democratic rule.

Kingdom of Sicily

Because of their fearsome reputations and unusual height, Normans soon discovered that they could earn premium wages as mercenaries, so many younger sons hired out all over the continent. The Byzantines engaged some to augment the forces they sent in 1038 to stop Muslim pirates operating from the ports of Sicily. It was a decision the Byzantines would always regret.
¹⁸

The most famous living Byzantine general, George Maniakes, led an oddly assorted invasion force—Lombards forced into service, a few Byzantine regulars, and a substantial contingent of Norman mercenaries. Crossing over from southern Italy, Maniakes’s army took Messina almost at once, won major battles at Rometta and Troina, and soon controlled more than a dozen fortresses in Sicily.
¹⁹
Then everything fell apart. Maniakes withheld the Normans’ share of the booty, angering them and causing his most effective contingent to return to Italy,
²⁰
Then, when the naval commander foolishly allowed the Muslim fleet to escape through the Byzantine blockade, Maniakes abused him physically and called him an effeminate pimp.
²¹
That naval commander was the emperor’s brother-in-law Stephen. In revenge, Stephen sent a message to the emperor accusing Maniakes of treason. Maniakes was summoned to Constantinople and immediately thrown into prison. Stephen took command in Sicily—and made a complete mess of things before dying. His replacement, a court eunuch named Basil, was not much better.
²²
The Byzantine army began a slow retreat, and then left Sicily altogether when it was called to quell a Lombard rebellion in Apulia, the southernmost province in the heel of Italy. Sicily was once again under uncontested Muslim rule.

The experience was eye-opening for the Norman mercenaries. They now knew that Sicily was rich, that the large Christian population would support an invasion, and that the Muslims were hopelessly divided. They also recognized that Constantinople was too far away and too corrupted by intrigues to sustain its rule in the West. So rather than help suppress the Lombard uprising, the Normans decided to lead it. In 1041 the Norman knights sneaked across the mountains and descended into Apulia.

The Normans were led by William of Hauteville, whose heroic
exploits in Sicily had earned him the nickname “Iron Arm.” They quickly seized Melfi, a well-situated and fortified hill town, and accepted the submission of all the surrounding towns. The Byzantine governor assembled an army considerably larger than that of the Normans and rebels. He then sent a herald to the opposing camp offering either the Normans’ safe return to Lombard territory or battle. In response, an enormous Norman knight smashed his mailed fist on the head of the Byzantine herald’s horse; the horse fell dead on the spot. (Yes, this actually happened, historians agree.)
²³
The battle began the next day.

The vastly outnumbered Normans routed the Byzantine forces, most of whom were killed in battle or drowned while trying to flee across the river. The Byzantine governor responded by importing many regular troops from Constantinople, but William Iron Arm and the Normans slaughtered this new Byzantine army, too. Even then the Byzantines did not accept defeat. They gathered another army and fought one more battle near Montepeloso. Again Iron Arm and his Normans prevailed, even taking the Byzantine governor prisoner and holding him for ransom. Never again were the Byzantines willing to fight an open battle with Normans in Italy; they contented themselves with defending strongly fortified towns and cities. Although they avoided further military catastrophes, they also failed to hold southern Italy, which slowly transformed into a Norman kingdom.

Soon the Normans turned their attention back to Muslim Sicily. In 1059 Robert Guiscard, the Norman duke of southern Italy, designated himself in a letter to Pope Nicholas II as “future [lord] of Sicily.”
²⁴
Two years later he and his brother Roger, with a select company of Normans, launched an invasion. They fortified Messina; formed an alliance with Ibn at-Tinnah, one of the feuding Sicilian emirs; and took most of Sicily before having to return to Italy. By 1071 Guiscard had driven the Byzantine forces out of southern Italy. The next year he returned to Sicily, captured Palermo, and soon took command of the entire island. Thus was created the Norman Kingdom of Sicily (which included southern Italy).
²⁵
It only lasted for about a century, but Muslim rule never resumed.