Vikings in the South: Voyages to Iberia and the Mediterranean

153 Pages·2015·1.42 MB·English

by  Ann Christys

Vikings in the South
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Studies in Early Medieval History
Series editor: Ian Wood
Concise books on current areas of debate in late antiquity/early medieval
studies, covering history, archaeology, cultural and social studies, and the
interfaces between them.
Dark Age Liguria: Regional Identity and Local Power, c. 400–1020 ,
Ross Balzaretti
Inventing Byzantine Iconoclasm, Leslie Brubaker
Pagan Goddesses in the Early Germanic World: Eostra, Hreda and the Cult of
Matrons , Philip A. Shaw
ii
Vikings in the South
Voyages to Iberia and the Mediterranean
Ann Christys
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
iii
Bloomsbury Academic
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BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published 2015
© Ann Christys, 2015
Ann Christys has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988,
to be identifi ed as Author of this work.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
I SBN: HB: 978-1-47421-376-9
P B: 978-1-47421-375-2
e PDF: 978-1-47421-378-3
e Pub: 978-1-47421-377-6
Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Series: Studies in Early Medieval History
Typeset by Refi neCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

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Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Preface and Acknowledgements ix
1 Introduction: Don Teudo Rico Defeats a Viking Raid 1
2 From the Encircling Ocean 15
3 So the Story Goes 29
4 A Mediterranean Adventure 47
5 Waiting for the Barbarians 65
6 Th e Wars of Santiago and Cordoba against Vikings 79
7 Conclusion: From Charter and Chronicle to Saga 95
Appendix 1: Glossary of Histories and Historians 105
Appendix 2: Timeline 109
Abbreviations 111
Bibliography 113
Index 131
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vi
List of Illustrations
0.1 Th e fi rst expeditions xii
0.2 Th e Iberian peninsula xii
0.3 Galicia xiii
1.1 Th e Luarca plaque 2
1.2 Santa María del Naranco, Oviedo 10
5.1 R ibā t. of Monastir 72
5.2 River Miño at Tuy 74
5.3 Th e Torres del Oeste 76
5.4 Replica Viking ships at Catoira, Ría de Arousa 77
6.1 Madīnat al-Zahrā’ 89
6.2 Th e Eastern Gate, Madīnat al-Zahrā’ 90
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viii
Preface and Acknowledgements
Several years ago, I spent a halcyon aft ernoon sailing or, to be more truthful,
becalmed in a replica Viking ship with a group of eminent scholars of the
Viking Age who were meeting at the Roskilde Ship Museum. Peter Sawyer
suggested that, as I had studied the Latin and Arabic historiography of
medieval Iberia, I might look at the evidence for Vikings in the peninsula.
Peter’s request was prompted by the ‘Bibliographia Normanno-Hispanica’
published the year before in the S aga Book . He was conscious that treatment
of Iberia in general histories, including his own O xford History of the Vikings,
was brief. In her chapter on the Vikings in Francia, Jinty Nelson had noted
that:
Occasionally Vikings ventured far beyond the Carolingian realms. In 844
Galicia and al-Andalus were raided. In 859 (according to the annals of
St-Bertin for that year) ‘Danish pirates made a long sea- voyage, sailed
through the straits between Spain and Africa and then up the Rhône. Th ey
ravaged some towns and monasteries and made their base on an island
called the Camargue.’ Muslim sources of the tenth century and later record
other episodes on this voyage: al-Andalus was raided, and then the little
Moroccan state of Nakur, whose royal women were carried off , then handed
back aft er ransoms were paid by the amir of Córdoba; ‘more than forty ships’
were lost on the way home; and, perhaps a fi nal success on the same
expedition, the king of Pamplona was captured and ransomed in 861 for
60,000 gold pieces. A basis of historical fact thus underlies the epic
Mediterranean journey described in the later medieval Hiberno-Norse
version of R agnar’s Saga . All this was spectacular but exceptional.
(Sawyer 1997: 29–30)
Hispanists are used to being exceptional, to existing in the margins of general
histories of the Middle Ages. Jinty’s exemplary summary of the more important
Viking exploits in the South and the intriguing stories attached to them was a
further incitement to take up the challenge to bring these Vikings into the
main body of the text.
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