The Vikings in Western Christendom

608 Pages·2020·2.674 MB·English

by  C. F. Keary

The Vikings in Western Christendom: A.D. 789-888

C. F. Keary

2
Copyright © C.F. Keary 1891

The right of C.F. Keary to be identified as the author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

First published in the United Kingdom in 1891 by T. Fisher
Unwin.

First digital edition 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

Second digital edition 2020 by FS
3
Non ha l’ottimo artista alcun concetto,
Ch’un marmo solo in se non circonscriva,
Col suo soverchio.
Michelangelo

4
Table of Contents

Preface
Chapter One – Heathendom
Chapter Two – The Creed of Heathen Germany
Chapter Three – Christendom
Chapter Four – The First Contests
Chapter Five – Character of the Vikings
Chapter Six – The Vikings in Ireland
Chapter Seven – Lewis the Pious: The Conquests of
Christianity
Chapter Eight – Civil War
Chapter Nine – Raids in the Frankish Empire, A.D. 834-45
Chapter Ten – Defences Broken Down, A.D. 846-58
Chapter Eleven – Decay and Redintegration A.D. 859-66
Chapter Twelve – The Great Army
Chapter Thirteen – Pause in the Viking Raids
Chapter Fourteen – Charles the Fat, and the Invasion of
Germany
Chapter Fifteen – The Siege of Paris
Chapter Sixteen – The Creed of Christendom
Chronological Table
5
Preface

The present volume is concerned with that period in the
history of the Scandinavian peoples when they were growing, but
had not yet fully grown, into nationalities, and when, therefore,
their true national history had not begun. Every historic people
has passed through this early formative period, its age of Sturm
und Drang; and it may be said that every nationality which is
worthy of the name has looked back upon that age with a peculiar
affection and with a sort of reverence. It has, in consequence,
overlaid the faint traditions of it with a garment of mythology,
out of which it is in most cases possible only here and there to
separate a shred of historical truth. The result is that the very
phase in the development of the people about which we most long
to know, is the one about which we are condemned to the
completest ignorance. The Viking Age of the Northern Folk
differs from the corresponding epochs in the history of other
nations in this — that it is illuminated by a faint ray of real history
lent from the pages of contemporary but alien chroniclers, the
chroniclers, I mean, of Christian Europe. Were it not for this
faint gleam, the earliest age of the Vikings would have remained
for us as a mere tradition, something known to have been, but not
presentable in any realizable form; much, in fact, what the Dorian
Migration is in the history of Greece. As it is, by the aid of the
6
contemporary records I have spoken of, we can present the
northern migration in a clearer guise.
For all that, a distinction must be drawn between the earliest
and, as I would call it, true Viking Age, and the actual history of
the Scandinavian Folk as recorded by themselves. Viking
expeditions continued to be made during the later historical
period. But they took a different character from those of the
earlier age, and they no longer absorbed so large a part of the
activity of the people; at any rate they no longer constituted, as
they do for our period, the only phase of national activity whereof
the records remain. Thus, though the expression Viking Age is
often employed with a much wider significance, it would, I think,
be an advantage, could its use be confined to just this epoch in the
life of the Northern people and to no other; to their age of Storm
and Stress, the age of their formation.
It would be an advantage, too, if it were more generally borne
in mind that the history of the North begins now and at no earlier
time. The Vikings of this period are for us the whole Scandinavian
people; we know no other — if, at any rate, we except a notice
here and there of the kings of Southern Denmark. But the pre-
eminence of the antiquaries of the North, overshadowing the
study of Scandinavian history, has rather tended to obscure this
fact. All histories (almost) of Scandinavian lands begin with
prehistoric antiquities, which are not history. Or it may be that
the historians of these countries have not liked to realize how far
down in time their history begins; so that prehistoric discoveries
or unauthenticated traditions preserved in the sagas of a later age
7
have been brought in to fill up what is for History in the proper
sense of the word a mere blank.
Such, then, is the interest attaching to the age of the Vikings
from the point of view of Scandinavian history. But its records are
so shadowy that it would not be possible to claim for it a very large
amount of attention upon that score alone. For universal history
— or say for the history of Europe generally — it has a much
deeper interest, as one phase, and a very important one, of the
long struggle between Christianity and the Heathenism of the
North. And it is under this aspect that the history is treated in the
present volume. Otherwise there would be no adequate excuse for
the three chapters with which the volume opens, nor for the one
with which it concludes. These four chapters are not, strictly
speaking, concerned with the Vikings; but they are concerned
very intimately with the relations of Heathenism — that is to say
Teutonic Heathenism — to Christianity and to Christian
Europe. It has always been the intention, or at any rate the hope,
of the present writer to carry on the study of this epoch one stage
further; namely, to the formation and to the early history of the
Scandinavian conquests and colonies in France, in the British
Isles, in the islands of the North Atlantic; and, as a pendant to this
external history, to the rise of the Edda and Saga literature and of
the mythology which they enshrine — the last articulate voice of
Teutonic Heathenism. If such an enlarged study were ever
completed, then the three opening chapters of this volume would
serve as an introduction to the whole, and the concluding chapter
as a link between this volume and the next. The half-title, too,
8
‘Heathendom and Christendom’ would stand not for this volume
only, but for any — one or more — succeeding one likewise.
I may, perhaps, be allowed to add that, to the best of my
recollection, this book was begun in the earlier part of 1882; that
its undertaking was due, more than anything else, to the
publication of the first two volumes of Professor Steenstrup’s
important work, Normannerne, to which I am glad to confess my
many obligations; and that a volume (not identical with the
present one) was ready for publication in 1887. But as, precisely at
that moment, there appeared the announcement of a work by Mr.
Du Chaillu upon a similar subject, publication was deferred until
I could discover how far the book thus announced covered the
ground over which I had travelled. The title which Mr. Du
Chaillu chose for his book is the one which I had till then fixed
upon for mine. But except in this one particular I was glad to find
that the subject matter of the two books lay wholly apart.
C. F. K.
200 Cromwell Road,
London
November, 1890

9
Chapter One – Heathendom

There are few physical features in our Europe today more
impressive than the remains of those Roman roads which once
traversed every land owning the Roman sway, and which have
withstood so wonderfully the wear of time. In every western
country of Europe traces of these roads are to be found still
recognizable, though in most they have been absorbed into a more
modern system. Such has been the case with us as in France. But
still the ancient highways can be well made out — our Watling
Street, Fosse Way, Icknield Street, Ermine Street. In many parts
of Spain these Roman roads remain untouched, but grass-grown
and half-ruined, while beside them run the mule-paths, which are
all that the indolent country now cares to keep in repair and use.
Each one of these roads is a natural symbol of the state which
brought it into existence, in its directness of purpose, its
unswerving determination and contempt of obstacles, and
likewise in a certain prosaic plainness. Yet we cannot call these
roads prosaic in the sum, so inimitable are they in their vast,
undaunted length, and even in the uniformity of their plan.
Standing upon them you realize better than in any other way the
long arm of Roman justice. If you put your ear to them, and the
cloud-gates of Time will roll aside for a moment for you, you may
still hear along all their length the tramp of legionaries, the
10