Introduction article

The World in the Viking Age

by Søren M. Sindbæk

The Viking Age was ignited by the art of building seaworthy sailing ships and the skills to sail them on the open sea. The growth in seafaring, trade, piracy, and exploration that began to gather momentum during the 8th century was not limited to Europe’s northern seas; it was also echoed in other parts of the world at the same time. If the era that began with the great European voyages of discovery at the end of the 15th century is known as the Age of Exploration, then the Viking Age deserves equal claim to the same moniker. From the South China Sea to the North Atlantic, the centuries leading up to the year 1000 were exploration’s first great age – a time when ships found routes to uncharted waters, new lands were discovered, and new ports sprang up along coasts.

SeafarersThree accounts of seafarers, who sailed at roughly the same time during the middle of the 9th century, demonstrate how ships both connected and changed the world during the Viking Age. The first of the three, the Norwegian Ohthere, appeared as a guest at the court of King Alfred the Great in England, when Viking raids upon the English coast were at their peak. Ohthere told about his life as a chieftain in northern Norway and his sea voyages from the Arctic Ocean to Denmark. His story was so new and strange to the English court that it was committed to writing, making it the oldest eyewitness account from Scandinavia. At the time of his travels, sailing ships had only been known in Scandinavia for a few generations and long sea voyages opened up a world of new possibilities. Before the year 900, Scandinavian seafarers would establish colonies on Iceland and the North Atlantic islands, from which they would eventually travel further to Greenland and North America.

Stories of new voyages and lands also echoed around the port of Siraf in the Persian Gulf. For the first time, ships from the Middle East began to sail all the way to China. In Southeast Asia, these journeys transformed the straits between Sumatra, Malaysia, and Java into a new hot spot for trade and cultural exchange. One of the explorers whose name became famous was Captain Abhara, a shepherd from the highlands of Persia who ended as a long-haul captain and navigator between India and China. The experiences he and other travellers came home with gave rise to some of the most original travel accounts known to history, with tales ranging from the accurate to the embellished, which were collected in Siraf and other Persian Gulf ports.

Archaeological finds can also reveal stories of voyages. Such was the case of the Byzantine diplomat, Theodosios, whose letter-seal has been found at Ribe and Tissø in Denmark and at Hedeby in northern Germany. From 840-842, he travelled from Constantinople (modern Istanbul) over the Adriatic Sea to Venice, and onwards to the Carolingian or Frankish court at Trier. The objective of the journey was to gain allies in the Byzantine Empire’s fight against Muslim pirates who had invaded Crete. The fact that Theodosios sent messages to a far-off corner of the world, which the Byzantine emperor’s court had only learned the existence of some few years earlier, was perhaps due to a small group of Scandinavians who had recently sailed down the Russian river systems to Constantinople – the first known voyage along this route. This new continental by-pass quickly gained great importance in Scandinavia and the Mediterranean, and, of course, in the new realm which emerged along the waterways: Russia.

The voyages of Ohthere, Abhara and Theodosios range over half of the globe, from China to the Persian Gulf, from the Mediterranean to Northern Europe and further to the outer-most arctic reaches of Scandinavia. Nevertheless, their worlds were so closely connected that they could well have had common acquaintances in the places to which they travelled. Archaeological discoveries in recent years have provided new insight into how seafaring changed the world during the Viking Age. Exactly how a long-haul ship from the Indian Ocean may have appeared in Abhara’s time has been revealed after the discovery of a wreck near the Indonesian island of Belitung; a ship, laden with wares from China, went down there just before the middle of the 9th century.[i] New finds from trading centres such as Aylah on the Red Sea, Unguja Ukuu on Zanzibar, or Abhara’s homeport of Siraf – towns that developed concurrently – demonstrate the complex cultures which emerged at the nodal points of maritime travel. Traces of industries that produced wares for maritime trade have been found in Chinese cities, and in Istanbul, Turkey, large-scale excavations have uncovered one of Constantinople’s harbours, with many wrecks of the ships that made the Byzantine Empire a world power at sea.

The centuries leading up to the year 1000 are widely known as the time in which the ancient empires and their urban cultures dwindled.[ii] However, at the same time, new networks were emerging, connecting coastlines all around the world. These changes often reflect tangible connections. When Ohthere traded on his journeys in the North Sea, he encountered Arabic silver coins from the Islamic caliphates like those Abhara would have had in his belt on the way to China, and in Scandinavian trading towns he might see glass beads from the same workshops that supplied Zanzibar. The age when this happened is known across the world by reference to a diversity of ruling dynasties and empires. It was the world of the Carolingian and Byzantine emperors, the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad, and the Tang Dynasty of China. But more than this, it was an age when adventurous seafaring wove land and sea together in new ways. It was the world in the Viking Age.

The worldLong before our calendar began, sailing ships had already found their way from the Mediterranean to India. Ships had sailed along most of Europe’s coasts since the days of the Roman Empire. By comparison, sailing ships were a rather late development in Scandinavia. For thousands of years, small and large boats had been rowed between coasts, but from the late 8th century onwards, historical sources and archaeological finds suggest that something had occurred, which made the open seas navigable.

Sailing ships made it possible to reach other worlds. However, there was a great difference between the world that could be reached by ships in antiquity and that in the Viking Age. During the 8th and 9th centuries, the Islamic territories had expanded from Afghanistan to Spain. Luxury goods flooded into the lands surrounding the Persian Gulf, and for the first time in almost 1,000 years, the Mediterranean was no longer the main centre of maritime trade.[iii] At the same time, under the rule of the Tang Dynasty, China turned its attention to the sea, and ports sprang up along its coast. In the 7th century, the Grand Canal was created – which would connect southern China with the Yellow River and Beijing to the north – linking the coastline with the heart of the empire and making seafaring a profitable business.[iv] In Europe, the Mediterranean lands’ traditional domination of trade and politics had been weakened by wars and unrest. The Carolingian Empire in the West and the Byzantine Empire in the East began instead to develop relations with the lands around the North and Black Seas.[v]

Beyond the borders of the old empires of the Mediterranean, the Middle East, India and China, sailing ships were often greeted with hostility in many parts of the ancient world. In contrast, by the time of Ohthere, Abhara, and Theodosios, many of these places had become societies producing wares that were in high demand and where traders were welcome. In East Africa, kingdoms were being established and commodities such as gold, slaves and ivory began to be exported from the new coastal towns. On Java and Sumatra, rare items such as camphor and spices were prepared for export. In Scandinavia, production of woollen cloth and high-quality iron became important industries. Gradual improvements in shipbuilding, navigation and geographical knowledge as well as greater confidence at sea made longer and safer voyages possible, also in hard weather and difficult waters.

Seafaring over the open ocean was based on the skills to navigate without landmarks, which required many years’ experience at sea. This in turn was based on great investment of time and in materials, whether it was specially selected trees for shipbuilding, high-quality iron for rivets, nails, anchors and chains, hand-woven sailcloth, caulking or rope that must be acquired in large quantities. Why did these investments make sense? Sea voyages did not just give access to trade and riches: warriors, diplomats and pirates all used ships in the play for power. Ships gave emigrating colonists hope for a better life at the same time that they ferried captured slaves into wretchedness. Pilgrims, craftsmen and scholars travelled in search of new knowledge. Others were driven by curiosity, like Ohthere, who sailed to the White Sea of his own volition, “to find out how far the land extended”. Seafaring allowed one to go beyond the familiar. It was this diversity that gave new significance to maritime contacts during the Viking Age.

NetworksWhen sailing away from home, travellers focused on some few, well-known destinations. The world became ‘small’, connected by routes that had previously been navigated and described. New towns were frequently established at the points where these routes intersected. They often lay in locations where onward travel became difficult or dangerous – where waters changed character, routes merged, large rivers met the sea or where summer sea-routes were exchanged for winter pathways.

The preconditions that brought people together at these places did not lie in the hinterland surrounding the towns, but in long voyages over the sea. Ships needed harbours with security for men and materials, and markets with enough goods to fill their cargo holds. It needed to be possible to acquire provisions and carry out repairs, and to stay for a number of months if necessary. Some wares came from far inland after the sailing season had ended. These towns were therefore busy all year round. They might lie at great distances from each other. To those who travelled for trade, it was vital that other traders visited the same ports. For seamen who had travelled for months, it made little difference if the journey was a few days longer if a safe harbour and the best markets were the end result.

Maritime towns – emporia – were rarely the mid-points of a district or a kingdom, but links in a network.[vi] They were often composed of modest houses of wood and were seldom noted for their temples, town walls or palaces. Yet they housed an unmistakably urban way of life. Here were market streets with exotic wares and skilled craftsmen, well versed in unusual techniques. Here lived people with acquaintances in faraway towns. Foreign visitors moved freely and many languages could be heard. From a great distance, the sight of all the masts of the sailing ships would indicate that these were unique and special places.

Emporia developed as gathering and distribution centres for the great cargos carried by ships. Many of the objects that filled the hulls had been literally unknown beyond their region before seafaring made them available. Ohthere brought walrus tusks as an exotic gift for the king of England. Just a few years later, the ivory of the arctic had become a highly desirable commodity, which was worked by artists and craftsmen at many sites around Europe. Heavy goods such as lumber, barrels, stone vessels, mass-produced ceramics or heavy quernstones were transported over long distances that would have been unpractical over land. New economic tools such as coins, weights and measuring systems came into use among travellers who needed to settle deals in a fast and unambiguous manner. Ideas and belief systems also travelled by sea. Mosques began to appear in Africa and India, missionary churches were built in Scandinavia, and Buddhism and Hinduism became popular on Java and Sumatra. Ships did not just satisfy a demand for transport – they changed the rules of the game for the individual seafarer and for their societies.

Viking-Age maritime networks and the towns they encompassed are one of archaeology’s great discoveries. They have long been known along the coasts of Northern Europe, where large-scale excavations have provided new information on many important sites. More recently, archaeological finds in the Mediterranean and around the Indian Ocean have uncovered a world that was previously only known from passing references in travel accounts. New techniques give archaeologists the possibility to trace the origin of increasing numbers of artefacts from these emporia and to understand the widespread maritime network that they represent. During the Viking Age, seafaring connected different cultures, allowed the diffusion of widely varying trade goods, and ignited cultural changes across the globe. The exploration of this story is a new voyage of archaeological discovery.

[i] The Belitung wreck provides an important new source on early medieval ships in the Indian Ocean, and its cargo is by far the most extensive collection of the types of goods that traders in this region brought back from their voyages to Tang-period China. However, the finds from the wreck were recovered by a for-profit salvage operation, and the Viking Ship Museum, in line with UNESCO conventions, will not condone such activities by displaying the operation’s finds to the public.

[ii] Sharma 1987; Horden & Purcell 2000; Wickham 2005.

[iii] Hourani 1995.

[iv] Wang 2003.

[v] McCormick 2001.

[vi] Chaudhuri 1985: 102; Sindbæk 2007; Wynne-Jones 2007; Hodges 2012a; Miksic 2013.