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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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But we must make a subset of these 'raiders' who are always removing evidence. Just from memory and from our books
Vikings
Frisian pirates
Earl Harold
Great Western Railway
French revolutionaries
Normans
Danes
Bishop Odo
But we must aim to be as systematic as they are. (Modern historians and archaeologists, I mean.).
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Re Vikings and Danes. A distinction should be drawn between the Danes who are historically verifiable (Wales played them the other day) and the Vikings, who are not. The point being that there is Danish history and you have to look out for forgeries (eg Adam of Bremen) but there is no Viking history so you have to look out for poetry (eg the sagas).
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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The Battle of Hafrsfjord
| wiki wrote: | Date Between 872 and 900
Location
Hafrsfjord, Rogaland
Status Victory for Harald Fairhair
Territorial
changes Unification of the petty kingdoms of Norway |
Who was Harold Fairhair?
| Through the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, historians broadly accepted the account of Harald Fairhair given by later Icelandic sagas. However, Peter Sawyer began to cast doubt on this in 1976,[12] and the decades around 2000 saw a wave of revisionist research that suggested that Harald Fairhair did not exist, or at least not in a way resembling his appearance in sagas. |
Well done Peter.
| There is no contemporary support for the claims of later sagas about Harald Fairhair. The first king of Norway recorded in near-contemporary sources is Haraldr Gormsson (d. c. 985/986), who is claimed to be the king not only of Denmark but also Norway on the Jelling stones. The late ninth-century account of Norway provided by Ohthere to the court of Alfred the Great and the history by Adam of Bremen written in 1075 record no King of Norway for the relevant period. Although sagas have Erik Bloodaxe, who does seem partly to correspond to a historical figure, as the son of Harald Fairhair, no independent evidence supports this genealogical connection.[19] The twelfth-century William of Malmesbury does describe a Norwegian king called Haraldus visiting King Æthelstan of England (d. 939), which is consistent with later saga-traditions in which Harald Fairhair fostered a son, Hákon Aðalsteinsfóstri, on Æthelstan.[20] But William is a late source and Harald a far from uncommon name for a Scandinavian character,[21] and William does not give this Harald the epithet fairhair, whereas he does give that epithet to the later Norwegian king Haraldr Sigurðarson.[22] |
Whoah ! Run that last bit by me again.
| William does not give this Harald the epithet fairhair, whereas he does give that epithet to the later Norwegian king Haraldr Sigurðarson.[22] |
Go on my son, stick it in the net.
| Sources from the British Isles which are independent of the Icelandic saga-tradition (and partly of each other), and are mostly earlier than the sagas, do attest to a king whose name corresponds to the Old Norse name Haraldr inn hárfagri—but they use this name of the well attested Haraldr Sigurðarson (d. 1066, often known in modern English as Harald Hardrada). These sources include manuscript D of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ('Harold Harfagera', under the year 1066) and the related histories by Orderic Vitalis ('Harafagh', re events in 1066), John of Worcester ('Harvagra', s.aa. 1066 and 1098), and William of Malmesbury (Gesta regum Anglorum, 'Harvagre', s.a. regarding 1066) |
How does ortho straighten the circle?
| Scholarly consensus on Harald's historicity now falls into two camps. One suggests that the medieval Icelandic and Norwegian historiography of Harald Fairhair is part of an origin myth created to explain the settlement of Iceland, perhaps in which a cognomen of Haraldr Sigurðarson was transferred to a fictitious early king of all Norway.[18][28] Sverrir Jakobsson has suggested that the idea of Iceland being settled by people fleeing an overbearing Norwegian monarch actually reflects the anxieties of Iceland in the early thirteenth century, when the island was indeed coming under Norwegian dominance. He has also suggested that the legend of Harald Fairhair developed in the twelfth century to enable Norwegian kings, who were then promoting the idea of primogeniture over the older custom of agnatic succession, to claim that their ancestors had had a right to Norway by lineal descent from the country's supposed first king.[29] |
Very good. Sverrir.
I merely add that the monks who wrote the chronicles beat both you and me to it.
Summary
Harald Fairhair c. 850 – c. 932 was of course Harald Hardrada c. 1015 – 25 September 1066.
The battle of The Battle of Hafrsfjord = The sequence of battles (Stamford Bridge/Hastings)
Hafrsfjord=Hastings
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Well, Wiley, you've neatly circumnavigated the trap prepared for you. If you want any Dark Age history -- and I do mean any -- you have to choose your poison. Only historians possess the antidote, they are historians! They know whatever they say, some will support them, some won't, but they'll never be alone. There'll always be someone to peer review their paper. If they're a real berserker -- maybe like this Peter Sawyer of yours -- they still can't say, "It's all poison, I'm rejecting the lot, going back to terra firma and I'll start working my way from there." Why not? Because there's only archaeology which means he'll have to give up being a historian.
Turning to archaeology...
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Vered the Hardhead tells me the Battle of Hastings is just representative of many small battles that no-one bothered to record. Can't be proved or disproved but it's a sensible idea.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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How did the Great Western Railway get on the list?
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Mick Harper wrote: | Well, Wiley, you've neatly circumnavigated the trap prepared for you. If you want any Dark Age history -- and I do mean any -- you have to choose your poison. Only historians possess the antidote, they are historians! They know whatever they say, some will support them, some won't, but they'll never be alone. There'll always be someone to peer review their paper. If they're a real berserker -- maybe like this Peter Sawyer of yours -- they still can't say, "It's all poison, I'm rejecting the lot, going back to terra firma and I'll start working my way from there." Why not? Because there's only archaeology which means he'll have to give up being a historian.
Turning to archaeology... |
Turning to the coins.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Culled from an early medieval Ian Allen, soon to be republished with explanatory notes from one of Britain's top trainspotters
--------------------------
What the Newport authorities did have to worry about were those inveterate foes of all large Welsh ecclesiastical structures, the Vikings. Also, being adjacent to England, the English
"In A.D. 846 the church was plundered by Irish pirates, in 875 by Danes and in 1060 by Earl Harold’s men"
Also the Victorians with their mania for improving works
"A mound used to stand in the grounds of St Woolos Hospital. According to Octavius Morgan the mound was traditionally believed to be the burial place of St Woolas, and was covered by spoil from the Great Western Railway tunnel which runs underneath."
-------------------
Who built the 'Great Western Railway' is subject to intense scholarly debate.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Hatty wrote: | | Vered the Hardhead tells me the Battle of Hastings is just representative of many small battles that no-one bothered to record. Can't be proved or disproved but it's a sensible idea. |
It is not, at this time going to be a chapter in The boys book of imaginary battles, but we might try and answer a question which occurred when reading Meetings with remarkable forgeries.
Why was Ireland blessed with so many Annals, and cursed with so many Viking raids? As every schoolchild knows, it starts with Lindisfarne 793 CE and then averages out at a raid roughly one per year (it's an annual event), for the next 30 years or so. It's then a second wave of Vikings that arrives for even more pillaging.
Maybe someone can help?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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What excellent questions. Let me consult the draft of our next book, The Boy's Book of Imaginary Battles. Skip Herodotus, Livy, Gildas... yes, here it is: "Dublin is claimed by the Irish to have been founded by the Vikings." Well I suppose they couldn't use anyone more prestigious e.g. "London is claimed by the English to be founded by the Romans." And they certainly weren't having any truck with "Dublin was founded by the arch-oppressor, the Anglo-Normans".
We haven't done the chapter on 'Number of annals plotted against frequency of Viking raids" yet. Sorry. Our chief statistician is busy with 'Number of goals plotted against minutes Grealish is on the pitch' but I can see if she will work through her lunch breaks.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Let's take a look. Chapter 6.
The existing ringforts and crannnogs had been proven ineffective in stopping the Vikings. These were replaced by a network of underground chambers called souterrains. These tunnels are lined with stone walls, and a roof. When the Vikings approached, the locals could hide in these tunnels until the danger had passed. Meanwhile the monks, not wanting to share, commissioned tall stone towers known as Round Towers. The entrance to these towers was one floor up, accessible only by ladder. Inside each tower were further floors and ladders. If Vikings were sighted, the Monks simply fled upwards carrying their valuable scripts with them. Whatever floor the Vikings scaled the monks would climb one level higher. By a combination of burying downwards, and escaping upwards, Christianity, its relics and scripts were saved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Souterrain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_round_tower
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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"Gather round, Vikings. We're going to set off on a thousand mile voyage o'er storm-tossed seas to chase Irish monks up stone towers in order to get their manuscripts off them. Ladders will be provided. One pace forward those of you who..."
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | "Gather round, Vikings. We're going to set off on a thousand mile voyage o'er storm-tossed seas to chase Irish monks up stone towers in order to get their manuscripts off them. Ladders will be provided. One pace forward those of you who..." |
"Stirring words Harpfer, but will you finally remember to bring the completed "working at height" risk assessment, as the last three raids have proven a total waste of time."
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Since you raise the systematic nature of Viking raids, it might be a sound corrective to come up with a list of targets for the whole of Europe for the whole of the Dark Ages which might conceivably be of interest to, say, a thousand men in a hundred boats setting off from anywhere in Scandinavia.
We can, I think, eliminate monasteries. Even a Viking tour of multiple monasteries. Monasteries of their nature cannot have anything worth stealing since if they did a hundred local men in ten boats would have got there before you. Ten men in one boat would probably do the trick. Once you move on to possibly worthwhile sources of booty -- castles, palaces, cities -- you will quickly find that a thousand men with only the equipment that can be carried on longboats is not going to cut enough mustard to get home with both booty and too many of the thousand.
Which leaves...
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The other kind of Viking Raid, the one where they set up shop. You know, like they did in Ebbsfleet or Normandy or Dublin. For why? We-e-ell, orthodoxy is a bit shifty about this business model. There is not much purpose in decamping with an army (it would have to be) just to stay there. Though that is what the most successful of them, the Normans, seemed to have done. [But then, as you know...]
The theory appears to be that you draw up the boats (or set fire to them, it varies), build an enormous armed camp and then demand Danegeld to go away. However, so far you have not achieved much more than Germany's Army Group North did in Courland, according to the Soviets: create the biggest prisoner-of-war camp in Europe except you have to guard and feed yourselves. So why would anyone pay? If they did, what's to stop you accepting the money, rowing twelve miles out beyond territorial waters, rowing back and asking for money again. Like most blackmail schemes it is either unenforceable or futile or subject to the nuclear option: OK, do your worst.
And, think about it, what is the worst you can do...
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