This brief sketch may be taken as the prototype of viking invasion of any region of western Christendom which was the object of their continuous attacks. Of such regions we may distinguish five. Almost simultaneously with the attacks on Ireland came others, probably also from Norway, on the western regions (coasts and islands) of Scotland. Plunderings of Iona are mentioned in A.D. 802, 806. In the course of a generation almost all the monastic communities in western Scotland had been destroyed. But details of these viking plundering are wanting. On the continent there were three distinct regions of attack. First the mouth of the Scheldt. There the Danes very early settled on the island of Walcheren, which had in fact been given by the emperor Louis the Pious in fief to a Danish fugitive king, Harald by name, who sought the help of Louis, and adopted Christianity. After the partition of the territory of Charlemagne's empire among the sons of Louis the Pious, Walcheren and the Scheldt-mouth fell within the possessions of the emperor Lothair, and in the region subsequently distinguished as Lotharingia. From this centre, the Scheldt, the viking raids extended on either side; sometimes eastward as far as the Rhine, and so into Germany proper, the territory assigned to Louis the German; at other times westward to the Somme, and thus into the territory of Charles the Bald, the future kingdom of France. In the event toward the end of the 9th century all Frisia between Walcheren and the German Ocean seems to have become the permanent possession of the invaders. In like fashion was it with the next district, that of the Seine, only that here no important island served the pirates for their first arsenal and winter quarters. The serious attacks of the pirates in any part of the empire distant from their own lands begin about the time of the battle of Fontenoy between Louis' sons (A.D. 841). The first wintering of the vikings in the Seine territory (A.D. 850) was in “Givoldi fossa,” the tomb of one Givoldus, not far from the mouth of the river, but no longer exactly determinable. Their first attack on Paris was in A.D. 845: a much more important but unsuccessful one took place in A.D. 885-87, unsuccessful that is so far as the city itself was concerned; but the invaders received an indemnity for raising the siege and leave to pass beyond Paris into Burgundy. The settlement of Danes under Rollo or Rolf on the lower Seine, i.e. in Normandy, dates from the treaty of St Clair-sur-Epte, A.D. 912 (or 911).
The third region is the mouth of the Loire. Here the island point d'appui was Noirmoutier, an island with an abbey at the Loire mouth. The northmen wintered there in A.D. 843. No region was more often ravaged than that of the lower Loire, so rich in abbeys—St Martin of Tours, Marmoutiers, St Benedict, &c. But the country ceded to the vikings under Hasting at the Loire mouth was insignificant and not in permanent occupation.
Near the end of the 9th century, however, the plundering expeditions which emanated from these three sources became so incessant and so widespread that we can signalize no part of west France as free from them, at the same time that the vikings wrought immense mischief in the Rhine country and in Burgundy. The defences of west France seem quite to have broken down, as did the Irish when Turgesius took “Con's half,” or when in A.D. 853 Olaf the White became over-king of Ireland. Unfortunately at this point our best authority ceases, and we cannot well explain the changes which brought about the Christianization of the Normans and their settlement in Normandy as vassals, though recalcitrant ones, of the West Frankish kings.
For the viking attacks in the 5th (or 6th) territory, our own country, the course of events is much clearer. As a part of English history it is, however, sufficiently known, and the briefest summary thereof must suffice. That will show how in its general features it follows the normal course. The first appearance of the vikings in England we saw was in A.D. 789. The first serious attacks do not begin till 838. The island of Sheppey, however, was attacked in 835, and in the following year the vikings entrenched themselves there. The first wintering of the pirates in England was on the contiguous island of Thanet in A.D. 850. The breakdown of the English defences in all parts of the country save Wessex dates from 868: in Wessex that occurs in 877-88 . But the position is suddenly recovered by Alfred in 878, by the battle of Aethandune, as suddenly though not so unaccountably as it was later in West Francia. As Rollo was to do in 912, the Danish leader Guthorm received baptism, taking the name of Aethelstan, and settled in his assigned territory, East Anglia, according to the terms of the peace of Wedmore. But the forces which Alfred defeated at Aethandune represented but half of the viking army in England at the time. The other half under Halfdan (Ragnar Lodbrog's son?) had never troubled itself about Wessex, but had taken firm possession in Northumbria.
The six territories which we have signalized—Ireland, Western Scotland, England, the three in West Francia which merge into each other by the end of the 9th century—do not comprise the whole field of viking raids or attempted invasion. For farther still to the east they twice sailed up the Elbe (A.D. 851, 880) and burnt Hamburg. Southwards they plundered far up the Garonne, and in the north of Spain; and one fleet of them sailed all round Spain, plundering, but attempting in vain to establish themselves in this Arab caliphate. They plundered on the opposite African coast, and at last got as far as the mouth of the Rhone, and thence to Luna in Italy.
What we found in the case of the Irish raids, that at first they are quite anonymous, but that presently the names of the captains of the expeditions emerge, is likewise the case in all other lands. In Ireland, besides the important and successful Turgesius, we read of a Saxulf who early met his death, as well as of Ivar (Ingvar), famous also in England and called the son of Ragnar Lodbrog, and of Oisla, Ivar's comrade; finally (the vikings in Ireland being mostly of Norse descent) of the well known Olaf the White, who became king of all the Scandinavian settlements in Ireland. In France, Oscar is one of the earliest and most successful of the invaders. Later the name of Ragnar (probably Ragnar Lodbrog) appears, along with Weland, Hasting and one of the sons of Ragnar, Björn. Farther to the east we meet the names of Rurik, Godfred and Siegfried. In the eastern region the viking leaders seem to have been closely connected with one of the Danish royal families, the kings of Jutland. The practical though short-lived conquest of England begins under Ivar, Ubbe and Halfdan, reputed sons of Ragnar, and is completed by the last of the three in conjunction with the Guthorm above mentioned. This is, of course, what we should expect, that larger acquaintance gives to the Christian chroniclers more knowledge of their enemy. Precisely the same process in a converse sense develops the casual raids of early times into a scheme of conquest. For at the outset the Christian world was wholly strange to these northmen. We have, it has been said, hardly any means of viewing these raids from the other side. But one small point of light is so suggestive that it may be cited here. The mythical saga of Ragnar Lodbrog is undoubtedly concerned with the Viking Age, though it is impossible now to identify most of the expeditions attributed to this northern hero, stories of conquest in Sweden, in Finland, in Russia and in England, which belong to quite a different age from this one. In the Christian chronicles the name of Ragnar is associated with an attack on Paris in A.D. 845, when the adventurers were (through the interposition of St Germain, say the Christians) suddenly enveloped in darkness—in a thick fog?—and fell before the arms of the defenders. In Saxo Grammaticus's account of Ragnar Lodbrog, this event seems to be reflected in the story of an expedition of Ragnar's to Bjarmaland or Perm in Russia. For Bjarmaland, though it gained a local habitation, is also in Norse tradition a wholly mythical and mythological place, more or less identical with the underworld (Niflhel, mist-hell). So it appears in the history given by Saxo Grammalicus of the voyage to Bjarmaland of one “Gorm the old.” It “looks like a vaporous cloud” and is full of tricks and illusions of sense. We see then that in virtue of some quite historical misfortune to the viking invaders
