the time of Tacitus, long before the dawn of the Viking Age. Their structure is adapted to short voyages in a sea well studded with harbours, not exposed to the most violent storms or most dangerous tides. To the last, judging by the specimens of Scandinavian boats which have come down to us, they must have been not very seaworthy; they were shallow, narrow in the beam, pointed at both ends, and so eminently suitable for manœuvring (with oars) in creeks and bays. The viking ship had but one large and heavy square sail. When a naval battle was in progress, it would depend for its manœuvring on the rowers. The accounts of naval battles in the sagas show us, too, that this was the case. The rowers in each vessel, though among the northern folk these were free men and warriors, not slaves as in the Roman and Carthaginian galleys, would yet need to be supplemented by a contingent of fighting men, marines, in addition to their crew. Naturally the shipbuilding developed: so that vessels in the viking time would be much smaller than in the Saga Age. In saga literature we read of craft (of “long ships”) with 20 to 30 benches of rowers, which would mean 40 to 60 oars. There exist at the museum in Christiania the remains of two boats which were found in the neighbourhood: one, the Gókstad ship, is in very tolerable preservation. It belongs probably to the 11th century. On this boat there are places for 16 oars a side. It is not probable that the largest viking ships had more than 10 oars a side. As these ships must often, against a contrary wind, have had to row both day and night, it seems reasonable to imagine the crew divided into three shifts (as they call them in mining districts), which would give double the number of men available to fight on any occasion as to row.[1] Thus a 20-oared vessel would carry 60 men. But some 40 men per ship seems, for this period, nearer the average. In 896, toward the end of our age, it is incidentally mentioned in one place that five vessels carried 200 vikings, an average of 40 per ship. Elsewhere about the same time we read of 12,000 men carried in 230 ships, an average of 48.
The round and painted shields of the warriors hung outside along the bulwarks: the vessel was steered by an oar at the right side (as whaling boats are to-day), the steer board or starboard side. Prow and stern rose high; and the former was carved most often into the likeness of a snake's or dragon's head: so generally that “dragon” or “worm” (snake) became synonymous with a war-ship. The warriors were well armed. The byrnie or mail-shirt is often mentioned in Eddic songs: so are the axe, the spear, the javelin, the bow and arrows and the sword. The Danes were specially renowned for their axes; but about the sword the most of northern poetry and mythology clings. An immense joy in battle breathes through the earliest Norse literature, which has scarce its like in any other literature; and we know that the language recognized a peculiar battle fury, a veritable madness by which certain were seized and which went by the name of “berserk's way” (berserksgangr).[2] The courage of the vikings was proof against anything, even as a rule against superstitious terrors. “We cannot easily realize how all-embracing that courage was. A trained soldier is often afraid at sea, a trained sailor lost if he has not the protecting sense of his own ship beneath him. The viking ventured upon unknown waters in ships very ill-fitted for their work. He had all the spirit of adventure of a Drake or a Hawkins, all the trained valour of reliance upon his comrades that mark a soldiery fighting a militia” (The Vikings in Western Christendom, p. 143). He was unfortunately hardly less marked for cruelty and faithlessness. Livy's words, “inhumana crudelitas, perfidia plus quam Punica, might, it is to be feared, have been applied as justly to the vikings as to any people of western Europe. It is also true, however, that they showed a great capacity for government, and in times of peace for peaceful organization. Normandy was the best-governed part of France in the 11th century; and the Danes in East Anglia and the Five Burgs were in many regards a model to their Saxon neighbours (Steenstrup, op. cit. iv. ch. 2). Of all European lands England is without doubt that on which the Viking Age has left most impression: in the number of original settlers after 878; in the way which these prepared for Canute's conquest; and finally in that which she absorbed from the conquering Normans. England's gain was France's loss: had the Normans turned their attention in the other direction, they might likely enough have gained the kingdom in France and saved that country from the intermittent anarchy from which it suffered from the 11th till the middle of the 15th century.
Sources of Viking History.—These are, as has been said, almost exclusively the chronicles of the lands visited by the vikings. For Ireland we have, as on the whole our best authority, the Annales Ultonienses (C. O'Conor, Scr. Rev. Hib. iv.), supplemented by the Annals of the Four Masters (ed. O'Donovan) and the Chronicon Scottorum (ed. Henessy). Finally, The War of the Gaidhill with the Gaill (ed. Todd); Three Fragments of Irish History (O'Donovan); cf. W. F. Skene, Celtic Scotland. For England the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Annales Lindisfarnenses (in Pertz, Monumenta, vol. xix.); Simeon of Durham, Historia Dunelmi Ecclesiae. For the Frankish empire the chief sources of our information are The Annales Regni Francorum, Annales Bertiani (Pertz, vol. i.) in three parts (the first anonymous, the second by Prudentius, the third by Hincmar, A.D. 830-82). The Annales Xantenses (A.D. 876, 873; Pertz, vol. ii.) are the authorities for the northern and eastern regions, and the Annales Fuldenses (which begin with Pipin of Herestel and go down to A.D. 900; Pertz, vol. i.) for Germany. Toward the end of the 9th century the Annales Vedastini (Pertz, vols. i. and ii.) are almost the exclusive authority for the western raids. In the historians of Normandy, especially in Dudo of St Quentin, much incidental matter may be found.
References to the Viking Age in a general way are to be found in a vast number of books, especially histories of the Scandinavian countries, of which Munch's Det Norske Folks Historie (1852, &c.) is the most distinguished; J. J. A. Worsaae has written Minder om de Danske og Nord-Mændene i England, Skotland og Irland (1851), an antiquarian rather than an historical study; G. B. Depping, L'Histoire des expéditions maritime des Normands (1843), a not very critical work, and E. Mabille, “Les Invasions Normandes dans la Loire” (École des chartes bibl. t. 30, 1869). A completer work than either of these is W. Vogel's Die Normannen und das Fränkische Reich (1906). It does not, however, break any fresh ground. J. C. H. Steenstrup's Normannerne (1876-82), in four volumes, is not a continuous history, but a series of studies of great learning and value; C. F. Keary, The Vikings in Western Europe (1891) is a history of the viking raids on all the western lands, but ends A.D. 888. A. Bugge's Vikingerne (1904-6) is a study of the moral and social side of the vikings, or, one should rather say, of the earliest Scandinavian folk.
(C. F. K.)
VIKRAMADITYA, a legendary Hindu king of Uzjain, who is supposed to have given his name to the Vikram Samvat, the era which is used all over northern India, except in Bengal, and at whose court the “nine gems” of Sanskrit literature are also supposed to have flourished. The Vikram era is reckoned from the vernal equinox of the year 57 B.C., but there is no evidence that that date corresponds with any event in the life of an actual king. As a matter of fact, all dates in this era down to the 10th century never use the word Vikram, but that of Malava instead, that being the tribe that gives its name to Malwa. The name Vikramaditya simply means “sun of power,” and was adopted by several Hindu kings, of whom Chandragupta II. (Chandragupta Vikramaditya), who ascended the throne of the Guptas about A.D. 375, approaches most nearly to the legend.
See Alexander Cunningham, Book of Indian Eras (1883); and Vincent Smith, Early History of India, 1904).
VILAS, WILLIAM FREEMAN (1840-1908), American political leader and lawyer, was born in Chelsea, Vermont, on the 9th of July 1840. His father, Levi B. Vilas, a lawyer and Democratic politician, emigrated in 1851 to Madison, Wisconsin. William graduated at the university of Wisconsin in 1858, and at the Albany (New York) Law School in 1860, and began to practise law in Madison with his father. In 1862 he recruited and became captain of Company A of the Twenty-Third Wisconsin
- ↑ Steenstrup (Normannerne, i. p. 352), to get the number of men on (say) a 30-oared vessel, adds but some 20 more. This seems an unlikely limitation, throwing an impossible amount of work upon the crew, and leaving each ship terribly weak supposing a naval battle had to be undertaken—as with some rival viking fleet, even before any Christian nation possessed a fleet.
- ↑ Cf. Grett. S. ch. 42, Njála, ch. 104, &c., and many other sources.
