Viking raids in the east: The fight for the riches of Constantinople

No place on Earth was as coveted by the Vikings as Constantinople, but the Scandinavian warriors could never breach the formidable defenses of the world’s richest city in spite of repeated attacks. It was only after the Vikings became the personal bodyguards of the Byzantine emperor that they grabbed a piece of Constantinople’s wealth.

The epic voyages of the Vikings to the British Isles, Iceland, North America and points west tend to obscure the fact that the Scandinavian warriors also ventured far to the east across Europe and parts of Asia. While the Danes and Norwegians sailed west, Swedish fighters and traders traveled in the opposite direction, enticed initially by the high-quality silver coins minted by the Abbasid Caliphate that sprawled across the Middle East.

Painting of The Invitation of the Varangians: Rurik and his brothers arrive in Staraya Ladoga.

These Vikings who crossed the Baltic Sea and descended across Eastern Europe were branded “Rus”—possibly derived from “ruotsi,” a Finnish word for the Swedes meaning “a crew of oarsmen” and the term from which Russia receives its name. As the Rus migrated down the Dnieper and Volga Rivers, they established settlements along trade routes to the Black and Caspian Seas and conquered the native Slavic populations in present-day Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.

By the middle of the ninth century, Rus merchants turned up in Baghdad. The capital of the Abbasid Caliphate may have been the world’s largest city with a population of more than one million people, but it failed to capture the Viking imagination like Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire that was said to harbor even greater riches.


“Silk and gold are the big lures,” says John Haywood, who chronicles the exploits of the Scandinavian raiders on four continents in his new book, “Northmen: The Viking Saga AD 793-1241.” “The Rus would have heard stories about the riches of Constantinople. The big attraction in trade was silk, which was a massively prestigious product for which they traded slaves, furs, beeswax and honey with the Byzantines. Constantinople was also one of the few places that still had gold coins, which were in short supply compared to the Roman period.”

Credit: xavierarnau/Getty Images)

Constantinople’s location on the shores of the Bosporus strait, which divided Europe from Asia, allowed it to become a prosperous crossroads of trade, the largest city in Europe and the richest city in the world. Great treasures necessitated stout defenses. The most-heavily fortified city in the world, Constantinople was encircled by a moat and three parallel walls. In addition, an iron chain that could be stretched across the mouth of the city’s harbor protected it from a naval assault.


It is not known when the Rus first reached Constantinople, but it was before 839 when Rus representatives arrived at the Frankish court as part of a Byzantine diplomatic mission. In June 860, the Rus launched a surprise attack on Constantinople at a time when the city was left largely undefended as Byzantine Emperor Michael III was off with his army fighting the Abbasid Caliphate in Asia Minor while the Byzantine navy was engaged with Arab pirates on the Mediterranean Sea.

Viking graffiti scars a balustrade in Hagia Sophia. (Credit: Jim Brandenburg/ Minden Pictures/Getty Images)

In what the Greek patriarch Photius called “a thunderbolt from heaven,” the Rus plundered the suburbs of Constantinople and launched coastal raids around the Sea of Marmara in which they burned houses, churches and monasteries and slaughtered the patriarch’s servants. However, they never attempted to breach the city walls before suddenly departing in August. The Byzantines credited divine intervention, but the Rus likely departed to ensure they could arrive back home before winter set in.


A medieval Russian source details a second attack on Constantinople in 907 when a fleet of 2,000 ships encountered the iron chain blockading the harbor entrance. The resourceful Vikings responded by going amphibious, hauling their ships ashore, affixing wheels and dragging them overland before placing them back in the water on the other side of the chain before being repelled by the Byzantines. No Byzantine accounts of a Viking attack in 907 exist, however, and Haywood notes that the story could have been concocted as a way to explain a subsequent trade agreement between the Rus and the Byzantines.

A Viking ship is approached by Byzantines at Constantinople. (Credit: Michael Hampshire/National Geographic/Getty Images)

In 941 the Rus launched a disastrous attack on Constantinople. With the Byzantine army and navy once again gone from the city, a fleet of 1,000 ships descended upon Constantinople only to be done in by 15 old dromons fitted with Greek Fire projectors that set the Viking ships ablaze. Weighed down by their armor, the Rus who avoided the flames by jumping into the sea sank to a watery demise. Others caught fire as they swam. When Byzantine reinforcements finally arrived, the Rus sailed for home.


A half-century later, the Vikings would be recruited to defend Constantinople instead of attacking it. When Byzantine Emperor Basil II faced an internal uprising in 987, Vladimir the Great gave him 6,000 Viking mercenaries known as Varangians to differentiate the native Scandinavians from the Rus who by the middle of the 10th century had assimilated with the native Slavs and lost their distinct identity. Impressed by the ferocity with which the Vikings battled the rebels, the emperor established the elite Varangian Guard to protect Constantinople and serve as his personal bodyguards.

 With no local ties or family connections that could divide their loyalties and an inability to speak the local language, the Varangians proved far less corruptible than Basil’s Greek guards.

The Varangian Guard. (Credit: Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

“They were immensely well rewarded,” Haywood says of the Varangians. “They were given silk for everyday wear. If you are Scandinavian at that time, you are doing well if you have silk trim on your clothes. They get an enhanced share of the booty. It’s this trickle of well-to-do homecoming mercenaries that spreads this image of Constantinople as the promised land of fabulous wealth.”


The Varangian Guard fought in every major Byzantine campaign—from Sicily to the Holy Land—until Constantinople was captured by Crusaders in 1204. Visitors to one of the most famous sites in the city now known as Istanbul can see that the Vikings left their mark on Constantinople—literally. At least two runic inscriptions carved into the marble walls of the Hagia Sophia may have been engraved by members of the Varangian Guard.

Other articles on the same theme:

• 1013: The year when the vikings invaded and conquered England

• Ragnar Lothbrok (Travis Fimmel) meet his fate and dies in a pit of snakes in Episode 15 of Vikings Season 4

• Top 8: Famous Vikings you should know about

• Over a millennium ago, the real Ragnar Lodbrok ran a legendary battle that would ensure them a place in history

Story source: 

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by History . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

1013: The year when the vikings invaded and conquered England

Swein Forkbeard leads the Viking assault on England in this detail from Matthew Paris’s 13th-century Life of St Edward the Confessor. The Danish king was drawn to England by the country’s material riches, says Sarah Foot. (Cambridge University Library)

One thousand years ago this summer, the king of Denmark (and lord also over Norway and Sweden) invaded England with a large fleet. After a brief campaign, he secured the submission of all the English people apart from the inhabitants of London. 

3 Key Battles of the Viking Invasions of England History Hit

When, as a near-contemporary English chronicler reported, “all the nation regarded him as full king”, the citizens of London finally capitulated and submitted, giving the Dane hostages, “for fear that he would destroy them”. 

Sweyn Forkbeard: England's forgotten Viking king - BBC News

That king was Swein Forkbeard. His swift conquest sent the Anglo-Saxons’ native ruler, Æthelred (nicknamed ‘the Unready’) into exile in Normandy, leaving his English subjects to pay a large tribute and supply their conqueror and his army with provisions. 
 

Sweyn Forkbeard photo: wikipedia

How could a foreign adventurer have brought such an abrupt end to the rule of the descendants of Alfred the Great? How could he have reversed the victory Alfred had won over the ninth-century Vikings, and reduced England to a subject realm within 
a Scandinavian empire? 

Southern Britain in the ninth century wikipedia

The story of Swein’s conquest of England goes back to the AD 990s, to one of the most celebrated episodes in early English military history, reported laconically in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, but commemorated in a famous Old English poem: The Battle of Maldon. In the summer of 991, 
a fleet of more than 90 Viking ships landed in Kent, sailed to Ipswich and, after sacking that town, came into the estuary of the Blackwater river in Essex. 
 

Byrhtnoth's Plaque near Northey Island image wikipedia

Byrhtnoth statue in Maldon, Essex. Hero and loser of the Battle of Maldon in 991 photo: wikipedia

Facing them on the other shore stood the ranks of the english army led by the Ealdorman of Essex, Byrhtnoth. When a Danish messenger called across the water to urge the English to make peace and “buy off this onslaught of spears with tribute-money”, so that they need not “join battle so grievously”, Byrhtnoth stepped forward to speakin response:

The Battle of Maldon Poem

Determining that the “grim game of battle” would arbitrate between them before the English would pay tribute, Byrhtnoth ordered his men to pick up their shields and walk to stand on the edge of the river, where the flood tide flowed, separating the two forces. Only when the waters receded could the seaborne attackers try to take the causeway, which bold English men defended resolutely, refusing to take flight from the ford. 

The perfidious Vikings (as the poem portrayed them) tricked their way into getting Byrhtnoth to yield some ground; he then paid the ultimate price for that act of pride, as the poet saw it, of conceding the Danes too much land. Byrhtnoth fell in the battle, with his last breath commending his soul to the Lord of hosts and of Angels.

Æthelred in an early thirteenth-century copy of the Abingdon Chronicle photo: wikipedia

Hateful visitors

The Maldon poet contrasted the heroism and dedication of Byrhtnoth and those who fell with him – loyal followers of a devout lord – with the disloyal and ungrateful cowards who fled the battlefield on their lord’s death, instead of sacrificing their own lives to avenge him. Danes (“the hateful visitors”) appear as arrogant in their demand for tribute before a blow has been struck; they use guile to gain ground on the English side of the causeway. English valour and moral courage lie at the heart of the poet’s message, but the military prowess of the “fierce” Vikings is never concealed. 

Although the poem did not name any of the hostile army, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle credited Olaf (Tryggvason) with leading the force that attacked England in 991, implying that he fought at Maldon. But an independent source mentions the involvement of an Essex nobleman in a “treacherous plan that Swein should be received in Essex when first he came there with a fleet”. 

King Olaf I of Norway's arrival to Norway Based on drawing by Peter Nicolai Arbo photo: wikipedia

This suggests that Swein, not Olaf, took the command. Newly established as king in Denmark, with the substantial power and resources of that realm behind him, Swein made a more plausible leader of this invading force than did the Norwegian adventurer Olaf. He would prove a formidable foe. 

Olaf Tryggvason: From a Child Slave to the First Viking Christian BaviPower

After a period of relative peace, Vikings had begun again to attack English shores before Swein and Olaf arrived in 991. Swein’s personal involvement represented a new threat: Denmark’s ruler had his eye on the material resources of England, one of the richest kingdoms of its day. 

Scandinavian adventurers had sought new lands and opportunities in western Europe since the ninth century, but never before had the Danish king himself led their raids. Swein’s ability to spend so much time on overseas expeditions offers an insight into the security of his power at home. The plunder he gathered in England helped to bolster both his resources and his reputation, strengthening his position on both sides of the North Sea.


Spreading misery

Defeated at Maldon, the English paid tribute to the Danes. Further Danish victories followed in the next three years, with attacks on East Anglia, Lindsey, Northumbria, London, Essex, Kent, Sussex and Hampshire until the English again paid tribute. 
 

Statue of Olaf in the city plaza of Trondheim photo: dailyscandinavian.com

At this point, in 994, the English king Æthelred succeeded in separating Swein and Olaf by sponsoring Olaf at his confirmation and giving him royal gifts. In return, Olaf promised never to come back to England in hostility, but took his new wealth to Norway and seized the throne. 

This forced Swein back to Scandinavia to counter the threat to his own realm. While the Danish king sought to reassert control at home (defeating and killing his Norwegian rival in 999), Viking armies continued to harry England, levying large tributes and causing significant misery.

Exeter's History via Maps Images 

Swein first reappears in the English chronicle record when leading the army in an attack on Exeter in 1003, but he may have returned to England as early as 1000. In 1004 he came with his fleet to Norwich, and burned the town down. Fierce fighting near Thetford brought Swein another victory and it seemed no man could defeat him. Then in 1005 a famine struck England, one so bad that the chronicler wrote that “no man ever remembered one so cruel”. Swein was forced to take his fleet back to Denmark. 

Crisis of the Late Middle Ages - Wikipedia

The chronicler, writing from London some time after the events, during the reign of Swein’s son Cnut, laid the blame for the recurrent English defeats firmly on the English leadership. 

To the chronicler’s mind, the incompetence, indecision and cowardice of those in power weakened the morale and determination of the rank-and-file troops, who often crumbled on the battlefield without offering real resistance. So weak were England’s defensive responses that the Danes went about as they pleased: “Nothing withstood them, and no naval force nor land force dared go against them, no matter how far inland they went” (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle). 

Anglo Saxon Chronicle photo: wikipedia

Even Æthelred’s drastic strategy of ordering the massacre of all Danish men in England on 
St Brice’s Day in 1002 did little to turn the tide of Danish victory, serving only to heighten the population’s fears.

Although Swein stayed in Denmark after his return in the year of the great famine in England (1005), his absence brought no respite to the English. The arrival in 1009 of the “immense raiding army”, led by Thorkell the Tall, represented a turning point in Æthelred’s reign. Whether, as one source favourable to Swein maintained, Thorkell came as the agent of Swein or (as is more plausible) he led an independent band of warriors, drawn from across Scandinavia, Thorkell’s tactics and military prowess proved more than a match for English defences.

Storm in Hjørungavåg by Gerhard Munthe image wikipedia

Between 1009 and 1012, his army devastated great swathes of England. As the chronicler wrote: 
“All these disasters befell us through bad policy, in that they were never offered tribute in time, nor fought against; but when they had done most to our injury, peace and truce were made with them. And for all this truce and tribute, they journeyed none the less in bands everywhere, and harried our wretched people and plundered and killed them.”

The rune stone U 344 in Orkesta, Uppland, Sweden, was raised by the Viking Ulfr who commemorated that he had taken a danegeld in England with Thorkell the Tall. He took two others with Skagul Toste and Cnut the Great

From an English perspective, the nadir of Thorkell’s campaign came in 1012 following the fall of the city of Canterbury when, on 19 April, his army shamefully put to death Ælfheah, archbishop of Canterbury. 

Ælfheah of Canterbury photo: wikipedia

In the aftermath of the archbishop’s martyrdom, Thorkell and 45 ships from his army changed sides to ally with Æthelred, promising to defend England.

photo: historyextra

Northern power base 

In 1013, King Swein arrived with his fleet at Sandwich in Kent. He might (as one source maintained) have wanted to punish Thorkell for changing sides. But a close connection between Swein and Thorkell cannot be proven, and other considerations motivated the Danish king, including the desire to now conquer England. 
 

Location of Sandwich. photo: cka.moon-demon.co.uk

From Sandwich, Swein sailed quickly round East Anglia, into the mouth of the Humber and along the Trent until he reached Gainsborough. Without a fight, Earl Uhtred and all the Northumbrians, the people of Lindsey and of the Five Boroughs and all the Danish settlers north of Watling Street submitted to him. This diplomatic victory gave Swein a power base from which to attack Thorkell and Æthelred in the south.

Having provisioned his army, and equipped it with horses, Swein left his son Cnut in charge in Northumbria and crossed Watling Street. Then he allowed his army to do whatever damage it would, intending to subdue the English by fear. His strategy worked. The citizens of Oxford submitted to him and gave him hostages; so did the men of Winchester. 

Only London refused to yield, its citizens resisting because King Æthelred and Thorkell were inside its walls. So Swein turned away to Wallingford, crossed the Thames 
and went to Bath, where he stayed with his army. All the western ‘thegns’ (noblemen) came to submit to him and gave him hostages. 

Now, as the chronicler wrote, “all the nation regarded him as full king”. So it was that the men of London also submitted for fear of what he would do to them. And Swein demanded full payment and provisions for his army that winter. Yet, despite it all, the chronicler lamented, “his army ravaged as often as they pleased”.

King Æthelred escaped to the Isle of Wight where he spent Christmas, and then went into exile with his wife’s people in Normandy. For one short winter, Swein, the king of Denmark and overlord of much of Scandinavia, added England to his empire. 

Isle of Wight in England photo: wikipedia

But on 3 February 1014, Swein died, and the fleet elected Cnut as king. The English then thought better of their own king, their natural lord and begged him to return, “if he would govern them more justly than he did before”. 

It would take two more years of heavy fighting, the death of Æthelred (in April 1016) and of his son Edmund (Ironside) at the end of November that same year, before Cnut would succeed to the whole kingdom of the English and so initiate a period of Danish rule. Cnut’s ultimate victory owed much to the persistence and military prowess of his father, Swein. From the perspective of 1013, it was clear that Byrhtnoth and his companions at Maldon had fallen to the superior military and tactical strength of the most successful king 
of the Viking age.


Who was Swein Forkbeard? 

The rise of the Danish king who subjugated England

Swein was the son of Harald Bluetooth, the first Christian king of Denmark, who had substantially enlarged the Danish kingdom and been accepted as overlord in Norway. Eager to wield power himself, Swein rebelled against his father in AD 987, and drove him into exile. 

Harald Bluetooth being baptized by Bishop Poppo the missionary, probably ca. 960 photo: wikipedia

Such was the stability of the realm that Harold had created that Swein was free to lead raids on England himself, without having to worry about his security at home. And 
his campaign enjoyed 
the support not only of 
his own retainers but also of other leading men from Denmark and elsewhere in Scandinavia, who hoped to profit 
from the treasures 
he would win.
 

Harald's kingdom (in red) and his vassals and allies (in yellow), as set forth in Heimskringla, Knytlinga Saga, and other medieval Scandinavian sources. photo: wikipedia

Swein’s nickname, Forkbeard, is first recorded in a chronicle from Roskilde, compiled about 1140. Most medieval accounts of his career followed the lead given by a German chronicler, Adam of Bremen, who denigrated Swein for failing to recognise the authority of the German emperor and not acknowledging the ecclesiastical authority of the archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen. 

Sweyn and the Jomsvikings at the funeral ale of his father Harald Bluetooth photo: wikipedia

A more positive picture is offered in a text in praise of Emma, widow of Æthelred the Unready, who went on to marry Cnut, Swein’s son. There Swein is praised as a fortunate, generous and religious king.


Other articles on the same theme:

• Top 8: Famous Vikings you should know about

• William the Conqueror's victory at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066

• Over a millennium ago, the real Ragnar Lodbrok ran a legendary battle that would ensure them a place in history

• Ragnar Lothbrok (Travis Fimmel) meet his fate and dies in a pit of snakes in Episode 15 of Vikings Season 4

Story source: 

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Historyextra . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.