HistoryExtrahttps://www.historyextra.comHome of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast2026-10-21T14:31:04.000Zhourly12000-01-01T12:00+00:00This Viking ruler begged to be dismembered – but his rival had something far worse in mindhttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/viking-leaders-orkney/2026-10-21T14:30:39.000ZIt’s Easter time, 1116. Hardly a fitting moment for an act of great treachery. Yet this was medieval Orkney, and treachery was very much on the menu.
That spring day 910 years ago, two powerful men came face to face on the island of Egilsay, in order to seal a peace agreement. Magnús Erlendsson and Hákon Pálsson were cousins and co-rulers of the Earldom of Orkney, and had been for years. But things were about to change.
Hákon had decided that he’d had enough of sharing power with his cousin, and so he lured Magnús into a trap. After a period of escalating tensions, Hákon had arranged what was ostensibly a peace meeting between the two rulers. But when Magnús arrived, he swiftly realised that he was outnumbered by eight warships to two – and that Hákon harboured violent intent.
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Magnús knew that he had been outwitted. And so he made Hákon three offers in an attempt to save his life. Firstly, Magnús offered to go to Rome and Jerusalem to “redeem both our souls” and never return. This was refused. Then he suggested going into captivity in Scotland. This, too, was turned down.
Then Magnús made a third offer: to be dismembered, or blinded, and imprisoned. Hákon was at first inclined to accept this bid. But Orkney’s chieftains were having none of it.
“We must kill one or the other of you now,” they declared. “And you shall not both rule the lands from this day forth.”
“Kill him then!” said Hákon. “Because I want to rule the territory and the lands before I die so suddenly.”
The killing of Magnús Erlendsson is arguably the central episode in The Saga of the Earls of Orkney, a narrative history of the Orkney and Shetland islands and Caithness in the medieval period, embellished with layers of fantasy.
In the Saga’s telling of this 12th-century showdown between co-rulers, Magnús’s martyrdom – not to mention a series of miracles attributed to him – led to his recognition as a saint two decades later. Over the following decades, Orcadians’ reverence for Magnús only grew – as did a building constructed to house his relics. That building, St Magnus Cathedral, still stands in the town of Kirkwall: Scotland’s oldest and most northerly cathedral and an impressive, Romanesque tribute to the slain earl.
The aftermath
Given Magnús’s status, it’s hardly surprising that the Saga was full of praise for his capabilities as a ruler. He was, we’re told:
“The most outstanding person, imposing in size, manly and intelligent-looking, well-mannered in his conduct, victorious in battles, wise in his understanding, eloquent and imperious... He gave many gifts to chieftains and powerful men, and yet he often showed the most care for poor people.”
But what of Hákon? Perhaps surprisingly, the Saga doesn’t paint the architect of Magnús’s death as wholly evil. After a brief period of oppressing Magnús’s followers, Hákon, we’re told, had a change of heart. He travelled to Rome and Jerusalem and bathed in the river Jordan. On his return to Orkney he became “a good ruler and brought peace to his territory... At this his popularity began to grow; in the end, the Orcadians wanted nothing more than to have Hákon and his offspring as their chieftains.”
So what was going on here? Why was the Saga willing to give Hákon, slayer of the saintly Magnús, such a positive press? The answer lies in the distinctive way power was inherited in the Earldom of Orkney.
Royal support
The origins of the earldom lie in the Viking Age settlement of parts of what is now Scotland in the ninth and tenth centuries. This meant that the earldom developed in a Norwegian tradition of inheritance, in which territory was divided between family members who had equal claims to it.
In the 11th and 12th centuries, the Earldom encompassed Shetland and Caithness as well as Orkney. It was soon established as a Christian polity presided over by earls who owed their power to the king of Norway. And because of that Norwegian inheritance system, there were often two or more earls, usually close kinsmen, ruling together.
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This was the context confronting the authors of the Saga when, in the early 13th century, they described Hákon’s deeds. The elevation of Magnús to sanctity suggests some disapproval – at least from the church – of such political killings. But the attitude of the chieftains, and Hákon’s popularity, opens a window on an alternative viewpoint in the Saga: that peace and prosperity could only be achieved when there was a single ruler.
The history of the Earldom of Orkney suggests that this viewpoint had more than a little merit. The death of Magnús at the hands of his cousin and co-earl is the best-known example of such a killing in the Saga. Yet it was far from the only one. In fact, the Saga is studded with examples of co-rulership ending in violence.
A beginner's guide to The Saga of the Earls of Orkney How do we know so much about the exploits of the rulers of early medieval Orkney? The answer lies in The Saga of the Earls of Orkney, otherwise known as the Orkneyinga Saga. The sagas are long, prose narratives of varying types. But those written with historical intent focus on the Viking Age (c750–1100) and the following centuries, and are mostly set in Iceland or Norway. The Saga of the Earls of Orkney is the only one of these set largely in the British Isles, reflecting the fact that parts of what is now Scotland then belonged culturally and politically to that Scandinavian world. It tells the story of the rulers of northern Scotland and their henchmen, taking the reader on a journey from their ancestry in Norway through to the beginning of the 13th century. Its account, particularly of the 11th and 12th centuries, presents a plausible, though certainly partial, outline of the main events of that time. Most of the action takes place in Orkney and Caithness, with occasional forays to Shetland. Readers are also taken to Ireland, and even the Holy Land via Galicia and Narbonne. The narrative is predominantly realistic, but it also has supernatural elements and a host of weird and wonderful characters. The Saga was compiled in Iceland in the early 13th century. It is, however, clearly based on the testimony of informants knowledgeable about northern Scotland, and on traditions from across the Viking diaspora. These traditions include the poetry quoted in the Saga, composed at the time of the events described. The narrative is firmly situated in the landscape of northern Scotland. As such it mentions locales that, in many cases, visitors to this beautiful part of the world can still see in the landscape today.
It all started in the early 11th century – decades before the rise of Hákon and Magnús – when the earldom was ruled by three of five brothers: Sumarliði, Einarr and Brúsi. When Sumarliði died, the youngest brother, Þorfinnr, staked his claim. Einarr was eliminated and Brúsi died of natural causes, leaving Þorfinnr to share power with his nephew, Rǫgnvaldr Brúsason.
But Þorfinnr was not inclined to rule alongside his nephew. And so, like Magnús in the following century, Rǫgnvaldr was killed by a follower of his co-earl – this time on the island of Papa Stronsay. And like Hákon, Þorfinnr went on to become a successful sole ruler, known as the ‘Mighty’.
Þorfinnr was succeeded by his sons, who got along just fine before their own sons – Magnús and Hákon – grew up. The Earldom of Orkney continued to follow the Norwegian model of co-rulers, and so the cycle of internecine violence was fated to continue.
As Magnús had no children, the rule then reverted to Hákon’s sons (by different mothers), Páli and Haraldr. This time, the elimination of one of the co-earls, Haraldr, happened by accident when he put on a deadly linen garment intended by his mother for his half-brother Páli.
Páli ruled alone until his second cousin, Rǫgnvaldr (Kolsson), emerged to claim his part of the earldom. He was the son of St Magnús’s sister and had been brought up in Norway. His role in the capture and elimination of Páli by an enigmatic Saga character called Sveinn Ásleifarson is not clear, but it undoubtedly benefited him, clearing his way to the earldom.
But Rǫgnvaldr (Kolsson) was not to rule alone. Páli’s sister, Margét, saw an opportunity for her son, Haraldr Maddaðarson, to replace Páli and rule as co-earl with Rǫgnvaldr (Kolsson), who was persuaded by a couple of bishops to agree to this. The bishops perhaps did not anticipate any problems, as Haraldr was only three at the time. And the two earls ruled together quite successfully for 20 years. But then events took a familiar turn.
In 1158, Rǫgnvaldr (Kolsson)’s life was brought to a violent end by a man called Þorbjǫrn, kinsman of Haraldr. In the Saga’s telling of events, Þorbjǫrn acknowledged his guilt but told Haraldr it was for his benefit:
“This deed that I have done is a great crime, and I am responsible, but all the territory has fallen into your power.”
Þorbjǫrn was right. Haraldr went on to become sole earl, ruling alone for 48 more years. However, unlike Hákon and Þorfinnr before him (those other earls who went on to enjoy long tenures in power following the deaths of their co-rulers), Haraldr didn’t get a particularly sympathetic hearing from the Saga. Other sagas show that he was also responsible for losing half of Caithness to the king of Scotland.
As for Rǫgnvaldr (Kolsson), he fared a lot better in the Saga’s pages. Like his uncle Magnús, he was venerated as a saint:
“His death was much lamented, because he was very popular there in the isles and widely elsewhere. He had been of assistance to many people, generous with money, calm and loyal to friends, a man of many skills and a good poet.”
This was high praise indeed. But such praise was rarely lavished on the earls’ henchmen. In fact, in a trope widely found in medieval literature, the Saga repeatedly attributes the earls’ murderous actions to the malign influence of their advisers.
Of the bust-up between Þorfinnr and Rǫgnvaldr Brúsason, the Saga writes:
“There was always a good relationship between the kinsmen when they met, but if worse men intervened, then there were differences.”
The same applies for Magnús and Hákon. These co-rulers are shown to have cooperated in the defence of their lands, but “when the kinsmen had ruled the land for some time, then it transpired as it more often and regularly does that many ill-intentioned men took to destroying their relationship”.
Despite the Saga’s misgivings, power-sharing persisted until the early 1200s, a century after Magnús’s death. So what are we to make of the system of co-rulership practised in the Earldom of Orkney? Was it always destined to end in bloodshed? And why did it endure so long? To answer these questions, we need to look to the realm that exerted such power over the earldom in the Viking Age: Norway.
Single and stable?
In the 11th and 12th centuries, Norway was also often ruled by co-kings, always close relatives, often brothers. Some historians have argued that such power-sharing arrangements led to more stable societies than those in which power was concentrated in single hands.
However, just as it sets out the challenges presented by co-rulership in the Earldom of Orkney, so the Saga describes the spectacular breakdown in relations between Norwegian kings. For example, in an episode set in the 1130s, the Saga notes that:
“Magnús and Haraldr [who were nephew and uncle] were kings of Norway for three winters, while their agreement could be said to hold, but in the fourth summer they fought at Färlev.”
Whatever the pros and cons of co-rulership, by the mid-13th century Norway had adopted a sole monarchy, bolstered by detailed legislation, primogeniture and the support of the church. The Orkney Earldom could not go down this road as it was never a kingdom nor powerful enough to become one. Yet it’s hard not to conclude from the Saga that power-sharing usually worked for a time, but always ended badly.
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Overall, there is a sense that neither the Icelandic compilers of the Saga nor their informants from Scotland were impressed by the earls, whether ruling jointly or singly.
What the general population thought of their rulers is harder to discern. The Saga tells us that when Earl Hákon Pálsson was struck down by disease, “people thought that was a great shame because it was very peaceful in his latter days and the householders were doubtful of any co-operation between the brothers Páli and Haraldr”. But the Saga focuses mainly on the doings of the earls and their closest associates. The ‘little people’ remain largely anonymous.
The last co-earls mentioned in the Saga were Haraldr Maddaðarson’s sons, Davíð and Jón. But Davíð died in 1214 and the Saga ends with Jón as sole earl of the Orkneys. By then, the islands were a part of a Norwegian empire that had also experienced its own period of civil wars, but had come through to establish a strong monarchy.
The earls of Orkney continued to wield a degree of power. But, over the following centuries – increasingly living in the shadow of the kingdoms of Norway and Scotland – that power would wane.
Judith Jesch specialises in Old Norse language and literature, and the Viking Age. Her translation of The Saga of the Earls of Orkney was published by Birlinn in 2025.
This article was first published in the November 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
]]>This Viking warlord had a magical banner that promised victory. But it had a secret cursehttps://www.historyextra.com/period/viking/viking-warlord-sigurd-the-stout-raven-banner/2026-10-20T14:59:20.000ZFacing a Scottish army he believed outnumbered his own seven to one, the Viking warlord Sigurd the Stout went to his mother for help. According to Orkneyinga Saga, she had little sympathy – if any – for his concerns.
“She basically says, ‘Well, if I thought you would be worried about dying, I would have brought you up in my wool basket,’” Viking Age scholar Judith Jesch explains on the HistoryExtra podcast.
Despite her misgivings about her son’s courage, his mother had, however, made something for him: a banner bearing a raven, so skilfully worked that the bird seemed to fly when the cloth whipped in the wind. She promised that it would bring him victory, with one condition.
“She says, ‘This banner will help you win the battle, but whoever carries the banner will die.’”
Three standard-bearers were killed in the fighting that followed. “You'd think they would have heard that it was a bad idea to carry this banner,” Jesch says. “But Sigurd does eventually win the battle.”
Fighting for power in Scotland
Sigurd ruled Orkney in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. From the islands off Scotland’s northern coast, the Norse earls could reach allies and enemies across Scandinavia, Scotland and Ireland. They also sought territory closer to home, across the Pentland Firth in Caithness.
The saga names Sigurd’s Scottish opponent as Earl Finnleik and places their battle at a site generally identified as Skitten, near Wick. Control of this part of the mainland was a recurring concern for Orkney’s rulers.
This account of the battle was written long after the fighting. Orkneyinga Saga, a history of the islands’ earls, is generally thought to have first taken shape around 1200, some two centuries after Sigurd’s lifetime. Its writers drew on earlier traditions, and the text underwent further revision.
We cannot recover a conversation between Sigurd and his mother from this scene, or establish what happened at Skitten through its account of an enchanted banner. We can, though, see what interested the storytellers who wrote this legend.
A taunting mother
“Her response to him is goading,” Jesch explains. “And this is a motif we find a lot in Icelandic sagas.”
In saga feuds, a killing or an insult could affect the standing of an entire family. Relatives had a stake in whether a man sought compensation, took revenge or did nothing, even if they would never fight themselves.
“It's often thought of as a very masculine world,” says Jesch. “It's the men going out and killing each other, basically. But as the sagas make clear, women also play a part in this process because they're part of the family group.”
That involvement often means “urging, encouraging the menfolk to go out” and commit violence, she explains, whether to avenge a wrong or for another purpose.
Sigurd’s mother uses the same pressure against her son. Her wool-basket remark paints a picture of an earl anxious about the odds as a child who still needs protecting – it’s emasculating. If he wants to be taken seriously, she implies, he must accept the possibility of death.
Such scenes tell us about the expectations of saga writers and their audiences. The woman who shames a reluctant man into fighting is a recurring literary figure – beyond this saga, too; think of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
But in this story, the notion of women encouraging men to commit violence is only one of several motifs.
“It's the combination of women giving advice, women with magical powers, and women goading men to go out and kill. These are three motifs that are entwined in this episode.”
Weaving the fate of warriors
Women who foresee events or practise magic appear elsewhere in Norse literature, among them the seeresses known as ‘völur’. The banner belongs to another strand of Norse storytelling, in which textile work gives women control over the fate of warriors. A poem preserved in Njál’s Saga describes valkyries, the supernatural figures associated with choosing the battlefield dead, weaving a fabric of war from human entrails and severed heads.
The raven, too, was familiar in accounts of battle. It fed on the corpses left after fighting and was associated with Odin, whose ravens Huginn and Muninn brought him knowledge of the world. On Sigurd’s banner, the bird is an appropriate emblem for a victory that will leave its bearers dead.
There is evidence for Vikings entering battles with raven standards outside the sagas. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the capture of a Viking war banner with the black bird in Devon in 878 – during the Viking attacks on Alfred the Great’s Wessex.
The death of Earl Sigurd
Sigurd died in 1014 at Clontarf, near Dublin, fighting in the coalition opposed to the Irish ruler Brian Boru. His allies included the rulers of Dublin and Leinster. With Irish and Norse interests entangled on the battlefield, the conflict neatly demonstrates how interlinked the Norse and broader Gaelic worlds had become.
- Read more | The history of Dublin: from Viking stronghold to international success story
His death is recorded beyond the Icelandic saga tradition. The Annals of Ulster name the earl of Orkney among the dead. And in Njál’s Saga, the raven banner returns to account for his end. Once again, its bearers are killed. This time, the surviving men refuse to take it. Sigurd takes the banner himself. As per his mother’s magic, he dies.
Judith Jesch was speaking to James Osborne on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
]]>Norway’s ‘Viking row’: the real history behind the World Cup football chanthttps://www.historyextra.com/period/viking/norway-viking-row-chant-world-cup-football/2026-07-11T00:41:13.000ZDid the Vikings chant about death, sex and masturbation while they rowed on the raiding missions that terrorised Britain and Europe between the eighth and 11th centuries?
That’s a pertinent question in the context of this summer’s FIFA Men’s World Cup. If you’ve been following the tournament, you’ll have no doubt seen clips of Norwegian supporters honouring their Viking ancestry by pulling imaginary oars in unison to the beat of a manly roar, with a drummer keeping time. The football team themselves perform the same motion when they win a game, led in general by their talismanic striker Erling Haaland (pictured above).
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That is the so-called ‘Viking row’, apparently invented by a Norwegian fan only in the last year or so, but building on a tradition of mass-participation rowing and clapping among Scandinavian supporters. It’ll be a feature, no doubt, of the build-up to the big game on Saturday night, when Norway face England in the World Cup quarter-finals.
The idea of the mass-participation row is not only to celebrate Norway’s Viking past, but also create an intimidating stadium experience when Norway is playing, and help foster a strong team spirit among the footballers and their supporters.
It’s a nice idea, even if some people have questioned how far we should celebrate the Vikings who paired their great seafaring explorations with murder, pillage, rape and slaving.
Those ethical considerations aside, does the Viking row have a direct historical precedent?
Blood, sex and masturbation
The Vikings’ seafaring prowess was built on their ability to swap sails for oars when they got close to land, enabling them to engage in coastal raiding or trading. And, according to experts, it does seem that they combined their rowing with songs and chants.
“In Old Norse sagas, song and battle have a very close connection,” explains Dr Eleanor Parker, a leading expert in Old Norse and Old English literature at the University of Oxford and the author of Dragon Lords: The History and Legends of Viking England. “Viking warriors are often shown chanting poetry in the midst of fighting, or before and after combat.”
“Like war chants, these poems sometimes channel the collective voice of the army, urging them on against the enemy. There is one that has Viking sailors singing as they’re about to land in England: ‘Let us be brave in battle, let us shake our spears and shoot! Great numbers of the English take to flight before our blades’.”
A few years ago, Professor Richard Perkins also wrote an academic article about Viking rowing chants, and how their rhythmic metre might have formed the basis of a particular style of court poetry that developed in the early Viking period.
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However, the chants that Professor Perkins identified from the Viking period are a touch more involved than those we’ve already heard at the 2026 World Cup.
They generally have more of a story to them, sometimes employing dramatic language of violence (blood raining down, men smiting each other mightily) and sometimes delivering some pretty spicy innuendo (oars as penises, that sort of thing). One verse even hints at masturbation: “While we work the soft oar stiff on the gunwale”.
It certainly sounds like there was enough going on in the songs to keep the rowers’ minds off the hard task at hand, while also keeping them to time as they pulled hard to shore.
The original England–Norway showdown
Returning to Saturday’s quarter-final clash, much capital is being made of the parallel between the match and the battle of Stamford Bridge. It was there, in September 1066, that the English king Harold II defeated the renowned Norwegian ruler Harald Hardrada, and made the river run red with Viking blood.
According to his saga, Hardrada composed some warlike verse before this battle. It’s not clear whether that would have been part of a rowing chant, but it did him no good in the battle, as he died along with most of his men.
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Some optimistic English pundits might hope that Hardrada’s demise offers some sort of precedent for this year’s tournament, while enthusiastic Norwegians will be trusting that their adoption of the Viking row will allow their players to harness the spirit of the raiding warriors.
The football Viking row is distinctly sanitised in comparison to the original. If the Norwegians truly want to channel their ancestral spirit, they need to be singing about death, sex and masturbation – which might not go down well with the American TV networks showing the game.
]]>Olaf Tryggvason: life of the weekhttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/olaf-tryggvason-life-of-the-week-podcast/2026-05-12T09:18:25.000ZFrom thrall to king; from pagan to Christian: Olaf Tryggvason was one of the titanic figures of the Viking Age, whose story straddles the line between fantasy and fiction.
Speaking to James Osborne about his life for this episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, Don Hollway steps back into the 10th century to give an account of the drama and violence that defined the Norse warlord.
]]>What was it like to be a Viking in the Great Heathen Army?https://www.historyextra.com/membership/what-was-it-like-to-be-viking-great-heathen-army-video/2026-05-01T08:25:29.000ZKnown to contemporaries as the Great Heathen Army, this was no ordinary raid. It was a coordinated invasion, bringing together warriors from across Scandinavia with a clear aim: conquest.
HistoryExtra’s James Osborne explores how this formidable army was formed, and how it swept through Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, toppling rulers, seizing territory, and reshaping the political landscape of England. From the fall of Northumbria to the struggles of Wessex, it's the story of a turning point in British history.
How did the army come together, and what was it like to travel and camp with them? Who were the leaders behind the army? Why did they come? And how did Anglo-Saxon kings respond to this new kind of threat? You'll hear expertise from historian and broadcaster Dr Eleanor Barraclough, who takes us inside life in the camps.
Drawing on historical sources and archaeological evidence, we reveal how the Great Heathen Army transformed England and paved the way for the Viking age in Britain.
View Green Video on the source website]]>It was an "extravaganza of brutality": how the Vikings menaced the Mediterraneanhttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/it-was-an-extravaganza-of-brutality-how-the-vikings-menaced-the-mediterranean/2026-01-19T15:30:53.000ZThe poor citizens of Al-Jazira al-Khadra never knew what hit them. In 859, an unfamiliar fleet sailed into the bay separating this Muslim settlement – which later evolved into the city of Algeciras, now in southern Spain – from Gibraltar. Making landfall nearby, the alien ships disgorged their fearsome crews: Vikings.
In a sequence of events terrifyingly familiar to victims in more northerly parts of Europe, these formidable marauders wreaked havoc. They occupied the city, burned the mosque, ravaged the countryside – and then moved on to the next target, and the next. The campaign later known as the ‘Great Raid’ was well and truly underway – part of a chapter in Norse history that’s less known today, but no less bloody.
Stone cold killers
The Vikings of our imagination are emphatically creatures of the north – avatars of cold climes and bleak weather, manifestations of ice and snow made flesh and steel. Dragon-prowed ships slice through the frigid waters of steep-sided fjords swathed in midnight-green pine forests. Fur-clad adventurers hunt walrus amid the crashing icebergs of the northernmost seas. Giants haunt the ice-capped mountains in an unreal world of midnight sun and northern lights.
We are used to reading tales of Viking rampages through lands both near and far from home: around the Baltic coastline, in Britain and Ireland, in what’s now northern France, Russia, even Canada. But none of these places seem so different from Scandinavia, in climate at least; indeed, some boast similar extremes of latitude. Even in the most temperate of these places, a sharp north-easterly or a rare winter snowstorm may come and go without raising an eyebrow. Likewise Vikings in times past. But, like the ice, it can feel jarring to find Vikings in places where we feel instinctively they don’t quite belong. Like Mallorca, southern France, even Egypt.
Of course, summer does come to the north. Vikings didn’t spend the whole year swaddled in bearskins. Still, like many of us, the inhabitants of those northerly climes might well have dreamed wistfully of a sun-soaked break in the Med – not least those hardy souls beyond the Arctic Circle who endured weeks of crushing midwinter darkness.
We don’t know exactly what sparked the Great Raid of 859–60, but we have a fair idea of at least some of what transpired. The expedition was supposedly led by Björn Ironside, son of the larger-than-life Ragnar Loðbrok (‘Hairy pants’), and Hastein, who was later involved in campaigns in Brittany, the Loire Valley and King Alfred’s Britain.
Having entered the Mediterranean and started as they meant to go in Al-Jazira al-Khadra, the Viking fleet next hit the kingdom of Nakur (or Nekor) on the north African coastline. There, in the words of one Asturian chronicler, they killed “a vast number of Muslims” and captured many others for ransom or for sale as slaves. The raiders headed back north via the Balearics, molesting Murcia, Mallorca, Menorca and, perhaps, Ibiza and Formentera.
Touching down on what’s now the Côte d’Azur, they pillaged their way through Perpignan, Narbonne, Nîmes, Arles and Valence. After a winter spent in the Camargue, the Vikings moved on to Italy, where they sacked Pisa. Thereafter, things get a little muddled. One far-fetched narrative has them aiming for Rome but getting confused, instead plundering the small port of Luni (a surprising mistake, given that Rome was far inland and to the south, and still possibly the largest and most architecturally impressive city in western Europe).
Whatever the truth of that tale, from Italy the fleet seems to have moved on to the eastern Mediterranean, and regions under the sway of the Byzantine empire. One chronicler even places Viking ships at Alexandria, near the mouth of the Nile.
We do know that the campaign nearly ended in disaster – for the Vikings. En route home through the Straits of Gibraltar (or, as it was known in Old Norse, Nǫrvasund, ‘Narrow Sound’), longships were intercepted by the formidable galley fleet of Muslim al-Andalus under the command of Qarqashish ibn Shakruh and the admiral Khashkhash. Andalusian forces decimated Viking crews with arrows and incinerated ships with bursts of ‘Greek fire’ – the nautical napalm of the early medieval world – belched across the water.
The Andalusians sailed close enough to engage the Vikings hand-to-hand across the ships’ bows: Khashkhash himself “fought them from the prow of his ship until he met a martyr’s death, may God have mercy on him”. Only a handful of Viking ships escaped the maelstrom – but those men who survived had gathered tales enough to fill many a long Nordic night.
- Read more | Forget the longships: this is the overlooked story of how the Vikings dominated eastern Europe
Capital ideas
The Great Raid was one of the largest, most dramatic and best remembered of the Viking adventures in the south, but it was far from the only such excursion. The sources rarely explain what inspired individual expeditions but, broadly speaking, adventures to such distant lands were animated by the same impulses that drove the Vikings to sail waters closer to home.
The main driver of raiding – and, indeed, military employment overseas – was the acquisition of capital. This was both economic, in the shape of plunder and extorted wealth, and social, in the form of fame and prestige. Both could be leveraged to gain political power back home. Stories of awe-inspiring deeds, and possession of the wherewithal to reward and retain a warband, provided the basis for power in early medieval Scandinavia. Viking exploits around the storied and wealthy Mediterranean rim had the potential to provide generous helpings of both.
Sometimes they could provide a springboard to the pinnacle of power and fame. When Harald Hardrada (more on whom later) returned to Scandinavia via what’s now Russia after a brutal mid-career sojourn in the employment of the Byzantine emperor, the poet Valgard of Voll said that:
Harald, you launched your vessel
Laden with a cargo of riches
Freighted with hard-won honour
And gleaming gold […]
Through storm and gale, great king,
You sailed your plunging vessel;
And as the sea-spray was thinning
You sighted at least Sigtuna.
Inside a year, Harald was king of Norway.
First fleet
It was some 15 years before the Great Raid, and half a century after the pioneering attack on Lindisfarne, that Vikings first sailed into the Atlantic and steered determinedly south. The first known sortie to the Iberian peninsula was made in 844. The 54 ships that undertook that journey blazed a trail that others – the Great Raid included – would follow and greatly extend over centuries to come. Setting out from Brittany, the Viking fleet harried the Atlantic coast of Iberia, landing at A Coruña and launching raids inland, but ultimately came to grief at the hands of Asturian stone-throwers and the stalwart resistance of the Christian king Ramiro I.
Thwarted there, the remaining Vikings cut their losses and headed south towards the Muslim emirate of al-Andalus. Their first stop was Lisbon, where they tarried for a couple of weeks to resupply their ships and terrorise the locals. Sailing on, the fleet sailed up the Guadalquivir river to menace the great city of Seville. Many of the inhabitants fled at the approach of the Norsemen, the reputation of these exotic marauders having preceded them.
What followed was an extravaganza of brutality that was grimly familiar in Britain, Ireland and France, but which was terrifyingly novel in southern Iberia. Viking raiders disembarked from their ships to pillage and despoil the Andalusian countryside, slaughtering men, kidnapping women and children, and burning settlements. Seville itself was largely ransacked, only the walls of the inner citadel halting the attackers. Terrified citizens huddling for refuge within the great mosque of Ibn Abbas were massacred.
Eventually, the emir, Abd al-Rahman II, got his act together. He mustered an army that confronted the Viking warband at an unidentified place recorded as Talyata where, according to the sources, 1,000 Viking warriors (or Majūs, ‘fire-worshippers’, as they are referred to in Arabic writing) were slain. Some 400 Norsemen were captured and executed in spectacular ways – decapitated or strung up on palm trees. According to the later source Ibn Idhari, Abd al-Rahman sent “the heads of the general, and of 200 of the noblest Viking warriors” to the tribes under Andalusian dominion in Africa. It was a warning and a reminder that his power, however much it had been tested by this novel threat, remained intact.
Though they didn’t make it into the Mediterranean on that occasion, the Vikings had delivered a nasty shock to the Andalusians. As a result, city and coastal defences were strengthened and naval patrols were enhanced – as the returning ships of the Great Raid discovered to their cost on their way home 16 years later.
Suburban terrorists
At around the same time that the Vikings of the Great Raid were pillaging their way around the western Med, another group were unleashing violence to the east. This was a sudden irruption of Rus – the adventurers of Scandinavian origin who settled between the eastern Baltic and Black Seas. Later establishing their epicentre in Kyiv, they sparked a long political and economic transformation of predominantly Slavic eastern Europe.
In 860, these marauders launched an attack on the suburbs of Constantinople. The earliest account describes the Northmen burning and plundering their way to the walls of the mighty capital of the Byzantine empire, terrifying the inhabitants. Later sources describe the raiders spreading out around the Sea of Marmara south of the city, and pillaging and burning monasteries on the archipelago now known as Princes’ Islands.
Capturing 22 of the exiled Patriarch Ignatius’ servants, the Rus took them “aboard their ships and cruelly dismembered them with axes, demonstrating their barbarity”. These attackers were the people whom Patriarch Photios of Constantinople – who lived contemporaneously with the events of 860, though didn’t record them directly – described as “a fierce and barbarous people, worshipping no gods and living in constant strife. Their coming brings destruction and sorrow to those lands they visit.” Sadly for the locals, it wouldn’t be the last time the Rus made their presence felt in the Bosphorus.
In 907, for reasons unstated, the Rus again assaulted Constantinople. The events were recorded in detail by the compilers of the Russian Primary Chronicle; though open to sceptical assessment, their words certainly paint a vivid picture. The attack was led by the Rus warlord Oleg, whose name was recorded as a Slavic form of the Old Norse Helgi, and comprised “Varangians [ie Scandinavians], Slavs, Chuds, Krivichs, Meryans, Polianians, Severians, Derevlians, Radimichs, Croats, Dulebs and Tivercians” – various East Slavic tribes.
According to this account, the Rus fleet comprised 2,000 ships, though Greek sources give the rather more credible figure of 350. Having landed outside the city, Oleg disembarked and led his army on another rampage through the suburbs, killing inhabitants, burning houses and razing churches. Prisoners were, so the chronicler recounts, “beheaded, tortured, shot or thrown into the sea”.
The most remarkable episode in this otherwise fairly typical account of Viking atrocities was the order that Oleg allegedly gave “to fit the ships with wheels. When a favourable wind rose up, they set sail and bore down upon the city by land.” The residents were, quite understandably, “frightened to see this”. It is difficult to understand how this would have worked in practice, attempted at short notice by a raiding army speaking disparate languages and who, we must assume, had never done such a thing before. The smouldering ruins of the suburbs would also have presented challenging terrain for Oleg’s marauding land-fleet.
Whatever the true details of the assault, it’s recorded that the terrified city-dwellers “agreed to pay tribute, provide provisions and grant the Rus the right to trade in Constantinople tax-free”. A Rus-Byzantine treaty was indeed duly signed – and the Old Norse names of the Rus signatories leave no doubt as to their Viking origins.
This treaty included provisions granting the Rus access to Constantinopolitan markets, provided they adhered to certain restrictions. They were to use only one designated gate; their numbers in the city were limited to 50 at any one time; they were to be accompanied by Byzantine guardsmen; and their weapons were to be left outside the walls. In return, they received food and an allowance for six months. If the attack had been a coordinated strategy to wring economic concessions for Rus traders in Europe’s greatest marketplace, then Oleg’s campaign – land-ships or no – had been a resounding success.
Unruly contractors
For all that the Vikings represented a menace, it was clearly preferable to have them working in the service of the Byzantine empire rather than camped belligerently outside the walls of its cities. So, for at least 200 years, Scandinavians were employed as mercenaries, hired to prosecute the empire’s wars in all quarters of the eastern Mediterranean.
Northmen who served in this way, known as Varangoi by the Byzantines, were prized for their skills as sailors and fighters, and the empire’s far-flung interests took them all across the greater Byzantine world. From 902, when the first direct reference to Varangians appears in Greek sources, they could be found fighting the empire’s wars in Sicily, Italy, Crete, Croatia, Lebanon, Anatolia and Syria – not to mention Armenia, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Georgia. And they left their mark in Constantinople: runic inscriptions in the stonework of the Hagia Sophia – the city’s great basilica, now a mosque – seem to be Varangian graffiti.
The Varangian phenomenon was turbo-charged in 988 when Vladimir the Great of Kyiv despatched 6,000 men to Emperor Basil II Porphyrogenitus (the ‘Bulgar Slayer’). The Rus leader issued the revealing advice to “not keep them in the city, for then they will only give you trouble, as they have given me”, finishing with the weary plea to “not let one man come back here again”.
Undesirable citizens they may have been, but these eastern Vikings quickly proved their military worth in Basil’s wars. Under pressure from within the imperial military hierarchy and from fractious neighbours in Bulgaria, Syria and Mesopotamia, the emperor was grateful for Vladimir’s assistance. He put his new recruits to immediate and effective employ, and Rus warriors were instrumental in crushing a revolt by the Byzantine general Bardas Phokas in 989.
Thereafter, Varangians became increasingly commonplace in the Byzantine military, serving in the imperial bodyguard – though the significance of their contribution may have been exaggerated in some sources. This policy was an extension of a long tradition in the imperial army of employing foreign fighters of diverse origins, from within and without the boundaries of the empire.
A legend in his lifetime
No Varangian was more celebrated – particularly by himself – than the future Norwegian king Harald Hardrada (‘Hard Ruler’). British readers will remember Harald best for his part in the events of 1066, when he led a Viking force to defeat – and his own death – at Stamford Bridge at the hands of the English king Harold Godwinson. The demands of that clash exhausted and diverted English forces, easing the path to Norman victory at Hastings a few weeks later, and the subsequent conquest of England by William, Duke of Normandy.
A legend in his own lifetime, Harald travelled to the Byzantine imperial court via Kyivan Rus, and distinguished himself in campaigns fought on a number of fronts – most notably in Sicily, but also in the Greek islands and Bulgaria, and possibly north Africa, Syria and Anatolia.
The most eye-catching of Harald’s postings was to the Middle East. In verses ascribed to Stuf Thordarson, who supposedly heard it from the lion’s mouth:
With courage sharp as a sword-edge
The all-triumphant warrior
Left Greece to conquer Palestine –
An easy task for Harald
Tempting though it is to imagine Harald seizing control of the Holy Land with ease 60 years before the knights of the First Crusade achieved the same feat, in truth this is characteristic hyperbole. The future king seems rather to have been engaged in some sort of joint security operation designed to police the pilgrimage routes to Jerusalem under the terms of a deal between the Fatimid Caliph of Egypt and Emperor Michael IV. Nevertheless, while he was there Harald took opportunities hitherto open to very few Scandinavians: he bathed his weary bones in the river Jordan and paid his respects to Christ at the Tomb of the Holy Sepulchre.
The Viking Age was coming to a close; the Age of the Crusades was near. But, as Harald’s tale shows, the boundary between these two epochs was not as clear-cut or impermeable as modern historiographical terminology implies. When the Norwegian king Sigurd Jórsalfari (‘Jerusalem-farer’) set sail in 1107 in search of adventure in the Holy Land, he followed in the slip-stream of his Viking forebears. He sailed down the coast of Iberia, through the straits of Gibraltar and on via the Balearics, pillaging as he went.
The longships that arrived in 1110, and which blockaded the Fatimid controlled Levantine city of Sidon (now in Lebanon) as an ally of the Frankish king Baldwin of Jerusalem, bore all the hallmarks of the Viking fleets that had terrorised the Mediterranean in centuries past. On his return journey, during a pitstop at the old Varangian staging post of Constantinople, the Norwegian king made a gift to Emperor Alexios I Komnenos: “A very ornate dragon-head from the prow of his ship.”
Thomas Williams is a historian of the early Middle Ages. His new book God’s Hammer: A History of the Viking Crusade is due out in October 2026
This article was first published in the January 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine
]]>War and military history podcast episodeshttps://www.historyextra.com/period/general-history/war-and-military-history-podcast-episodes/Vikings quiz - week twohttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/vikings-quiz-week-one-2/2024-02-12T12:04:20.000ZView Riddle on the source website]]>Viking raiders, with Professor Ryan Lavellehttps://www.historyextra.com/membership/viking-raiders-with-professor-ryan-lavelle/2024-02-01T16:43:58.000ZIn the first mini-lecture of the HistoryExtra Academy Vikings course, Professor Ryan Lavelle introduces us to the Viking Age, and explores the Vikings' reputation as fearsome raiders
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More content from week one of the HistoryExtra Academy Vikings course:
Fighting the Vikings – read time 13 mins History explorer: Alfred and the Vikings – read time 13 mins Your guide to the Viking raid of Lindisfarne – read time 3 mins The great Viking terror: how Norse warriors conquered the Anglo-Saxons – read time 12 mins Slaves in the Viking Age: how prevalent were enslaved people in Viking societies – read time 3 mins Why did the Vikings' violent raids begin? – read time 12 mins
Viking ships: 5 lesser-known facts – read time 6 mins
]]>The battle of Brunanburh: the forgotten fight that changed British historyhttps://www.historyextra.com/period/anglo-saxon/battle-of-brunanburh/2023-04-14T15:48:39.000ZHalf a century after Brunanburh – the victory of the men of Wessex and Mercia over an alliance of Scots, Strathclyde Britons and Norsemen from Ireland – it was still being called “the great battle”. Indeed, it has been described as one of the most defining battles in British history. It helped the Anglo-Saxon king Æthelstan consolidate his hold over his Wessex kingdom and create a more unified England, while it has also been argued that the strong resistance put up by his enemies prevented the whole of Britain from being forcefully united into one imperial power.
Despite its significance, few today have heard of the battle of Brunanburh in AD 937, and even fewer think they know where it was fought.
The battle of Brunanburh: quick facts
When was it fought? AD 937 Where? Great Britain (precise location disputed) Why? Allied invasion of northern England Who was involved? Kingdom of England, led by Æthelstan Kingdom of Scotland, led by Constantine II Kingdom of Strathclyde, led by Owain I Viking kingdom of Dublin, led by Olaf Guthfrithson Who won? After a day of fighting, according to some accounts, it was an English victory
What led to the battle of Brunanburh?
Ever since he’d been crowned king of the Anglo-Saxons in AD 925, Æthelstan had been steadily extending his authority. After his grandfather, Alfred the Great, had halted the Danish conquest of England, his father, Edward the Elder, recaptured the East Midlands and East Anglia from the Danes in AD 917. Building on these solid foundations, Athelstan pushed north. Two years after becoming king, he took over the last remaining Viking kingdom at York, extending his rule up to the Scottish border. In AD 934, he invaded Scotland, possibly because its king, Constantine, had broken a peace treaty.
- Read more | Aelfweard and Aethelstan: were they rivals for the throne of Wessex?
After gathering his forces at Winchester, he marched north, picking up reinforcements on the way and paying a visit to the shrine of St Cuthbert at Chester-le-Street, in modern-day County Durham. Supported by a fleet that sailed up the east coast, Athelstan led his Anglo-Saxon warriors deep into Scotland, burning and ravaging as far as the great fortress of Dunnottar, south of Aberdeen.
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Nobody dared take on the powerful southern army in battle, and the northern rulers soon gave in. Constantine surrendered to Æthelstan and his neighbour Owain, King of Strathclyde, followed suit. Both were forced to accept the overlordship of Æthelstan, now at the peak of his powers.
Realising that their only hope of countering the powerful English king was by setting aside their differences, Æthelstan’s enemies forged a coalition against him, with Constantine and Owen joining forces with Olaf, the Viking King of Dublin. In AD 937, they moved into Northumbria, where there were large numbers of Danish settlers and few of the aristocracy felt much loyalty to Æthelstan. It’s not clear how or where they combined their armies, but it is said that 615 ships carried the Dublin Vikings to England. The one source that does give any details says that the Vikings sailed their longships up the Humber.
- Read more | The Danelaw: is the ‘realm’ of the Vikings in Anglo-Saxon-era England a place or an idea?
Who was Æthelstan?
During his 14-year reign, Æthelstan pushed England’s boundaries to the furthest extent they had yet reached. He eliminated opposition in Cornwall, extracted a huge tribute from the kings of Wales, conquered Viking York, extended his control over Northumbria and fought off a major invasion in AD 937. But he was more than just a warrior feared by his neighbours. He issued law codes to strengthen royal control over his expanded kingdom, regulated the currency, and encouraged town life. He was a great collector of works of art and relics and a generous patron of religious houses. In his final years, Æthelstan was respected and influential throughout Europe, and four of his half-sisters married European rulers. He died in AD 939 and was buried in Malmesbury Abbey.
By autumn, the invaders had established themselves in York and were ravaging Æthelstan’s kingdom to the south. How would Æthelstan respond? According to a contemporary chronicle (which is now lost, but was quoted in the 12th century by the writer William of Malmesbury), he did nothing, spending “idle hours” while the invaders laid waste his lands.
In fact, Æthelstan was busy raising troops. A 10th-century army took time to assemble, and Æthelstan wasn’t going to make the same mistake that Harold Godwinson would in 1066 by hurrying into battle before he had gathered all his forces. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle emphasises the part played by the West Saxons and Mercians in the ensuing clash of arms, but it seems that Æthelstan’s army wasn’t exclusively English. The king had brought in some extra muscle in the form of a force of Viking warriors under the leadership of two hard-bitten Icelandic adventurers: Egill and Thorolf Skallagrímsson.
Egill’s colourful (and violent) life was the subject of a long saga, probably written by Snorri Sturluson, the famous 13th-century Icelandic poet, chieftain and historian. It’s a thoroughly entertaining read, offering a valuable insight into the Viking mindset, but it’s so full of literary invention that its value as a history is thought to be limited.
Dawn attack
According to Egill’s saga, Æthelstan bought some of the time he needed to raise his army by challenging his enemies to fight him on a “hazelled field”, a specially chosen battlefield marked out by hazel branches, where the fighting would take place by mutual agreement at a set time. By tradition, once you had been challenged in this way, it was considered dishonourable to refuse or continue to ravage an enemy’s lands.
Finally, towards the end of the year, Æthelstan moved north, and the two armies clashed at a place called Brunanburh. There’s a lot of debate over where this actually was, with Yorkshire, the Wirral, Galloway and Northamptonshire just some of the suggested sites. Egill’s saga describes the battlefield as an open heath bordered by dense woodland on one side and a river on the other, with Æthelstan and his brother Edmund’s forces drawn up where the gap between the two was narrowest.
The main battle began with a dawn attack by the English, but the first casualties had already been suffered when an Anglo-Saxon bishop arrived with his men the night before, pitched his tents too near the enemy, and fell victim to a surprise attack. The initial fighting bore little relation to the confused free-for-all often depicted in today’s films. Both sides would have drawn up in closely packed ranks, presenting a solid wall of shields to their enemies. It’s sometimes suggested that the shields overlapped for extra protection, but this would have been impossible in the hurly-burly of battle as well as making it extremely difficult to use a weapon effectively.
The lines of both armies would have bristled with spears, the commonest weapon of the period, leading at least one poet to describe an army as a “war-hedge”. Swords are frequently mentioned in contemporary poems and accounts, but they were expensive and usually only carried by the richer members of an army. Some warriors carried two-handed axes, which could shatter a wooden shield or cleave a man’s head in two.
Unless one army attempted a surprise attack, a battle would normally begin with the two armies drawing up opposite each other, shooting bows and hurling insults – and spears – before one side (or both) felt confident enough to move forward. This might be a slow and steady advance, but an army could give up the security of a shield wall in favour of the impetus provided by a mad rush. Sometimes, warriors would deploy in a wedge formation, commonly called a ‘swine array’, and try to punch their way through an enemy shield wall.
Axemen needed room to swing their deadly weapons, so it was almost impossible for them to fight in tightly packed ranks. They may have dashed forward to take on individual opponents, or used their axes to splinter the wooden shields of their enemies. If both lines held firm, the fighting would degenerate into a bitter battle of attrition. This was close-quarter combat at its most terrible, where you looked into the eyes of your enemy and could smell his breath and taste his blood.
Accounts say the fighting at Brunanburh lasted all day. According to the Annals of Ulster, the battle was “immense, lamentable and horrible, desperately fought” while a contemporary poem concluded “never was there more slaughter on this island, never yet as many people killed before this… since from the east Angles and Saxons came up over the broad sea”.
Eventually, the English gained the upper hand and the invaders broke and fled. Athelstan and his army pursued them until nightfall, “hew[ing] the fugitive grievously from behind with swords sharp from the grinding”. Olaf made for the safety of his ships and sailed back to Dublin with what was left of his army, Constantine escaped to Scotland and abdicated a few years later, while Owen was probably killed in the battle. Athelstan and Edmund headed south in triumph.
But the English paid a heavy price for their victory: two of Athelstan’s cousins had been slain, along with two bishops, Thorolf Skallagrímsson, and “a multitude” of lesser men. The invaders’ losses were even higher. Five minor kings, seven Viking earls and one of Constantine’s sons were killed together with thousands of their followers.
- Read more | 10 ways the Anglo-Saxons changed the course of British history
Locating the battlefield: where is Brunanburh?
A wide variety of sites have been suggested. One is near Lockerbie in Scotland, not far from the hillfort at Burnswark, but it’s unlikely the battle was fought this far north, especially as Olaf and his allies had overrun Northumbria and occupied York. Another suggestion places the battle further south, in the hills on the Huntingdonshire-Northamptonshire border. Some accounts refer to Bruneswald rather than Brunanburh, and there was indeed a forest of that name between the rivers Nene and Ouse in that area. Some historians argue that the battle was actually fought on the Wirral. Dismissing the 12th-century account of the Vikings sailing up the Humber as a mistake, they base their conclusion on two place names that are mentioned in the contemporary account: Brunanburh and Dinges Mere. They believe that Brunanburh was the old name for the Wirral village of Bromborough, and that Dinges Mere meant ‘marshland of the Thing’, the old Norse word for the assembly which met at Thingwall on the Wirral. Others aren’t convinced. Historian Michael Wood believes that the account of the Viking landing on the Humber is probably correct, and points out that two sources, one Irish and one English, say the invaders were helped by Danes within England, who could only have been from Northumbria or the East Midlands. He argues that the battle was probably fought somewhere south of York, which was, after all, the main war zone between the 920s and 950s AD. Wood concludes by asking that if the Vikings’ aim was to re-establish their kingdom in York, what were they doing in the Wirral? It seems likely that unless some new written evidence is uncovered or there’s a stunning archaeological find, the debate will rumble on.
Brunanburh is the final battle in Seven Kings Must Die, the finale film to The Last Kingdom. Check out more of our related content:
- Seven Kings Must Die: how close to real history is it?
- Seven Kings Must Die ending explained: who are the seven kings?
- Seven Kings Must Die spoiler-free preview
- The Last Kingdom: what's the real history and how historically accurate is it?
- The real Uhtred of Bebbanburg: the historical inspirations for The Last Kingdom’s hero
- Bernard Cornwell on The Last Kingdom’s finale
- If King Alfred was great, was Æthelstan even greater?
- Who was Edward the Elder?
- Brunanburh: the forgotten fight that changed British history
- Michael Wood on the astonishing Æthelstan
This article was first published in the September 2017 issue of BBC History Revealed
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