My undergraduate students really enjoy the seminar on Viking migration. It is a really fun session we can have lots of fun with! I like to explore the reasons for Viking migration by dividing the reasons into two distinct groups, the push factors and the pull factors. The push factors are the potential reasons which might explain why the Vikings left their homelands of Norway, Sweden and Denmark in the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries. And the pull factors explain what drew the Vikings to English shores. What was so attractive about England?
In this seminar, I would divide the students into two groups, one group would explore the push factors and the other group the pull factors. Sometimes the factors might overlap, e.g. they might be a push and a pull factor. This is something we can then also debate in class.
I find it really useful to arrange the material in this way, especially for exam revision or in preparation for an assignment. The question might be something along the lines of – What are the factors that explain Viking migration in the 8th, 9th and 10th centuries? Or What explanations have been put forward to explain why the Vikings came to England?
In this post, we will be looking at why the Vikings came to England by exploring the push factors. What explanations have been put forward that would suggest a push away from Scandinavia, thus explaining why the Vikings came to England?
Push Factors
Overpopulation
This is one of the more popular explanations for Viking migration. Indeed, this has been perhaps the most popular explanation since the 19th century. As many historians have pointed out, Norway is a very mountainous country with much of the land uninhabitable. 1F.D. Logan, The Vikings in History, (2005), p. 3. This would then suggest that land was at a premium. Logan argued that in this male-dominated society, there was a huge emphasis on sons. To produce as many sons as possible, men possibly had multiple wives at the same time, or a succession of wives. This led to an increase in population in our period. With little land to go around, many Vikings were then pushed from their homelands and forced to seek land elsewhere. 2F.D. Logan, The Vikings in History, (2005), pp. 10-11.
Dudo of St-Quentin who was writing in the early 11th century alluded to this:
These licentious people have many women and breed children beyond numbering. When these children become adult, they argue violently with their fathers and grandfathers and with one another about land. If their numbers greatly increase and they cannot acquire arable land sufficient for their subsistence, custom decrees that a large group be chosen by lot to emigrate to foreign places where by fighting they can
Dudo of St-Quentin quoted by F.D. Logan, The Vikings in History, (2005), pp. 11-12.
acquire land and live peacefully.
However, historians of the Vikings have criticised this argument and downplayed this push factor. For instance, Sawyer has argued that although an increase in population and a resulting shortage of land may have been a factor in Norway, there is little evidence to indicate that this was the case in other parts of Scandinavia. Furthermore, Sawyer argues that the earlier Vikings were seeking wealth rather than land. 3P.W. Sawyer, ‘The Age of the Vikings and Before’, in P.W. Sawyer (eds.), The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings, (1997), p. 3.
Primogeniture
Primogeniture, the practice of handing down one’s wealth to the eldest son has been put forward as an explanation and this is also linked to the issue of overpopulation. A father who has many sons and leaves all his wealth and land to his eldest sons renders his younger sons landless. These younger sons then may have ventured out of Scandinavia to seek their own lands. However, as noted above, the evidence for overpopulation is scant.
Climate change
Undergraduates are always surprised to learn that climate change isn’t something new. Historical records show that the climate changes throughout the centuries. The Viking Age did see especially cooler weather. However, we do see a gradual improvement in climate and overall weather patterns. This led to calmer seas and fewer storms in summer. For Norwegians who wanted to sail, the winds blew steadily west in the spring and east in the autumn. This made travel back and forth to England much easier.
Silver
The Vikings loved silver! We know this from the many Viking burials and hoards which contain huge amounts of silver. Silver was a portable wealth which. If we buy into the notion that there was a lack of land in Scandinavia, portable wealth held great significance. And so silver was something a man could pass down to his sons and also give as a reward to his followers.
Silver was also important for trade. This precious metal was a preferred currency in Arabic territories in particular. From the 9th century, the Vikings turned their attention to the East and began to trade along these Arabic trading routes. The Vikings then sought out silver to take to the Arabic markets. Some historians have described this activity as ‘silver fever’. The flow of Arabic silver throughout Scandinavia has been offered as an explanation for Viking activity in Europe. The Vikings found an abundance of silver in monasteries in Western Europe, which then explains why they came to England.4R. Hodges and D. Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne & the origins of Europe: archaeology and
the Pirenne thesis, (1983). There is a debate as to whether the presence of Arabic silver in Scandinavia or periods of reduction in the availability of silver in Scandinavia caused Viking activity in the West. 5J. H. Barrett, ‘What caused the Viking Age?’, Antiquity, (2008), Vol. 82, Issue 317, p. 677.
Social Change & the Economy
From the 8th century, we see an increase in trade around the North Sea. Trading ports then emerged at places such as Southampton, York, Kent, the Rhine, Hedeby (Germany) and Ribe (Denmark) amongst others. 6D. Hadley, The Vikings in England: Settlement, Society and Culture, (2006), p. 17. This then led to the emergence of various warbands who competed for wealth in this region.
Coupled with these economic developments we also see a change in the political structure in Scandinavia in the 8th and 9th centuries. Seemingly, Scandinavian warlords looked to their English and Carolingian neighbours who at the time were centralising their power bases. In the first half of the 9th century, many Danish kings were acknowledged as overlords by local rulers. 7P.W. Sawyer, ‘The Age of the Vikings and Before’, in P.W. Sawyer (eds.), The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings, (1997), p. 8. This centralisation of power potentially led to the losers in this process seeking lands elsewhere. 8M.J. Ryan, ‘The Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings, c. 825–900’ in N. J. Higham and M. J. Ryan (ed.), p. 239. This rise in royal power was a phenomenon which occurred throughout Scandinavia in the 9th century. This centralisation of royal power was by no means stable. Dynastic conflicts and changes frequently made royals dispossessed of their power and lands. Wormald argued that if these dispossessed rulers were not ruling at home, they would seek to rule elsewhere.
Another explanation, linked to the rise in royal power, could be the desire of these royal powers to accumulate wealth to sustain their position. It is possible they sent out warbands to raid and collect wealth for this purpose.
The consolidation of power in Scandinavia is a convincing push factor which could explain why so many dispossessed Vikings came to English shores. However, as the consolidation of this power began in the 9th century, it doesn’t explain why the Vikings initially came to the English shores in the late 8th century.
Women in Viking Armies
As McLeod has shown, there is evidence of Scandinavian women accompanying their male counterparts to England during Viking activity in the 9th and 10th centuries. S. McLeod, ‘Warriors and Women: The Sex Ratio of Norse Migrants to Eastern England up to 900’, Early Medieval Europe (2011), 19 (3), pp. 332 – 353. Some of these women may have been warriors. This will be a matter for another post! But their presence perhaps indicates Viking intentions – settlement. Women may then tell us something about the motives of the Vikings and why they left their homeland. Perhaps there was a shortage of land in Scandinavia and many Vikings were pushed from their homelands to seek to settle elsewhere in kingdoms, such as the newly unified ‘England’.
I hope you enjoyed this post in which we have explored a range of push factors to explain why the Vikings came to England. Look out for my next post in which I explore why the Vikings were drawn to England – the pull factors.
For some context, see my post: The Viking Attack at Lindisfarne – The Primary Sources.
Images courtesy of pexels.
