Viking Activity In The British Isles

Viking activity in the British Isles occurred during the Early Middle Ages, the 8th to the 11th centuries, when Scandinavians travelled to the British Isles to raid, conquer, settle and trade. They are generally referred to as Vikings, Richards 1991. p. 9. but some scholars debate whether the term Viking represented all Scandinavian settlers or just those who used violence. Graham-Campbell and Batey 1998. p. 3.

At the start of the early medieval period, Scandinavian kingdoms had developed trade links reaching as far as southern Europe and the Mediterranean, giving them access to foreign imports, such as silver, gold, bronze, and spices. These trade links also extended westwards into Ireland and Britain. Blair 2003. pp. 56–57.

In the last decade of the eighth century, Viking raiders sacked several Christian monasteries in northern Britain, and over the next three centuries they launched increasingly large scale invasions and settled in many areas, especially in eastern Britain and Ireland, the islands north and west of Scotland and the Isle of Man.

Background of local ethnic groups

During the early medieval period, the islands of Ireland and Britain were each culturally, linguistically, and religiously divided among various peoples.

Language and religion

The languages of the Celtic Britons and of the Gaels descended from the Celtic languages spoken by Iron Age inhabitants of Europe. In Ireland and parts of western Scotland, as well as in the Isle of Man, people spoke an early form of Celtic Gaelic known as Old Irish. In Cornwall, Cumbria, Wales, and south-west Scotland, the Celtic Brythonic languages were spoken (their modern descendants include Welsh and Cornish).

The Picts, who spoke the Pictish language, lived in the area north of the Forth and Clyde rivers, which now constitutes a large portion of modern-day Scotland. Due to the scarcity of writing in Pictish, which survives only in Ogham, views differ as to whether Pictish was a Celtic language like those spoken further south, or perhaps even a non-Indo-European language like Basque. However, most inscriptions and place-names hint towards the Picts being Celtic in language and culture.

Much of southern Britain had become the various kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England, where Anglo-Saxon migrants from continental Europe had settled during the fifth century, bringing with them their own Germanic language (known as Old English), polytheistic religion and cultural practices.

Many peoples of Britain and Ireland had already converted to Christianity from their older, pre-Christian polytheistic religions, including the distinct polytheistic religion (Anglo-Saxon paganism) practiced by the Anglo-Saxons.

Distribution of ethnic groups

In northern Britain, in the area roughly corresponding to modern-day Scotland, lived three distinct ethnic groups in their own respective kingdoms: the Picts, Scots, and Britons. The Pictish cultural group dominated the majority of Scotland, with major populations concentrated between the Firth of Forth and the River Dee, as well as in Sutherland, Caithness, and Orkney. The Scots, according to written sources, constituted a tribal group which had crossed to Britain from Dalriada in the north of Ireland during the late-fifth century. The northern Britons lived in the Old North, in parts of what have become southern Scotland and northern England, and, by the seventh or eighth centuries, these had apparently come under the political control of Anglo-Saxons.

By the mid-ninth century, Anglo-Saxon England comprised four separate and independent kingdoms: East Anglia, Wessex, Northumbria, and Mercia, the last of which was the strongest military power. Richards 1991. p. 13.

Class system

Between half a million and a million people lived in England at this time, with society being rigidly hierarchical. The class system had a king and his ealdormen