The Vikings’ Route to Civilization

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Richard Holledge, The Vikings’ Route to Civilization; Trade, skillful metalwork, poetry, even peaceable board games. Wall Street Journal, Mar 5, 2014
http://online.wsj.com/news/artic ... 4579417123670677990
(exhibition review on “Vikings: Like and Legend. The British Museum, Mar 6 through June 22”)

Quote: "as the British Museum's Gareth Williams, one of the show's curators * * * puts it: 'Viking is a job description. . . . You can say all Vikings were warriors, but not all Scandinavians were Vikings.'

Note:
(a) The exhibition:
www.britishmuseum.org/vikings
("The Viking Age (800–1050) * * * The Vikings’ skill in shipbuilding and seafaring was central to their culture and achievements, and at the heart of the exhibition will be a 37-metre-long warship. Found in 1997, and dating to around 1025, it is the longest Viking ship ever discovered")

(b) "In January 793, a band of Vikings swept ashore in northeast England and laid waste to the monastery of Lindisfarne. As the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, a collection of annals dating back to the ninth century, records: 'The harrowing inroads of heathen men made lamentable havoc in the church of God in Holy-island, by rapine and slaughter.' This is the popular image of the Vikings, enshrined by medieval sagas * * * [in truth:] The helmets were never topped with horns. The word 'Viking' comes from the Old Norse word Vikingr, which meant pirate or raider. These marauders came from present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden, living in farmsteads or settlements little more than 100 strong, based along the region's myriad coves and inlets."
(i) Lindisfarne
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindisfarne
(officially: Holy Island of Lindisfarne; Population 162 (2001); section 1 Toponym: from an Old English name Lindisfarena, meaning unknown)
(ii) Anglo Saxon Chronicle
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_Chronicle
(written in Old English, late in the 9th century, probably in Wessex [Kingdom of the West Saxons; 519–10th century], during the reign of Alfred the Great [849-899; King of Wessex from 871 to 899])
(iii) Old Norse (a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, [from 8th century] until about 1300 [when it] began to develop into the modern North Germanic languages)
Wikipedia
(iv) Viking
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking
(The period from the earliest recorded raids in the 790s until the Norman conquest of England in 1066 is commonly known as the Viking Age of Scandinavian history; section 7.2 The end of the Viking Age)


(c) "Between the eighth and the mid-11th century, the Vikings swaggered their way across the Atlantic to Greenland and North America. And, taking advantage of the shallow draft of their boats, they cruised down the rivers from the Baltic to places such as Kiev in Ukraine and the Byzantine capital of Constantinople (now Istanbul). They sailed as far as the Islamic Caliphate, which stretched from Samarkand in central Asia to Baghdad and Jerusalem, and adventured along the Mediterranean coast to Morocco. Appropriately, their naval power is celebrated by the first object to be seen in the exhibition—a small brooch in copper (c 800-1050) of a ship with two dragon heads and a reefed sail."
(i) draft (hull)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_%28hull%29
(ii) Samarkand
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samarkand
(second-largest city in Uzbekistan; section 1 Etymology)
(iii) Vikings
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings
(a multi-colored map near right margin, with legend: "Scandinavian settlements of the 8th through 11th centuries")
(iv) The last sentence is about a brooch shaped like a ship.
(v) reef
(A) (n; Middle English riff, from Old Norse rif):
"1:  a part of a sail taken in or let out in regulating size
2:  reduction in sail area by reefing"
(B) (vt, vi): "to reduce the area of (a sail) by rolling or folding a portion"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reef


(d) "But the undoubted show-stealer is the mighty Roskilde 6 warship that dominates an entire hall of the museum's new extension. * * * there it is—the Roskilde 6—its majestic lines re-created by a curved steel frame which, strangely, adds to its fearsomeness. While only 20% of the original keel remains, the ship was one of eight ships found in the harbor of Roskilde, Denmark, in 1996 and brought to London in separate units. Built in about 1025, it would have been a veritable war machine. More than 121 feet long, it was propelled by 40 pairs of oarsmen, their prodigious axes and swords, long bows and steel-tipped arrows at the ready. It might have been used by King Cnut, who ruled over large parts of Scandinavia and England
(i) Viking Ship Museum (Roskilde)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_Ship_Museum_(Roskilde)
(in Roskilde [city]; is the Danish national museum for ships; five Viking ships, deliberately sunk around 1070, were recovered in 1962)
(ii)
(A) Roskilde 6. Viking Ship Museum, undated
www.vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/en/the ... sources/roskilde-6/
(B) What does it look like?

Nick Clark, British Museum to Display Largest Viking Ship Ever Discovered Following £135M Building Revamp. Independent (London), Apr 29, 2013
www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter ... revamp-8595275.html
(photo gallery: copyright National Museum of Denmark)
(iii) Cnut the Great
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut_the_Great


(e) "amber jet, whalebone, glass beads and soapstone came from Norway and the Shetlands"

gemstone
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemstone
(However certain rocks (such as lapis lazuli), or organic materials that are not minerals (such as amber or jet [qv]), are also used for jewelry, and are therefore often considered to be gemstones as well)

(f) "The Vale of York hoard from the 10th century, which was found in northern England in 2007, tells almost the entire narrative of the exhibition—and the story of the Vikings—in one showcase. The array of gold and silver includes artifacts from Afghanistan, Ireland, Russia and Uzbekistan; a gilt-silver religious vessel was probably looted from a church in the Frankish empire to the south; and coins carry symbols that refer both to the Scandinavian god Thor and to the Christian St Peter."
(i) Vale of York Hoard
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vale_of_York_Hoard
(The coins date from the late 9th and early 10th centuries, providing a terminus post quem for dating the hoard)
(ii) Vale of York
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vale_of_York
(iii) vale (n; Middle English, from Anglo-French val, from Latin valles, vallis):
"VALLEY, DALE"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vale

(g) "The switch to barter and trade can be verified by the discoveries in Scandinavia over the years of 100,000 dirhams, the Islamic currency, dating back to the ninth century. Nonetheless, the Vikings did not altogether forsake their barbaric ways. An account of those who settled in the Rus area—in and around today's Belarus—by the Arab writer Ahmad ibn Fadlān called them the 'filthiest of God's creatures,' and he described in gruesome detail a funeral in which the dead chieftain's slave girl was forced to have sex with several of the retinue before being burned alive on a pyre and floated off on the chief's longboat for the voyage to the afterlife. It is an anecdote not dwelt upon with such gruesome detail in the thoroughly erudite catalog.
It was the pagan way. Christianity was established by the mid-11th century, but until then the Vikings lived in a supernatural world of gods and spirits and wild lands populated by trolls and ogres. With no divine moral code, they took pride in staying outside mainstream society."
(i) dirham
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirham
(ii) Rus
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus
(the transliteration of the Slavic name for [Latin] Ruthenia)
(iii) Ahmad ibn Fadlan
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmad_ibn_Fadlan
(a 10th-century Arab traveler)
(iv)
(A) troll (n; Norwegian troll & Dan[ish] trold, from Old Norse troll giant, demon):
"a dwarf or giant in Scandinavian folklore inhabiting caves or hills"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/troll
(B) troll
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll
(v) ogre
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogre