The Vikings, the Ultimate Military Adventurers
‘The Norseman cometh!’ is a cry that echoed across vast regions of coastal Europe and mainland Britain between about 800 and 1050 CE, announcing the imminent arrival of a Viking raiding party. The word ‘Viking’ in fact, is drawn from the Scandinavian term ‘Vikingr’, meaning literally ‘pirate’. In more idiomatic terms, however, it was used as a verb by northern Europeans to describe a period away from home on the business of trade, colonization or plunder.
Most modern histories tend to try and remind readers that the Vikings, universally associated with savagery and violence, were in fact also prolific maritime traders and colonizers, founding settlements on all of the British Isles, and as far afield as Newfoundland. In fact, the continent of North America was visited by the Vikings long before Columbus landed in the Caribbean.
Well, that may well be true, but before the Vikings began to indulge in trade and colonization, they launched years of raiding expeditions that certainly did display astronomical levels of violence. In fact, in examination of Viking tactics, and why they were so successful, the phycological effect of such orchestrated violence meant that more often than not a battle was won simply by the Vikings showing up.
Like every deeply ingrained military culture, these attitudes to violence and military prowess were born out of tradition and circumstance. Norse culture and religion promote violence and warfare, reinforced significantly by the various sagas and legends of Nordic history. The simple belief that the moment of death is preordained imbues a culture with a sense of reckless daring. Death cannot be pre-empted or avoided, leaving only dying with fearlessness and glory as a worthwhile objective.
The catalyst for projecting this worldview overseas was, of course, the Viking warships, and the seafaring culture into which most Vikings were born. The technology of warships and the traditions of seafaring gave the Vikings enormous scope for movement along the coast of Europe, but also to the British Isles and the coastal regions of Iceland and Greenland, all of which were eventually settled by the Vikings.
Initially, attacks were hit-and-run expeditions of plunder, and a popular target for this was the monasteries of England and Ireland that tended to yield up much treasure. One tactic of Viking phycological warfare which had been frequently commented on was the use of ‘Berserkers‘, or professional warriors displaying trance-like engagement with the battle, and often naked, and feigning lunacy. The sight of even a small phalanx of berserkers leading an attacking force often had the enemy simply dropping their weapons and running.
The Vikings most certainly were a warrior society, with the ethos of violence and war written into their cultural DNA. The Viking Age is generally agreed to have ended in 1066, with the successful occupation of England by the Norman invaders. By then Europe was modernizing, and Viking culture was in decline.