Vikings in Low Furness

Serious historians and archaeologists often make a distinction between Viking and Norse/Scandinavian settlement in the British Isles. The term ‘Viking’, strictly speaking, refers to the earliest –infamous- phases of trade and raiding activity; where no permanent settlement was involved. The word ‘Viking’ was rarely used by the people themselves, and, when it was, it referred to men who had gone ‘a-viking’; or had taken to piracy from ‘viks’ – creeks or inlets in the language of their homelands. ‘Vik’ finds a parallel in ‘wic’ –Anglo-Saxon for a trading settlement.

The start of this period is often thought to coincide with the attack in 793AD, recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, on the island monastery of Lindisfarne off the coast of Northumbria. However, recent scholarly work has indicated that tales of Viking invasions are inextricably mixed with the political and other beliefs of the (often Anglo-Saxon) historians recording them. Stories of Vikings swarming ashore from long-ships, terrorising the local inhabitants and carrying off armfuls of loot and local lovelies have to be treated with a certain amount of scepticism!

Our concepts of what constituted the Viking period, or Viking Age, are so easily coloured by emotional attitudes and feelings. ‘Viking’ easily grabs the attention, is usually accompanied by a bearded warrior swinging a blood-stained axe, and sells books and television programmes by the score. The true picture, as revealed by archaeology, is considerably more complex. There are many problems that, right from the outset, hinder our identification of Viking raiding in north-west England. Furness, in common with many other regions around the Irish Sea and across northern Britain, was subject to raids from many peoples following the collapse of Roman administration at the start of the 5th century AD. From this point until the 8th and 9th centuries, the Irish, Picts, Scots, British and Anglo-Saxons all contributed to internecine warfare in this area – which was a contested territory. So – which bits of ‘Viking’ activity can we find, and demonstrate to be truly Viking?

It has commonly been though that Cumbrian place-names derived from Old Norse are evidence for Viking activity. -Thwaites (clearings; eg: Walthwaite near Pennington), -scales (huts; eg: Scales village) and –bys (hamlet, village; eg: Kirkby-in-Furness) are typical of those often quoted as Viking in origin. However, the evidence from the Loppergarth runic tympanum contradicts this, (a tympanum is a specifically cut stone feature designed to fill a gap between the top of a church door and the arch above it). The Loppergarth example is thought to have come from an early church at Pennington – and it clearly shows, through its mixture of English and Old Norse runes – that the Old Norse language had mingled with Old or Middle English by the 12th century AD, (the date conventionally ascribed to the tympanum through its ornamentation). A merging of script allows us to see a merging of language, and a script on this ‘12th century’ stone shows that many supposed ‘Viking’ place-names could easily have been ascribed late in the Norse/Scandinavian period of settlement – even into the period when Furness was subject to Norman control. Unfortunately they cannot tell us anything about raids and trading!

When we come to isolated finds – such as the Rampside sword – we get closer to firm ground. Acknowledging that some of these finds were perhaps interred as heirlooms, they nevertheless give us glimpses of burials – and pagan (as opposed to Christian) burials at that (Christians were not supposed to be buried with grave-goods). The Rampside sword fragment was found in 1909, well before the advent of radiocarbon analysis, which nowadays would be used on organic substances found in association with, or attached to, the find, (from the published report the Rampside fragment seems to have retained traces of a wooden scabbard). So we cannot be sure precisely when this weapon was buried. Also, because the area in which it was found had been disturbed by building activity, we don’t know anything about finds, or a body, that might have been associated with it. However, simply from its context, (St.Michael’s churchyard), we can see that it has a classic Viking burial situation. The burial mound would have had a fine view over the perfect natural harbour at Piel. The long, sandy beaches around nearby Walney Island, and the shores of the sheltered channel formed between Walney and the mainland, would have acted as ideal beaching points for ships with shallow draught.

Rampside is certainly close to our model ideal of the situation of a Viking burial – close to the sea and the early seaways. It finds eloquent echoes in grave-goods from other ‘Viking burials’ in coastal locations in Ireland, the Isle of Man and Western Scotland. These are areas where the Scandinavian settlers of Furness are supposed to have originated – indeed, some historians maintain that they arrived as late as the tenth century AD as second or third generation ‘Scandinavians’ – or ‘Norse/Irish’. Clues in the ornament and decoration of particular Cumbrian Scandinavian sculptured stones, such as those at Gosforth in West Cumbria, do demonstrate Scottish and Irish links.

However, Irish links can also be shown to apply to other carved stones from the region, like the Irton cross near Gosforth, or Great Urswick 1. These stones show no obvious Scandinavian design traits. Indeed, non-Scandinavian portable ecclesiastical metalwork objects and illuminated manuscripts formed potent influences on many of these carvings. In consequence, we should look to the early monasteries and their estates for traces of early Viking activity. Ecclesiastical sites were often recorded as targets for Viking attacks in early historic annals. Their populations of unarmed clerics and civilians, their undefended enclosures and buildings and rich contents singled monasteries out as prime candidates for Viking attention.

This brief discussion of the Vikings in Low Furness may have left us with a strange paradox. We don’t seem able to get to the Vikings without addressing the very images of fire, violent raiding and slaughter that we often deny. That Scandinavians settled in this area is without doubt. What we have to do is seek out the origins of that settlement – the power-bases that controlled local supplies of what the piratical Vikings sought – treasure, slaves, iron. These were valuable, portable things - and people - that could be sold or bartered on. The elusive, mobile Vikings came initially not in search of land, but wealth that could be moved and displayed in a society dominated by the code of the warrior and the hearth.

Steve Dickinson, August 2003