Dan Snow's History Hit - Vikings in Spain

Episode Date: April 11, 2023

When we think of Vikings, we tend to picture them in the colder climates of Northern Europe, and not so much in the warmer regions of Spain and the Mediterranean beyond.However, joining Dr. Cat Jarman today is Dr. Irene García Losquiño, a researcher whose work is uncovering Viking activity on the Iberian peninsula, shedding new light on the lives they lived there beyond the raiding we know about.This episode was edited by Stuart Beckwith and produced by Rob Weinberg.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download the History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download the History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hello and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Dr Kat Jarman. Spain might not be the first place you would associate with the Vikings, and we know quite a lot about their exploits in nearby regions like what is now France, but surprisingly little seems to be known about their activities in Spain. However, we do know that parts of Spain suffered from extensive raiding activity. But even so, no comprehensive archaeological study of Viking sites in Spain has really been carried out. But today's guest is an interdisciplinary researcher who's been working on exactly this, and especially the Viking

presence on the Iberian Peninsula. I'm really delighted to welcome today to the podcast Dr Irene Garcia-Losquina, who is a research fellow at the University of Santiago de Compostela and CISPAC. Irene, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you very much for inviting me. I'm really excited to be with you here today. I've been dying to get you on the podcast for ages actually, because we work in the similar sort of things. We both work on the same time period. So we've talked lots at various conferences and things. So I'm really excited to get an update on all of this and where we're at at the moment. Thank you very much. I'm excited to talk to you. I always have appreciated your

work. So it's quite an honor for me to be here and go medieval with you. Brilliant. Thank you. Right. Let's just get straight into it. I did want to know, first of all, why did you decide to focus on the Vikings in Spain? Well, when I was doing my PhD, I was working on runology and I was actually working in the pre-Viking period. So it was a little bit of a surprise for me to move into the Viking Age and move into the geographical region of medieval Iberia.

But it had been bothering me for a wee while that there was not that much done about the Viking presence in Iberia. We knew that they had raided there. And almost coincidentally, as I had been having these thoughts about why we didn't have more about Vikings in Spain and Portugal, I see a message from my friend. And my friend's message said, have you seen the Viking anchors that just landed at a beach in Galicia? And I'm like, what?

So fair enough, there was a newspaper article about these, assumedly Viking anchors that had been found at a beach. And that started the whole thing. So I did a trip to Spain to look at these anchors, to look at some ballast that had also been washed ashore. And while nothing conclusive ever came about that aspect, I did get hooked. So I realized just how much could be done.

Once I was there, I could see that there was a lot of work that could be done that it was risk to work that maybe new things could be learned maybe not but as I began to detangle what we had and start imagining what we could have it was just almost addictive I know that feeling it's a good one It's always great to find a bit of a gap in our knowledge as well, which is fantastic. But I wondered if you could tell us a little bit what we actually know from the written sources. And as I mentioned in the introduction,

we know that there were numerous raids on Spain, so they're not far away from the other parts of the world that were much more known about. But could you summarize a little bit what we know about those and that presence from written sources? Yes, definitely. And clearly written sources here are the true jewel from which we can start working about Vikings in Spain, because there's a variety of written sources. Some of them come from the Christian North, and we have chronicles and different annals

and letters and charters. And then we have a lot of Andalusian historiography that records some of the contact. But in general, all of the written sources tell us the story that starts in the year 844. And that year, we have a record that literally says, in this year, the Vikings first arrived at Asturias, at the north of Spain. And that's the first raid that we know. It's quite a comprehensive raid that goes all around the Iberian Peninsula, the west of the Iberian Peninsula, and creates quite a lot of havoc

around Seville and the river Guadalquivir. In Al-Andalus, it's very heartily felt. And that's the beginning of it all. It begins big. That doesn't mean that there hadn't been contact before, but that's the big beginning. That kind of is the Lindisfarne of Spain. And after that, we have several big campaigns. There's a campaign in the year 859 that lasts around three years. And that's a very big campaign again, even larger than the one before that goes all the way through the north of Spain. Well, let's call it Iberia, the north of Iberia, west Iberia, all over Landalus, through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean. Spain, well, let's call it Iberia, the north of Iberia, west of Iberia, all of the land

that was through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean. In the Mediterranean, then, it's like an open field where they spend quite a lot of time raiding and possibly doing other things than raiding, obviously, for a wee while. And then we have a little bit of a quiet time up to around the mid of the 10th century. There are raids because we have evidence of citizens asking for help to defend themselves against Vikings. So they are coming. But really, it's in the middle of the 10th century. We meet a huge increase in the number of raids, pretty much coming yearly.

in the number of raids, pretty much coming yearly. We have attacks in 1960, 1964, 1965, 1968. So there's this record of extreme activity. And I suspect, this is my personal opinion, that this extreme activity is on the one hand that there is an obvious increase in activity, but I also think it's also an increase in recording the activity. For different political reasons, they're being recorded. So it's possible that this kind of activity was present before the mid-10th century and that there is this kind of yearly continuity. So we keep getting records of raids until the end of the Viking Age. Although I always like to say that that's not the case. The Viking Age ends in between inverted commas.

There's no era, it just ends. But the activity continues. So you get into the 11th century, 12th century, and the activities are very similar. They just keep happening. So we can see these raids that happen very often, and they are quite strong and also raids that happen often and are less strong. But the written record is really obsessive about raiding and kind of ignores things that

are not raiding. I want to get back to that in a moment, but do we see a specific response to this? Obviously, this is all talking about what is actually happening to these parts of the world, but what is the local response to that raiding? Is there anything specific that we see? Yes. And I actually, I love that you're asking me this question, because this is one of the things I love looking for in the sources. It's like, okay, Vikings are coming, but how is that impacting the population? What are they doing? And it's interesting because if you take, for instance, that first campaign that I mentioned before in 844, their response in the northwest of Iberia, specifically in Galicia, is a heavy response.

According to the sources, the Vikings don't stand a chance. There's missiles thrown at them. They are repelled from Galicia. So that huge army, because it is a big army, is not able to create much damage. That same army, when going to Al-Andalus, creates a lot of damage. In fact, they spend a whole month just raiding, not just on the coast, but also inland. And their response of the population is very different. They have to flee. Seville, for instance, is emptied of inhabitants. Whole populations are decimated. And the Emirate,

at the time, responds also in a different way by joining forces with different groups, including groups from completely different parts of Iberia, to expel the Vikings from the regions. Because of that same campaign, other responses can be seen. The Emirate not only expels the Vikings, but decides to invest quite a lot of money and time in developing defenses. So they invest in weaponry. They build a huge fleet. So they develop this naval system to repel future expeditions. They build defense buildings like watchtowers and things along the coast to protect beacons against future raids. And the same thing happens during other periods in places like Galicia, where the response is in the building of defenses.

You can see even in gaps where you don't know is a rating match. You can imagine that they are rating just because so much is being built against them. Especially in the case of the Andalusi fleet that I was mentioning before, just some years later, in that big campaign that ends around 861, the Emirate uses the fleet and manages to block the entrance of Vikings through the Strait of Gibraltar as they're coming back from the Mediterranean. So that's the kind of response that we are seeing. And sometimes those responses leave traces. Sometimes even in folklore, they leave traces. But mostly it's an architectural response. And presumably that has quite a good effect as well of if it's quite visible as a deterrent. If you see fortifications, you might make them think twice a little bit at least, I suppose.

Exactly. If they're seeing that, oh, this fjord, or as they're called, Rias in Galicia, is quite well defended and you have watchtowers and beacons and castles atop hills that can communicate with each other as they see us coming, chances of damage are lesser. But to be fair, in spite of all of these, they keep coming almost yearly. So some success was still being had. Makes you wonder what would have happened without them, doesn't it? If there was even more severe. But it does make you wonder a little bit about the archaeology as well. How much of this has left an archaeological trace? And do we have a lot of objects and things like that? It's a lot of trace of the Viking attacks? For now, I am sorry to have to say that there is very little. We see it a little bit in those defenses.

For instance, the constructions that were built in the mid-10th century around Galicia, those are potential archaeological foci of interest. But really, with the exception of one item, we don't have Viking Age material from Scandinavia in Spain, at least yet. So that one item that is of Scandinavian craft and is in the Epirian Peninsula, it's a tiny, tiny, tiny antler box, the cylindrical antler box that can be found in Leon. We don't know what it was. It contains possibly something that had a scent to it, or it's been said that maybe some game pieces,

something really tiny. And the problem with that is it's completely out of context. It is found within a collection of boxes of the same size from different parts of Iberia and the world from different periods of time. And we don't really know how it made its way there. But that's actually the only Scandinavian object that we have. I have to admit that the hope is that that will be different in the future because not much archaeological action has taken place in the Iberian Peninsula

with a view to find locations of Viking presence. I hope that with time, the conversation can change a little bit. I know that there is interest. I myself am trying to start up, and I have in the past started up, a couple of venues of archaeological research. So maybe if you ask me the question in five years, the answer will be different. But that's all we have for now. We'll have to get you back in five years. Definitely, right. You're booked. But I'm going to talk to you a little bit more about that and how that relates to

sort of Viking self-aware in a moment. But one thing I wanted to know, because I know you looked into as well, is other sources of evidence like place names. So in all these other places where the Vikings more or less have had a significant presence, some of them settle, some of them leave a mark or at least stay slightly permanently. Now you mentioned earlier that these written sources are very heavily emphasising the attacks and the raids. Is there any sign of anything else, any place names, any signs that people settled as well? Well, I think that's a wonderful question because that's the question I care about the most. As you said, the written sources are so heavily driven by complaining and reason of the so about Vikings' violence that there's no real general record of any other type of medium or

longer term presence. Having said that, you ask about place names. Place names, I think, are the clue to get us looking into the right places where settlement did happen, and at least medium term settlement or medium term presence did happen. Although I think that long term settlement also took place. So there's two kinds of place names that we can play with when we're thinking about Vikings staying in the Iberian Peninsula. One type of place name is the good one, the really, really approachable one, which is a name like Normandy. It's a name that people have given the groups coming into the Iberian Peninsula.

We have the equivalent of Norman, North Omani, the men into the Iberian Peninsula. We have the equivalent of Norman, Nordomani, the men of the north in Galicia. They are recorded as Nordomani, different versions, and Lordomani in the written sources. So that's the name the people are giving them. And we actually have that name still existing in the toponomy of the Iberian Peninsula. Up to recently, we had three examples of them. Right now, I have also a fourth example that I'm working with. So we know then of four different locations where settlement has occurred. And in two of these locations, well, in three of them, actually, settlement continued past the Viking Age up to today. I think it's very interesting to try to go to the

medieval documentary sources and learn a little bit about these particular locations called the Norsemen. And especially my favorite is a document from the 10th century that is describing this big donation that someone's doing to a monastery. In order to delimit the area that is being donated, they are describing the points that delimit this area. And one of the four points that delimit this area, it's what the authors call the town of the Northmen. It's what the Ulcers call the town of the Northmen. So clearly it's telling you that at some point recently in time, there was a place there that was the town of the Northmen. So I think that's a very good avenue for looking into where settlement happened.

And then there's a second type of place names. I think that's the risky, complicated ones, which are the ones that appear in other places like England or France or anywhere else that the Vikings have settled. Those are place names that contain all Norse elements in them. Anthroponin is the name of people or topographical describing things of the landscape. And I did some research into these and detected several kinds of names, specifically one kind of name that potentially could have a Scandinavian component. I spent a good summer traveling around Galicia to see if this name could possibly be Scandinavian. And what I can say is that it seems that, yes, potentially this type of name is Scandinavian in origin. And that could lead us to locations where it's more likely to have found Scandinavian settlement.

That's really, really exciting. And that actually genuinely implies that there was much more of a presence and more longer term presence than we thought before. So that's very exciting. I guess the problem then is the next step. So you have that starting point, and then what do you do? In fact, we've had this problem with the Vikings and places like England even. We have lots of place names and things,

but we don't have necessarily a physical signature. We don't have a village where we know the buildings are definitely Scandinavian. So I wanted to ask you a little bit about that because I know that we met at a conference quite a few years ago now where we were talking about these Viking camps and actually looking, as some of the listeners might have heard previous podcasts where we talked about Viking camps in England as well, a lot of those have been really quite recent. We've shifted how we look for them. So we look for things like metal detected artefacts and things like that. I know that you were also involved in trying to take that similar approach. Can you tell

me a little bit about that work that you've done into looking a bit more physically for these Vikings? Yeah, thank you. I think you're right that now you know where you could find this thing. And do you want to go find them physically? Do you want to get into the archaeology of it? And the answer is, of course, who doesn't, right? It's an exciting gap, but it's also a very difficult gap. And I think the key is in exactly what you said, looking at how this is being accomplished in the places where it's being accomplished, like the work that is being done in camps in England and people that you continue to do regarding camps in England and finding ways to translate that into the Iberian Peninsula where it can be translated.

So I think that the massive difference that metal detecting has made into the location of potential Viking camps elsewhere had to be translated into the Iberian Peninsula. So not too many years ago, I decided to try to do that. And that was complicated because there had been no metal detecting being done for any purpose remotely like this in Galicia. And I knew I was asking for a lot to try to take that approach, but somehow it worked. I was allowed. So I had a small campaign in a location that I thought could be interesting. And then again, you don't have as much data as you would like in this process of location.

So you know it's going to be sometimes a little bit hit and miss. In this case, I examined an interesting location by a river, and that river was used by Vikings constantly, all throughout the Viking Age. And I know, because of all the type of work that I've done, more with documentary sources, that in that river, you're going to find anywhere from two to three different time locations. So it's a matter of establishing where those are.

So I did a metal campaign in one potential location. And actually, with the exception of hand-cut nails, nothing turned out. So the markers that we are seeing in metal detecting in England, like lead, things like that, nothing turned out. So I am moving to the next location of interest. I have a selection of several locations that could be of interest. And hopefully starting with the metal detecting will allow to be able to then locate things better and proceed with more intensive archaeological work after. If we're lucky.

I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder.

Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were. By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. Now, I know a slightly different topic of research for you has been looking again a little bit more about what these Vikings, these Scandinavians were doing and especially mercenary activities. So by that exchange of military service for money, goods or favors or whatever, which we know happens elsewhere. Why did you study that in Galicia? What brought you to that avenue? I think it was a topic that I was interested about in England. I used to teach at the university

in Alicante, history of the English language of all things. And I remember teaching a class on Viking activity in England. And I have a section about Viking mercenary activity. It always fascinated me, the level of opportunism shown by different groups within campaigns when they become mercenaries, sometimes for the same people that they've been fighting against. So I had that in the back of my mind. And then working on medieval documentation for Viking Galicia, there's this wonderful, wonderful document dated to the year 1032 that is telling the story of this region in Galicia that is really having a hard time

because there's this group of, they call them rebels, but this group of warriors or people who are against the powers that be. And they're really terrorizing the whole population. warriors or people who are against the powers that be. And they really terrorize the whole population. They're burning fields and destroying resources and churches and all of that. And this document tells how a nobleman of the area, with the aid of all of his other noble peers and a group of Vikings, go fight these rebels and go fight them at this castle that they have on top of a big rock.

And they destroy them and they burn the castle. But clearly this is an evidence of Vikings working with local powers against rebels or against people who are disrupting the local well-being. And I thought that was fascinating. So that opened an avenue of research for me. It was like, okay, can we find other instances where this collaboration and the same way that I'm trying to look into medium and long-term settlement as a form of non-necessarily violent interaction,

are there other forms of non-violent interaction? So that's what drew me to that. So what did you discover? Were there cases that you could find in the records as well? Yeah, there's a couple of cases that I think are quite interesting. But you can see it in these few instances in the records, and possibly that speaks of a tradition, which you're only seeing three instances, but that's enough to translate into a variety of different kinds of sources.

Because in these instances that I'm referring to, sometimes we see it in chronicles or in letters, and sometimes it has transcended and we see it in a saga. So I'll give you a couple of these examples. One of them is what happens in a very, very big campaign that takes place in the 10th century. Concretely, in the year 968, there's this huge Viking army that comes into Galicia, a hundred ships up to the very mountains in the east, because the document says so, for a period, either one or three years, if I'm being clear. I think it's possibly one year, to be honest. But that's a long time to be quite inland in this territory. And this source, it's very descriptive, and only talks about violence. These armies there to create havoc and that's what they do. And they create so much havoc that they kill really important people.

And in the end they are defeated and they have to go back where they came from and a lot of them dead. So that's what we have from that source. And then two years later, another source from a completely different place, inland in Spain, in León, in the same place where that little box made of antler is located, that I was referring to before, we have a different source that tells us a one-sentence story. And that one-sentence story is the Vikings came to Campos. Campos is a region in León.

So that's their story. The Vikings came to Campos. Not the Vikings destroyed Campos. Not everybody was dead. Nothing negative, just that little note. So we know that a couple of years after a huge army has arrived in Galicia and they spent a year raiding to the very border of Galicia and León, a group of them is transitioning to León. And what do we find in León? Well, one of those place names that

I was telling you about before, Lordemanos, it's a little town in León where there was a settlement. And I have argued somewhere that that could be an instance of mercenary activity in that a group that was in violent relationships with king all of a sudden goes and moves quite close to where the king is, where the other settlements are. It's not an isolated place with no one there. It's a place where people are. It's actually a place where the king is investing in bringing people in to build up the area. Because it's actually kind of a buffer zone with an area of conflict with Al-Anmalus.

So this is maybe a case where we can see a group of Vikings settled here in a conscriptive area, but an area that was clearly under the blessing of the king. So maybe that's telling us something there. Then we can go many years after, past the Viking Age, into the 12th century. And we have the Orkney Inga saga, which has always been one of my favorite sagas. And in that saga, it tells the story of one of the earls of Orkney called Rogenvalder Kallikolson. And in one of the stories, he's going to Galicia with 15 ships and a lot of people, and they decided to spend the winter in Galicia.

This again speaks of something that clearly has happened several times before, that it's a normal thing to winter in Galicia. And when they show up there, they're kind of a bit demanding, and they want a food market for provisions. And the locals can't, because they don't have the resources, but the Earl and his companions, they're like, no, no, no, you must. And then the locals say, well, if you are so kind to get us rid of a foreign tyrant that has come and has established himself in the castle,

and we want him out. So if you get him out, then we give you a market. So here you get another clear transaction of services in exchange for something. And I will not do spoilers. The people can read the story. It's really funny. I'll just say that the Earl and his men do a little bit of procrastination but there is another example of potential

mercenary work and just that it's a tradition to have this kind of service interchange it's not a weird thing we see it obviously going on everywhere else so there's no reason why they shouldn't do that and i think this also, for me, is one of those things that really characterizes what the Vikings are doing so well. They're quite pragmatic. They see what works, don't they? And so they see who's going to pay me the most. They're not driven by some sort of loyalty necessarily to just their own country and their own king. You know, they're quite flexible, aren't they? Which presumably is exactly what we're seeing here in Spain. Yeah, I agree. I think that these kind of multifaceted behaviors, they're not showing something erratic. I think they're just showing what is the nature of Viking going out and doing

things because you adapt to what is bringing the biggest reward for you. And also again, maybe contributing to the idea that even when it is big armies going and doing things, not everybody in the big army behaves cohesively all the time. What you're saying about loyalties, maybe that idea of bloodthirst and loyalty is not something that really defines Viking campaigns. Absolutely. No, I completely agree. And I absolutely love this. I love the fact that you're able to actually grasp something

and take those bits of evidence and saying, well, what are we missing? What can we find? And I think this is one to watch for the next 10 years or so. My sort of final question to you is a little bit about how this is all received in Spain.

I mean, obviously, this isn't something that has been researched a lot at all, as you've made a really good point of. And I know that you don't have a huge, big Viking department around you or anything like that at your university. So how is all of this seen in Spain, even the general public? Do people know about the Vikings in Spain? Are they interested?

Well, I can tell you there's a lot of interest from the public. It's been wonderful. I think people really like the topic of the Viking world in general, from as long as it has been popular in Europe, which has been a long time. So the public interest is really good. And I think what I'm seeing is a public that is really keen in knowing the nuances of Viking contact. I think they're well past the Viking straight,

the hyper-masculinity thing or things like that. And they really want to know about the nuances of how was life in Viking Age Scandinavia and what the contact with Vikings coming to Spain really meant. Not just the violent part, but any kind of part. So I think that's wonderful. And then in terms of the academic reception, let's say, or the academic interest in Spain, I think it's become more open to this field of study.

And I'm very lucky because even though I don't have a Viking studies department with me in Spain, I'm surrounded by amazing medievalists, professors of journalism, people from different disciplines, archaeologists who are not Viking specialists, but who love the idea of understanding medieval Galicia, for instance, as a place where contacts are happening with Europe. And they're doing the same. They're also doing a great job there at Europeanizing the Middle Ages in a way, or opening the contacts with all of the Southern Mediterranean during the Middle Ages and understanding it as a place of contact. And I think that's where I fit well there. I'm just one more element of showing contact amongst the other elements that people are studying. Thank you so much for joining me

and sharing all of your expertise with us here on Gone Medieval today. Thank you so very much. It's been wonderful to be here with you in Gone Medieval. I've been dying to have a chat with you. So thank you very much for inviting me. So that brings us to the end of this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. Don't forget, if you do want more medieval information in your life, you can subscribe to our Medieval Mondays newsletter. Just look in the episode notes for how to do that. And please do also give us a rating or a vote wherever you find this podcast. Any reviews really help other people find us

and share it with your friends and your neighbours and your colleagues or whoever. Don't forget, we are going to be back with another episode. My colleague Matt Lewis will be back with the next one and I will be back again after that. So until then, have a great week. you