Gone Medieval - Vikings In the Frankish Kingdom

Episode Date: January 11, 2022

The Kingdom of the Franks was the largest post-Roman barbarian kingdom in Western Europe, ruled by the Franks during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. But how did it fare against Viking attacks? From the changes in travel, early raids, exports, and trades, we look at this kingdom and its Viking activity through a different lens. In this episode, Cat is joined by Christian Cooijmans. Christian is a British Academy Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool, with his research focusing on the reach and repercussions of Viking endeavors across mainland Europe. We examine and challenge the widely accepted central interpretations of Viking activity in northern continental Europe.Christian Cooijmans, author of Monarchs and Hydrarchs: The Conceptual Development of Viking Activity across the Frankish Realm. Published by Routledge.For more Gone Medieval content, subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to the Android or Apple store Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello and welcome to Gone Medieval by History Hit. I'm Dr. Kat Jarman. In this week's episode, we're going to be talking about Viking attacks in the region in northwestern Europe that's surprisingly often overlooked,

but also where they were very similar to more familiar events in places like Britain and Ireland. I'm talking about the region of Francia. And today I'm delighted to have us my guest here, Dr Chris Coymans, who's a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool. He's also the author of the book Monarchs and Hydrax, The Conceptual Development of Viking Activity Across the Frankish Realm. Thank you so much for joining us on Gone Medieval today, Chris. Thanks for having me. It's great to be with you.

Now, I'm really keen to talk about this, because I think that quite a lot of people, when we think about the Vikings and the Viking aid, we sort of forget about this part of continental Europe a little bit, really. Is that sort of the sense that you get as well? Yeah, it's not really talked about as much in these sort of overarching Viking histories. Frankeyes usually mention sort of very sort of off the cuff,

a quick reference, but any sort of detailed analysis of what's happening in Francia, usually not part of these larger analysis. So we're going to go into quite a lot more detail in a moment, but just before we start, just for our listeners, who might not be that familiar with these conducts, could you explain what you actually mean by Francia? Where are we geographically speaking? And what's actually happening there politically, too, sort of round about the start of the Viking Age? So the Frankish realm, or Francia, as we sometimes call it, was a huge political territory that made up a significant share of the western and central parts of continental Europe during the early Viking Age. It covered an area that extended all the way from the North Sea to the Mediterranean and from the Baltic Sea all the way to Brittany, so spanning hundreds and hundreds of miles across in each direction. So that's just to provide some perspective on how big of a territory we're really dealing with here. And of course, just like today, this would have been an area of significant ethnic and cultural contrast.

So it's estimated to have been home to about 10 to 20 million people at the time. And that would have expressed itself in a wide variety of languages and customs and traditions. But even though it was sort of accommodating all of these different peoples and cultures, the Frankish realm as a whole was effectively ruled by just a single family. at this time, and they were known as the Carolingians. So when Vikings first began to make their presence known around Francia, the power and the influence of the Carolingians was very much at its peak, and most famously so in the person of Charlemagne, who remains sort of the most well-known of these kings, because not only was

Charlemagne a very sort of successful military leader, he managed to conquer regions like Lombardy and Bavaria and Saxony. He also introduced a wide range of very effective societal reforms throughout this entire realm, which covered everything from the economy to governance, to law, to education, and that's just to name a few. So you could say that things were going pretty well for the Carolingians during the first few decades of the 9th century, but it's not very long before we start to see the metaphorical cracks appear in the veneer. So when Charlemagne died in the year 814, his son. son and heir, who was called Louis, had a lot of trouble maintaining stability, and he had to face

several open rebellions by his own sons for control over this Frankish realm. And when Louis eventually died in 840, all of this escalated into a full-blown civil war, which eventually led to this vast realm being carved up into three independent Frankish kingdoms, each of which was ruled by one of Louis's surviving heirs. But even that was just sort of the beginning of what would be many, many decades of political conflict and controversy, both between and within these now separate kingdoms. And it's this ongoing erosion of political and military power that would be very happily taken advantage of by all sorts of third parties, not least by the incoming Vikings. So let's talk about them and Scandinavians on these attacks. We'll get onto more detail about

those attacks a bit later on, but if we think right at the beginning, it's around about 750, do we know of any contact before that? Or is it sort of something, are these raids just of coming out of the blue? Or is there anything happening prior to the Viking Age? Yeah, so the earliest interactions that we're aware of between Scandinavia and Francia actually predate the Viking Age by many centuries. And there's quite a lot of archaeological material that we can draw from here. So in Scandinavia itself, for example, we can clearly see Frankish prestige items being introduced during the sixth and the seventh centuries, which include these particular types of glassware and weaponry, for example. And by the 8th century, those kinds of imports seem to have grown exponentially with large amounts of ceramics from the rhinelins and glass vessels from the Ardennes and rhinestones from the Eiffel, all having been found up in Scandinavia. and all of that evidence not only points to a demand for these kinds of items up north,

it also suggests that networks of trade were already well established by this time to move these items between centers of production in Francia and their destination overseas. You know, this is something you've talked and written about yourself. Scandinavia is by no means this isolated or marginal region at this time. Not at all. It's already a conduit of communication and confidence. commerce well before any Viking activity is even attested. And it's very much incorporated into the same networks that the Frankish realm was also a part of. And so when we start to move through the

8th century, we also begin to see other types of interaction taking place along these same routes. We find early attempts at Christianization, for example, such as those made by Willi Bort, who was an English missionary, who traveled into the Danish territories through Frisia, which is an area in the northwest of the Frankish territories. We also see early diplomatic contacts take place between Scandinavian and Frankish rulers. A Danish leader named Sigfrid, for example, already appears in the Frankish Annals in the 780s, and he seems to have regularly sent and received messengers and embassies in the decades to follow. And I think that all of these kinds of contacts combined, would have made Scandinavians very aware of their neighbors to the south, and they would

have already had quite detailed knowledge about where certain goods came from and where movable wealth was being gathered and how you could get there and what the political and the military situation was in that region. So that kind of information may have been remembered, and it may have been sort of kept up to date, and later it would have been put to good use when we do start to see Vikings making their way across the Frankish realm. Yeah, and that's a really key point, isn't it? Having that knowledge and that information, because then, of course, start of the Viking Age,

we start to get these early raids. And what do we know about those first raids? What sort of records do we have? Where do they take place? So we get a sense from various different texts that Vikings were already active in a limited capacity along the Frankish coast around the turn of the 9th century. so roughly coinciding with their first recorded appearances around the coast of Britain and Ireland.

But for Frankea, the early evidence is sometimes difficult to interpret, and it's a bit vague on the details, so we often can't really pinpoint early attacks with any great amount of certainty. But the first specific attack around the Frankish coast that is traditionally thought to have been carried out by Vikings is dated to the year 799. Now, we don't actually know all that much about this attack. The annals are completely silent about it. We have no archaeological evidence to work with.

But what we do have is a letter written by Alquin of York, no less, who mentions that pagan ships had made their way to the islands of Aquitaine and that they'd cost a lot of damage there and that over a hundred of these attackers had been killed on a beach. So this attack is traditionally thought to have taken place, on the island of Noamuchet, which is off the Atlantic coast of present-day France. It's just south of Brittany. And it's often held up as the one event that kicked off the Viking Age in Francia,

much like, you know, Lindisfarne was for England. But when we examine Alquin's letter a bit closer, we actually discover that it's nowhere near as specific. Alquin doesn't actually say who the attackers were, for example. He doesn't use the word Northman or Dane, which we find in. a lot of these later sources, which would confirm them to be Vikings. He just uses the word pagan and pirates, but those terms were used for other peoples as well. They could refer to mariners coming in from Iberia and the Mediterranean Sea, for example,

who are also known to be active in those same waters. He also doesn't specify what the target would have been. He just mentions islands, plural. And because there are many islands off the coast of what would have then been Aquitaine, we really can't say with any certainty whether Noamu Che would have been among them. So could this have been a Viking attack? Yes, I think so, absolutely. We can't rule it out in any way.

But if it was, would it have been this sort of game-changing bolt from the blue event? Probably not. As I mentioned, we do have other suggestions of this activity taking place during this early time, suggesting that it was already far more commonplace to run into Viking. along the Frankish coasts. And we don't really have any archaeological evidence of those early attacks. I mean, like in Britain and Ireland, we have these records, but we don't actually have archaeology.

Is it the same in Francia as well? Yeah. So when we look at Viking activity in Francia, we have several types of evidence that we can work with. But the most prominent of these by far is the textual material, written sources that were composed during the period in which these events were happening. And these come in all shapes and sizes. We have annals and chronicles.

We have biographies. We have saints' lives. We have letters. We have poetry. We have charters and legal documents. And all of these provide information about Viking activity across the region in some way. It's really an absolute wealth of material. And it provides a very detailed insight into their actions and their motivations, often much more so than what we can draw from the English and the Irish material.

for example. Frankish authors seem to have had quite a lot of access to information about Vikings, and often they spend entire paragraphs and chapters just talking about their movements and their interactions. But despite the emphasis on the written sources, we do also have some archaeological evidence to work with. It's certainly nowhere near as much as you'd find in Britain or in Ireland, but it's still not an insignificant amount. So a lot of this material is made up of single finds that were discovered, you know, by accident along coastlines and rivers. And these include various types of metal jewelry and accessories, for example, such as rings and broaches. We also see various examples of what we consider to be Viking swords, which are often found when dredging riverbeds. And there are a number of silverhors as well, some of which have been tied to potential encampment sites.

There is also a single Viking boat burial, which is not on the mainland, but on an island off the coast of Brittany called Gua. And this contained the remains of two people, an adult and an adolescent, as well as various animals, weapons, tools, and game pieces. Something that's also been associated with Viking activity is the physical evidence for destruction that we sometimes come across. So in Rouen, for example, excavations at the cathedral complex have revealed traces of this large out-of-control fire, which is expressed in the remains of charred wood and molten lead and pieces of stained glass, all of which were dated to the mid-ninth century and are therefore linked to the Viking attack that took place there in 841. And up north in the Netherlands, there's a town called Zutphen, where similar destruction layers were found, as well as the skeletal remains of various people and animals,

many of which contain this blunt and sharp force trauma, meaning they probably died very suddenly and very violently. And again, this has been associated with a local Viking attack on the town in 882 in this case. So it's quite an eclectic mix of archaeological evidence that we can work with, but it's hopefully one that does continue to grow over the coming years and decades. Hi, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb And in my podcast, not just the Tudors, We talk about everything from sex to spying,

Wardrobes to Witch Trials. Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Subscribe from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. Things that sort of strikes me is that we are just a sort of short hop across the English channel here to over to England. And at the same time, very similar things, very similar attacks take place in England as well.

And we know a fair bit about those from various other documentary sources. But do we know if these are the same people that are hopping between Francia and England, or are they different groups? Do we have any knowledge of that at all? Yeah, so the presence of the Vikings in Francia is first recorded around roughly the same point in time as when we also start to see the same activity in Britain and in Ireland. And at first, in all three of these areas, we find coastal and peripheral targets, usually monasteries and harborsides being attacked in what seemed to be these very sort of quick

hit-and-run style attacks designed to extract as much movable wealth from these places as quickly as possible before any sort of military response can be mounted. And that seems to suggest that in all of these three regions, Viking groups were still operating with fairly limited numbers, with relatively few resources at their disposal. And as a result, they were taking. taking full advantage of the element of surprise rather than any sort of, you know, overwhelming strength in numbers or in arms. Now, the argument has been made that some of these early attacks could have been carried out by the same groups, you know, sailing to England first

and then making their way to Ireland and then on to Francia or in any different order. And even though we don't have that much direct evidence to link those early activities, I think there really isn't any strong reason to assume that they couldn't do this, especially when you consider the enormous distances that some of these Viking groups were already covering in very short periods of time. In 820, for example, the Frankish Annals report that a group of 13 Viking ships first attacked the coast of Flanders, which is on the North Sea, then made its way to the mouth of the Sen, which is in the English Channel, and then traveled all the way to Aquitaine, which is on the

Atlantic coast. So we're talking well over a thousand miles traveled here, all within the same year, and that's not even, you know, counting the return journey. So with all that in mind, there really isn't a reason to think that they couldn't have made their way to England and Ireland over the course of those same expeditions. And of course, several decades later, when Viking activity increases, you know, by an order of magnitude, we can find explicit references being made to these groups crossing the English channel on quite a regular basis. Yeah, so at that point we start to get more information, don't we? And actually, in your book, when you've written about this,

you talk about how this all develops over time and these different stages in the process. And one of the thing that struck me was how we can see that intensification. And so what do we really know? Because actually, you've looked at things like numbers of ships reported. Is that how we know that more is happening? Yeah. So when we are reaching towards the middle of the 9th century, we begin to see these very pronounced changes in the way Viking groups traveled and organized themselves across Francia. So their attacks, for example, become much more commonplace.

And rather than just targeting, you know, smaller coastal settlements, they now seem to become part of these much larger and complex military campaigns, which focused their efforts on targets that were, you know, dozens, if not hundreds of months. miles upstream. And these included some of the most important and well-defended Frankish centers of trade and religion and political governance. So we're talking sites like Paris and Cologne and Nantes and Tour and Bordeaux, significant urban centers, many of which traced their roots all the way back to antiquity and some of which were even still enclosed with city walls from that period. So Viking groups and fleets grew in size and capability with many more people participating carried by much larger fleets with more resources at their disposal. Now, it's difficult to pin an exact number on the amount

of individuals and ships that we should be thinking about here. I can give you an example. Listeners may be familiar with the infamous Viking siege on Paris of 885 and 86, for which we have a very detailed account from a monk called Abbe, who claims to have been an eyewitness to that event. And the way that he describes the attack is brilliant. It's very captivating. But as far as we can tell, it's also very much exaggerated. For example, he claims that just before the siege started, the River Sen was so completely filled with Viking ships that it was impossible to see the water itself anymore. So according to him, there were 700 ships present carrying 40,000 people overall. So these are some of the largest numbers that we've ever seen

reported in the Frankish realm, but whether they're accurate is very doubtful, not only because Abel would not have been taking the time to do any sort of careful headcount of these people, but also because this would have been more than the entire population of Paris itself at the time, and Abbeau specifically mentions that only a few hundred people were present to actually defend the town. It's so disproportionate that it's likely for these numbers to have been inflated for effect. But having said this, individual Viking groups around Frankea are very much known to have combined their resources on a regular basis. So there's still plenty of reason to think that a joint Viking force could have been measured in the hundreds or maybe even thousands of individuals,

if only for a short period of time before it would eventually split up again. And as we know quite a bit about those attacks, do we also see how the defences are being made? You know, what's being done? Are there more fortifications being built? Is there a sort of really concerted effort to try and withstand this? Yeah, so throughout the 9th century, we actually see quite a diverse repertoire of countermeasures put in place by Frankish rulers to ward off Viking activity. First of all, there's, of course, the straightforward military response where armed forces were sent to oppose incoming Viking fleets and armies. but that seems to have had a very mixed result overall,

mostly because domestic armies were often very slow to muster and to deploy, and Vikings usually chose to retreat rather than to fight when confronted with these Frankish armies. Then there's, of course, the building of fortifications, which becomes an increasingly common strategy from the mid-ninth century onwards, and this didn't just involve the building of walls around settlements, although that certainly happened as well. Very notably, it also included the building of fortified bridges across major rivers

to block the upstream movement of Viking fleets. And this was something that was actively encouraged by Charles the Bald, who was king of Western Francia at the time. He had at least two of these bridges built that we know of. One is across the seine at a site called Pond Larch, which is just upstream from Rouen, and another was on the Loire at a place called Pond de Cé, which is near Angerre. We also see large tribute payments being made to Viking groups at this time to stop hostilities from taking place to begin with. So these were sometimes made up of thousands of pounds of silver and gold,

but they could also contain flour and wine and livestock, which highlights that Vikings were really able to obtain their provisions in all sorts of different ways. And this is also seen in the fact that specific trade embargoes were being put in place by Frankish rulers around this same period, some of which specifically prohibited domestic merchants from selling weapons and horses to Vikings. So that's a very revealing little detail because it demonstrates that Vikings were not just taking things by force. They were also very happy to just buy whatever they needed. And it shows how dynamic these groups would have ultimately been in these activities. Yeah, so they're properly sort of adapting to whatever circumstances is needed, I suppose, aren't they, in that sense?

The other thing I wanted to ask you about, so in your book, so you titled your book Monarchs and Hydrax, which I really like, but I'm thinking in terms of how these things were organised, do we know who the leaders were? Were they sort of one large leaders properly channeling all these forces into specific places, or are we talking about much smaller groups? What do we know about the organization of the groups? Yeah, so from interpreting the Frankish sources collectively, we get a lot of valuable insights into how Viking groups actually functioned and how they coordinated their actions. And it's from these sources that we get a sense of them being mostly individual groups with very individual goals and objectives.

So these were forces that were largely self-sustaining and self-governing. And we seem to have been very flexible. in their social and in their political organization. And it's in that context that we now sometimes think of these Viking groups as being examples of something called a hydrarchy. Now, hydrarchy is a system in which Viking ships and fleets acted as traveling political spaces in and of themselves, which would function very much outside the traditional frameworks of power and authority.

And this very much allowed them to pursue their own. own self-interest and to adopt very versatile and pragmatic ways of organizing their expeditions. So we can think of these Viking groups as being sort of communities on the move with their own identities and their own beliefs and of course with their own specific leaders, which I tend to call hydrarchs. So instead of portraying Vikings as these sort of impulsive out-of-control stereotypes, which still happens way too often. We can actually see that they were very rational and calculated in their actions. They were very well informed on the politics and the economics of the Frankish realm. They gathered intelligence on their targets. They meticulously

planned their campaigns and they communicated and even joined forces with other Viking groups when it was beneficial for them to do so. And when we delve further into those sources, see that some of those groups were active for many years on end, traveling as entire family units sometimes, which gives us the impression that hydraki would have been quite an enduring way of life for a lot of people. And it's not just Scandinavians either. We have multiple accounts of Frankish people actively joining and living with these groups, suggesting that they may have offered opportunities that Frankish society overall couldn't. That's a really interesting thought, isn't it, actually. And one thing that strikes me a little bit is this is all very much a

story about raids, but if we look to England, it tends to sort of start a bit more with the raids, but then going into a settlement phase, which was obviously very successful. But what about in Francia? Do we not get that? Do people settle as well? Or do they literally just come and raid and go back again? Well, the story of Viking activity in Francia never really seems to have been just about sort of violence incursion. And we can see Scandinavians throughout the Frankish realm taking on a variety of different roles, which don't necessarily match that traditional stereotype. They would have acted as merchants, as messengers and as diplomats, for example. Some even presented themselves at court, and they swore their allegiance to Frankish kings, which caused them to be actively integrated

into the existing political hierarchy of the Frankish realm. But at the same time, the process of settlements doesn't really seem to have taken place in Francia in the same manner that we see in the Dane Law in England, for example, where lands were actively sort of conquered by large Viking forces who then began to put down roots in those areas. On the continent, we really don't get a sense that Vikings were settling down in especially large numbers during the 9th century. So what we do see is that a lot of Viking leaders would either start, you know, ingratiating themselves with Frankish kings, like I mentioned, or that they would actively force these

rulers to offer them some sort of specific political deal or privilege. And this sometimes included a grant of land. In the 850s, for example, there was a Viking called Rorik, who was offered the trade center of Dorostad in the low countries. and the surrounding region in benefits, so for him to rule over, which he seems to have done for over 20 years. And that territory was granted to him in order to appease him, to pacify him and his immediate followers,

on the assumption that that would prevent other Vikings from threatening that particular area, as well as the Frankish heartlands upstream. But even during that period of Rorick's rule, we still don't see any sort of large-scale Scandinavian settlements taking hold there. Now, a similar scenario, of course, takes place later on when a Viking called Rallo was granted territories around the Sen in the early 10th century. And that seems to have been a much more successful venture in the end, which prompted a significant influx of Scandinavian migration to the region and eventually led to the development of the territory that we now. call Normandy. But it's still very difficult to make out why this didn't happen in the low countries, for example, or in any of the other Scandinavian land grants in Francia that we're aware of.

Okay, so to sort of wind up a bit then, what happens towards the end of the Viking Age? How does this develop? So following the initial rise of Normandy as this Scandinavian ruled political territory, so by the mid to late 10th century. We actually start to see an overall decline in the amount of Viking activity that's taking place around the Frankish realm. Now, whether that was due to Vikings settling down in Normandy or because Frankish defenses had become more effective, or whether Vikings were focusing their efforts more on England or Ireland, this is all very much up for debate. And it also really doesn't help that we don't have nearly as many textual sources to work with for much of the 10th century. But nevertheless, we still do see the occasional sporadic Viking attack taking place.

In the low countries, for example, they are seen to occur as late as the early 11th century. But those are more exceptions to the rule. And overall, the impression we have is that the Viking Age in Francia was effectively already pretty much over by this point. in time. Well, I think that actually is a very good place to end this episode as well, actually. That's been really, really brilliant. Chris, thank you so much for joining us on Medieval Today. Thanks so much for having me, Kat. And do have a look for Chris's book, Monarchs and Hydrax, the conceptual development of Viking activity across the Frankish realm, which is highly recommended. That was Dr. Chris Coyman's from the University of Liverpool. Don't forget if you want more

medieval information in your life, you can subscribe to our history hit newsletter Medieval Mondays. Just look in the episode notes in whatever app you're using to listen to this to find out how. And of course, if you haven't already, you can subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss any of our episodes. Thank you so much for listening today. I'm Dr. Kat Jarman.