Northmen: The Viking Saga AD 793-1241 by John Haywood Read Free Book Online Page B

on Frisia as does another early Anglo-Saxon poem, the fragmentary ‘Finnsburg’. A Frankish poem, composed c. 570, records another major raid by Danes but this was also driven off by the Franks. No further Danish raids on Frisia are recorded until the Viking Age, so this defeat appears to have deterred them from interfering in what the Franks regarded as their sphere of influence for 200 years.
    The Migration Period was a quite literal golden age for Scandinavia. In the course of their migrations, the Germans and Huns relieved the Romans of enormous amounts of gold and silver, either as plunder or payments of tribute. Much of this gold eventually found its way to Scandinavia, whether by trade or plundering raids across the Baltic, or in the pockets of homeward-bound mercenaries. One of the routes by which much of this gold reached Scandinavia was through Eastern Europe and across the Baltic to the islands of Bornholm, Öland and Gotland, where several treasure hoards dating to this period have been found. The richest hoard of the period, however, was found in the eighteenth century at Tureholm in Södermanland in central Sweden and contained 26.5 pounds (12 kg) of gold. Treasures may be buried for two reasons: ritual offerings to the gods or, in the days before banks, for security. However, in the second case, the owner’s intention was eventually to recover the treasure, not leave it in the ground as an expensive time capsule for modern archaeologists or metal-detectorists to discover. There is no evidence that most of these treasures were buried for ritual reasons so the failure of the owners to recover so many hoards is best seen as yet another sign of the pervasive insecurity of the period. These islands would have been particularly exposed to piracy and the owners of the unrecovered hoards may well have been killed in raids or captured and carried off for the slave markets.
    Most of the imported Roman gold was melted down and turned into spectacular jewellery and other prestige objects for the aristocracy. It was in the early part of the period that goldsmiths and silversmiths in southern Scandinavia developed the Scandinavian-Germanic animal art style, which used the stylised and enormously elongated bodies of real and imaginary animals to create interlaced patterns of astonishing complexity. The new art was probably a response to the turbulent times, creating a new language of symbols that were full of meaning to those who had the knowledge to read them. Unfortunately, that knowledge is now lost. Taken to Britain by the Anglo-Saxons, the animal style merged with indigenous Celtic art styles to create the hybrid Hiberno-Saxon style, whose finest expressions are found in illuminated manuscripts such as the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells . In Scandinavia, animal art developed through a succession of styles until it was replaced by the imported Christian Romanesque style at the end of the Viking Age.
    One of the characteristic items of Migration Period jewellery are bracteates, gold medallions modelled loosely on Roman medallions, which were worn as pendants. Bracteates frequently have the motif of a man’s head and a horse – thought to represent Odin and his steed Sleipnir – and sometimes also runic inscriptions, most of which have defied interpretation. Few artefacts, however, could have displayed the wealth of their owner more impressively than the two ornate gold drinking horns found at Gallehus in Jutland, the larger of which was 30 inches (75.8 cm) long and weighed over 7.7 pounds (3.5 kg). Horns like this, together with other precious tableware, fine jewellery and weapons, would have been displayed at the lavish warrior feasts that were, after wars, a chief’s or king’s most important opportunities to enhance their reputations by feeding their followers heroic portions of meat, filling them with ale or mead, and showering them with valuable gifts. Another example of Roman influence in this