AD 800–1200 Hide Your Women: The Norsemen are Coming!

THEY CAME TO plunder and rob and to take the women. Crossing the North Sea in their longships, relying on the east wind to fill their sails, the men rowed steadily whenever the wind dropped. They were warlike, these coastal dwellers, known as Vikings after the viks or inlets where they lived in Norway and Denmark. For around 400 years, few parts of Britain escaped their attention.

They also came to live in the lands they discovered and to trade with the natives. Many settled in Shetland, Orkney, the Hebrides and on the west coast of Scotland, from where they set out to explore and attack other parts. They left their settlements in the Northern Isles – Hjaltland and Hrossey, today’s Shetland and Orkney. They sailed south to Katones, Caithness, and Sudrland, now Sutherland, and across the Moray Firth to Banffshire, Buchan and the North Sea coast of Aberdeenshire and Apardion, the name they gave to Aberdeen itself. They came to trade with the canny Aberdeen merchants and to settle fertile areas where the fishing was also good. But they did not always come in peace.

From around 950, Vikings harried the east coast, coming from the north and also from settlements to the south. Eric Bloodaxe, said to have become King of Norway after murdering all but one of his brothers, became King of Northumbria and lived in a palace in York. His wife was daughter of the King of Denmark and was believed to be a witch. Their sons, including perhaps the infamous Harald Greycloak, were among those who came to plunder Scotland’s east coast. Here, they were defeated by natives, most likely on a hill near a place now called Cruden Bay, north of Aberdeen. This was obviously an attractive place, as Vikings later settled near this sandy bay, with its little river providing fresh water.

The Vikings harried the east coast, coming from their settlements in Caithness, Sutherland and Northumbria. (Myths of the Norsemen from the Eddas and Sagas)

KILLED BY A DEAD MAN!

Towards the end of the 800s, during the reign of Scottish King Donald II, the warlike Danes seized Northumbria, effectively cutting off contact between the Scots and the south. Around the same period, Sigurd the Mighty took control of the north of Scotland and even succeeded in taking the previously impregnable fortress of Dunnottar, set high on the cliffs south of Aberdeen. Sigurd revelled in this victory and cut off the Scots’ leader’s head, which he then hung from his saddle. But the Scot, Mael Brigte, known as The Bucked Tooth, fought back from the dead. As his head banged against the horse’s flank, one of his filthy protruding teeth punctured Sigurd’s leg – the mighty Sigurd went on to die an agonising death from blood poisoning.

Dunnottar Castle today – very different from the simple fortress of Viking times. (Author’s collection)

By 1012, the Danes had settled near the sandy bay by the estuary of what is now called the Water of Cruden, where they built a fort on Hacklaw, the hill nearest the beach. Fearing the settlement needed reinforcing, Danish King Sweyn Haraldson sent his teenage son Cnut, or Canute, on the hazardous journey across the sea in charge of a large army. Already battle-hardened, the seventeen-year-old Canute had orders to defeat the Scots once and for all as Sweyn, also known as Sueno, was keen to avenge the repeated losses he had suffered in earlier battles.

THE NORSEMEN’S SKULLS GRINNING HORRID

Another Danish raiding party was defeated when they came ashore from the Moray Firth in 1004, looting supplies for their storm-bound ships. What became known as the Battle of the Bloody Pits is thought to have been fought at present-day Bloodymire Farm, Longmanhill. Legend has it that the natives fought hard and fought dirty, with even the women involved, having filled their stockings with sand and stones to use as coshes! The blood-dripping, severed heads of at least three Danes were taken to St John’s Church, near Gamrie, where the skulls remained displayed in the wall for centuries. In the 1830s, a visitor wrote, ‘I have seen the Norsemen’s skulls grinning horrid and hollow in the wall where they had been fixed directly east of the pulpit’.

images

The Vikings’ skulls ‘grinning horrid’. (Author’s collection)

images

Tradition has it that King Malcolm II of Scotland preferred to harass the Danes by intercepting their food supplies with short, sharp attacks – what we might now call guerrilla tactics. He had fought and killed his kinsmen to become king, so he certainly had an appetite for battle and bloodshed. His reluctance to enter into full conflict with the Danes may be explained by the extremely difficult and bloody battle he had fought and won against them only two years before, at Mortlach in the hills to the west, where he lost three trusted leaders. Canute was determined, however, and indeed Malcolm’s followers were spoiling for a real confrontation to see off the invaders. King Malcolm brought his troops to the flat land below Hacklaw, close to the sea. Here the battle was joined and vicious fighting raged all day, spreading inland along the river valley. Remains of the dead and their weapons have been found as far as 4 miles inland, although it was by the bay that most of the officers and nobility were slain.

As night fell, the survivors of both armies withdrew to lick their wounds. The sight which greeted them as dawn broke was so dreadful, with bodies strewn everywhere, that their thoughts turned to peace. This was the last major battle between the Scots and the Danes, with a treaty forged which was founded on the Christian faith and respected by both sides. The treaty decreed that the battlefield would become consecrated ground with the dead of both sides given an honourable Christian burial. King Malcolm ordered a chapel to be built on the site, which was dedicated to St Olaf, patron saint of Norway and Denmark. Under the terms of the treaty, the Danes and Norwegians withdrew from Scotland, with both sides agreeing to fight no more during the lifetime of Sweyn and Malcolm.

Canute lived to fight another day, and later in life became King of Denmark and England. Today, the consecrated ground is long forgotten and Cruden Bay’s famous golf links lie on the site of the battleground and original chapel. The picturesque parish church, however, still bears the name of St Olaf and the battle lives on, over a thousand years later, in the name ‘Croju Dane’ or ‘Crudane’, which means death or slaughter of the Danes.

Many Viking warriors were skilful archers. (Heimskringla, drawn by Christian Krohg)

Much of the Vikings’ contact with the town of Aberdeen, Apardion, was in trading with local merchants. However, in the early 1100s, Eystein, an illegitimate son of Norwegian King Magnus Barefoot, became joint King of Norway with his brothers Sigurd and Olaf. Olaf died young and while Sigurd was away fighting the Crusades in Moorish Spain and the Holy Land, Eystein served Norway well, venturing west across the North Sea. In Caithness, he captured Earl (or Jarl) Harald Maddadson, succeeding against the Jarl’s large thirty-bench galley and eighty men with only three small cutters. Once the Jarl’s ransom of three marks of gold was paid, Eystein sailed south to the market town of Apardion, where he robbed the town and slew many men, breaking their swords. This was all recorded later the same century in Geisli by Icelandic poet Einar Skúlason: