The Viking invasions were amazing in many ways. The Vikings were shrewd traders, intrepid explorers, fearsome fighters, navigating their way without maps from North America to the Middle East. Wherever they found themselves, the Vikings never hesitated to apply their limited but well practiced skills to gaining mastery of the situation. Like other conquerors in the past, they never lost confidence that their basic tactics and tools would be sufficient to gain victory over whatever foe they faced, and were successful more often than not.
The Vikings had a very strong concept of the dark fate they called "rok," the understanding that every man has his death hour and there is nothing that can be done to change it. In a way, the Viking Age was the last hurrah of stoic pagan fatalism over a paranoid monotheism which attributed all ills to a wrathful God and valued piety over valor. This strange interaction bore perhaps its most interesting fruit during the First Crusade, during which cynical Viking/Normans accompanied a horde of fervent Christians seeking to profit from their attempt to liberate the tomb of Christ.
If you are looking to get lost in some history on this sad day when the revolution seems to be floundering, I got some tales to tell you.
Disclaimer
First, a few words of warning for both of the readers who stumbled in here thinking this was a diary about Minnesota politics. Various historians explain the sudden onslaught of Viking raiders and their spate of victories by whatever causes are currently fashionable within contemporary academia. Marxist historians explained the invasions as caused by dwindling resources at home (shrinking as a result of the consolidation of holdings in the hands of an emergent nobility) driving the poor to seek their fortunes elsewhere, demographers explain this as resulting from an excessive growth in population in Scandinavia, post modernists sing of the deep cultural connections and dynamics of interaction between everybody involved, and so on and on. But I’m not a professional historian. Heck, I’m supposed to be a professional attorney, but does this look like practicing law to you? If I had been born during the Middle Ages, perhaps I could have been a renaissance man, but in the 21st century, I am at best an amusing dilettante. Please allow this to serve as a warning for any actual historians who might be reading this – the multiple inaccuracies and liberties with the facts will probably infuriate you and exacerbate your heart condition, so proceed at your own risk, keeping in mind that I wholeheartedly welcome any clarifications or corrections you put in the comments section, which would also be appreciated by other readers.
As for everybody else, I call on each of us not to allow my personal inadequacies and general creepiness sidetrack us in our pursuit of random knowledge and in our own Viking quest! If this diary is too long for your tastes today, feel free to skip around the free standing sections, there’s poetry and meditations on fatalism in the Background Section, stories about the Russians and the Khazars in the Rus Section, a tale of an intrepid Viking warrior who served the Byzantine Emperor on the battlefields of the Middle East and died in the north of England contesting the throne in the Varangian Section, and a tale of how another Viking commander conned his way through the First Crusade in the Norman Section.
Background
The beautiful simplicity of the Viking Invasions was that the Vikings saw a world of opportunities and they took it. They never hid behind the usual justifications often used by more "civilized" conquerors. They didn’t pretend to fight for faith and switched religions without missing a beat, for self-defense, for freedom, or for universal justice. To them, war was merely commerce by other means, and trading and conquest went hand in hand as a single profit making enterprise favoring the strong, the shrewd, the unscrupulous and the brave. The Vikings were also not fighting on behalf of any state. Men from all over Scandinavia, and later Russia, Britain and Iceland, would come together to go "a-viking" – to set out on an expedition to see what profits could be made in vulnerable lands. As such one could say they were one of the first instances ofs stateless militarists or corporations, other examples of which include English privateers, American filibusters and, some might say, Halliburton.
As people came back from lucrative raids, mercenary stints, or trading expeditions, they spread the word around the widely scattered Norse communities that there was a great alternative to the hardscrabble lire of a fisherman or farmer in snow covered Scandinavia. Also the desire to occasionally see the sun might have had something to do with it, just as the craving by the English people to experience food with actual flavor drove the expansion of the British empire. Despite growing up on the periphery of Europe without any certain knowledge of the world beyond, the Norsemen felt little fear about venturing forth, sometimes for thousands of miles, in order to better their lives and the lives of their loved ones, to increase their status and to attain wealth, power and glory fighting and trading in unknown lands. They were confident that their small boats and capacity for tenacious small unit fighting could overcome any and all opposition, whether from gods or men, and trusted in their fortune. Viewed in this way, the Viking rape of Europe becomes downright inspirational, doesn’t it, a sort of Nordic Yes We Can moment.
The Vikings were not aided by their confidence alone. They had several great advantages, first in mobility through their longboats, small shallow draught oared ships with a single retractable mast, which could be sailed on the open sea or up rivers, and carried overland by their crew of 20-40 men with little trouble if a river became impassable. Whenever possible, the Vikings would typically impress the native population into carrying their boats and would also steal horses to allow them to make lightning raids, although they still typically fought on foot during this period. Second, early Viking military tactics involved tight formations of heavy infantry, armed shields, metal helmets, and long swords or battle axes. Such formations, held together by years of fighting together and the cohesion that typifies units drawn from a homogeneous warlike population imbued with similar values and training, which also typified the Spartans and the Swiss in other times would easily hack to pieces much larger numbers of village militias, conscripts or feudal levies they typically encountered on their raids, and could even resist the charge of the period’s cavalry, which was only starting its evolution toward the heavily armored battle tanks which were the knights of later years. In essence these tactics and equipment differed little from other Germanic people of that period, such as the Saxons whom the Vikings faced on numerous occasions, but the Vikings’ years of experience, superior generalship, and unit cohesion would still give them an edge even over similarly armed opponents. Past victories, coupled with a calm fatalism springing from their pagan religion, gave them the confidence to engage any opponent. Meanwhile the fear their systematic terroristic actions inspired in the people they attached (the Vikings always started by systematically despoiling every holy place their victims had to establishing in their victims’ minds that their gods were powerless or that the Vikings were supernatural messengers of the wrath of said gods) sapped the strength of the opposition. Typically however, the Vikings preferred to avoid costly engagements and to proceed directly to the looting, followed by a quick retreat to their boats or a fortified base (usually an easily defensible island in the middle of a river or a lake, such as the one on which the Vikings founded Dublin).
The first Viking expeditions set out in the 8th century, when Europe was only beginning to recover from the collapse of the Roman Empire and the advantage enjoyed by organized state armies over stateless forces was negligible. It is considered that Norsemen living in modern Sweden and Finland and oriented geographically toward the eastern Baltic, moved in a general eastward direction, while those living in Denmark went to France and England, while Norwegians attacked Scotland and Ireland and colonized Iceland and Greenland. Of course this is a generalization, as this movement predates any national borders, and Norse adventurers from various places, who all shared the same general language, culture and religion, often jumped to different crews to take advantage of opportunities as they were presenting themselves, regardless of location.
The Norsemen (I will use this general term for the people, mostly from Scandinavia, of whom the Vikings were composed) of that age still believed in the old Germanic pantheon, Odin, Thor, Loki, etc., but had been in contact with Christianity for centuries, so they were not unfamiliar with its tenets as well, and often borrowed Christian concepts and European culture in general. This borrowing is evidenced by the story, capturing and amplifying the powerful absurdity and beauty of the central Christian myth, about Odin sacrificing himself in order to gain knowledge of the end-times and runic magic and being suspended from the world tree for many days wounded with a spear, as poetically retold by Odin himself in the Poetic Edda:
I was given to Odin,
myself to myself.
For nine full nights I hung,
wounded with a spear,
on the windswept tree
of which no man knows
of what roots it runs.
Eventually a raven came and picked out his eye and Odin died, but was reborn and gained the knowledge and magic powers he sought, and was thereafter always accompanied by two ravens, Thought and Memory, who continuously updated him on developments in the many worlds. Odin also became aware, without being able to prevent it, of Ragnarok, the Norse apocalypse in which the giant Loki would ride a ship of human nails into battle against the gods, killing most of them, including Odin and perishing himself, while Loki’s son, the terrible wolf Fenrir ate the sun and the world of men was flooded, leaving only two survivors. So Odin basically predicted the consequences of global warming in largely the same way as Al Gore.
The fact that various pagans, such as the Greeks, Romans and the Norse, whose religions had Fate at their center, had at the core of their religion the necessity to accept their fate, even if it meant doom, provided the foundation for their ability, referenced above, to venture deep into the unknown without much fear or trepidation, and to make peace with and incorporate into their worldview all the strange things that they encountered on their journeys. If a man’s hour of death is written and cannot be changed, then all that remains is to live well the moments allotted to him. The Poetic Edda beautifully sums up the meaning of this dark inescapable fate, called "rok" in both Old Norse and modern Russian, in its highest expression, the end of days, Ragnarok (meaning "the dark fate of the gods"):
It sates itself on the life-blood of fated men,
paints red the powers' homes with crimson gore.
Black become the sun's beams
in the summers that follow,
weathers all treacherous.
Do you still seek to know? And what?
Monotheism is also not incapable of accommodating fatalism and the two doctrines have been frequently intertwined. However, there is a strong opposing trend in monotheism that seeks to give the religions dictates power by the threat that people’s actions and thoughts are continuously being monitored by an angry God who is keeping a tally of their transgressions so as to more painfully punish them in this life and the next. Pagan religions typically did not posit punishments in the afterlife, though some did offer rewards for glorious deeds, such as the Viking Valhalla, the hall where Odin receives brave warriors fallen in battle. However, the fact that a brave warrior who happened not to fall in battle, but died of old age would not get into Valhalla made the concept much less of a direct reward for correct behavior such as the Christian heaven. To merit punishment, one must have free will, and therefore destiny can be altered. Hinduism provides a curious blend of the two strands by positing that though one is doomed to return in the cycle of reincarnation eternally, one’s reincarnation destination and fate upon reincarnation is affected by one’s actions in the current life, although this again tended to support a sense of resigned fatalism about one’s present condition as having been predetermined and not changeable.
Despite the idea of free will needed to underpin the threat of judgment by the all powerful God which seem incompatible with fatalism, the concept of an overriding Fate that even the gods cannot alter is foundational to Christianity. The very fact that God had to send his only begotten Son to die for humanity’s sins, because Divine Justice did not allow God to simply pardon humanity, implies that there is a force stronger than God’s will determining even God’s actions, forcing God to "game the system" to achieve his desired result of pardoning mankind. During the Reformation, the concept of fatalism and predetermination was addressed directly and given perhaps its best exposition by the ardent Christian Calvin, who recognized that the concept of an all-knowing, all-powerful God means that all of our actions in life are already known and predetermined by God before we are born. Our life’s mission therefore becomes spotting and differentiating between those who are going to heaven and those who are going to hell, and protecting the former from the latter. But since the hour and manner of our death has been already set by God, we should not try to live in fear, but to live out our lot in the most honorable and virtuous way possible. This conclusion is strikingly similar to the conclusion of such Stoics as Marcus Aurelius or Chinese Taoists like Lao Tzu, and would have likely gotten the approval of the Vikings as well, while also foreshadowing the very similar conclusions of atheistic existentialist philosophers of the 20th century. Despite the fact that all of these thought systems had wildly disparate origins and evolutions, they tended to come to very similar conclusions, allowing people to accept their conditions without bitterness and brave men to remain calm in the face of death.
The feelings of the Norsemen themselves about contemporary Christianity were perhaps best expressed in one of the first armed contacts between the Vikings and Western Christendom, during the sack of abbey on Lindisfarne, a center of learning famous across the continent, which exemplified perfectly the Viking flair for terrorism as a means of softening up their targets, and their utter indifference to other people’s gods. Priests, monks and nuns were killed in the abbey, thrown into the sea to drown, raped, tortured and enslaved, and the church treasures pillaged. Feelings aside, initial Viking incursions were often characterized by such calculated despoliation of holy places, and even cemeteries, with the intent of terrorizing the much larger native population into developing a supernatural fear of the invaders. This was not hard to do, since nobody knew the Vikings came from or what they wanted, whether there were only a few raiding parties or if they were the forerunners of a major invasion. The sack of Lindisfarne had just such an effect, triggering widespread terror among the Saxons and Scots, who were very warlike and barbaric people themselves and not easily given to panic, but could not explain how or why God would allow so many irreplaceable relics, which were supposed to have great power, to be looted by pagans. A famous surviving medieval English prayer pleaded, "Oh Lord, protect us from the fury of the Norsemen." Eventually, most men of learning agreed that the likely and logical explanation was that these visitations were clear proof of the impending end times, particularly in light of the approaching year 1000 when most people agreed angry Jesus would come to thin out his flock. The Vikings consciously played into these millenarian fears, striving to create an image of themselves as supernatural invincible monsters, thus creating an effective campaign of terror which undermined the resistance of Christian populations to their invasions.
The Rus
Trade routes, stretching from the Baltic and down the large Russian and Polish rivers to the Ukraine and into the Black Sea and across to Byzantium, predated the Viking Age. In fact, Norsemen have traded with Europe and the Mediterranean since the dawn of time, supplying for instance the amber that was so prized by the ancient peoples. At some point, however, some enterprising Norsemen realized that the entire region was lightly held and could be exploited more fully if military power, rather than just commerce, was brought to bear. The Viking longboats easily navigated inland from the Baltic Sea and then were dragged overland to the headwaters of the great rivers heading south toward the Black Sea. The native Slavic population, already familiar with the Vikings from years of trade, unlike most other peoples visited by the Vikings, was more than friendly. The Vikings also refrained from their usual acts of violence or terrorism against the native population, realizing that there was very little to loot from these subsistence famers and that their cooperation would be far more beneficial in helping the Vikings reach their ultimate targets further to the south. Impressed by the Vikings’ military prowess, commercial acumen and discipline, several Slavic tribes requested that the Viking captains stay and become their princes to defend them from their enemies, teach them their tricks and plug them into their trade networks. The Rurik family of the Rus clan Vikings accepted the offer and fortified existing Slavic settlements in Novgorod in northern Russia, Kiev in the Ukraine, and many places in between, these strongholds giving them firm control of the river route between the Baltic and the Black Seas, and in the process giving Russia its name and a dynasty, the Ruriks, who reigned in Russia into the 16th century.
But the goal of the Vikings was not power over the impoverished and backward Slavs, but access to the Black Sea, and through it, to the riches of Constantinople and the Mediterranean basin. Soon, a huge fleet of longboats, led by the Prince of Kiev, Oleg, whom the Russians still view as one of their founding fathers, penetrated Constantinople’s harbor defenses and proceeded to ravage the lavish palaces along the shores of the Sea of Marmora. The Byzantine Emperor quickly sued for peace, paying Oleg a huge ransom and establishing privileges for Viking traders in Constantinople, complete with furnished places to stay and the right to a weekly bath on the Emperor’s dime. Oleg then nailed his shield to the gates of Constantinople and sailed for home. The Viking mastery of the Black Sea was so pervasive that the Persian chroniclers of the period called it the Varangian Sea.
From Kiev, the Vikings also came into contact with the Khazar Kingdom, a confederation of steppe tribes living on the northern shores of the Caspian Sea, as far west as the Crimea, and north along the Volga River, controlling trade along that sector of the Silk Road. The Khazars had attained a high level of prosperity and organization, and legend has it that their khan, looking to join the family of civilized nations, hosted a dispute between an imam, a priest and a rabbi to determine which of the world faiths his people would join. Legend has the rabbi’s winning argument, after hearing the arguments of the other two representatives, to be as follows: "Great Khan, the arguments of these learned men are very persuasive. However, if you adopt the faith of Muhammad, then after the turbans of the imams will come the green sails of the Caliph of Baghdad. If you adopt the faith of the Christians, then after the miters of the priests will come the golden sails of the Byzantines. But if you adopt the faith of the Jews, the only thing that I will bring after me is my prayer shawl." It is indeed likely that the Khazars, wary of falling under the influence of the great powers, but still eager to partake of their civilization, chose Judaism as a way to get their foot in the door and become "people of the book" without getting dragged into the struggle for dominance between Christians and Muslims. It’s also possible that the many Jews who fled Byzantium for Khazaria during various periods of persecution had something to do with it, just as the sizeable Jewish merchant and convert community in Arabia had much to do with the formation of Muhammad’s religious ideas.
For a few centuries, the Khazars enjoyed a supremacy over the other steppe peoples of the region, such as the Bulgars, and lucrative control over a section of the Silk Road. They were usually allied with Byzantium, as they had many shared enemies, often intermarrying with the imperial family, and fought many wars against Arab and Persian expansionism in the Caucasus, penetrating southward as far as Mosul in modern northern Iraq. By their conversion the Khazars gained valuable connections to the Jewish diaspora all over the world, bringing them abreast of world culture. Correspondence between the Khazar Kagan (as the khan now began to be called in references to the Kohane order of Jewish priesthood) and the Khazars on occasion retaliated against Muslim or Christian interests for violence done to the Jews in those lands. This fateful connection has ensured the Khazars a lasting fame, especially after various European writers, seeking to discredit Jewish nationalist and Zionist aspirations, traced the origins of Ashkenazi Jews to Khazaria rather than Israel.
The Vikings had a lucrative trade relationship with the Khazars seeking to access the flow of goods from China which they controlled, but it soon soured. Prince Oleg hatched an ambitious scheme by which his fleet of longboats would be dragged over to the Volga, sail into the Caspian Sea and raid the completely unprepared coast of Persia. For this he needed the cooperation of the Khazars, and secured it by promising a portion of the spoils to the Kagan. After a very successful raid during which the Vikings took the Persians completely by surprise and did their usual thing by destroying as many mosques as they could, the Vikings sailed into the Khazar capital Atil in ships loaded with slaves and treasure. What transpired there is unknown, but the Kagan ordered the wholesale slaughter of the Vikings in his city. This tragic incident, far exceeding in pathos the more celebrated demise of the Niebellungen, set off a cycle of wars that eventually saw Khazar power smashed by Kievan Rus and Kievan Rus in turn smashed by an invasion force from further east, also seeking to dominate the Silk Road.
Russia’s earliest chronicles ascribe to Oleg the power of knowing the future, setting up a beautiful fatalistic interlude, following the rich tradition of Greek myth and the tale of Caesar’s murder, and showing yet again that one cannot escape his fate. He is said to have been given the knowledge that he would die by his horse. When this horse died, he was very happy that the dark rok had passed him by. Years later, he returned to visit the spot where his horse fell, finding only the skull remaining. Under the awed eyes of his troops, he placed his foot upon the skull and launched into a speech on the nature of rok and prophecy, and just then, a snake crawled out of the skull where it had been sleeping away the hot afternoon, and bit Oleg on the foot, killing him. Such is the true nature of rok and its immutability.
The Varangians
The word "Varangian," by which Vikings were referred to in the East, derives from the Old Norse væringi meaning "a confederate," from var- "pledge, faith." This might be what at least some of the Vikings called their bands, held together by voluntarily pledges of loyalty and commitment to the mission. In Russian it is pronounced varyag, and this root possibly gave rise to the modern Russian words for enemy – "vrag" and for thief – "vor." The Byzantines were as impressed by the military prowess and unit cohesion of the Vikings as the Russians. However, they already had several competing imperial dynasties, and had a different use for the Vikings in mind. Vikings began to be hired as mercenaries into the Byzantine armies, and in short order, an entire "Varangian Guard" was formed, first serving as an elite heavy infantry unit and then as the personal guard of the emperor. Because the Vikings were not involved (at least at first) in the palace intrigues of Constantinople, the emperors felt that they could trust them to protect their person and guard their palaces from would be usurpers.
One of the captains of the Varangian Guard is known to us. He was Harald Hardrada (meaning the "Harsh Ruler"), a Norwegian Viking the story of whose life gives us insight into the reality of the Vikings and its interaction with world politics and Scandinavian life. He was a Norwegian prince who had taken the wrong side in a dynastic dispute and was exiled from his homeland. He gathered a crew and went to Russia, eventually serving as a commander in the armies of Yaroslav the Wise, the Rus ruler of Kiev. His prowess won him a reputation, and he soon had some 500 Vikings pledging their loyalty to him, thus becoming his Varangians. With his Varangians Harald came to Constantinople and took service with the Emperor. He served the Byzantines for 8 years, becoming head of the Varangian Guard and amassing vast wealth during military campaigns ranging from Baghdad to Sicily. Eventually, after doing some time for misappropriation of funds (throughout the ages a mark of an enterprising man), he escaped Constantinople with some retainers and a vast hoard of treasure. His wealth and prestige allowed him to marry the daughter of Yaroslav the Wise (his love poems to her survive to this day), return to Norway and become king there.
However, Harald’s rok was not to reign peacefully in Norway with his beloved queen. He proceeded to lay claim to the throne of Denmark, ravaging Denmark’s coasts for fifteen years in an attempt to secure its submission, but without success. And then another opportunity came up that was too attractive to pass up. The Vikings had by this time, been ravaging England, Scotland and Ireland for years. Ireland was eventually conquered completely, while England had several Viking kings, both before and after this period, and the entire northern part of England was called Danelaw in recognition of Viking influence. Harald’s distant relative, the Norman Viking William the Duke of Normandy was planning another major invasion of England, seeking to take advantage of a disputed succession. England at the moment was ruled by Harold Godwinson, himself descended from Vikings, whom William viewed as an usurper. William had been setting up this invasion for years, going so far as to get Papal blessing for this expedition enabling him to sail under the sign of the cross. As a diversionary tactic to weaken English defense, William proposed that Harald land his Norwegian Vikings in the north of England, while William would land his Normans and French allies in the south, figuring that at least one of them would be successful.
As rok and William’s shrewd calculations would have it, in 1066 Harald transported his 15,000 man army in 300 longboats and was the first to face the Saxon army of Harold Godwinson. Harold was a very able general and a brave man, and his Saxons were a good match for the Vikings, being descended from similar German stock, fighting in the same way and having long experience of combat with Vikings. Before the battle, legend gives us an encounter between Harald and Harold, during which, when asked what Harold Godwinson was prepared to give to Harald Hararada as ransom for his kingdom, Harold replied, "Six feet of ground or as much more as he needs, as he is taller than most men." The words inevitably proved prophetic as otherwise they would not have been preserved or, more likely, inserted into his mouth by a later historian. Harald’s forces were decimated in the Battle of Stamford Bridge, near York, and Harald himself was killed by a random arrow that went through his throat. Harold’s luck wasn’t much better. As his bloodied soldiers hurried south, they met the fresh army of William of Normandy, who was utilizing, in addition to the traditional Viking heavy infantry formations, heavy knightly cavalry which was beginning to come into its own in Europe. In a heavily contested battle, decided largely by attrition, William defeated Harold, who also died from an arrow wound, and became William the Conqueror, King of England. William’s reorganization of the kingdom and the improvement of heavy cavalry tactics leading to the rise of the knightly class and its chivalric code finally put an end to any further major Viking invasions of England, though it took a Viking to do it.
The Normans
Harald’s death is often used to mark the end of the Viking Age, but as we can see, the Vikings had by this time spawned another generation, generally called the Normans, which is French for Northmen. Vikings had conquered a large chunk of northern France, and forced the King of France to recognize their leaders as Dukes of Normandy. They began speaking French, the universal European language of the period, and converted to Catholicism, though this in no way lessened their avarice, lust for adventure, or brutality. The process of conversion was organic, as the Viking men took local wives who raised their children Christian and taught them the language. The Viking men did however succeed in passing on their martial prowess to their sons undiluted by the feminizing power of Christianity which had been often denounced by previous barbarian conquerors. In this case, the conversion of faith by these men of war had no effect on their vocation, although it did on impact their choice of targets, such as when the European knightly class took time off from wars at home to go and fight some infidels "across the sea" in the Middle East during the Crusades. The Normans’ conversion made it easier for them to be seen as equals rather than "barbarians" by the exclusionary Catholic societies of Europe and increased their mobility in these societies. From Normandy and Scandinavia, a new Norman wave washed over Europe, this time focusing on the Mediterranean.
Large numbers of Normans, following the example of the Varangian mercenaries of Byzantium, began taking service under princes all over Europe. One region traditionally hungry for mercenaries was Italy, a wealthy region the native population of which never regained the warlike nature lost during Rome’s imperial decadence. Normans took part in the contest over Sicily and Southern Italy, which had changed hands rapidly between Romans, Goths, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, Lombards, and which would remain a playground for aspiring empire builders for centuries to come. The Norman mercenary units, retaining the traditional Viking cohesion and ambition, eventually overthrew their employers and set up a Norman principality in Sicily and South Italy, setting up an efficient Nordic administration that brought a rare prosperity and influence to Sicily.
Typically, the Normans were not content with this initial foothold. Scanning the geopolitical field before them for targets of opportunity, the eyes of the Normans became once again fixed on Byzantium, repeating the thought process of their Rus relatives. An interminable war with the Byzantines, served loyally in this war by their Varangian Guard, followed, with the Normans being unable to achieve a decisive victory. Frustrated, the Normans began to look elsewhere, and just then, their Catholic conversion bore an unexpected fruit. The Pope preached the First Crusade in the late 11th century, and his call was met with an enthusiastic response thought-out Christendom. One of the magnates most excited was Prince Bohemond of Taranto, a Norman nobleman from South Italy, who viewed the planned expedition as his chance to take part in the greatest raid of them all. The Normans were by this point, intimately familiar with the region through which the First Crusade would have to pass to get to Palestine, including Constantinople, and the other crusaders were happy to have such knowledgeable officers and such hard fighters as the Normans in their ranks.
The Byzantines were horrified by the idea of a gigantic unruly barbarian mob passing through their territory to points unknown, especially if the Normans were going to be involved, but were in no position to stop it. Crusader regiments were escorted by Turcopoles, Byzantium’s mercenary light cavalry, who tried to prevent the worst depredations with mixed success (a few cities were still sacked, though apologies were later issued in true European fashion). As the Crusader armies arrived at the straits that separate Asia and Europe upon which Constantinople sits on the Asian side, the Emperor became increasingly terrified about the prospect of ferrying the barbarians across. He invited the Crusader leaders, Count Geoffrey of Lorraine, Count Raymond of Toulouse and our hero Bohemond to the palace and tried to overawe them with its splendors and to extract a pledge from them not to molest his subjects and to return any Byzantine possessions they might conquer back to the Empire. This of course conflicted with the obvious goal of the Crusade which was to conquer Palestine, formerly a Byzantine possession, but it appears that an understanding of some kind was arrived at, and the Crusader leaders took the solemn oath and received passage across the straits. While the oath weighed heavily on the minds of the two devout Franks, the Norman prince must have chuckled all the way back to camp, given his subsequent behavior.
The First Crusade succeeded beyond all reasonable expectations. The Crusader army moved through Turkey, scattering all opposition before it. The Seljuk Turks who had only recently overrun the region were used to dealing with small professional Byzantine armies, and did not know how to handle the mad charge of the Western knights. The Middle East as a whole was also not in a good position to defend itself. Its political balance had been upset by the Turkish invasions and the decline of the Sunni Abbasid Caliphate. Palestine itself was in a state of near collapse, having changed hands repeatedly during the previous generation between Turks and Egyptian Arab Shiites and the coast between Syria and Egypt was loosely held by a large number of weak and corrupt emirs, who were in no position to offer any fight to a large invading army. The only significant power standing in the way of the Crusaders after the Seljuks in Asia Minor were pushed aside early on, was the Seljuk Emirate of Aleppo, a city in modern eastern Syria which could draw on Turkish and Arab fighters from all over the Middle East. The Crusaders bypassed Aleppo on two sides, taking the largely Christian County of Edessa on the upper Euphrates in modern Iraq by the invitation of its people, liberating Christian Cilician Armenia on Turkey’s southeastern coast, and proceeding southward along the sea, supported by Italian galleys.
In their way, in modern day Syria, stood the magnificent ancient city of Antioch, founded by one of Alexander the Great’s generals and the seat (along with Alexandria, Constantinople and Rome) of one of the four primary Christian church patriarchs. Apart from Constantinople, no European had ever seen a city so large and developed, with multi-story stone houses, architecture dating back to the Roman period, with baths fed by running water from aqueducts, and magnificent libraries and pleasure gardens added during the peak of Arabic culture. The links to the coast were tenuous and the walls were tall, but the Crusaders rested their faith in the God on whose behalf they had come, and laid siege to Antioch. Hunger soon set in, both in the city and in the besiegers’ camp, and morale began to fail.
But a few months into the siege, a miracle occurred: one of the men, after a dream visitation by some angels, unearthed a rusty metal rod, which God had told him was the Holy Lance that had been used to pierce Christ’s side as he hung on the cross, sacrificing himself to himself, as it were. The discovery of the Holy Lance, a clear sign of God’s favor, energized the army. Bohemond expressed some reservations about its authenticity, but this was largely due to the fact that it was discovered by somebody in the employ of the other commanders and accrued to the prestige of his rival. Bohemond, however, had not been idle, but used the long boring days of siege to make contacts with Christians inside Antioch, who were in the majority. The Normans finally succeeded in entering into negotiations with a Christian commander in charge of a section of walls in the Norman sector of the siege works, and he finally agreed to betray the city to the Crusaders for a price. Armed with this information, Bohemond called a meeting of the commanders. Astutely preying on the religious naïveté of Geoffrey of Lorraine and the growing desperation of Raymond of Toulouse, Bohemond proposed that since God had shown unmistakably his favor and intention to the hand the city over to the Crusaders by revealing the Holy Lance to them, the army should attempt to do the impossible and take the city by storm. To motivate the demoralized troops, Bohemond proposed that the forces of whichever commander entered the city first would get to keep it. This was a clear violation of the oath given by each of them to the Byzantine Emperor, but the other commanders agreed to this as well, because they were running out of options, with hunger and disease rampant in the camp and rumors swirling about the approach of a large relieving army led by the Emir of Aleppo. Whatever chivalric and Christian rules dictated that they honor their solemn oath were outweighed by expediency and the suddenly remembered argument that the Byzantines were not real Christians but pernicious schismatics.
The Crusaders dutifully stormed the walls with little hope of success, but to the shock of the rest of the army, the Normans quickly gained control of the walls in their sector, after being let in by their contact on the inside. Bohemond therefore claimed possession of the city and proceeded to measure the drapes in the many many palaces. But while the city had many palaces, there was no food left after the prolonged siege, and before the Crusaders had a chance to remedy this situation, the rumored relieving army from Aleppo finally arrived and closed them in their newly won city. The idea of enduring a siege in this strange place, isolated from the supporting Italian fleet and unsure of the loyalty of the population, was out of the question. Though their horses were gaunt and their knights weak from hunger, the Crusaders resolved to give battle to the relief army. The Crusader army was arranged in the traditional medieval formation – a series of "battles" – lines of knights separated from the next line, so that they could charge at intervals to maximize their impact, backed by a strong reserve. The Muslims, which had never faced such a large number of heavy cavalry and such tactics, nevertheless relied on their vastly superior numbers to absorb the charge of these starving barbarians.
What followed was a battle that to some irrefutably proved the existence of God. The Crusader battles smashed one after another into the Muslim lines, with the Muslims being too compressed to maneuver and deploy their preferred tactics of mobility and arrow fire. The veteran knights, driven by both fervor and desperation, hacked away at everything in the path, cutting deep into the enemy lines, and before the Muslims had a chance to reform and engulf the penetrating units, another battle would slam into them, causing further havoc. The Muslim center was cut apart, the Emir was shaken, and the Muslims began fleeing the field in disorder, chased by exultant Crusaders as far as their exhausted horses could carry them, which was surprisingly far. Some historians have explained this remarkable success and in particular the incredible performance of the knights’ famished horses by the fact that the knights preferred male chargers, who were bigger and could bear more weight, while the Turks and Arabs preferred mares who were faster. The stallions, smelling mares for the first time in months, charged with abandon forgetting their hunger, while the mares flirtily allowed themselves to get caught, much to the consternation of their riders who wanted their horses to speed them away from the knights so they could wheel around and shower them in arrows. The Battle of Antioch opened the way to Palestine, eliminated the possibility for any further effective united Muslim opposition to the First Crusade, and created a myth of Crusader invincibility that would haunt the Muslim world for generations.
As the Crusader army prepared to proceed to Jerusalem and fulfill their vows, Bohemond dropped a bombshell that leaves no doubt as to what his true motivations were all along. He would stay in Antioch and not fight to free the Tomb of Christ. To the medieval European mentality this was shocking, but from a Viking perspective it was the only reasonable choice. Here was a great and fabulously wealthy city, sitting on the terminus of many major trade routes, while to the south lay Jerusalem, a dusty and impoverished city of ruins that, because of its position far from the coast, would be very difficult to defend from counterattacks, and exposed to attacks from powerful Egypt. To a Viking this was a no-brainer, and Bohemond remained behind as Prince of Antioch, though many of the rank and file of his army proceeded with the Crusade, joining the other detachments. Bohemond spent the rest of his life fighting with the Byzantine Empire and trying to capture Constantinople, but he was not successful. That prize went to another Crusade of unscrupulous men over a century later.
The capture of Antioch and the Norman quasi-empire in southern Italy and the Balkans were the last achievements of the Vikings. The states established by previous Viking invasions, such as Rus, Normandy and England, were able to defend themselves against any further raids. Scandinavia accepted Christianity and followed the course of the rest of Europe into feudalism and monarchy. The beautiful myths, poetic traditions and fatalistic worldview of the Vikings lingered on the periphery, with Iceland continuing the saga tradition, leaving a lasting testament to the power of the Viking culture. Nordic runic graffiti dot Europe, from columns in the Sophia Cathedral in Istanbul to Sicily, and the English, with their love of history, still preserve memories of the Danelaw that once ruled their northern lands. The Russians continue to import rulers and ideas from the West to this day, from the German Romanoff dynasty to German Marxist ideas to the American robber capitalism of today. Finally, the Scandinavians have again discarded Christianity and reverted to a sort of calm secular fatalism similar to that of the Viking Age, though their ample social net eliminates their motivation to go plundering in foreign lands and hopefully keeps us safe from the fury of the Northmen.