Forgotten Vikings: D-Listers of the Viking Age

The Viking Age is a perennial subject for many, a period of about three-and-a-half centuries where the fortunes of various countries across northern Europe were forged out of fire, fury, bloodshed, economic growth, expansion, and all that jazz. Or at least, that is how it first seems; a constant ‘ramping up’ of scale and scope from an isolated raid on Lindisfarne in 793 to the final showdown at Stamford Bridge in 1066. This narrative, moving from raiders to invaders to crusaders, is one of the key tenets of modern storytelling about the Viking Age, covering such famous figures like Erik Bloodaxe, Harald Fairhair, Hardrada, Cnut the Great; some real, many not. But it is such famous figures – Viking Age celebrities – that overshadow and obscure some of the more interesting elements of the period. You’ve all likely heard of Mr. Bloodaxe, right? What about Knutr and Sigfrodr of York? Two kings who ruled about fifty years before him and were some of the first to implement Anglo-Scandinavian coinage in the capital. What about Bjorn Ironside and Ivarr the Boneless? Huge names. A-listers of the Viking Age. People will know who they are either through their perceived pseudo-historical impact or their enduring legacy throughout pop culture. But what about their contemporaries and like-minded kin? What about Sitriuc Silkbeard, Rorik of Dorestad, Bjorn of the Broadwickers? Characters large and small from sagas and chronicles, some ripped straight out of fiction and others embroidered into real political narratives of the ninth and tenth centuries.
To celebrate the release of Forgotten Vikings: New Approaches to the Viking Age – a book that tries to peel back many of the more obvious layers of the period – this article will run through several ‘lesser known’ (mileage may vary depending on your level of knowledge in the subject) figures from the 9th to 12th centuries and bring them into a new light. So, without further ado, let us move away from the celebrities of the Viking Age, and analyze their less-popular cousins, all still deserving of fame and acclaim.

Rorik of Dorestad: The Canny Diplomat

Appearing on the pages of continental chronicles in the 840s, an individual named Rorik from Denmark wanders into the frame as a masterful tactician and politician, the likes of which we see today in the world’s most astute diplomats and public speakers. To dissuade further Viking raids against the Low Countries (which were at the time under the hegemony of the Frankish kings), Rorik was appointed as a defender of Dorestad, a trading emporium underlying today’s Wijk bij Duurstedde, in The Netherlands. Paid presumably with a bribe and a promise of landed wealth, Rorik was entrusted to safeguard the shores from his own kinsmen, to act as an ‘anti-Viking’, by using his fleet and his forces to divert other Viking crews from attacking the Low Countries. That is, more or less, what happened, though not exactly without error.
You will have all heard of Rollo, the enterprising raider who was given land in France in 911, which would later become the Duchy of Normandy. Rollo was following a road well-trodden, laid by the likes of Rorik and his 9th century forebears. Between 836 and 840, Dorestad was ‘burned to the ground’ and ‘absolutely destroyed’ about three or four times, and only then was it given to Rorik as a benefice. Reading between the lines of these Frankish annals, we can see that the place clearly wasn’t destroyed and then rebuilt every few months; we must then question what exactly the annalists were getting at! Were they alluding to a Scandinavian takeover of the place, and were they reticent to acknowledge its status as newly owned by their enemies? By ‘giving’ Dorestad to Rorik, Frankish kings may have just been officializing an already lost piece of territory, one that persisted as a cap in Rorik’s feather for a further thirty years before his death.
During his reign over Dorestad, Rorik fulfilled his promise of diverting further Viking raids, but only in the most literal sense. By dissuading raiders from attacking Dorestad and its hinterlands, Rorik effectively just redirected Viking crews elsewhere in the Frankish kingdom, leading to them becoming a problem for other kings. He did not solve the problem but delegated it to someone else, as politicians often do. In this regard, over his thirty-year career, Rorik of Dorestad deftly played the courts and chronicles of 9th century France, achieving status, land, and wealth within a Frankish and Frisian sphere, despite being cut from the same cloth of enterprising raider as those he was paid to repel!

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Top image: Viking ships in the distance.        Source: Vlastimil Šesták / Adobe Stock

By Alex Harvey