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this is the somewhat typed up transcript of the above podcast. Enjoy.
Hello and welcome to the first episode of the first season of History on the Run. Each of these episodes will be coming out weekly. On Friday to be specific, but you can download and listen to them at your own leisure. Whether it’s walking, running, doing chores, or driving to work, I will give you something to think about and talk about with your friends. While I love History, and every episode will have dozens of historical nuggets in them, history is boring by itself. Let’s face it. Dates, names, and places can be interesting, but without something else history is just some people who did some stuff in some places. In a college setting you’d be getting all of the Social Sciences and that is what we’ll bring here at History on the Run. Psychology, economics, sociology, political science, international relations, and every part of that great tree of the social sciences will be touched upon. But, without further ado, let’s get on with the show.
Imagine living in a big city. Every day you hear reports coming in. Stories of the foreboding presence sweeping in from the north filters into your conversations. The only feeling that you can possibly have had that comes anywhere close to what these people feel is that sinking feeling of a deadline you can’t avoid coming up. Just think of it, that dread, boiling in your chest. It’s the procrastinator’s nightmare. Now just think of that feeling times ten. Imagine that today. New York, Washington, San Francisco, Chicago, you name it. Imagine this city surrounded by 40,000 Danes and there’s only you and 200 men at arms assigned to defend the city.
This is what happened to Paris during the 9th century. While Paris didn’t have the Champ de Elyees, the Eiffel Tower, or the Arc de Triumph it was still an important city of medieval France. At this time France was the heart of the Carolingian Empire, and the locals had tried their best to halt the Viking raid. The Vikings traveled in their famous longboats up and down all of Europe’s rivers. Only twenty years before Vikings in Russia had attacked the capitol of the Byzantine Empire Constantinople! The Vikings were everywhere the rivers could take them. Luckily for them every major city was on some major river, so the pickings were plentiful.
The Carolingians tried to stop the Vikings with everything possible. The most important of these fortifications were the fortified bridges. Paris had two of these fortified bridges to block off the river, and these bridges were the defenders’ best hope at holding off the Viking menace. Bishop Gozlin and Count Odo had to attempt to defend the bridge only two hundred men at arms. While 40,000 might be an exaggeration by Abbo, the poet who recorded the event, we can see that there was a very large Viking force in place. The Danes landed in seven hundred ships and demanded the surrender of the city. Count Odo, however, refused to give up the city to the Danes. Count Odo and his brother Robert the Strong took charge of the defense and fought off attacks against an unfinished tower on the bridge. The attacks failed and the Vikings regrouped for a new plan. The Danes first built siege engines and according to Abbo a thousand shots were fired into the tower. The defenders must have been shell shocked at this point, and the constant barrage repetitively wrecking every defense holding back a force of men who want to rip you apart probably left them nerve-wracked and senseless. At this point the Danes assaulted the tower in three separate groups with each formed into a testudo formation. The testudo is a group formation where all of the troops hold their shields so that every side has shields facing out. The people in the center hold the shields above their heads to catch any arrows that land on top of the group. The Danes would have had to move in a tight formation and move slowly to maintain the formation and have good discipline to make sure anybody who fell from an arrow or a javelin gets replaced. They filled in ditches and cut off the tower from the bridge back to the city and killed the men inside. They then tried to break into the city proper and get their hands on men, women, and children to sell as slaves and all of the valuables they could get their hands on. Luckily for the defenders they held until the Carolingian Emperor showed up. You can just imagine the relief that must have swept over the defenders when they heard the new.
Let’s step back from the siege for a second and ask why did these raiders descend to pillage, loot, and burn Europe? Why did they become the nightmare from the North? I think it’s too often that we look just at their own culture and ignore what made these men become the nightmares of bishops, counts, and emperors from France to the Byzantine Empire. In a way, we do two polar opposite things to these people. We either try and make them into us or we emphasize how they’re not like us.
Let me explain myself here. When we study Vikings you’ll hear a lot about Norse family structure, their history, their culture, their religion, etc, but very seldom do you get into the psychology and economics behind the actions of these raiders. While families, religion, trade, and other such things are very interesting the real importance lies in what they did that changed history. To put it bluntly it’s the raiding, ransoming, and violence that makes these men really interesting. What made them do what they did? What would it take to make you do it?
The second thing we do is we distance ourselves from these types. Take pirates for example; everyone knows about Blackbeard and other worse pirates. We think of cruelty, a feverish desire for wealth, and of course, a love of the rum. What we don’t look at is the motivation. Did it make economic sense to be a pirate? What were the rewards? What caused this? Why isn’t it happening now? Could it happen now? Is it happening now?
So, you might be thinking what is this podcast? This podcast is a lecture series. Each series will be broken down into five lectures. Each series will revolve around a theme. The theme of this series is Violence for profit. The first lecture will deal with Vikings, the second with pirates, mercenaries will come next, we’ll move on to gangsters, and lastly we’ll deal with the armies of conventional states.
So, Vikings, where was I…..Ah yes, the Siege of Paris. The reason the Vikings did these things was simple: profit. Money. Wealth. And for the Vikings it was incredibly profitable. After Charles arrived it did not suddenly look like a clip from the Lord of the Rings with Gandalf leading the relief force to save everyone from the barbarian horde. No, it was quite different. When Charles arrived he paid the Vikings to go away. He would be deposed after coming to the aid of the three year siege with his moneybags. The Carolingian Empire would break up and would not be put back together. Charles would be known as Charles the Fat. Not only did Charles the Fat pay the Danes, but he also let them pass into Burgundy which was not under his control to sack, pillage, and destroy that territory. The Vikings must have made off rather well. After being paid they were able to keep what they had taken from the area around Paris and they were allowed to go into Burgundy to raid for slaves and other goods.
The Vikings got their income through a multitude of ways. One way was simply by trading. The Germans in Denmark had a healthy trading relationship that stretched back to Roman and Celtic periods of history where ideas, goods, and people moved between the cultures. As they began to trade with the new European states after the fall of Rome they also began to raid, and they then began to conquer. The Vikings from Norway, Denmark, and Sweden set up kingdoms in England, Ireland, and Russia through conquest. In Normandy France they were actually invited in. The French were having so many problems fighting the Vikings off they hired Vikings to take care of these other Vikings. It’s like in the business community where you poach your competitor’s employees to use against them.
So let’s imagine that these raiding ventures are a business. Where do they get their revenue? First they get it through the acquisition of goods. Anything that had value they could simply take and sell. This included slaves. At the siege of Paris any free men they found in the countryside were taken into bondage. The Vikings had a long history of slavery. When attacking other neighboring local villages they would take the prisoners and sell them as slaves, and when they met other cultures taking them as slaves was done without hesitation. In Ireland, for instance, the Vikings were incredibly involved in the slave trade. ‘The Annals of Ulster’ record times when the Vikings swept down and took cattle, men, women, children, and anything else they could lug onto their ships. The Vikings used their large trade network to send their slaves all over the known world. We know that many of slaves went to Muslim Spain, but it’s possible slaves could have been traded along the entire network that stretched from Iceland to India. We know that their trade network expanded this far because in an archeological dig on the Swedish island of Helgö a small statue of Buddha was found. Clearly globalization is nothing new. It’s also interesting to think that in the Arab World or India there are people with an Irish heritage they don’t even know about.
Now today we have ceased to view human beings as being part of a market, but this is simply because cultures can decide what is a market and what is not a market. For example there is a market over my time and my labor, but there is no market over me. Certain things like Dum dum rounds, mines, and chemical weapons are markets for some and for others as horrid as slavery. We in America do not allow a market for the time of children to exist, but in many other countries around the globe they have no qualms about such a market. Interestingly enough while we make a market for a child’s labor illegal here in the US we deal every day with markets that deal with child labor. For the average Viking a slave was the same thing as any other good and was bought and sold at in capitalist markets where prices and quantities were controlled by supply and demand. If you’re still not following me let me give you another example. Today our friends are not markets. When we are on Facebook we don’t think about profit, revenue, or any other business terms. But what about the future? Is this going to change? Some people would like this to change and are trying to turn your friendships into a business….for you. Here’s a clip from a site talking about a new Social Network site called MyPage5
MyPage5
Quote, “They call it “the MOST FINANCIALLY REWARDING social networking site in the world”, which is true to some extend. You earn $5 just for signing up and the rest is as followed: (you can do most of these as many times as you want to), Create blog= 4c, Blog Comment= 1c, Upload video= 3c, Video comment= 1c, Post classified= 1c, Start topic in a group= 1c, Group Comment= 1c, Profile comment= 1c, Upload photo to album= 1c, Photo comment= 1c, Band comment= 1c, Chat reward= 2c, plus 5% of your referral’s daily activities. As you can see, there are a lot of ways to make money on this site. You will be paid via pay pal.”
http://www.blogstash.com/5-social-networking-sites-to-make-money-socializing/
Other sites are popping up like daisies. Things like FrensZone, 60gr, ApSense, Gather, and so many more are trying to attract Facebook’s users by letting them share in the spoils
Ok, I think we’ve got a bit distracted. Ok, Viking revenue streams. We have goods, slaves, and of course land. Land, before the industrial revolution was one of the most valuable things in the world. Land came with serfs who were people tied to the land and were basically slaves. Land got you food, people, and of course status. The one thing you had to do was defend your land and your people because others wanted to take it. When the Vikings thought they could keep the land they did. In the areas that had a strong state with a long periods of Roman Rule the Vikings weren’t able to take any land, and in the case they did they were invited by the ruler. In Russia, Ireland, and England there wasn’t a strong state that was able to resist Viking advance. In the case of England there had been Roman rule, but it had not been for as long a time as France and was always a periphery of the Empire. In the case of Normandy the Vikings had been invited in and were able to become an established part of French culture.
So, goods, people, and land are all forms of profit for the Viking raider. Another way of creating wealth for the future mascots of the Purple People Eaters from Minnesota involved zero violence. Historians have labeled the term Danegeld. It was basically a tribute system that prevented the Vikings from attacking. The threat of violence that generated tribute was the final form of income for these raiders. The best part is not a drop of blood was spilt in the process.
The Vikings developed technology in their boats that allowed them to travel up rivers easily. These longboats were able to travel across oceans and across Europe. They were such good sailors that nobody….let me repeat that….nobody…..tried to challenge the Vikings at sea. Charlemagne, by far the pinnacle of the Carolingian Empire only fortified the border. It’s hard to imagine that one of the greatest military commanders of the Middle Ages would back away from challenging the Vikings at sea if he thought there was any chance that he could beat them. This means that the Vikings had complete control of the seas. This gave them the strategic advantage because they could land anywhere at any time. This mobility gave them an ability to strike all of Europe’s major cities…..and they did.
However the Vikings did need to fight once they landed. Boats don’t win wars on land…ok…that’s not quite true, but nonetheless the Vikings had to be a force on the battlefield to be the scourge of Europe. The Vikings certainly had the tactics, weapons, and battlefield prowess to be just that. The main armor that would have been worn by Viking warriors was chain mail with an iron helm with a nose guard. Chain mail is basically thousands of little steel or iron links that formed a shirt. Any type of slash would have the same effect as a blunt object, but stabbing attacks were often able to pierce the chain mail mesh. To give this a little personal flair I own a shirt of chain mail….and let’s just say I enjoyed wearing it around at places like….school. Someone would always think they were clever and stab me with their pencil asking, “does this hurt?” Unfortunately, as I said, a stabbing motion is just able to pass through the rings, and so yes, it did hurt. Another thing about chain mail is it often times went just past the hips like a very short skirt. That means there was little protecting your shins from blows. Lastly, the Vikings carried a wooden round shield to deflect blows.
The main weapon of the Vikings was not an axe, but a sword. They did use axes as well, and we’ll get to that, but the main weapon of choice was a 2 to three foot Frankish broadsword. Ironically it was Frankish weapons that were used to terrorize the France. Every free Scandinavian had some skill with a blade as it was also a weapon of defense. Throwing axes, and later in the 10th century a two handed axe started to be used by the Scandinavians. Finally, along with spears both bows and javelins were used by Vikings to great effect. Most Vikings hunted for game regularly, so their ability with a bow should not be underestimated.
In the Icelandic Sagas there is a great detail given to battles and how they took place with a large amount of detail involved. One of the things that this shows is that everyone who listened was familiar with an assortment of weapons and their uses.
Viking fleets would often merge and this meant that several thousand Vikings wearing armor that was the best for its times could emerge basically anywhere. For military historians it’s a stroke of genius. For the Vikings at the time it was just a good way to make money and get land. Which, of course, they did.
Stay tuned next week for the next lecture in the series “Violence 4 Profit”. We’ll be looking to Pirates. Not only were they the scourges of the seas, but they were oftentimes good business ventures.
Sources:
Piracy: The Complete History by Angus Konstam
The Medieval Siege by Jim Bradbury
War in the Middle Ages by Philippe Contamine
The lecture series The Vikings by Kenneth W. Harl
The lecture series The Medieval World by Thomas F. Madden
http://www.blogstash.com/5-social-networking-sites-to-make-money-socializing/
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