The Auldest Tung

The Norse Test

And so lastly before conclusions are drawn, albeit not irrevocably and with this subject they never can be, we turn to the final gap in the Calefrisian chronology, to a period in the history of the north-east of Scotland, about which, frankly, virtually nothing is known, at least not for sure. It is notionally the two hundred years from 800 AD to 1000 AD, or more accurately the two hundred and twenty-one from 793 AD to 1014 AD.

Some call it The Viking Era but I find that unhelpful and on two counts. Firstly the Viking word itself is inaccurate, at least as a generic term. My preference would be for "Scandic" and hence "The Scandic Era". And the reason is that for me the Vikings were a specific group of migrants, although not necessarily raiders, who were part of the Scandic Era, the first part, thus preceding the Norse, looked at in this chapter, the Danes, in the next, crossing slightly with and perhaps absorbed by the former but not obviously the latter, and both equally sea-born and of similar but not the same geographic origin. Specifically Viken, presumably etymologically at least the source of the Viken-ing, the Vikings, the people of Viken, was an ancient, larger are and around today's Oslofjord. It was a region that had been subject to the same pressures first of conquest that in Western, Norse Norway would be concluded with victory in about 875 AD for Harald Fairhair at the naval Battle of Hafrsfjord, and then of assimilation that would continue for the next thirty years and force displacement and Norse movement. The difference was that in Viken it had been been between a hundred and two hundred years earlier so from the middle of the 7th Century as other, similarly minor kingdoms had been forced together by more powerful kings, some of them Fairhair's ancestors, and then in addition had later succumbed to Danish pressure from the south.

And secondly even the term "Scandic" is something of a trope, indeed a misnomer. It infers only one half of the story. It is as if life outwith men of violence with perhaps horned helmets and certainly interesting if curious religious beliefs did not continue, when clearly it did and apparently successfully. In fact, in spite of Viking, Norse and Danish activity roughly the same period, 848 AD to 1018 AD, would see to Scotland the addition of the Anglic lands between Dunbar and the Tweed, would largely see the physical emergence of the Scotland we know it today and as such might equally in ours terms be named the Formation or the perhaps alliteratively more catchy Emergence Era. 

But let us for the moment stick to "Scandic" and accept with genuine Viking  movement from about 650 AD at some point or points they and in situ Calefrisians, and, indeed, also Scots Anglics, would have crossed paths. But they never apparently crossed swords and that can only be because they had an alternative, talking, with the facilitator probably, whilst not tribally closely related, a sharing of, first, a good deal of language, a prerequisite, and, second, common experience. Specifically all three groupings were derived from early Germanic, Continental settlers, albeit in different regions, who respectively had been forced from Southern Norway by weather, people and perhaps military pressure ultimately from Sweden, by weather and water from Old Frisia and from Anglia again by weather, people pressures and potentially a degree of military pressure once more of Swedish origin.

Moreover, the same reconciliatory process might have been repeated and even extended with the arrival of the seemingly more belligerent Norse, who to a degree shared the same backstory, notably military pressure. Certainly it might provide explanations of why there were no known raids on Calefrisia or indeed early raids into Pictland as a whole but that there were further south. On the one hand, whilst raiding into England from Orkney, even the fastest long-ship with the wind behind it would have needed an overnight on the way and always a port in a storm, of which there were, then as now, many. On the other the relationship with Norway of the Norse of Scotland in whatever form it was then was at times fractious yet they still needed to live, indeed trade in-and-out, day-by-day with already long-established, steady Calefrisia the obvious commercial alternative. Thus the Norse may have been allowed to use Calefrisian harbours for whatever purpose, raiding or trading, and in return Calefrisia would be both a mercantile partner and left alone to carry on as before including seeming to be loyal to Pictland but actually to sit on the fence. Then should the Norse attack the Pictish heartland the outcome would be as it was with an agreement that if the Vikings battled the Picts into submission, then there could a collective shrug of the shoulders, things could be looked at again and a realpolitik way forward found.

Indeed the same process might also provide a similar explanation subsequently in Brittia and Britannia of why, after initial flurries from 789 AD and notably on Lindisfarne in 793 AD itself, Norse attacks from 795 AD and then settlements were switched to admittedly more economically attractive, Celtic Ireland and also to equally Celtic but far less lush, marginally Pictish but more so Gaelic West Scotland and its islands. Specifically it suggests the possibility of a further understanding still within Germanic Scotland between again Norse on one side and on the other Scots Angles and an extension of it in time south of the border to English Angles, Jutes, any others and even Saxons, a cooperation that was not overt, had a strong element of watching backs, particularly but not exclusively by the Germanic non-Norse, but allowed coexistence. In Scotland it was as things turned out to be in more or less perpetuity. In Eastern England it lasted a century and a half and in the meantime Norse raids from the north, if not Hiberno-Norse attacks from the other side of the Irish Sea, not only ceased but there was no retaliation for those there had already been.

As it happened the Norse did eventually attack not Calefrisan but Pictish Caledonia. Yet I repeat only one early Pictish king, Eogan, nephew of Caustantin and the last regal descendent of Angus of 730 AD, was killed fighting them, presumably in defeat. And it would only be in 839 AD so forty years later and moreover in Fortriu so the northern territories, with even then the southern ones unscathed. Meanwhile under Caustantin himself, his brother, Oengus, and his son, Drest it seems either the acceptance of Calefrisian neutrality had extended to Caledonia as a whole or perhaps more realistically Norse pickings elsewhere were better and/or easier. Anyway a form of peace reigned and with some further Pictish accommodation of a less than critical nature and perhaps more by luck than judgement it would be able to continue to do so with just four more testing moments of probably generic Norse origin.

The first came in 866 AD towards the beginning of Causantin I’s reign and was due to a campaign into southern Pictland under joint kings of Dublin, Amlaib and Imar, so in reality not Cale-Norse but Hiberno-Norse and cut short apparently because of problems back in Ireland.

The second was in 900 AD, with a large element of confusion over both the where and the against whom. It involved the violent end of Donald II, conventionally recognised as the last king before Pictish morphed into Alban, a death that came after a just a year on the throne but one which had supposedly already seen defeat of Scandic forces, described as Dugall so perhaps Danish, probably on Seil, so far West Coast, and by “Scots”, so Gaels. It was also a death that had been augured to take place at Dunottar, a prophesy assumed by some as correct but again with a perhaps more likely alternative strategically, Forres, with here the date critical.

The final quarter of 9th Century had first seen an attempt by Norse Norway to exert its control over the Scandic occupants cum settlers of Shetland and Orkney. It had then seen a campaign or campaigns that expanded Orkney Norse reach, or perhaps more full reach into Caithness and also into Sutherland as far as the upper River Oykel and the Dornoch Firth. And finally it also seems to have seen certainly Scandic campaigning under Thorstein the Red from the Western Isles onto the mainland opposite Skye and north-west into Ross-shire. Those campaigns seem to have mostly come to an end with the death of Thorstein probably in the late 1880s and that of the Norse leader, Sigurd, in 892 AD, at which point confusion set in until the arrival in 895 AD of the next Orkney Earl to have a steady if perhaps harsh hand on the tiller, Torf-Einar. However, perhaps Donald, nick-named Dasantach, The Madman, saw in the several transfers of Orkney power an opportunity to push back against it. Equally it is possible that a Torf-Einar five years in with his feet under the table decided the moment was right to consolidate perhaps scattered Norse settlement south of the Oykel around the Moray Firth. Either way a meeting of arms not at Dunottar but at Forres as the century turned could be a logical result, which despite Donald's demise seems to have resulted in, well, nothing much.  It and, indeed, the next, i.e. the third and fourth examples of Norse-Pictish confrontation, one undoubted and the other not impossible but unlikely, would not occur for fully half a century and result in neither tangible gain or loss nor advance or retreat by either party. And this as once more the Calefrisian life of the North-East and with it its language had been able to continue very much as before.

That third example occurred in 954 AD. It was the violent death of Malcolm I. He had reigned for a little over a decade and his passing was, if anything, anti-climatic. It is said to have been in the Mearns, perhaps at Fetteresso. Some say it was a “Viking” incursion but it could just as well have been rebellion, connected with home opposition based around the Germanic enclave of Bervie and Stonehaven and not for the first time the fortress at Dunnottar, opposition that may or may not have been purely Pictish in source. Moreover, it had followed an expedition also by Donald into Moray there to quell what appears to be specifically local rebellion  and suggests both at least partial control of the area but also more general problems in his own backyard perhaps as a result of him taking his eye off the local as he involved himself in two historically-critical events both outwith the realm.

One was his ostensibly major part in the the final, Saxon-led expulsion of the Hiberno-Norse cum Danes from Northumbria and Deira in 950 AD. That same year he is said to have carried out a substantial, seemingly co-ordinated and probably clearing raid as far south as the Tees and two years later one source has him then involved in a further, successful battle in England alongside English allies with also men from Strathclyde against those same Hiberno-Norse. The other was prior to events in the east his incorporation of Strathclyde and points south and south-west into Alba as the Brythonic kingdom was finally overwhelmed and split, the northern half becoming the part of Scotland it is today and the southern half, Cumbria, going to increasingly Saxon England.     

And the fourth testing moment was in 962 AD, when Indulf, Malcolm's successor, definitely king now of Alba and not simply Pictland and who had in the year of his accession shown his cards by immediately taking Edinburgh, was killed by Findochty again in Moray in battle against “Vikings”, presumably Norse, in fact now Cale-Norse, with by then still ties but also several degrees of separation between Orkney and Norway. But Indulf's death was in victory that seems to have been not just enough to have halted any further Norse expansion southwards but also to ensure Calefrisia continued beyond as undisturbed as before. Moreover, beyond the deaths of Malcolm and Indulf and effectively the last throes of Norse-Pictish conflict, there is reason to believe there might finally have developed a similar understanding as between the Orkney Norse and Calefrisia with Pictland, indeed Alba itself, which went something like this.

The Picts recognised the Norse presence in the North. They effectively ceded the territory, even some population, and in return the Norse stepped back, confining their activity to consolidating a sphere of influence not just in the northern North but in the northern Irish Sea as well. And for two, almost three, generations they were to do it very successfully, indeed almost too successfully, that is until the Battle of Clontarf. Taking place in said 1014 AD just outside Dublin at Norse behest and as an attempt at all-Ireland hegemony it turned into a catastrophic defeat not only for the Hiberno-Norse but also their Norse and Viking allies from Shetland south to Man and not just in terms of fighting-men lost. It forced, indeed effectively left no alternative to in Scotland retrenchment and elsewhere a switching of Norse attention from Ireland as a whole to Normandy with all that would mean just fifty years later for England and eventually for Scotland's Lothian and Lowland power-base a hundred or more years later still.