The Muddled Origins of the Phrase ‘Viking’
Starting within the eighth century, raiders exploded out of Scandinavia in a manner that shocked their contemporaries in Western Europe.
Their victims used varied names for his or her attackers from the north. In Anglo-Saxon (Previous English) writings the phrases “Danes,” “Northmen,” “pagans,” or “heathens” have been those most frequently used. However one time period, “viking,” is resoundingly absent.
What’s shocking is that the time period “Danes” didn’t carry a lot geographical accuracy in these mentions. In consequence, after we discover the phrase within the accounts of a specific Viking raid we can not ensure that these accountable got here from Denmark.
This sounds weird however an instance will illustrate the purpose. In 789, after reporting a raid on Portland, Dorset, in southwest England, the identical entry in a chronicle says that these accountable have been Danes—and that they got here from Norway! Clearly, a label might get indifferent from geography.
Many different labels have been additionally used to explain these ferocious northern raiders. The Franks, in what’s now France and western Germany, referred to as them the Nordmanni, or “Northmen.” In consequence, an space ceded to them within the Tenth century would turn into Normandy, “Land of the Northmen.”
Some have advised that Slavs in Jap Europe knew them from their ruddy complexions because the Rus, which means “pink.” Or this title might have been derived from an Previous Norse phrase for “rowers” or “seamen.” (Previous Norse is principally an umbrella time period to explain languages spoken in Scandinavia within the early Center Ages.) Or maybe the Rus label got here from a coastal space of Sweden referred to as Roslagen.
The phrase finally gave rise to the nationwide names of Russia and Belarus. It’s because the roots of the historic Russian nation began as a combined Viking-Slav state centered round Kyiv in Ukraine.
A associated phrase, Rhos, was used within the Byzantine Empire (dominated from Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul, Turkey), whose rulers employed the Scandinavians as mercenaries. The northern sailors had traveled down the rivers main from the Baltic Sea and, finally, sailed into the Black Sea. From there, they traveled into the japanese Mediterranean and the Byzantine Empire, the place they discovered their preventing abilities might earn a reasonably penny.
The Byzantines additionally referred to as them Varangians, or “those that swear loyalty,” and the mercenaries of the Varangian Guard served the Byzantine emperor in Istanbul. In Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia, one of them carved a runic inscription that reads “Halfdan carved these runes” or “Halfdan was here” into the white marble parapet surrounding the balcony of the higher gallery of the church.
In Eire, they have been the Northmen once more (Lochlannach in Irish), a designation much like the one utilized by the Franks. For causes which might be obscure, the Irish went on to distinguish the Norwegians as Finn-gaill (white foreigners) and the Danes as Dubb-gaill (black foreigners).
Removed from Scandinavia, Islamic writers referred to as them Al-madjus (heathens), in a religiously derived label much like that utilized by Anglo-Saxons, including “Might Allah curse them.” And, sure, Scandinavians reached the Islamic lands which stretched from the Iberian Peninsula to the Center East, and past to the Caspian Sea.
What’s shocking to the fashionable reader is the truth that we rarely hear them referred to as Vikings exterior of Scandinavia on the time. Though a number of doable origins have been proposed, we’ve no particular reply to the query of the place the now-familiar time period got here from.
In Previous Icelandic (a variant of Previous Norse), the phrase vik (which means “bay” or “creek”) might have been used to explain seamen hiding in, or crusing from, coastal, Scandinavian inlets. This may have been an comprehensible label, whether or not it was meant because the impartial sailor or the extra rakish pirate. On this manner, a geographical time period might have turn into a bunch title.
An space of southern Norway was referred to as Vik, so one other label rooted in geography might have turn into hooked up to these crusing from this space. Then again, the Previous Icelandic verb vikja, which means “shifting” or “turning apart,” might have come to explain seafarers who have been all the time “on the transfer.”
These prospects are rooted in geographical origins, however occupation can also have been within the combine when it got here to the definition because it developed. Later Previous Norse Scandinavian written sources name a raider a vikingr and a raiding expedition of such folks a viking. For Scandinavians, the phrase “viking” is one thing you probably did reasonably than what you have been.
For a lot of who have been described on this manner (including female Viking warriors), this could have been a part-time occupation. At different occasions of the yr, or throughout different phases of their lives, they might not have gone out “viking” or been thought-about Vikings. Then they might have been farming and buying and selling. Viking as a part-time exercise—a sort of medieval job-share—just isn’t how we’ve come to know the time period at this time.
For the Scandinavians who used the time period, “going viking” didn’t carry a destructive connotation. In Previous Norse sources, going out viking was an journey, collaborating in a spot of muscular free enterprise.
Nevertheless, these on the receiving finish of a Scandinavian raid seen issues very in another way. It’s not shocking that the victims of the Vikings coined their very own phrases—and these have been typically not optimistic or complimentary.
Even the red-faced foreigners of Slavic and Byzantine accounts counsel a way of an alien “different.” Though, as we’ve seen, extra impartial geographical phrases have been additionally used (Danes, Northmen), even when these have been normally deployed within the context of a usually destructive account. For individuals who have been on the receiving finish of Scandinavian raids, there was undoubtedly no romantic notion of the Vikings.
Viking names, akin to Thorfinn Cranium-splitter, a Tenth-century Earl of Orkney, reveal that the Vikings themselves reveled in their own violent reputations and warrior prowess. As one historian wryly put it, concerning a Tenth-century Viking king of York: “He wasn’t referred to as Eric Bloodaxe as a result of he was good with the youngsters.”
So, given all these options, when did the time period “viking” come into English utilization?
Previous English—the language spoken by Anglo-Saxons in England earlier than the nation was conquered by the Normans in 1066—had an identical phrase for such raiders. The Previous English kind wicing or wicingas was derived from the Previous Norse phrase—however doesn’t seem as a label for Scandinavian pirates till the Tenth century. And it was solely used hardly ever—however, when used, it had a destructive connotation.
But, some English east coast place names include the phrase “viking.” In these instances, it might have been derived from a Scandinavian private title. If that’s the case, we’re again to a extra optimistic spin on the label, because the individual in query virtually actually carried the title with satisfaction. As in, “I’m an adventurer,” reasonably than, “My employment is smash-and-grab…and worse.”
Nevertheless, that positivity is no surprise, provided that the individual in query in these instances was virtually actually a Scandinavian settler who had come to England to take land. Examples embody Wickenby (trendy Lincolnshire), which suggests “Viking’s by” or “Viking’s village,” Wiganthorpe (trendy Yorkshire), which suggests “Viking’s thorp” or “Viking’s dependent farm,” and Wigston (trendy Leicestershire), which suggests “Viking’s tun” or “Viking’s village.”
After this removed from widespread use in Previous English, the phrase didn’t floor once more till virtually a millennium later when, throughout the nineteenth century, it lastly grew to become the usual time period for medieval Scandinavian invaders. That’s a very long time out of use, provided that at this time it’s so incessantly deployed.
The truth is, its trendy spelling, viking, just isn’t recorded earlier than 1840. Since then, it has come to explain these concerned in raiding expeditions, as Scandinavians initially used the time period, and Scandinavians usually throughout the Viking Age, a utilization by no means deployed up to now.
Nevertheless, it’s now so well-liked that it’s the label of selection for most individuals. Nonetheless, we have to do not forget that few of these assembly the unique Vikings would have acknowledged the time period; and, most strikingly, Scandinavian retailers and settlers wouldn’t have thought that it utilized to them, because it was not what they did. Nevertheless, Vikings is now the go-to label, such is the unusual historical past of language.