The Vikings in Scotland

This is the Westness brooch. Silver inlaid with panels of gold, decorated with little knuckles of amber and red glass, it is a thing of beauty.

“This is the best example of its kind anywhere in Britain or Ireland,” Maldonado says. “It would have been worn by someone of the top level. We’re talking kings or bishops.”

He points to the intricate carvings in the gold. “The closer you look the more you see. The little birdies there, the little animals. The best one is the wolf,” he says, pointing to a tiny snout.

Ornate patterns of animal figures curl around and across the gold. Dating to around 750AD, this is an example of the height of craft and art in the eighth century.

So, the question is how did it end up buried in a Viking woman’s grave more than 100 years later at the end of the ninth century?

Adrian Maldonado examines a Viking axe head

Today, Maldonado, until recently Glenmorangie Research Fellow and now the Galloway Hoard researcher, is laying out the answer. And in doing so he’s telling us a story of the Vikings that may be a little different than the one we think we know.

“This is buried at the end of the ninth century,” he says of the brooch-pin, which was discovered by an Orkney farmer in 1963. “One of the first generation of Viking burials in Westness.

“This is a woman who is about 25 to 30 when she dies. She seems to die in childbirth because there is an infant in the grave with her. She’s wearing her oval brooches, Scandinavian-style, and this, one of the best examples anywhere of a brooch-pin of this kind.

“The interesting thing about Westness is that it’s a Viking cemetery, but it’s in a Pictish burial ground. The Picts are already burying there. The Vikings, instead of setting up a new burial ground, just bury alongside the Picts.

“The Westness woman, in particular, has this real mix of Norse stuff, Irish stuff, English stuff and this thing,” he says, pointing to the brooch-pin, “prominently displayed. So, she’s wearing little belts that are probably Northumbrian, she’s got a comb that is probably Friesian, she’s got a beaded necklace from Germany.

“So, this person is showing off all the different things the Viking world has access to in one burial.

“And the fact that she is wearing this means she’s probably of Irish or Pictish descent.”

Three other women buried as Vikings on the site have had their bones tested and have been declared “insular”, which means they’re from Ireland, Scotland or northern England.

“They’re definitely not Norse women,” Maldonado explains. “And the men from that same cemetery tend to be from colder climates and so they are Norse.”

Viking brooches held in storage at the National Museums Collection Centre

What does this all mean? It means that some of our cliched notions of the Vikings may be wrong. That the idea of the Vikings as wild warriors looting and burning and pillaging their way across Europe for a couple of centuries from the end of the eighth century is not the whole story.

The true Viking saga is a more complex, fluid one than we sometimes allow. And it’s one that takes in Ireland, England, the Arab world and the birth of Scotland.

Or, put another way, it’s another chapter of the human story itself; a story of encounters that sometimes led to violence but also to trade, to wealth, to marriage, to the sharing of ideas and ultimately to integration or assimilation.

Maldonado is a modern-day example of that story himself. Born in Puerto Rico, the 38-year-old studied medieval history at Harvard. In his third year he came to St Andrews on an exchange programme. “And I saw the Border abbeys, I saw St Andrews Cathedral. That was it. Medieval history was over, and I transitioned into archaeology. I came back to Glasgow for a Masters.”

In 2018 he was appointed the Glenmorangie Research Fellow, a position funded by the whisky distiller, which has meant rummaging around in the storerooms of the National Museums Collection Centre in Granton where we are today.

There are roughly 22,000 items on display in the National Museum of Scotland up in Chambers Street. In Granton, there are some 12 million more, spread around 11 buildings. This installation is more than just storage, though. It’s a centre for conservation, preservation and scientific research.

And so, Maldonado has been working his way through tray after tray of Viking artefacts since 2018. Out of this has come a new book, Crucible of Nations, and a renewed idea of who the Vikings were and how they changed European history. And Scottish history into the bargain.

Read More: What did the Romans do for us?

It’s a story that begins at the end of the eighth century with the first Viking raid on the British Isles. A violent insertion into the story that has echoed down the centuries.

Their target was monasteries. “They’re like the universities of their day with all the money and wealth and resources that brings,” Maldonado explains

“The bishops are wearing gold rings, they’re wearing silk and fine robes, and these places are quite open. At the end of the eighth century word gets to Scandinavia.”

In 793AD, the first Viking raid hits Lindisfarne in Northumbria. Two years later, Iona is targeted.

The Vikings seize wealth, and they seize people. Some to sell off as slaves. Some to hold for ransom.

“From there it’s a couple of years of smash and grab raids, incredible violence,” Maldonado continues. “On Iona, 60 people are killed during a raid in 806.

“It’s a massacre. Instead of taking people away something went wrong.

“But that seems to be the exception.”

And this is key. For all our populist notions of Viking raids there is little actual evidence of burning churches and mass executions.

“It almost never happens,” Maldonado points out. “There is only one place in Scotland that has good evidence of violence and burning down.

Adrian Maldonado in the NMS Collection Centre

“Portmahomack [in Easter Ross] was the sight of a massive monastery that was completely undocumented. But an archaeological excavation has uncovered a huge burning layer.

“There are a couple of skulls with blade wounds to the head. That’s the one place where it definitely seems to have taken place. Otherwise, it just doesn’t happen.”

The reality of the Viking age is more nuanced. As time passes, the Vikings begin to settle in the north and west of Scotland and along the coast of Ireland. They become part of our island story.

“Dublin is the big one. But in Scotland they take over entire islands. Colonsay seems to go completely Viking. That’s Viking headquarters. There are loads of burials, loads of settlement evidence.

“Some islands like Mull seem to have no Viking settlements or Viking burials. You could read that in a couple of different ways. The people of Mull fought them back … Maybe. Or they came to an agreement.

“That’s something that we don’t really talk about with the Vikings. We imagine them killing their way through. But the patterns of settlement really show you something else.”

That’s not to say they didn’t fight. In The Wolf Age, his new history of the Vikings in the 11th century, the Norwegian historian Tore Skeie argues that to the Vikings war “was a kind of natural state, a completely commonplace part of the world and people’s lives.”

And there’s no question they fought on Scottish soil. At the beginning of the Viking age in the ninth century there was a huge battle in 839AD which saw the death of both the Pictish King and the King of Dalriada at Viking hands.

There would be more battles in the ninth century, but the Vikings quickly established settlements on Orkney, Shetland, the Hebrides and possibly in Strathclyde. And by the late ninth century the division between Viking and native is beginning to rub away at the edges.

What we begin to see is the Vikings settle beside the Picts and the Irish. They bring their families with them as part of the war bands, set up homes in Ireland and what would become Scotland. And they begin to intermarry. Hence the woman in the grave in Westness wearing a brooch-pin made 100 years and maybe more before she lived and died.

A new term is invented for these Vikings who have settled in the British Isles, “foreigner Gaels”.

The result is a flow of information and influence flowing both ways, with the waters of the North Sea and the Irish Sea as the information highways.

“The Vikings bring this Irish fashion out of Ireland into Scotland. And then it goes back to Norway, and they start making their own Norse-flavour brooches and pins in that Irish style,” Maldonado explains.

“The colonial process goes both ways. It seems that people are moving in both directions and families are coming over here, bringing the objects that they wore in Scandinavia, and we end up seeing them in their graves.

“But more often than not they’re wearing Scandinavian brooches with stuff made in Dublin, stuff made here.”

Silver is the wealth of the time. The Vikings access Russia via the Baltic and then travel down the silk road, selling slaves in exchange for silver.

“They’re bringing back pure silver from the Islamic world. We know that because we have these dirham coins, Arabic coins, that are minted in Uzbekistan and found in Viking hoards in Scotland,” Maldonado explains.

And that wealth begins to be spread around. “If you see which way the wind is blowing, you might learn a bit of Norse to trade at least. If you don’t go fully Viking, you at least pick up a few words. If you give them the cattle they want, you might get a bit of silver out of it.

“That’s the Galloway hoard in a nutshell.”

The hoard, which dates to 900AD is the richest collection of Viking-age objects found in Britain and Ireland. It was discovered at Balmaghie in Kirkcudbrightshire in 2014.

What was found may look Viking, but there are Anglo-Saxon names written on it, Maldonado points out.

“So, these are locals. It just shows you that people can plug into this system once it’s in place.”

What emerges then is a picture of peoples living alongside each other in settlements, sharing craft skills and culture. Gaels beside Vikings in Ireland, Picts beside Vikings on the Scottish islands. And as time passes there is inevitably a blurring of those lines.

Ideas and influences are shared, whether that be jewellery designs or Gods. By the 10th and 11th centuries Vikings were beginning to convert to Christianity or at least paying lip service to the new God in exchange for the possibility of more trade or influence.

But in this push and pull of cultural influences there were inevitably losers. And in this case, it seems to have the Picts.

Orkney and Shetland were Pictish once. The evidence of Pictish symbols carved in stone suggests as much. And yet there are no Pictish place names left, though some – Pitlochry, Aberfeldy – still exist on the mainland.

Does that suggest the Vikings simply wiped the Picts out on the islands? “It’s not so easy as that,” Maldonado points out. “The archaeology doesn’t show any evidence of that wiping out. What you have is Viking objects in Pictish houses for about 100 years.

“It’s like they are living alongside each other, or the Vikings are taking their homes. Either way, there is not this overnight massacre. You just don’t see it. They’re using Pictish combs alongside Norse combs, old brooches, new brooches side by side.

“For at least 100 years there is this overlap and then it goes a little bit more strongly Norse. And the idea is they didn’t have to wipe anybody out. After a while in Orkney and Shetland they’re trading with Norway more than they are trading with anybody else. People are right on the motorway there.

“It just becomes easier to pick up Norse and have Norse be the language of business, the language of the kings. And eventually it just becomes the language that everybody speaks.”

The Picts were squeezed between the Viking incursions and the increasing strength and influence of the Gaels.

Eventually, there’s no more Pictish language, there are no more Pictish symbols. On the islands they speak Norse, elsewhere they start speaking Gaelic.

“And that’s the beginning of Alba,” suggests Maldonado. “So, the Picts disappear in the Viking age. They’re the only people that this happens to. Everybody else kind of makes their way through.

And Picts apart, this, Maldonado points out, is the real story of the Viking age. It’s a story of different peoples rubbing against each other, sometimes, often, violently, but also becoming intertwined.

And that can be seen in the Viking artefacts in front of us in Granton here today.

“Their shields are made in Dublin; their swords are made in France and the pins are made in Ireland. And we call these things Viking,” Maldonado concludes.

This is the complex and interrelated truth about the Vikings. Their story is our story too

On the tray in front of us the Westness brooch glitters still, more than 1,000 years after it was made, a shining beacon from the Dark Ages, a time more complex than we sometimes imagine.

Crucible of Nations: Scotland from Viking Age to Medieval Kingdom by Adrian Maldonado, published by National Museums Scotland Enterprises, is available to pre-order now. Visit nms.ac.uk

Rediscovering Viking Age Scotland with Michael Wood in which the broadcaster and historian will be in conversation with Adrian Maldonado takes place on Tuesday at 6pm. Book tickets for online viewing via the National Museums website.

The exhibition Galloway Hoard: Viking Age Treasure is now on at Kirkcudbright Galleries until July 10, 2022. Visit kirkcudbrightgalleries.org.uk

Silver arm ring, 10TH century AD

“So, this is from Kirk O’Banks in Caithness,” Adrian Maldonado explains. “At this point the Vikings just live here. Orkney and Shetland are Norse places now. The Hebrides are Norse islands. Dublin has been there for 100 years. They start making arm rings like these

“It’s called ring money. These can be chopped up as well. If you’re making a small transaction, you can cut a bit off.”

Gold arm ring, Oxna, Shetland, 11th century

“The gold rings are almost never chopped up. These are for really big transactions or really prestigious transactions; buying land, gifting money to the church, bride wealth, a dowry, or payments of ransom money, tributes to a king.”

Wolf-headed sword, mid-ninth century, Swandro, Rousay, Orkney

“It’s just the hilt of the sword. But if you look really closely you can see wolf heads. Tiny eyes, tiny ears and this is the snout going up here.

“The Vikings bury weapons with the dead as part of the funerary rituals. These people aren’t being sent off in burning ships. That’s a movie thing. There are cremations and there is one record of a boat burial and then the boat is set alight and then they gather it all up and put a mound over it.

“It’s actually harder to drag your longship out onto land far enough that it is up on the hill in a prominent place. That’s much harder to do than just light it on fire.”