Vikings. Pops

POP1

Cnut (he of the legend of the tide) was driven out of England by King Ethelred. According to Adam of Bremen, he returned in 1015 with a fleet of over 1000 large ships. Undoubtedly an exaggeration. Wikipedia quotes 200 ships and 10,000 men. The invasion was successful and in 1016 Cnut, at the age of about 20, became the king of England.

POP2

Compare to other invasions:

The Spanish Armada of 1588 consisted of 132 ships, amomg them some of the largest ever built till that time; 3000 cannon and 30,000 men.

Harald Hardrada of Norway in 1066.  300 ships.  Resoundingly defeated at the battle of Stamford Bridge by the new Anglo-Saxon king Harold Godwinson, a mere 25 ships sufficed to take what was left of the Viking army back to Norway.

Two days later William the Conqueror arrived in England.  He had between 600 and 700 transport ships to carry 7000 men (including 3000 cavalry.)

Julius Caesar had 800 ships 5 legions (25,000 men)and 2000 cavalry.  54 BC.

POP3

The period of fifty years from Cnut to William The Conqueror is perhaps the pivotal period of English history, not just because of the Norman conquest of 1066, but because of what might have been but was not.  Consider the possibilities:

Cnut died in 1035.  His two sons ruled for a brief period dying respectively in 1040 and 1042.  Had either of them lived longer, William the Conqueror would probably not have invaded in 1066, and England would have been a Scandinavian nation; the English language would have been a mix of Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon.

The battle of Hastings was a very closely fought battle that could have gone either way, even despite the weariness of King Harold's army which had just defeated Hardrada's Vikings and endured a forced march from the north of England.  If Harold had been victorious, England would have remained Anglo-Saxon and the English language would not be this glorious amalgam of Anglo-Saxon and French.

POP4

The Normans (Norse-men) were the descendants of Vikings who settled in what became Normandy.  Their leader was Rollo who, in about 911, became baptized and married the daughter of King Charles the Simple.

POP5

In the Heathen calender, the midwinter feast was called Jol. In the three scandinavian languages of today Jul is the term for Christmas, and in the English language we have Yuletide.

POP6

According to the Icelandic historian and poet Snorri Sturluson (1179-1241), Odin promised his followers that each man who came to him in Valhalla would have the use of "what he himself had buried in the earth". This would go a long way toward explaining the treasure troves that farmers sometimes dig up, such as the Silverdale hoard, or the Spillings hoard discovered in 1999.

POP7

From about 800 to about 1200 there occured the Mediaeval Warm Period (also known as the Little Optimum) which producd some of the warmest centuries of the past 8000 years. Previously inhospitable regions now became destinations for Viking settlers, who now had the incentive to make the long journey westward toward a desirable end, and were thus induced to travel ever further, to Iceland, on to Greenland and finally to America. Iceland for example was covered with woods from the mountains to the seashore, and whereas now only 20% of the land is suitable for pasture, then the figure was between 45 and 70%.

In 1495 Pope Alexander VI (that would be Alexander Borgia) found time amidst his intrigues to express concern in a papal letter about the spiritual life of Greenlanders noting that "no vessel has touched there during the past eighty years".

POP8

Charlemagne's forced Christianization of the Saxons in the 780's included sanctions that were far divorced from any intimation of brotherly love - death for eating meat during lent, death for cremating the dead in accordance with Heaten rites, death for any who hid themselves unbaptised. But for a Christian to kill a Heathen earned no penance because the Heathen were considered less than human.

POP9

The Vikings were not always victorious.  In 844 a fleet of 80 Viking ships appeared off Lisbon, "covering the sea like dark birds". The city was captured and the fleet continued down the Spanish coast to Seville, at this time part of the Muslim empire.  The city was also taken and occupied.  A Muslim army with the use of siege catapults drove the Vikings out.  A few months later the Vikings suffered another defeat with the loss of thirty ships.  The corpses of Viking captives hung from the palm trees of Seville and Talyata - an incongruous picture of Norsemen amid the palm trees.