Viking Age on Orkney
The Viking Age on Orkney began around 780 AD, before the raid on Lindisfarne . Although there is no doubt about the ultimate extent of the Scandinavian settlement, the exact circumstances of the arrival and takeover of the Orkney by the Vikings are controversial as the sources are poor.
The settlement
An attack on Burghead Fort in the land of the Picts in 742 is the first to be recorded. When the next Viking raids on the British Isles (787 Dorset, 793 Lindisfarne both in England , 795 Lambay Island Ireland), the Scandinavians seem to have already had bases on Orkney. The strategic location between Norway and the target areas made them the base for raids, especially in Ireland , Scotland and Wales for centuries . The status of the first Orcadian settlements (possibly only winter camps) is unclear. Although early contacts existed, it is believed that Scandinavians did not go to Orkney and other regions of the British Isles in large numbers until the 9th century .
The Icelandic sagas, written down centuries after Orkney's takeover , put the Norwegian King Harald Fairhair (around 853–933) to blame for the exodus. Even if political pressure encouraged emigration, the period of the first raids (which probably resulted from an economic emergency) was about a century before his time. Overpopulation was just one of the factors that led to the expansion into the North Atlantic. The land seizures in eastern England and Normandy took place a little later. The north Germanic migration to the south ( Goths , Cimbri etc.) and the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England preceded this conquest. As a result of the climatic conditions in Scandinavia , there have been waves of migration at least since the turn of the ages, which, given the Vikings' nautical skills, led across the sea to the east and west. Orkney settlers came mainly from the west coast of Norway.
The Jarltum
The Orkneyinga saga is clear in interpreting the founding of the County of Orkney. The Norwegian King Harald Harfagri ( Fairhair ) (852–933) sailed west to confront Vikings who invaded Norway and had their base on Orkney. As a result of this campaign, "Rognvald, Jarl von More" , receives the newly founded county of Orkney from Harald as compensation for the loss of his son Ivar. Rognvald handed over the county to his brother Sigurd Eysteinsson (Sigurd the Mighty d. 892) around 880 AD. He is succeeded by Turf-Einarr ("Torf" -Einar), the illegitimate son of Rognvald von More. Torf-Einar received the Jarl title after two of his brothers failed in the task of leading the Jarltum and formally abandoned the Jarl dignity. He improved the living conditions on the islands. Torf-Einar imported the first peat and the technique of peat extraction from the area around the Moray Firth . Without this progress, colonization by larger groups of immigrants would have been difficult, as the archipelago had hardly any firewood. At the same time, Torf-Einar took over the tax burden for the first settlers, which he made dependent on his goodwill. This saga, written at least 300 years after the events, is the only but dubious source.
Within a few generations, Orkney became a Northman county, from which Jarls like Thorfinn Einarsson, called "Hausakljufer" ("Thorfinn the Skullsplitter") controlled the Shetlands , the Hebrides , the Isle of Man and parts of northwestern Scotland. With Sigurður Hlöðvisson (Sigurd the Fat), supposedly baptized in 995 by Olav I. Tryggvason , who died in 1014 at the Battle of Clontarf , the Orkney Jarls married into the Scottish royal family.
The northerners dominated the islands. Their language, Old Norse , prevailed in place of the native language of the Picts and their place names replaced the older ones. The relationship between Scandinavians and the Picts is controversial. There is the peace theory of the archaeologist Anna Ritchie, who concluded from finds such as the Westness burial ground that Vikings and Picts coexist in peace , and the genocide theory of Brian Smith, who deduces the violent suppression of the Pictish population and culture from the loss of all Pictish place names . In 839 the last surviving Pict king Uuen (on the mainland) was killed by the Vikings. During the rule of the Vikings over the islands in 843 AD, the Picts and Scots were united under Kenneth MacAlpin , but this had little influence on the Orkney for a century.
The end
The male line of descendants of the Viking Jarle became extinct with the death of Orkney jarl Jon Haraldsson , who was murdered in Thurso in 1231 . The Orkney fell after him for 90 years through a female line of descendants under the rule of a dynasty that descended from the Scottish Earls of Angus , then also through a female line of descendants to the Scottish Sinclair family. When King Christian I of Denmark, Norway and Sweden gave his daughter Margarethe to King James III in 1469 . married from Scotland , Orkney and Shetland received this as a dowry, whereby these territories fell to the Scottish Crown Domain in 1470 and the Norwegian Jarltum of Orkney became extinct. Orkney was part of Norway until 1470, whose culture, language and way of life at that time corresponded to those of a Nordic county.
See also
literature
- William PL Thomson: The New History of Orkney. Mercat Press, Edinburgh 2001, ISBN 1-84183-022-4 .
- Brian Smith: The Picts and the Martyrs or Did Vikings kill the native population of Orkney and Shetland. In: Northern Studies. Volume 36, 2001, ISSN 0305-506X , pp. 7-32.
- Lorentz Dietrichson: Monumenta Orcadica. The Norsemen in the Orkneys and the Monuments they have left. William & Norgate, London 1906 ( archive.org ).
Web links
- A Brief History of Orkney: The Norse Takeover . (English)
Footnotes
- ^ Maria-Claudia Tomany: Destination Viking and Orkneyinga saga. Historiography and Regional Identity Problems in Orkney. Utz, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-8316-0417-3 , pp. 74 f. and in particular the representation of the dispute in William PL Thomson: The New History of Orkney. 2001, pp. 43-49.