Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (34 page)

discussed in the Prologue played a role. The Vikings did damage their envi
ronment, they did suffer from climate changes, and their own responses
and cultural values did affect the outcome. The first and third of those three factors also operated in the histories of Easter and Mangareva's neighbors,
and all three operated for the Anasazi and the Maya, but in addition trade with friendly outsiders played an essential role in the histories of Iceland
and Greenland as of Mangareva's neighbors and the Anasazi, although not
in Easter Island and Maya history. Finally, among these societies, only in Viking Greenland did hostile outsiders (the Inuit) intervene crucially. Thus,
if the histories of Easter Island and Mangareva's neighbors are fugues weav
ing together two and three themes respectively, as do some fugues by Jo-
hann Sebastian Bach, Iceland's troubles are a quadruple fugue, like the
mighty unfinished fugue with which the dying Bach meant to complete his
last great composition, the
Art of the Fugue.
Only Greenland's demise gives
us what Bach himself never attempted, a full quintuple fugue. For all these
reasons, Viking societies will be presented in this chapter and the next two
as the most detailed example in this book: the second and larger of the two
sheep inside our boa constrictor.

The prelude to the Iceland and Greenland fugues was the Viking explosion that burst upon medieval Europe after
a.d.
793, from Ireland and the Baltic to the Mediterranean and Constantinople. Recall that all the basic elements
of medieval European civilization arose over the previous 10,000 years in or
near the Fertile Crescent, that crescent-shaped area of Southwest Asia from
Jordan north to southeastern Turkey and then east to Iran. From that region
came the world's first crops and domestic animals and wheeled transport,
the mastery of copper and then of bronze and iron, and the rise of towns
and cities, chiefdoms and kingdoms, and organized religions. All of those
elements gradually spread to and transformed Europe from southeast to
northwest, beginning with the arrival of agriculture in Greece from Anatolia around 7000
b.c.
Scandinavia, the corner of Europe farthest from the Fertile Crescent, was the last part of Europe to be so transformed, being
reached by agriculture only around 2500
b.c.
It was also the corner farthest
from the influence of Roman civilization: unlike the area of modern Germany, Roman traders never reached it, nor did it share any boundary with the Roman Empire. Hence, until the Middle Ages, Scandinavia remained
Europe's backwater.

Yet Scandinavia possessed two sets of natural advantages awaiting ex-

ploitation: the furs of northern forest animals, seal skins, and beeswax
prized as luxury imports in the rest of Europe; and (in Norway as in Greece)
a highly indented coastline, making travel by sea potentially faster than
travel by land, and offering rewards to those who could develop seafaring techniques. Until the Middle Ages, Scandinavians had only oar-propelled
rowboats without sails. Sailboat technology from the Mediterranean finally
reached Scandinavia around
a.d.
600, at a time when climatic warming and
the arrival of improved plows happened to be stimulating food production and a human population explosion in Scandinavia. Because most of Nor
way is steep and mountainous, only 3% of its land area can be used for agri
culture, and that arable land was coming under increasing population
pressure by
a.d.
700, especially in western Norway. With decreasing oppor
tunities to establish new farms back at home, Scandinavia's growing population began expanding overseas. Upon the arrival of sails, Scandinavians
quickly developed fast, shallow-draft, highly maneuverable, sailed-and-
rowed ships that were ideal for carrying their luxury exports to eager buyers
in Europe and Britain. Those ships let them cross the ocean but then also
pull up on any shallow beach or row far up rivers, without being confined to
the few deepwater harbors.

But for medieval Scandinavians, as for other seafarers throughout his
tory, trading paved the way for raiding. Once some Scandinavian traders
had discovered sea routes to rich peoples who could pay for furs with silver
and gold, ambitious younger brothers of those traders realized that they
could acquire that same silver and gold without paying for it. Those ships
used for trade could also be sailed and rowed over those same sea routes to
arrive by surprise at coastal and riverside towns, including ones far inland on rivers. Scandinavians became Vikings, i.e., raiders. Viking ships and sailors were fast enough compared to those elsewhere in Europe that they
could escape before being overtaken by the locals' slower ships, and Euro
peans never attempted counterraids on the Viking homelands to destroy
their bases. The lands that are now Norway and Sweden were then not yet united under single kings, but were still fragmented among chiefs or petty-kings eager to compete for overseas booty with which to attract and reward
followers. Chiefs who lost in the struggle against other chiefs at home were
especially motivated to try their luck overseas.

The Viking raids began abruptly on June 8,
a.d.
793, with an attack on
the rich but defenseless monastery of Lindisfarne Island off the northeast
English coast. Thereafter, the raids continued each summer, when the seas
were calmer and more conducive to sailing, until after some years the

Vikings stopped bothering to return home in the autumn but instead made winter settlements on the targeted coast so that they could begin raiding
earlier in the next spring. From those beginnings arose a flexible mixed
strategy of alternative methods to acquire wealth, depending on the relative
strengths of the Viking fleets and the targeted peoples. As the strength or
number of Vikings relative to locals increased, the methods progressed from
peaceful trading, through extorting tribute in return for a promise not to
raid, to plundering and retreating, and culminated in conquest and the es
tablishment of overseas Viking states.

Vikings from different parts of Scandinavia went raiding in different di
rections. Those from the area of modern Sweden, termed Varangians, sailed
east into the Baltic Sea, navigated up rivers flowing from Russia into the
Baltic, continued south to reach the heads of the Volga and other rivers
flowing into the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, traded with the rich Byzantine Empire, and founded the principality of Kiev that became the forerunner of
the modern Russian state. Vikings from modern Denmark sailed west to the
coast of northwest Europe and the east coast of England, found their way
up the Rhine and Loire rivers, settled at their mouths and in Normandy and
Brittany, established the Danelaw state in eastern England and the Duchy of
Normandy in France, and rounded the Atlantic coast of Spain to enter the
Mediterranean at the Straits of Gibraltar and raid Italy. Vikings from mod
ern Norway sailed to Ireland and the north and west coast of Britain and set up a major trading center at Dublin. In each area of Europe the Vikings set
tled, intermarried, and gradually became assimilated into the local popula
tion, with the result that Scandinavian languages and distinct Scandinavian
settlements eventually disappeared outside of Scandinavia. Swedish Vikings
merged into the Russian population, Danish Vikings into the English popu
lation, while the Vikings who settled in Normandy eventually abandoned
their Norse language and began speaking French. In that process of assimi
lation, Scandinavian words as well as genes were absorbed. For instance, the modern English language owes "awkward," "die," "egg," "skirt," and dozens
of other everyday words to the Scandinavian invaders.

In the course of these voyages to inhabited European lands, many Viking
ships were blown off-course into the North Atlantic Ocean, which at those times of warm climate was free of the sea ice that later became a barrier to ship navigation, contributing to the fate of the Norse Greenland colony and
of the
Titanic.
Those off-course ships thereby discovered and settled other lands previously unknown either to Europeans or to any peoples: the unin
habited Faeroe Islands some time after
a.d.
800 and Iceland around 870;

around
a.d.
980 Greenland, at that time occupied only in the far north by
Native American predecessors of the Inuit known as the Dorset people; and
in
a.d.
1000 Vinland, an exploration zone encompassing Newfoundland,
the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and possibly some other coastal areas of north
eastern North America teeming with Native Americans whose presence
forced the Vikings to depart after only a decade.

The Viking raids on Europe declined as their European targets gradually
came to expect them and to defend themselves, as the power of the English and French kings and the German emperor grew, and as the rising power of
the Norwegian king began to harness his uncontrolled hotbed of plunder
ing chiefs and to channel their efforts into those of a respectable trading
state. On the continent, the Franks drove the Vikings from the River Seine in
a.d.
857, won a major victory at the Battle of Louvain in modern Bel
gium in 891, and expelled them from Brittany in 939. In the British Isles
the Vikings were thrown out of Dublin in
a.d.
902, and their Danelaw king
dom in England disintegrated in 954, although it was then reconstituted by
further raids between 980 and 1016. The year 1066, famous for the Battle of
Hastings at which William the Conqueror (William of Normandy) led French-speaking descendants of former Viking raiders to conquer England, can also be taken to mark the end of the Viking raids. The reason why William was able to defeat the English king Harold at Hastings on England's
southeast coast on October 14 was that Harold and his soldiers were ex
hausted. They had marched 220 miles south in less than three weeks after de
feating the last Viking invading army and killing their king at Stamford Bridge
in central England on September 25. Thereafter, the Scandinavian kingdoms evolved into normal states trading with other European states and only occa
sionally indulging in wars, rather than constantly raiding. Medieval Norway
became known not for its feared raiders but for its exports of dried codfish.

In light of this history that I have related, how can we explain why the
Vikings left their homelands to risk their lives in battle or in such difficult
environments as that of Greenland? After millennia of their remaining
in Scandinavia and leaving the rest of Europe alone, why did their expan
sion build up so quickly to a peak after 793, and then grind to a complete
halt less than three centuries later? With any historical expansion, one can
ask whether it was triggered by "push" (population pressure and lack of
opportunities at home), "pull" (good opportunities and empty areas to
colonize overseas), or both. Many expansion waves have been driven by a