Just Finished Reading: The Viking Art of War by Paddy Griffith (FP: 1995)

The Vikings, who terrorised a whole continent for close to 300 years, have a fearsome reputation as a warrior elite who carved up their enemies as easily as they carved up their empires and simply took whatever they wanted. Likewise they freely navigated across the globe, from England and Ireland to Iceland, Greenland and they even discovered America centuries before Columbus. No wonder they fire the imagination of so many historians and anyone interested in the wild times of a warrior elite. It’s a shame, therefore, that very little of the legend is true – at least according to the author of this interesting work of military history.

He certainly has some worthy credentials to back up his claim being, after all, a Senior Lecturer in War Studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (essentially the UK equivalent of West Point) so he should certainly know a thing or two. He also provides us with the facts, as much as we can ascertain such things, which do tarnish the Viking reputation as some kind of superman or demon sent by God to prey on the wicked. Referencing the saga’s and contemporary accounts from across Europe it becomes clear that against poorly armed or poorly organised opposition the Vikings did prevail and “cause much slaughter”. But where they met determined defences the odds of success fell away rapidly with the sea pirates coming off worse (and sometimes much worse) as often as they prevailed. There greatest asset was their ability to ‘pop up’ almost anywhere sometimes miles from the coast in apparently ‘safe’ areas, take what they wanted or what was available then vanish before armed help could arrive. The fed on chaos and mismanagement but made little headway against well trained and well led troops – as they found to their cost in England during the reign of Alfred the Great and almost every time they tried to nibble off pieces of the Arab/Muslim empires towards the East. Here they were repeatedly repulsed with much more than a bloody nose.

Likewise the author calls into question their much talked about sense of adventure and basic navigation skills. Referring yet again to the saga’s he points out just how many times new lands where stumbled upon by accident, lost, found again and eventually settled by groups arriving in small fleets who often made landfall only after losing a number of their ships in the process. Normally the Viking ships rarely sailed out of sight of land and then only in the best possible weather – yet still significant numbers of their ships were lost in the process.

So where did the reputation of essential toughness and capability come from? A great part of it, it seems, was the unexpected nature of the attacks – seemingly random and almost always decidedly violent. Where countries had not prepared adequate defences the Vikings went where they liked, did what they wanted and took what they could carry. Anyone who objected generally ended up dead – but this was standard practice across Europe at the time. The Vikings, it appears, where not vastly different in the level of violence used from any of their contemporaries. It was their strangeness, the ever present fear of their arrival and the helplessness of the general population to defend themselves (by and large) that gave rise to the legend of the Northmen.

This was a very different book from the others in my Viking Blitz read concentrating as it does purely on the military aspects of this fascinating people. Discussing overall strategy, military organisation, tactics, weapons, ships and fighting techniques it was a valuable addition to my understand of their way of life and death. Definitely recommended for both Viking and Military History buffs.

Coming Next in History: Three Battles that made Britain.