Archaeologists now know that farms with a courtyard, fields and outlying lands existed in Norway as early as the Stone Age, years ago, long before the Viking Age. The animals on the farm in the Bronze Age were largely the same as the Vikings had and which we have today. People kept cows, sheep, goats, pigs and horses. There might have been a dog running around the yard. Archaeologists found an entire village here, with a number of houses from the Bronze Age and older Iron Age. When bronze was invented in the Middle East or in southeastern Europe over 4, years ago, it made life easier for people.
Bronze made it much easier to make advanced, solid weapons. The tools people used also got better. But the copper and tin that were used to make bronze were only mined a few places in Europe. The sources for the materials were often in completely different places on the continent. This also helps explain why people of the Bronze Age became so dependent on ships. And they certainly had room for more than just bronze, which people could trade with.
A number of women who have been identified in Bronze Age communities in Denmark had come from far away, while men more often came from the local community. No one knows why this is so. But what is likely is that women must have played an important role in bringing knowledge and traditions across long distances in Europe. Helle Vandkilde is a well-known Danish Bronze Age researcher who has made important contributions to our understanding of the period.
The idea is similar to today's concept of globalization. It suggests that bronze required the creation of new networks and new social systems, because the metal is created from two other metals, copper and tin, which rarely occur together. The fact that the two components of bronze had to be sourced from completely different places meant that trade accelerated.
Kristian Kristiansen from Gothenburg University says that all of this new information has led to a great deal of discussion among Bronze Age experts. The fundamental question is whether the information from all this new research accurately reflects what life was like for the people who lived in northern Europe three thousand years ago.
In the past, Bronze Age researchers placed a great deal of emphasis on the local community, where people lived. They conducted digs and searched for artefacts where people lived, without thinking so much about their relationship to the rest of the world. The most important finds were considered to be valuable items, weapons and jewellery. Now the research has shifted to focus more on the people themselves and how they lived. In recent years, researchers such as Kristiansen, Melheim, Vandkilde and others have focused on new scientific methods which create an image of a very mobile Bronze Age society with contacts over long distances.
We know it was transported over long distances. Researchers can now measure trace elements in the copper which helps tell them where the metal has come from. Along with lead isotopes in the copper, the trace elements can tell us what kind of ore it was and how old the copper is.
Together, this creates a kind of fingerprint that reveals the age and place of origin of the metal. Unfortunately, there are currently no grave finds in Norway where the hair and clothing from a Bronze Age person are intact. The closest is the beautiful jewellery in the grave of the Rege woman from Rogaland. For example, large quantities of wool were produced in the Terramare culture in Italy.
She emphasizes that many of the new methods the researchers are using now are still under development. At the beginning of the Bronze Age years ago, it was perhaps as much as 3 degrees C warmer in Norway on average than today. It then got colder and about years ago it may have become very cold. You can read more about this in this sciencenorway. Just over a thousand years ago, during the Viking Age, the climate warmed up again.
At that time there would likely have been a landscape of large oak trees along much of the coast. If you travelled by ship into the Alta Fjord in Finnmark, you might see tall deciduous forests. Inland areas in southern Norway, such as Hedmark, Oppland and Buskerud, were also covered by large deciduous forests. Many mountains were wooded, unlike today.
As early as the end of the Stone Age, people cleared many of the forests in Norway. They continued to do so during the Bronze Age. In Western Norway, the heath landscape began to spread. There were farms and pastures both along the coast and inland. The first summer farms appeared. The climate was so mild that people were able to leave their animals outside all year round. But years ago, the people who lived in Norway hardly felt like they were living in a backwater.
Norwegians at that time were well aware of cultural developments in Europe. Findings from the Bronze Age tell us that people in Norway were aware of trends from elsewhere at the same time as people farther south in Scandinavia.
The merchant ships that travelled south from present-day Norway around years ago may have contained a lot of leather. We know that Danes at that time exported a lot of expensive amber south to Europe. Archaeologists have found amber jewellery from the Baltic Sea in Egyptian tombs from the time of the Pharaohs. The skins, which may have been sent from Norway and south, have long since rotted.
It may have been the people of Syria in the Middle East. Or perhaps bronze was invented in several places, independently. Maybe there were a number of different people who discovered that a mixture of copper and tin resulted in a whole new metal that was much better to use than pure copper. After all, the bronze could be shaped in ways that were previously unthinkable. It was also important that the bronze could be used again and again, so that if something broke, it could be recycled.
Because the bronze was so often reused, there are rarely large amounts of it to be found in the settlements that archaeologists excavate. Sometimes there are large bronze finds in graves or when someone has died by accident in wetlands, lakes or on scree slopes.
Demand for copper and tin in Europe was far greater than the supply. Tin was probably the scarcest. No one has been able to show that copper or tin was mined in the Nordic countries during the Bronze Age. But perhaps it just hasn't been studied enough? There is some tin in Telemark. Until a few years ago, Bronze Age researchers had decided that the copper in swords and jewellery found in Norway came from mines in Central Europe.
Their opinion was based on something that could be easily seen: There were great similarities between Norwegian and Central European Bronze Age swords. Ling published a study in Sweden last year of a total of Bronze Age swords from Scandinavia.
The study also concludes that as early as years ago, a copper mine in Italy was the most important source of swords cast both in Italy and here in Scandinavia.
Scientists are more uncertain about the tin found in Norwegian bronze. But here the UK stands out as the most likely place of origin, Melheim says. She earned her doctorate on metal production in the Bronze Age. The Bronze Age may have had a society where leaders gained greater power, much as leaders did during the Viking Age. These people controlled both building projects and trade.
They may also have been religious leaders. Agriculture allowed more people to have access to food than was possible in the Stone Age. This allowed more people to work. But someone needed to organize everything. And leaders needed something to show that they were in charge.
As a result, they probably acquired prestigious weapons, clothing and jewellery that signified power. This increased the demand for both bronze and textiles. As the metal culture spread, the Stone Age's skilled Norwegian stone smiths had to find something else to do. Some probably became bronze casters. And eventually the casters here in the Nordic countries became just as capable and often even better than their continental teachers.
They produced jewellery and ornamented daggers in bronze that are equal to anything made further south in Europe. The fashion and motifs in jewellery and weapons were the same in Norway as in the rest of southern Scandinavia and in northern Germany. This tells us that people belonged to the same culture, even though they lived far apart. As the Bronze Age drew to a close, the climate in Norway became colder. It may have changed a lot. This innovation came to Norway about years BC.
When a band of Danish raiders arrived in Frankish lands, they were met by a Frankish emissary, who asked to be taken to the leader of the Viking band. He was told, "We are all leaders here. By the end of the Viking age, most European lands had strong central authorities, including trained, standing armies capable of mounting effective defenses against Viking attacks. Generally, the Vikings were not trained, organized troops.
While skilled at arms, their shock tactics were ineffective against trained, professional soldiers supported by the king. Another change that occurred as a result of the Viking attacks was that some of the more desirable targets were fortified or modified, making them less susceptible to Viking raids. Monasteries built easily defendable towers, where valuables and people could be moved quickly in the event of a raid.
Some monasteries were moved inland, away from the reach of ship-based Vikings. The island monastery at Iona was raided three times by Vikings, in the years , , and Beginning in the year , the monastery was moved about 20 miles 35km inland for safety.
The Christian church arrived in the Viking lands at the end of the Viking age. The Viking raids were not in keeping with some of the tenets of the Christian church, so it is not a surprise that the arrival of the church and the decline of raiding are closely tied.
The Viking age ended when the raids stopped. The year is frequently used as a convenient marker for the end of the Viking age.
It was the last major Viking incursion into Europe. The raids slowed and stopped because the times changed. It was no longer profitable or desirable to raid. King Alfred ruled from and after many trials and tribulations including the famous story of the burning of the cakes! After the battle the Viking leader Guthrum converted to Christianity. In Alfred took London from the Vikings and fortified it.
The same year he signed a treaty with Guthrum. The treaty partitioned England between Vikings and English. The Viking territory became known as the Danelaw.
It comprised the north-west, the north-east and east of England. Here, people would be subject to Danish laws. Alfred became king of the rest. Alfred's grandson, Athelstan, became the first true King of England. He led an English victory over the Vikings at the Battle of Brunaburh in , and his kingdom for the first time included the Danelaw.
In , Eirik Bloodaxe, the last Viking king of York, was killed and his kingdom was taken over by English earls. See Egils Saga. However, the Viking raiding did not stop — different Viking bands made regular raiding voyages around the coasts of Britain for over years after So the Vikings were not permanently defeated — England was to have four Viking kings between and The greatest of these was King Cnut, who was king of Denmark as well as of England.
A Christian, he did not force the English to obey Danish law; instead he recognised Anglo-Saxon law and customs. He worked to create a north Atlantic empire that united Scandinavia and Britain.
Unfortunately, he died at the age of 39, and his sons had short, troubled reigns. His battle banner was called Land-waster. The English king, Harold Godwinson, marched north with his army and defeated Hardrada in a long and bloody battle.
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