Northmen, The Viking Saga 793-1241 AD

Chapter 6: Seville and Luni. Vikings in Spain and the Mediterranean 844–61

It was all but inevitable that once the Vikings were established as a permanent presence on the River Loire in the 840s that they would sail further south and investigate the possibilities of the Iberian Peninsula. There was certainly much there to tempt a Viking. The peninsula was dominated by Western Europe’s richest and most sophisticated state, the Moorish Emirate of Córdoba. Vikings raided Iberia in strength several times to try to relieve the Moors of their wealth, but they found the emirate a formidable military power and, for all their courage and enterprise, they never prospered there.

The Emirate of Córdoba was the westernmost outpost of the Islamic world. Iberia was conquered for Islam in 711 – 12 and became part of the Umayyad Caliphate, a vast Arab empire stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to India. Only in the rugged Cantabrian Mountains in the far north-west did Christians hold out against the Muslim invaders. The Muslim conquest was followed by large-scale immigration of Moors (i.e. Berbers) from North Africa and also by smaller numbers of Arabs, which completely transformed the culture of the peninsula. The Umayyad Caliphate was the political embodiment of the Ummah, the community of all Muslim believers, and a direct link back to the time of Muhammad. However, the caliphate’s unity became increasingly strained as it expanded and in 750 the Umayyads were overthrown by the Abbasid dynasty. A general massacre of the Umayyad family followed. One of the few to escape, Abd al-Rahman, made his way to Iberia – al-Andalus to the Muslims – and founded a breakaway state at Córdoba. The emirate flourished and Córdoba became, with a population of around 200,000, by far the largest and richest city in Western Europe and probably the fifth largest city in the world. Córdoba was also Europe’s most dynamic cultural centre. Jewish and Christian scholars were welcomed alongside Muslims to study the science and philosophy of the Classical world at its many schools.

The emirate was not only wealthy and culturally sophisticated, it also had a very efficient military organisation with a large and well-organised professional standing army of infantry and light cavalry. The army was especially strong in archers and the royal armouries manufactured 20,000 arrows every month. The bow was generally regarded as a secondary weapon by the Vikings, and they used it mainly in skirmishing before a battle started. Both infantry and cavalry wore mail or scale armour, and iron helmets, which were available only to richer Viking warriors. The emirate’s elite warriors were the mamluks, slave soldiers, usually bought as children and brought up as warriors. Despite their slave status, mamluks were respected and could become wealthy and influential. The standing army allowed the emirate to react quickly to Viking raids in comparison to Francia or the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, where it took time to raise and gather levy-based local defence forces. These states also found it difficult to get men to fulfil their military obligations because they were reluctant to leave their homes and families unprotected. This was not an issue with mamluks. A state of near continuous war prevailed between the emirate and the Christian states of the north, the kingdoms of Galicia and Asturias, and of Navarre, and the County of Barcelona. This attracted many highly motivated jihadis. As their survival depended on it, the Christian states were also geared for war and the Vikings would find no easy pickings anywhere in Iberia.

Muslim chroniclers sometimes refer to Vikings as al-Urdumaniyin, meaning ‘Northmen’, but it is more common for them to be described as al-Majus. Derived from ‘magi’, this was a word originally used by Arabs to describe the Zoroastrians of Persia, but it acquired pejorative overtones and was used in the same way that Christian writers would often simply describe Vikings as ‘the pagans’. Modern historians have often claimed that Christian writers exaggerated both the violence of Viking raids and the size of Viking fleets and armies. However, Muslim chroniclers show the same sense of shock at the violence and audacity of Viking raiders and also agree broadly with Christian chroniclers about the size of Viking fleets and armies.

The first recorded Viking raid on the Iberian Peninsula took place in 844. Vikings from the Loire sailed south to the Gironde and, taking advantage of the dispute between Charles the Bald and Pippin of Aquitaine, they sailed up the River Garonne as far as Toulouse without meeting any resistance. After this success, the Vikings moved on to plunder the coast of Galicia and Asturias and, not for the last time, sacked the small port of Gijón. When the Vikings attacked La Coruña they were met by the army of King Ramiro I and were heavily defeated. Many of the Vikings’ casualties were caused by the Galicians’ ballistas – powerful torsion-powered projectile weapons that looked rather like giant crossbows. Seventy of the Vikings’ longships were captured on the beach and burned. More of the Viking force was then lost in a storm. The survivors sailed on, round Cape Finistere and down the coast of modern Portugal, which was then almost entirely under the control of Córdoba. When the Vikings landed near Lisbon in August, the Andalusian chronicler al-Razi says that they still had 108 ships in their fleet (fifty-four large ships and fifty-four smaller ones). This suggests that when it set out from the Loire, the Viking fleet must have numbered around 200 ships. The Vikings plundered the countryside around Lisbon for thirteen days, fighting three battles with Moorish forces before withdrawing.

Messengers from the governor of Lisbon rode to Córdoba to raise the alarm. The emir, Abd al-Rahman II, in turn put the governors of all the coastal provinces on alert, but not before the Vikings had sacked the port of Cadiz and the walled hill town of Medina-Sidonia, some 20 miles inland. Part of the fleet sailed to Morocco and sacked the city of Asilah before rejoining the main force. The Vikings then sailed into the River Guadalquivir, which ran through the emirate’s most prosperous territories and led ultimately to Córdoba itself. On 29 September, the Vikings set up a base on Isla Menor, an island in the Guadalquivir about 30 miles from the sea: Andalusian sources say that they now had eighty ships. The next day the Vikings sent four ships to plunder the nearby village of Coria del Rio. Many of the inhabitants were killed. On 1 October, the whole fleet sailed 15 miles further up river to Seville. Seville was a prize worth taking. The mythical hero Hercules was said to have founded the city and under Roman rule it became a wealthy river port exporting wine, grain and olive oil. Seville continued to grow under Moorish rule and in the ninth century it was probably the second most important city in the emirate, after Córdoba. The Vikings had seen cities before in Francia but most were the shrunken, depopulated cores of Roman towns that had declined along with the empire that founded them. In Iberia, town life was reinvigorated by inclusion in the vast free trade area that was the Islamic empire. As they approached Seville, the Vikings must have been dizzy at the thought of the riches it must contain. Despite the warnings, Seville’s governor seems not to have taken any special measures to protect his city and he fled before the Vikings arrived, leaving the inhabitants leaderless. When lookouts spotted the Vikings disembarking on the riverbank, the townspeople bravely but unwisely left the safety of the city walls and sallied out to fight them. They were little better than an undisciplined mob and soon lost their nerve and panicked when the Vikings attacked, scattering in all directions. In the chaos, the Vikings stormed into the city and spent seven days of unhindered plundering, killing and taking captive those of the inhabitants who had not fled to take refuge in the mountains.

After they had finished looting Seville, the Vikings withdrew back to their base on Isla Menor from where they continued to send out raiding parties towards Córdoba and other cities. A few days later Vikings returned to Seville, hoping that some of the refugees might have returned. Only a few had; they took refuge in a mosque, where the Vikings massacred them. While this was going on, Moorish forces were gathering in the hills above Seville and cavalry patrols were scouring the countryside, harassing Viking foraging parties. One large party (an improbable 16,000-strong, according to the chronicler Ibn al-Kutia) was ambushed and wiped out. On another occasion 500 Vikings were killed and four fully laden ships taken. As October drew on, the Vikings’ position became increasingly insecure. On 7 (or 11) November, the Moors used a feigned retreat to draw another large Viking force into an ambush at Tablada, near Seville. Over 1,000 Vikings were killed, including their leader, and 400 were captured along with thirty ships. The Moors hanged many of the dead in palm trees and burned the ships. The captives were all beheaded. The emir sent 200 of the severed heads to his friends in Asilah by way of announcing his victory. The surviving Vikings were trapped and hungry but they still had their prisoners to bargain with. The Moors allowed the Vikings to withdraw after they agreed to release their prisoners in exchange for food and clothes. Moorish chroniclers last recorded what was left of the fleet as it passed Lisbon on its way back to the Loire. It would seem likely that less than a quarter of the Vikings who had set out on the expedition made it back alive.

In the aftermath of the raid, the emir ordered the strengthening of the coast defences and built a new armoury at Seville. He also ordered the construction of a fleet and recruited a force of well-paid sailors. The warships built by the Moors were a type of large, fast, sailing galley known as a dromon. They carried crews of fifty to a hundred oarsmen and as many soldiers, and had two masts mounting lateen sails, which gave a ship a superior windward sailing ability compared to the Viking square sail. The emir ordered that the ships be fitted with catapults that could throw incendiary bombs made with naptha. These alone gave the Moorish warships a decisive advantage over the Vikings’ longships.

The greatest of all Viking expeditions to Spain was led by two of the most famous of all Viking leaders, Björn Ironsides and Hastein. Björn was later believed to be one of the many sons of the legendary Ragnar Lodbrok. When he was a child, Björn’s mother was supposed to have given him a magical invulnerability to wounds for which he earned the nickname ‘Ironsides’. Hastein was the wily Viking chieftain who later proved to be such a thorn in the side of Alfred the Great. Björn and Hastein left their base on the Loire in 859 with a fleet of sixty-two ships to raid along the coast of Galicia and Asturias. Finding local resistance too strong, the Vikings moved on to pillage the emirate’s west coast. Here they evidently enjoyed greater success. The emirate’s coastguards captured two longships scouting ahead of the main fleet and found that they were already full of treasure, provisions and captives. The fleet suffered another defeat when it landed at Niebla near Huelva in south-west Spain. The fleet next put into the mouth of the Guadalquivir, perhaps with the intention of sacking Seville for a second time, but it was confronted by the new Moorish fleet. The Vikings had no answer to its incendiary weapons and they fled after several longships were burned. The Viking way was always to move on if resistance proved too strong in one place, knowing that they would eventually catch somewhere off-guard. Finally, at Algeciras, a few miles from Gibraltar, they achieved complete surprise, taking and sacking the town and burning its main mosque.

Björn and Hastein took their fleet through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean. Though Vikings had never plundered in the Mediterranean before, the sea was no stranger to piracy, and Italy and Francia suffered frequent raids by Arab and Moorish pirates based in North Africa. The Vikings landed first on the African coast, at Nakur in the vicinity of modern Melilla. Local forces put up only a little resistance before fleeing and the Vikings plundered freely for a week, capturing the harem of a local ruler, which was later ransomed by the emir of Córdoba. The Vikings also captured some black Africans, who they described as blámenn (‘blue men’), who had probably been brought to North Africa by Arab slave traders. The Vikings found them so exotic that they kept some of them. They were eventually sold again as slaves and finished up in Ireland. From Melilla, Björn and Hastein returned to Spain, plundering the coast of Murcia and then the Balearic Islands. Returning to the mainland, the Vikings continued north along the Mediterranean coast, sacking Narbonne and then setting up a winter camp on an island in the Camargue, a marshy delta of the River Rhône. In the spring, Björn and Hastein sailed over 100 miles up the Rhône, sacking Nîmes, Arles and Valence. After the Franks defeated them in a battle, the pair judged it wise to head back to the open sea and sailed east along the Côte d’Azur to Italy.

According to a colourful but surely legendary account by the Norman monk Dudo of St Quentin, Björn and Hastein landed at the Ligurian port of Luni and mistook it for Rome. Luni had enjoyed modest prosperity in the Roman period as a port for exporting the pure white Cararra marble from the nearby Alpi Apuane, but by the ninth century it was little more than a village and the scant ruins that remain today make it hard to imagine that anyone could ever have mistaken it for Rome. But why spoil a good story? The glory-hungry Vikings were determined to capture the most famous of all cities. Judging the city’s defences to be too strong to storm, Hastein came up with a plan to gain entry by a ruse. Viking emissaries approached the townspeople, telling them that they were exiles seeking provisions and shelter for their sick chieftain. On a return visit the emissaries told the townspeople that their chieftain had died and asked permission to enter the city to give him a Christian burial. The unsuspecting townspeople agreed and a solemn procession of Vikings followed their chief’s coffin to the grave at which point Hastein, still very much alive and fully armed, leapt out of the coffin and slew the city’s bishop. In the resulting confusion, the Vikings sacked the city. When he was told that he had been misinformed, and that he had not after all, sacked Rome, Hastein felt so disappointed that he ordered the massacre of Luni’s entire male population. This story was repeated by many later Norman writers and the same ruse was attributed to later Norman leaders such as Robert Guiscard, Bohemund of Taranto and Roger I of Sicily. It is evidence that medieval warriors admired cunning as much as bravery and skill at arms. The Vikings moved another 60 miles down the Tuscan coast to the mouth of the Arno, sacking Pisa and then, following the river upstream, also the hill-town of Fiesole above Florence. After this the Viking fleet disappears for a year. Björn and Hastein must have wintered somewhere and it may be that they sailed into the eastern Mediterranean to raid the Byzantine Empire. Late Arabic and Spanish sources claim that Vikings raided Greece and Alexandria. If they did it was probably Björn’s and Hastein’s fleet.

The fleet reappears in 861 when it passed through the Straits of Gibraltar again, this time homeward bound. The straits are only 9 miles wide so the chances of the Vikings slipping through unobserved were slim and the Moorish fleet was ready and waiting for them. Of Björn’s and Hastein’s remaining sixty ships, only twenty escaped the ambush the Moors had prepared for them. Björn and Hastein may have been unaware that a strong surface current flows constantly through the straits from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean Sea. During the Second World War, sixty-two German U-boats entered the Mediterranean undetected by riding this underwater current with their engines turned off. Not one was ever able to get out again against the current. Björn and Hastein may have had the same problem, their slow progress against it giving the Moors plenty of time to intercept them.

Undaunted by this disaster Björn and Hastein continued raiding as they sailed homewards. Just before they left Spanish waters, they raided the small Christian kingdom of Navarre and sacked Pamplona. In a spectacular coup they captured its King Garcia I, and ransomed him for the incredible sum of 70,000 gold dinars (approximately 679 pounds /308 kg of gold). The survivors of the expedition returned to the Loire in 862 very rich men. After the expedition, Björn and Hastein split up. Björn headed back to Denmark, perhaps intending to use his wealth and reputation to launch a bid for the throne. He never made it and died in Frisia after losing everything in a shipwreck. Hastein stayed on the Loire: he still had a long and profitable career ahead of him.

The daring nature of Björn’s and Hastein’s expedition secured their reputations as legendary commanders but the cost had been very high: less than a third of those who had set out three years earlier had made it back. This must have given other Vikings pause for thought for, though they continued to raid the Iberian Peninsula until the early eleventh century, there was no return to the Mediterranean. The Straits of Gibraltar had proved to be a dangerous and unavoidable bottleneck for any fleet trying to get into or out of the Mediterranean and in the future the Vikings kept well clear. The Moors defeated major raids in 889, 912 – 13, 966 and 971. The raiders in 889 got as far as Seville before they were defeated, once again, on the fields of Tablada. The survivors of the raid settled in the surrounding countryside and many subsequently converted to Islam. This was the only known Viking settlement in Iberia. During the course of their expeditions to Iberia, Vikings may have accidentally discovered the Atlantic island of Madeira. The evidence for this comes from an unusual source, the DNA of Madeiran house mice, which indicates that they were introduced to the then uninhabited island from Northern Europe, probably as stowaways, some time between around 900 – 1050.

There probably were also more peaceful contacts between the Vikings and the Moors. There was strong demand in the Emirate of Córdoba and in the Moorish states in North Africa for Frankish, Slavic, English and Irish slaves, and many of these would have been supplied either directly or indirectly through middlemen by Viking slave traders. Many of the younger male captives were destined to be castrated: al-Andalus was famous as the main supplier of eunuchs to the Islamic world. In 845, after the Viking attack on Seville, the emir Abd al-Rahman sent an embassy led by al-Ghazal to visit the king of the Majus with gifts for him and his queen. Al-Ghazal described the land of the Majus as an island, three days journey from the mainland. There were other islands in the vicinity, which the king ruled too. Before his audience, al-Ghazal insisted that he should not be asked to kneel before the king. This was agreed, but when he arrived at the king’s hall he found that the entrance had been lowered so that he would be forced to enter on his knees. The perfect diplomat, al-Ghazal resolved the difficulty by lying on his back and pushing himself in, feet first. This would very likely have impressed rather than irritated his hosts, who would have recognised something of themselves in his determination not to be humiliated. The king’s wife Noud took a fancy to al-Ghazal and seduced him, assuring him that the Majus did not suffer from sexual jealousy and that women were free to leave their husbands at will. Al-Ghazal was correct that Scandinavian women had the right to divorce, but as for the absence of sexual jealousy, this was wishful thinking. A wife’s adultery was usually taken very seriously by her husband and in some parts of Scandinavia he had the right to kill both her and her lover if they were caught together: he may actually have mistaken a favoured concubine for a queen. It is not known which king al-Ghazal visited. If he had mistaken the Jutland peninsula for an island he may have visited the Danish king Horik. Alternatively, he may have visited a Viking warlord in Ireland, possibly Turgeis, whose wife was called Auðr, which is not too different to Noud. The purpose of al-Ghazal’s embassy is not stated either but it was almost certainly to do with trade – slaves if he had gone to Ireland, furs from the northern forests if he had gone to Denmark.

Ultimately the Vikings had no great impact on the Iberian Peninsula. Their raids were bloody and destructive but both the Christians and the Moors were able to contain them. As a result, the Vikings did not act as a catalyst for change by upsetting the local balance of power as they did in so many other places that they raided. Writing in the 1150s, the Andalusian geographer al-Zuhri summarised the Vikings as: ‘fierce, brave and strong, and excellent seamen. When they attacked, the coastal peoples fled for fear of them. They only appeared every six or seven years, never in less than forty ships and sometimes up to one hundred. They overcame anyone they met at sea, robbed them and took them captive’. So, just another bunch of barbarians.