Vikings in Northern Britain

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Hello and welcome to today's episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. My name is Dr Kat Jarman and today I've got some very special exclusive content for you because right now I am in the far northeast of England. I'm in Northumberland. up after a particularly freezing day digging holes in the field and I'm here because I'm part of a team that has started investigating a brand new Viking site that has just been identified and in today's podcast I'm very excited to be able to share for

the very first time and exclusively for Gone Medieval, the lowdown on this brand new discovery. And with me now I have the archaeologist in charge of the project, my brilliant colleague Dr. Jane Kershaw. Jane is an assistant professor

at the University of Oxford so thanks so much for agreeing to share this with us Jane. Thanks for having me. Now Jane specializes in the Viking Age and especially in Viking Age metal work and as we'll hear in a moment metal artifacts were actually key to finding the site in the first place and we're going to go back to that very specific site in this new discovery in a moment but we just need to

start out with some of the background information about the site. So I thought we could start with the particular group of Vikings that we're talking about here, namely the so-called Great Army or Great Heathen Army.

And in case our listeners aren't really that familiar with The Great Army, Jane, can you just tell us briefly about... who these people were yeah absolutely so they are first recorded as arriving in england in 865 so this is after a period of 70 years or so of viking raiding but in this year a great army arrives they're a motley

collection of career warriors, mostly from Scandinavia, maybe some people coming from the continent, possibly from Ireland as well, and they travel around England subduing the various anglo- Saxon kingdoms. They take East Anglia, they go and they capture York, they're capturing parts of Mercia as well and this activity is taking place in the late 860s and 70s and we have historical

documents that tell us where they overwinter and it's these winter campsites that archaeologists have been investigating and that we're learning a lot more about. I should say at this point that the work that I've been doing in the last decade or so is

at some of these camps so I've got a special interest. And one of those camps is the site called Repton in Derbyshire and that's probably the camp that we know the most about because we have the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle record of it and then the archaeologists backed it up. Another site for 872 is a site called Torxey in Lincolnshire. And they've been really, really important because they match the historical record with the archaeology. But, crucially, this far north, we don't...

really have any evidence of any of those camps do we? No the archaeological evidence has been non-existent for Vikings this far north we are well north of the time but we pick up the story in Repton After the Vikings have been there in 873, and where do they go next? The historical sources say that actually the Great Army splits at this point. Most of what the sources call the host, which is the army, go south.

settle in the south of England, especially East Anglia, but a part of the army goes north and it heads to the River Tyne.

Yes, and I should say at this moment as well, if you want to find out more about the Great Army, you can also check out more about their activities in the south of England, culminating in the legendary Battle of Eddington. Check out the new documentary on that topic, On History. where Dan Snow and I went on a road trip across the country to search for evidence of the great army. Let's go back to the north again. So the historical records do mention then that

The Great Army, or at least part of the Great Army, goes north and goes actually into Northumbria. What exactly do they say? And we've got some names, haven't we? Yeah, we do. And it's interesting because a lot of different written sources all say the same thing.

which is that a Viking leader called Halfdan, so one of the leaders of the great army, takes part of the troops there and they all agree, all the sources agree, that he enters Northumbria on the Tyne. So we're confident that along the Tyne somewhere...

is a Viking army base. But so far nobody's really worked out where that was. There is no evidence whatsoever. There have been suggestions based on likely positions, like Tynemouth itself is a likely... location because there were some anglo-saxon monasteries there and maybe that was a source of wealth for the vikings there was a natural harbor in that area so it's been suggested that maybe they didn't sail that far down the time and stayed near the coast but really we have

no physical evidence. So we know Halftown goes north, we know he comes here but then what does he do? I mean what else happens and could you possibly say a little bit more about the context of this kingdom of Northumbria? You know what else was here?

What could he have wanted? He's already taken York. So the Viking army have taken York in the 860s. York is the centre of the Northumbrian Anglo-Saxon kingdom at that stage. There are other centres that become... very important so Bamba further north on the coast and of course Lindisfarne which the Vikings have earlier raided and these monasteries I just mentioned around the mouth of the Tyne a cluster of Anglo-Saxon monasteries also

raided much earlier on around 800 by the Vikings. So this is an area that Vikings have previously attacked and extracted wealth out of but when we join them again in the 870s they're still interested in raiding but we're in a different phase of Viking activity where raiding is soon turning to settle.

mints let's bring it back to the new discovery and the reason why we are up here why we were shivering in a very rainy wet april field today how did this new discovery come about what was it that you narrow in on this particular location because the historical sources just mentioned the time but we're much further north than that so we've traveled up the Northumbrian coast during the beautiful Coquit Valley and the site first came to light

from the metal detector finds and these metal detectorists have been working the site for around 15 years. They've been carefully recording where they discovered their finds, reporting it to the National Portable Antiquities Scheme and that has allowed us to identify this site as really significant in its regional context and that's what first drew us here. There was a lovely assemblage of Viking Age material, not standout stuff, not kind of gold.

silver that attracts a lot of attention but actually more mundane pieces that nonetheless we tie now to Viking camps and the great army. So we have a selection of lead gaming pieces for instance, so pieces that would have been used as markers on boards that members of the great army are playing during their copious downtime in between.

raiding activities, whiling away their time in the same muddy field we were in today. There are lots of Anglo-Saxon dress accessories, although they're Anglo-Saxon they turn up at Viking camps, we're not really sure how they're being used, but these are fittings for belts.

and pins and things like that and also the local coinage which isn't actually a silver coinage but which is copper alloy so it's a very kind of low denominational coinage but it's a recurring feature at Viking campsites and we have it here yeah so that's the key isn't it this is essentially now we recognize as a kind of signature for these great army camps and they don't happen before we start hearing about the great army sites

don't really happen afterwards either so you know if you go into the 900s you don't get that same signature you don't get the gaming pieces they seem extremely specific and we know

Because we have them at somewhere like Repton, where we've got the historically documented evidence, you can use that evidence and you can sort of take that elsewhere. So that all fitted really well, didn't it? It did. And the coinage is especially helpful because then... we can say it's not an exact date that it offers but we can say this was coinage produced in the 850s 860s it points us towards a certain period of use so it's not purely guesswork you know we have some dating evidence there so

think this happens after 873 and you think it's quite soon after in the next year or two probably i do because the historical sources are clear that it's 875 that the viking army part of the army heads to the Tyne and there, the sources say, Halfdan raided among the Picts and the Strathclyde Britons. These are populations, so Scotland and North West England and Southern Scotland towards the West Coast.

These are populations further north than where we are now, so it makes sense that the Viking Great Army is on the Tyne, they're heading up further north to raid in these northern zones, and on the way they pass the coast. So the Coquit is a river that goes from the North Sea and a bit further inland and then the site is in that valley so it's accessible from the coast. Exactly, it's perhaps best named today for Walkworth Castle.

which is a prominent local feature. But also on the coast itself you have Kokut Island, a very small island today, it's a bird reserve, but a very convenient navigational waypoint. So if you were sailing up the coast... you come to this island you can turn in at modern day Amble where we're sitting now and you can row up the river.

it fits into that pattern we've got the objects that sort of scream viking great army at us and it makes sense as a location we know that some of them went up here but let's talk a little bit more in in sort of like general terms about this because that's another thing that we've been trying to understand in recent years. These campsites, these locations that were used by the Vikings we know that they spend the winter there.

So some of it is literally somewhere you can shelter and you can settle. They need to be defendable essentially. You need to be able to make sure you keep people safe. It used to be thought that these were fortifications because sometimes in the records they talk about fortifications. We don't have any evidence or any sign of fortifications here, do we? And instead, they are taking advantage of something else. The site is unnaturally...

defensive site. It's an area of high ground with quite steep falls on at least three sides, easy access to the river which is great for looking out and keeping an eye on potential enemies and it also gives you access. if you need to get out to the coast to get away. So we're not necessarily looking for built structures that are forts or ditches necessarily, but we're more looking for a prominent position in the landscape that takes advantage.

of the natural features because these sites are temporary sites these are very short-lived probably a year or so maybe they come back after a little while but they these are not permanent settlements so we need to understand these not sites that people are going to invest a great deal in terms of

permanent structures. So really when we continue with our excavations we're not really likely to find, we're not going to find buildings, we're not going to find anything major like that. I mean what do you think we're going to find when we continue? I hope very much we'll find more finds, like more small finds, small pieces of meta work which are so informative about this site.

we might find some burials. One of the really interesting things about this site is that it is not just occupied in the Viking Age. There is evidence for earlier Anglo-Saxon activity, high status Anglo-Saxon activity.

Whether this is something like a market site or more likely a cemetery is yet to be seen but there's clearly early Anglo-Saxon activity and going back even earlier there's Roman activity which is really interesting this far north here, we're well north of Hadrian's Wall, there's late Roman activity which you don't get a lot of in Northumberland and it might be connected to the building of the Antonine Wall even further north.

where we are now. So this has a longer history, I guess, this site. It's a site that the Vikings didn't necessarily have to identify for themselves as somewhere prominent. They would have been attracted to an already high status site. Have you heard of the teenage werewolf prosecuted in 1603? Did you know that the 17th century British government relied heavily on female spies? And do you want to know about chin-chucking and thigh sex? Of course you do.

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So there could possibly even have been some earlier features. And actually, we were walking around today, we were looking at some of our maps, drone images and LIDAR images and so on, and looking for some sites that perhaps... somebody else perhaps the Romans had built something there before.

We're a bit uncertain at the moment, so we've got to come back and investigate. But it's quite possible that that could have been there. Indeed. And if we think about Torxie, for instance, they do actually have a Roman villa in the middle of that site. Unclear about what would have been.

invisible or in use at that stage but it was a site that was occupied in the Roman period as well as then being occupied later by the Viking Great Army and I suspect it's highly likely that we have Roman activity and going back even earlier Iron Age activity.

classic Iron Age fort sort of site. And actually other sites like Thetford as well, for example, where we, again, there's another winter camp we've not yet identified, but that also has a very prominent Iron Age hill fort. So there are fortifications, again, it's located by...

river so it fits that pattern extremely well which is quite exciting. Yeah increasingly as we add more and more of these sites to our repertoire we can see recurring features. But if you go to this whole valley today it's pretty quiet there's not a lot there's beautiful villages there's lovely bridges we found a lovely pub yesterday where we could sit outside perhaps you know maybe have a drink but there's not really anything else

there so obviously we talked about the river the fact that they're going north but you know was there anything else here for them was this a destination itself apart from that or was it more of a sort of strategic choice to come up to a place like this It is strategic and a really important feature of this site is that it is not enemy territory. These lands had been owned by the Anglo-Saxon monastery, the community of Lindisfarne.

But they were taken over by an Anglo-Saxon king who was then killed by the Vikings in York. And when he died, his lands would have passed over to the Viking rulers in principle. Whether in reality there were...

client kings involved, ruling day to day, is open to question. But it means that the Vikings who rode into River Coquit were in charge of this area so it was in a way a safe haven and it could have been a really convenient and safe base from which to plan attacks further north and northwest and that's something that we can really visualize i think when you go out there in the landscape and things like how you travel so obviously we've talked about the river and the fact

you will know I'm slightly obsessed with how the Vikings used rivers in different parts of the world and in other parts of Europe like in Eastern Europe the rivers are absolutely key to what the Vikings are doing and here too we can imagine that if they are During raiding inland we know that this is a force that goes in part on land but also by boats. So they have boats, they have ships that are going to be very valuable.

And then we were discussing earlier on today, what do you do with those shifts? If you're raiding inland, where are you going to keep them? And could that be the sort of function of a site like this as well? Definitely, I think that's a critical part. You need somewhere to keep your ships safe, somewhere where you can repair them.

mend the sail if necessary and when the where the crew can rest but also where you have them at the ready so if you need them and you need to get away quickly you can do that so a safe place where you can easily maneuver a fleet is vital but what's interesting about this side is that not only do you have the access to the rivers and then the coast but you also have a Roman road infrastructure that can take you

inland. So you can go on a road that's known as the Devil's Causeway, you can go into northeast Northumbria as far as Berwick-upon-Tweed but it can also take you to the Lower Tyne Valley where it connects to other Roman roads to take you further inland and further west. So you have both overland routes and riverine routes so it's just perfect strategic so if you're somebody like Halfdan who's got ambitions to do so what actually let's let's stop on that what is he trying to do do you think

It's a good question. I mean, the sources say that Hafdan is intent on pillaging.

and raiding this area on attacking the churches and monasteries. Now we sort of have to take that with a pinch of salt because these are sources that want to claim they are the victims of Viking raids but we do get the sense from the source is that Haftan is quite a character and this is in the context of a cast of really big characters any Viking leader is going to be quite a character at this stage but Haftan seems quite special he's someone that leads

troops up into Scotland. We know that he fights in Scotland at Dollar and Athol for up to a year, quite a long time. He then comes back, he settles in Yorkshire.

with his army but the settled life is not for him he's keen to keep on raiding to try to continue this campaign of warfare and he tries to muster his men to do this they don't want any part of it and in the end he leaves the town again with just three ships the sources say and he goes to Ireland where he's involved in the killing of his nephew and shortly after that he himself is killed so he doesn't survive

that much longer but he's someone who is a warrior up until the end and doesn't seem to want to settle down and plough the land like the rest of his followers. And can we just touch on that one source that says something about him leaving the country because that's quite an interesting one because it actually gives a bit of a reason for what happened with him and why...

people didn't want anything to do with Halfdan anymore. Indeed. So this is an early 12th century source. It's a little bit after our period. So again, grain of salt required. But it says that Halfdan was a tat.

by mental insanity and by the severest bodily odour. And that was why none of his followers wanted to go with him. So he's leaving the time stinking, not able to gain any more loyalty or support from the people that have... followed him thus far and so he heads off to ireland in disgrace and smelling really bad poor half done okay so moving on

moving just back to the new site and the new discovery what's the significance of finding a site in Northumbria do you think I mean do we need to is it important and what can that really tell us it is important this is not an area of the country that has

lot of archaeological material for the early medieval periods of the Anglo-Saxon and the Viking Age and really Viking history has no place here so far. We have these historical references but actually they've not been investigated, they've kind of been overlooked in favour of places in the country where we do have much richer archaeological evidence like Yorkshire and East Anglia. So I feel like this site is filling a gap.

in our knowledge and actually drawing attention to the very far reach of the Viking great army they're traveling up and down the country literally we're going to the far far north of England here and they're going from England into Scotland so this is a link

what's happening in England what's happening in Scotland and that is also connected to what's happening in Ireland so they're not separate movements they're all interrelated the same players are involved in all three areas. This really could be a very important puzzle piece.

that big picture which is exciting and it's brilliant because we don't get new Viking sites very often there really are quite a few and far between and if it wasn't for the careful reporting of these fines over the years you know I think we have a contrast here somewhere like Torque C that has an awful lot of finds recorded now, many many man hours of metal detecting on the site, it's different here. It's not got the same hundreds or thousands of artifacts but it's been a slow and steady build.

And as a result, we've been able to identify a fascinating site. And as you said right at the beginning, these aren't the really amazing big hordes. They're not gold and silver. They are really kind of... boring to a lot of people everyday small objects but the fact that these tell that bigger story is essentially what's so important about them so hopefully we'll get more of those finds more recorded and then we can really fill in

the picture go and check your scrap boxes because it might be that you have material that you don't think is interesting but we find fascinating so that's really brilliant so we've just done a bit of digging we've just got started here i think we've really understanding the landscape was beginning to understand landscape some of that is the movement of the river in the past because at the moment the way the river is flowing isn't

necessarily the same as a thousand years ago. So what we need to do is try to work out what that river used to do and how that affects our site. I have to be completely honest in the last two days we found a few things but no amazing discoveries.

just yet and you and i dug a trench a little test bit that had absolutely nothing nothing at all in it unfortunately but we're not going to give up so what's next for this site then so we've been just test spitting at the moment so putting in very small trenches just to assess how deep is the archaeology are there features we do have features just nothing that is very tangible at the moment so we're coming back to the site we're going to do a proper

two-week dig in September and we really need to understand what's happening with the river so I think some coring is needed, some kind of identifying the different phases of the landscape, how the land that has crops in it today would have been.

used in the past so that's going to tell us then hopefully much more about who was here how long they were here for what sort of resources they had access to how big the site was because actually the area we're talking about it's quite big isn't it it's really substantial I think our latest estimate was 42 or 43 hectares which is comparable to

the other sites that have been identified like Torxey and Aldwark in Yorkshire as well. So it's definitely in the same league as that which is interesting when we think about the sources and only part of the Viking army going north. the rest going south but here the site is just as big as the campsites that have hosted the entire Viking army.

So we could be talking about a pretty substantial and pretty important site, potentially. Yeah, where nobody knew to expect it. And that's what's so exciting. So literally a few years ago, absolutely no clue. And then the objects just bring this to life entirely.

really really exciting obviously i'm excited because i'm involved in the project myself but this is definitely one to look out for so we will keep you updated we will as i said be digging more and jane's going to be leading research going forward so when there is some we'll make sure we bring it to you here.

And if you do want to find out more about the Great Army as well, listen to some of the other podcasts on Dan Snow's history hit and check out the new documentary about the Great Army on our road trip through the country looking for some of these sites as well.

you enjoyed this episode this was Dr Jane Kershaw talking about the brand new Viking site in Northumberland thank you so much for joining me Jane thank you it's been great and don't forget to subscribe to Gone Medieval and you can find it anywhere where you find your podcast click that subscribe button pretty please and tell all your friends and family to do the same and we will be back next week with more I'm Dr Kat Jarman and I will see you again soon