The Viking Age

793 CE O.S. – 1066 O.S.51 items

medievalvikings
The Oseberg ship, buried in 834, in the Viking Ship Museum, Oslo. Photo: Larry Lamsa, 2015. CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Oseberg ship, buried in 834, in the Viking Ship Museum, Oslo. Photo: Larry Lamsa, 2015. CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

From Lindisfarne to Stamford Bridge, 793–1066

For two and a half centuries, people from Scandinavia raided, traded and settled across a quarter of the globe. This timeline follows them from the first raid on an English monastery to the death of the last Viking king to invade England, and it spreads across the map from Newfoundland to Constantinople and from Seville to the Volga.

How to read it

  • Every date is Julian, as contemporaries kept them: the Northumbrian annalists, the Frankish court, the Irish monks and the Byzantines all used it. In these centuries it runs four to six days behind the modern calendar.

  • The bands are the age’s phases and places: the first hit-and-run raids, the Great Army in England, the Danelaw and Norse York, the settlement of Iceland, the river road to Byzantium, the conversion of the North and Cnut’s North Sea empire. The river road, the Great Army’s camps and a raid into the Mediterranean are drawn as routes, the Danelaw as a region.

  • Filter by raids, trade, migration or religion to follow one thread, rus for the eastern world of the Rus’ and the Varangians, and battles for the fighting.

  • Much of the story comes from sagas written down two or three centuries later. Items tagged sagas give a date from that tradition; items tagged archaeology give one from tree rings, ash layers or radiocarbon. Where the two meet, as at L’Anse aux Meadows, the notes say which is which.

Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race, nor was it thought that such an inroad from the sea could be made. — Alcuin to King Æthelred of Northumbria, 793

Items

  1. The hit-and-run raids

    ≈ 57 years

  2. Lindisfarne is sacked

    Lindisfarne Priory, Holy Island

  3. Sixty-eight monks killed on Iona

    Iona Abbey

  4. King Godfred moves a market to Hedeby

    Hedeby (Haithabu), on the Schlei

  5. Ansgar preaches at Birka

    Birka, on Björkö in Lake Mälaren

  6. The Oseberg ship is buried

    The Oseberg mound, near Tønsberg

  7. Dorestad is plundered

    Dorestad (Wijk bij Duurstede)

  8. The “Rhos” reach Ingelheim

    Imperial palace, Ingelheim

  9. A longphort at Dublin

    Dubh Linn, the black pool, Dublin

  10. The sack of Seville

    Seville (Ishbiliya)

  11. Paris sacked at Easter

    Île de la Cité, Paris

  12. An army winters on Thanet

    Isle of Thanet, Kent

  13. Björn and Hastein raid the Mediterranean

    ≈ 2 years · The Loire to Luni, by Nekor, the Balearics and the Camargue

  14. The route from the Varangians to the Greeks

    ≈ 183 years · From the Varangians to the Greeks: Birka, Ladoga, Novgorod, Kyiv, Constantinople

  15. The Rus’ attack Constantinople

    Constantinople (Istanbul)

  16. Rurik is called to Novgorod

    Rurikovo Gorodishche, by Novgorod

  17. The Great Heathen Army

    ≈ 13 years · The Great Army’s camps: East Anglia, York, Nottingham, Reading, Repton, Chippenham

  18. Norse Jórvík

    ≈ 87 years · Coppergate, York (Jórvík)

  19. The Great Army takes York

    Coppergate, York (Jórvík)

  20. Landnám: the settlement of Iceland

    60 years

  21. Reykjavík: Ingólfr and the Landnám ash

    Aðalstræti, Reykjavík

  22. The winter camp at Repton

    St Wystan’s Church, Repton

  23. The Danelaw

    76 years · The Danelaw, roughly: England east of Watling Street

  24. Alfred wins at Edington

    Edington, Wiltshire

  25. The siege of Paris

    10 months, 26 days · Île de la Cité, Paris

  26. Rollo is granted Normandy

    Saint-Clair-sur-Epte

  27. Oleg’s treaty with Byzantium

    Constantinople (Istanbul)

  28. Ibn Fadlan meets the Rus’ on the Volga

    Volga Bulghar, near modern Bolgar

  29. The Althing meets at Þingvellir

    Lögberg, the Law Rock, Þingvellir

  30. Battle of Brunanburh

  31. A Norseman’s name in Hagia Sophia

    South gallery, Hagia Sophia

  32. The conversion of the North

    ≈ 65 years

  33. Harald Bluetooth’s Jelling stone

    Jelling church and mounds

  34. England’s second Viking age

    36 years

  35. Trelleborg is built

    Trelleborg ring fortress, near Slagelse

  36. Erik the Red settles Greenland

    Brattahlíð (Qassiarsuk), Greenland

  37. Vladimir of Kyiv is baptised

    Old Kyiv hill, Kyiv

  38. The Varangian Guard

    Constantinople (Istanbul)

  39. Battle of Maldon

    Northey Island causeway, Maldon

  40. Leif Erikson reaches Vinland

  41. Iceland votes for Christianity

    Lögberg, the Law Rock, Þingvellir

  42. Battle of Svolder

  43. St Brice’s Day massacre

    St Frideswide’s minster, Oxford

  44. Sweyn Forkbeard takes England

    Gainsborough, on the Trent

  45. Battle of Clontarf

    Clontarf, north of Dublin

  46. Cnut’s North Sea empire

    ≈ 18 years, 11 months

  47. Wood is cut at L’Anse aux Meadows

    L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland

  48. Battle of Stiklestad

    Stiklestad, Trøndelag

  49. Harald Sigurdsson in the Varangian Guard

    8 years · Constantinople (Istanbul)

  50. Ingvar the Far-Travelled sails east

    ≈ 5 years · The Gripsholm runestone, Mariefred

  51. Battle of Stamford Bridge

    Stamford Bridge, on the Derwent