Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
VIKING NAMES
The Vikings were settlers as well as traders and exploiters, and their long-term influence was
marked. Embattled Slavs to the east gave them the name
Rus
, and their creeping colonization
gave one area in which the Vikings settled its modern name, Russia. Russian names today
- Oleg, Igor, Vladimir - can be derived from the Swedish - Helgi, Ingvar, Valdemar.
The Viking period
The Vikings - raiders and warriors who dominated the political and economic life of
Europe and beyond from the ninth to the eleventh centuries - came from all parts of
southern Scandinavia. But there is evidence that the
Swedish Vikings
were among the
first to leave home, the impetus being rapid population growth, domestic unrest and a
desire for new lands. Sweden being located on the eastern part of the Scandinavian
peninsula, the raiders largely turned their attention further eastwards, in the knowledge
that the Svear had already reached the Baltic. By the ninth century, the trade routes
were well established, with Swedes reaching the Black and Caspian seas and making
valuable trading contact with the
Byzantine Empire
. Although more commercially
inclined than their Danish and Norwegian counterparts, Swedish Vikings were quick
to use force if profits were slow to materialize. From 860 onwards Greek and Muslim
records relate a series of raids across the Black Sea against Byzantium, and across the
Caspian into northeast Iran.
Domestically,
paganism
was at its height; dynastic leaders would claim descent from
Freyr, “God of the World”. It was a bloody time: nine
human sacrifices
were offered at
the celebrations held every nine years at Uppsala. Adam of Bremen recorded that the
great shrine there was adjoined by a sacred grove where “every tree is believed divine
because of the death and putrefaction of the victims hanging there”.
Viking
law
was based on the
Thing
, an assembly of free men to which the king's
power was subject. Each largely autonomous province had its own assembly and its
own leaders: where several provinces united, the approval of every
Thing
was needed for
any choice of leader. For centuries in Sweden, each newly elected king had to make a
formal tour to receive the homage of the individual provinces.
The arrival of Christianity and the early Middle Ages
Christianity
was slow to take root in Sweden. Whereas Denmark and Norway had
accepted the faith by the turn of the eleventh century, the Swedes remained largely
heathen. Missionaries met with limited success: no Swedish king was converted until
1008, when
Olof Skötkonung
was baptized. He was the first known king of both
Swedes and Goths (that is, ruler of the two major provinces of Västergötland and
Östergötland), and his successors were all Christians. Nevertheless, paganism retained a
grip on Swedish affairs, and as late as the 1080s the Svear banished the then king, Inge,
when he refused to take part in the pagan celebrations at Uppsala. By the end of the
eleventh century, though, the temple at Uppsala had gone and a Christian church was
built on its site. In the 1130s, Sigtuna - the original centre of the Swedish Christian
faith - was replaced by Uppsala as the main episcopal seat, and in 1164 Stephen, an
English monk, was made the first archbishop.
1008
1157
1229
1323
Baptism of first Swedish
king to be converted to
Christianity
Swedes lead crusade
against heathen
Finland
Birger Jarl assumes
power in Stockholm
Sweden's eastern
frontiers formalized with
Russia
