Predatory Polities: Viking Raiding Fleets in Ninth-Century Europe

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Beyond “Barbarians”: Dimensions of Military Organization at the Bleeding Edge of the Premodern State" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Viking Age was a time of upheaval and disruption across the northern world. Beginning in the late eighth century CE, historical documents attest to a surge of viking raiding into western Europe. By the mid-ninth century, predatory raiding fleets are recorded as operating across the North Sea and the British Isles, modern-day France and the Iberian Peninsula, and even making inroads into the Mediterranean. The largest fleets, which were made up of numerous autonomous flotillas comprising not only raiders but also their families, are now widely considered to have functioned as mobile, migratory polities in their own right. Until recently, the organizational structures underpinning the operation of these groups, nor their modes of interaction with the societies that they encountered, have not been closely scrutinized. In this presentation, I will draw together both archaeological and historical evidence in order to examine the ways in which viking fleets mobilized for collective action, in addition to the various tensions that may have had to have been negotiated in order to ensure success in the field.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Beyond “Barbarians”: Dimensions of Military Organization at the Bleeding Edge of the Premodern State   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35896.0