Vikings in al-Andalus and the Maghreb

The impact of the Vikings on the Iberian Peninsula was limited. The fear and fascination with the Vikings, that continues to generate widespread popular and scholarly interest, has exaggerated their destructive effects on medieval society

Ann Christys

Vikings in an illustration of the *Vie de Saint Aubin d’Angers*. Biblioteca Nacional de Francia, ms. NAL 1390, f. 7r.

«Majūs* arrived in about 80 ships. One might say they had, as it were, filled the ocean with dark red birds, in the same way as they had filled the hearts of men with fear and trembling. After landing at Lisbon, they sailed to Cadiz, then to Sidonia, then to Seville. They besieged this city, and took it by storm. After letting the inhabitants suffer the terror of imprisonment or death, they remained there seven days, during which they let the people empty the cup of bitterness».
Ibn Idhārī, trans. Stefánsson, J. 1908-9, ‘The Vikings in Spain. From Arabic (Moorish) and Spanish Sources’, Saga Book, 6: 35–36.

In this passage Ibn ‘Idhārī (fl. c. 1314) evokes the terror provoked by the appearance of a Viking fleet off the western coast of al-Andalus in the late summer of 844. Iberia was one of the farthest corners of the Viking world, but piratical bands from Scandinavia launched sporadic raids on the coasts of the Christian north of the Peninsula, al-Andalus and the Mediterranean from the mid-9th to the 11th century. The most detailed accounts of their plundering are preserved by Muslim chroniclers and geographers, who mixed up names, dates and places and added picturesque details to their stories of the raiders of the sea. They were known as Majūs, a name that reflected beliefs about their origins that derived from scholarly tradition rather than eyewitness testimony. The wide semantic range of this term helps explain why today two of the best-known «facts» about the Vikings in al-Andalus are that they made cheese and that the poet al-Ghazāl sailed north from al-Andalus until he reached the court of a Viking king. Yet the so-called «majūs cheese» has nothing to do with men from Scandinavia; rather, the term “majūs” was used to differentiate Muslim from non-Muslim dietary practice. Similarly, the story of al-Ghazāl’s journey seems to be a fantasy, perhaps composed by the poet’s biographer in the thirteenth century. Latin and Castilian sources, which are mostly earlier and more laconic than the Arabic, also record the presence of the «Northmen,» although Christian chroniclers may have exaggerated the brutalities of Viking plundering of churches and monasteries in order to attract patrons for their restoration. Later, Scandinavian saga writers narrated the expeditions of Viking raiders in Iberia, both real and fictional, and of Norse crusaders who attacked the coasts of the peninsula on their journeys to Jerusalem. These historians have elaborated on what little we know with certainty about the Vikings in the Iberian Peninsula.

Viking expedition represented in the *Passio Sancti Edmundi, Regis Orientalium Anglorum et Martyris* (s. XII). Wikimedia Commons.

The factual skeleton beneath these exaggerations resembles what we know of Viking activity elsewhere in Europe, a tradition of trade and raiding along coasts and rivers. The western coast of the Iberian Peninsula in particular was perfectly suited to the possibility of piratical campaigns, with bays and inlets in which the Vikings could take refuge, islands that could serve as bases, and rivers that were navigable as far as Santiago de Compostela in the north and Seville and Cordoba in the south. Yet almost fifty years elapsed between the famous Viking raid on the monastery of Lindisfarne in the north of England and their first recorded attack on the Iberian Peninsula. Towards the end of the 8th century, Vikings had arrived in France as traders and they soon began raiding and overwintering at the mouths of the Loire and Garonne rivers. From here they sailed towards the Iberian Peninsula. The annals of the monastery of Saint Bertin recorded for the year 844 that

«The Normans sailed up the Garonne as far as Toulouse, wreaking destruction everywhere, without meeting any opposition. Then some of them withdrew from there and attacked Galicia, but they perished, partly because they met resistance from missile throwers, partly because they were caught in a storm at sea. Some of them, though, got to the south-western part of Spain, where they fought long and bitterly with the Saracens, but were finally defeated and withdrew to their ships».
Annals of St-Bertin 844, trans. J. L. Nelson 1991, The Annals of St-Bertin, Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 60.

Local tradition in northern Spain and the Asturian chronicles of the tenth century recall failed attempts by the Vikings to land on the northern coast – possibly in Luarca, near Gijón – and in A Coruña. After abandoning Galicia, they headed south and laid siege to Lisbon and Seville, an episode that was widely reported in the Islamic world. In a brief note on Seville, the geographer al-Ya’qūbī (d. 897) recorded that ‘the Majūs, who are also called the Rūs, fell upon the city in the year 229 AH’ (September 843-September 844).[1] The Andalusian Ibn al-Qūṭīya (d. 977) gave a long description of their attack on Seville, to which he added that

«After the building of the Great Mosque of Seville was complete, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān (822-852) had a dream in which he entered the building and found the Prophet Muḥammad – peace and praises be upon him – lying in the prayer niche, dead and wrapped in a shroud. The dream caused him to wake in distress, so he asked those who interpreted dreams for an explanation. They told him: ‘This is where his Faith will die’. Immediately after that the capture of the city by Vikings occurred».
Ibn al-Qūṭīya, trans. D. James, 2009, Early Islamic Spain. The History of Ibn al-Quṭīya, Abingdon and New York: Routledge, p. 101.

Ibn al-Quṭīya related the miraculous appearance in the mihrab of the Mosque of a young man who single-handedly held off the attackers for three days until the emir’s forces, gathered from all corners of his kingdom, drove the Viking ships back into the sea, laden with booty and captives.

Viking helmet from Gjermundbu. Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. Wikimedia Commons.

In 859, the Vikings returned and, after attacking Galicia and Lisbon, entered the mouth of the Guadalquivir. The emir Muḥammad (852-886) mobilized his army and a new fleet expelled the raiders, who sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar and entered the Mediterranean. They threatened the southern coasts of al-Andalus and France for three years and crossed to North Africa, where they attacked the ports of Nakūr and Aṣila and seized captives. Many different sources that mentioned Viking exploits in the Mediterranean; some said that they sailed to Italy and Byzantium, though they probably confused Vikings with other pirates, mainly Muslims, and with Scandinavian traders and mercenaries who travelled to Byzantium via the Russian river system. Two long accounts in Arabic of the expedition of 859-61 end with a description of a Viking raid on Pamplona on their return voyage. According to Ibn Ḥayyān (d. 1076), the Navarrese were forced to pay a fabulous ransom of sixty or seventy thousand dinars to redeem their ruler García Iñiguez (r. 851-870) from captivity. The story sounds more than improbable; indeed, the same historian stated that the campaign as a whole was a failure and this is why the Majūs never returned to the Iberian Peninsula.

In fact, it seems that more than a century elapsed before the Vikings returned in significant numbers to threaten Santiago in the north and Lisbon, again, in the south. The court annals of Cordoba for the years 971-974 record that the caliph al-Ḥakam II was warned on two occasions of the arrival of Majūs off the western coast of al-Andalus. After an elaborate farewell ceremony at Madīnat al-Zahrā’, al-Ḥakam sent his commander Ghālib ibn ‘Abd al-Raḥmān against the Majūs. A celebration of Ghālib’s triumphant return was also staged at the palace, even though neither the Umayyad army nor the Umayyad fleet had come into contact with the raiders, for when the Majus learned that the Quraysh forces were on their way, said al-Rāzī, they were terrified and «fled to their remote islands.» In the following year, the Cordoban forces again headed for the coast, but they found that the enemy had already set sail. This may reflect the reality of Viking activity: lightning raids that ended long before the authorities could mount a reaction. This was the last known Viking attack in al-Andalus, although local annals and other sources from northern Iberia mention Viking raids in the north.

Viking expeditions in the Iberian Peninsula and the Mediterranean Sea. Source: Christys, A. 2015. *Vikings in the South. Voyages to Iberia and the Mediterranean*, London: Bloomsbury.

Thus it appears that the impact of the Vikings on the Iberian Peninsula was limited and the region differs from the rest of the medieval Viking world in another significant aspect. Viking studies, in general, have recently focused on material culture and, above all, on the evidence for trade. No emporia – Viking trading enclaves – comparable to the ones that operated in England and Ireland and around the Baltic have yet been found in Iberia. Scandinavia runestones were carved in memory of men who died «in the south» or in «Serkland» (perhaps North Africa), but none of these individuals can be identified with certainty as the men who sailed to the Iberian Peninsula or the Maghreb. Place names in Galicia reflect periods of Scandinavian settlement, and some of these Vikings served as mercenaries in Christian armies. The Torres de Oeste, fortifications still preserved on the river Ulla below Santiago, can be dated to Viking times. But material evidence of Viking campaigns against Lisbon, Seville and Almeria or their winter camps in the marshes of the Guadalquivir has yet to be discovered.

Two artifacts and a handful of tiny bones have been linked to Viking activity. The inhabitants of O Vicedo, in the extreme northwest of Galicia, believe that the anchors uncovered by the storms of 2014 may be Viking. The treasury of San Isidoro, León, preserves a small whalebone chest of Scandinavian origin, which was reworked as a reliquary. The provenance of the chest is not documented and it may have been donated by a pilgrim or as a diplomatic gift rather than left by a Viking raider. Archaeologists have discovered hints that Viking ships may have reached Madeira. Bone fragments from the earliest mouse populations excavated on the island have been dated to between 900 and 1036, centuries before the Portuguese conquered and populated the island. Mitochondrial DNA from the current Madeiran mouse population resembles that of mice from Scandinavia and northern Germany, but not that of mice from the Portuguese mainland, suggesting that mice could have colonized Madeira from Viking ships. Similar lines of research may in future serve to identify the extent of Viking activity in the South.

Elsewhere in Europe the Vikings arrived in search of the treasures of churches and monasteries. In the ninth century, however, ecclesiastical establishments in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula were small and poor; monks are not known to have moved their wealth out of the reach of pirates as they were forced to do in England and France. Later, after the period when Vikings were most active in Iberia, and after the supposed discovery of the body of St. James in Galicia, when pilgrims began to make their way to his shrine in Santiago de Compostela, the Asturian church began to accumulate treasures such as the crosses of Oviedo and Santiago, liturgical vessels and ornaments. Some of the Andalusian cities may have been attractive targets, as rich fabrics, ivory chests, fine gold and silver work and ceramics were made for the Umayyads and their elites. A relatively small amount of currency circulated: of more than a quarter of a million Arab coins discovered in the lands of the southern shores of the Baltic, none is of Andalusian origin, and few Andalusian dinars or dirhems have been found in Scandinavian hoards. Nor does the silver that the Vikings melted into ornaments, ingots or cut silver come from al-Andalus.

There was, of course, one source of booty that could be confiscated from even the poorest settlements. Accounts of Viking raids on the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb emphasize the capture of captives (although most of the slaves in al-Andalus were taken in campaigns against their Christian neighbours). Information about Viking slavery in al-Andalus and the Maghreb comes from scattered references in narrative sources and charters. A very late Irish chronicle refers to «blue men» whom the Vikings brought to Ireland from Mauritania; we may assume that they were black Africans. Two 11th-century charters document the sale of property to pay off debts incurred in the ransom of women captured by Vikings in Galicia. According to the first, the ransom was paid in silver. In the second, the raiders made off with a number of everyday objects: clothing, a sword, a cow and a small amount of salt.

It is to be hoped that new archaeological discoveries will expand our picture of the Vikings in al-Andalus. Until they do, the main legacy of this period is the stories preserved by Arabic historians. The fear and fascination with the Vikings that continues to attract widespread popular and scholarly interest have exaggerated their destructive effects on medieval society. This same fear and fascination is palpable in medieval Muslim recollections of the Majūs.

Notes:

* Majūs: A term that originally referred to the supposed paganism and fire worship of the Persian Mazdeists and that, by analogy and as a catch-all, ended up being used also for other peoples with beliefs alien to Judaism and Christianity, such as the Vikings.

[1] Al-Yaqūbī Kitāb al-buldān, ed. M. J. de Goeje, 1892, Leiden: Brill, p.354.

Al-Andalus y la Historia

The impact of the Vikings on the Iberian Peninsula was limited. The fear and fascination with the Vikings, that continues to generate widespread popular and scholarly interest, has exaggerated their destructive effects on medieval society

Ann Christys

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